History Literature / TheSerialMurders

* LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub: Discussed. The villain introduces Richard to a couple of really obvious Legitimate Businessmen, present to bid on using the villain's powers for assassination. Jeperson quips that the men must be "olive oil salesmen", referencing the legitimate business of the Corleones in ''Film/TheGodfather''. They appreciate the joke, but the villain -- who is both uncultured and not as smart as he thinks -- is lost.

* NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: ''The Northern Barstows'' is set in the city of "Bleeds" in the county of "Northshire", and the characters speak in an accent that's recognisably OopNorth without being from anywhere in particular.

Richard is annoyed to be offered what he thinks is an ordinary murder, until he learns it's one of a series of events in which celebrities have suffered the same fates as their NoCelebritiesWereHarmed equivalents in a popular soap opera, ''The Northern Barstows'', at the exact same moment as those fates were broadcast.

* BitingTheHandHumor: Of a sort; when someone jokingly says that commercial television was the invention of Satan, it's suggested that this is literally true. Most of the 1970s TV shows that influence the Jeperson stories, however, were themselves broadcast on British commercial television.

* CampStraight: Lionel Dilkes, the extremely camp PR man, admits to Richard that he's actually not at all homosexual, just playing up to people's expectations of his profession.

* CharacterNameAlias: The mastermind behind the murder-for-hire scheme uses the alias 'Darrius Barstow' when dealing with underworld: Darius Barstow being a long dead character on ''The Northern Barstows''.

* DidNotThinkThisThrough: The villain gets a bit over-confident with his special abilities and ends up holding an AuctionOfEvil using a special version of the show that he's written, filmed and approved to show off his abilities and sell them to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, he's forgotten that the producer gets final approval of the episode and the director of the network gets final say over what goes out on the air... and neither of them are on his side.

* {{Expy}}: ''The Northern Barstows'' is clearly an in-universe version of ''Series/CoronationStreet'', having started off in the 1960s as a rather earnest and serious KitchenSinkDrama type of show about a reasonably realistic approximation of Northern English life, only to gradually become increasingly soapy, melodramatic and over-the-top in order to retain audiences. And only ''part'' of that was because of all the voodoo.

* LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub: Discussed. The villain introduces Richard to a couple of really obvious Legitimate Businessmen, present to bid on using the villain's powers for assassination. Jeperson quips that the men must be "olive oil salesmen", in reference to the legitimate business of the Corleones in ''Film/TheGodfather''. They appreciate the joke, but the villain -- who is both uncultured and not as smart as he thinks -- is lost.

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Most of the rich and famous characters depicted on the soap opera, to the point that it's been said you haven't really made it in Britain until you've been misrepresented on ''The Northern Barstows''.

* OhCrap: At the end, after preemptively gloating over his victory to Richard and Barbara, when the episode actually begins airing the villain instantly recognises that it's not the one he wrote, directed and edited... and that the doors are locked and the phones disconnected in the screening room he's currently in. His reaction is... not dignified.

* PutOnABus: A common occurence in ''The Northern Barstows''.

* CelebrityResemblance: When they learn they're going to have characters based on them, Richard mentions that people keep telling him he looks like Creator/PeterWyngarde, while Vanessa suggests he could also be played by Creator/PeterCushing, and Barbara says she's "always being mistaken for some woman who wears fangs in [[Film/HammerHorror Hammer Films]]".

* CallForward: Adam Onions, the man from IΨT, has a larger role in ''Literature/{{Swellhead}}'', which is set after this but was written first.

* HollywoodVoodoo: The kind that involves voodoo dolls is central to the plot. The twist is that the "dolls" are the NoCelebritiesWereHarmed fictional versions of real people who appear on ''The Northern Barstows'', usually wearing an item of clothing that (unbeknownst to the actors) was stolen from the target.

* HollywoodVoodoo: The kind that involves voodoo dolls is central to the plot.

* {{Oxbridge}}: Lady Dee is an Oxford graduate; specifically, she was at Shrewsbury College, the same fictional college [[Literature/LordPeterWimsey Harriet Vane]] attended.

* CelebrityResemblance: When they learn they're going to have characters based on them, Richard mentions that people keep telling him he looks like [[Series/JasonKing Peter Wyngarde]], while Vanessa suggests he could also be played by Creator/PeterCushing, and Barbara says she's "always being mistaken for some woman who wears fangs in [[Film/HammerHorror Hammer Films]]".

* AlwaysVSexy: The actress Victoria Plant, known to one and all as "Lovely Legs". (She's actually one of Richard's colleagues working undercover, but since her real name is Vanessa she's an example of the trope even so.)

He investigates, with the assistance of Professor Barbara Corri, an glamorous female academic whose specialist subject is soap operas, and discovers that in the world of television nobody is who they appear to be, onscreen or off.

* SexMagic: OccultDetective Richard Jeperson ends up having [[AThreesomeIsHot threesome]] to conclude a magic ritual, though it's not clear if this is a part of the ritual or everyone just getting worked up.

* CanonWelding: One of the prospective clients at the AuctionOfEvil is the villain of Newman's non-series novel ''Bad Dreams''.

* CelebrityResemblance: When they learn they're going to have characters based on them, Richard mentions that people keep telling him he looks like [[Series/JasonKing Peter Wyngarde]], while Vanessa suggests he could also be played by Creator/PeterCushing, and Barbara says she's "always being mistaken for some woman who wears fangs in [[HammerHorror Hammer Films]]".

* WagTheDirector: The actress who plays Mavis Barstow, the central character of ''The Northern Barstows'', is also one of the producers and whatever she says goes.

* ComicBookFantasyCasting: When they learn they're going to have characters based on them, Richard mentions that people keep telling him he looks like [[Series/JasonKing Peter Wyngarde]], while Vanessa suggests he could also be played by Creator/PeterCushing, and Barbara says she's "always being mistaken for some woman who wears fangs in [[HammerHorror Hammer Films]]".

* ComicBookFantasyCasting: When they learn they're going to have characters based on them, Richard mentions that people keep telling him he looks like [[Series/JasonKing Peter Wyngarde]], while Vanessa suggests he could also be played by Creator/PeterCushing, and Barbara says she's been told she resembles one of the actresses from HammerHorror films.

* RepeatingSoTheAudienceCanHear: A notorious feature of ''The Northern Barstows'' is that whenever something happens that the writers couldn't afford, couldn't fit, or just couldn't be bothered to show on screen, they deliver the necessary exposition by writing a scene in which Ben Barstow receives a phone call telling him all about it -- or rather, stands with a phone to his ear "repeating" the information for the benefit of the audience.

* {{Defictionalization}}: It's mentioned that there was an attempt to market a beer under the name of the BlandNameProduct beer that everyone drinks down t' pub in ''The Northern Barstows''; unfortunately the product itself wasn't any good, and nobody bought it.[[inuniverse]]

* TheOtherDarrin: Discussed during a writers' meeting Richard and Barbara sit in on, with Barbara helpfully explaining to Richard the difference between a "[[TheOtherDarrin Darrin]]" and a "[[TheNthDoctor Who]]", and the derivations of each.[[inuniverse]]

* {{Defictionalization}}: It's mentioned that there was an attempt to market a beer under the name of the BlandNameProduct beer that everyone drinks down t' pub in ''The Northern Barstows''; unfortunately the product itself wasn't any good, and nobody bought it.

* TheOtherDarrin: Discussed during a writers' meeting Richard and Barbara sit in on, with Barbara helpfully explaining to Richard the difference between a "[[TheOtherDarrin Darrin]]" and a "[[TheNthDoctor Who]]", and the derivations of each.