TV's constipation?

THE LIMITS OF SQUEAM

Like most people we've been watching a lot of TV during lockdown.  Although we've watched plenty of shows from this country, and the wider UK, much of our entertainment has been from other European countries, rather than the ubiquitous US stuff.  Despite the language differences we feel more at home culturally with the 'Old World', as it was once known.  And the Walter Presents catalogue on All 4 offers plenty of choice to explore.

One of the best of that bunch has been the Catalan thriller Nit i Dia (Night and Day) featuring forensic pathologist Sara Grau as the lead character.  There have been two series so far, each of thirteen episodes, and well worth a look if you enjoy a good crime series with plenty of suspense and twists.  Of course, as with all fiction, suspension of disbelief is often required.  But sometimes there are such obvious deviations from reality that you wonder why the director chose to do so.  I saw something in the final episode of the second series that made me wonder how film makers determine where our limits of prudishness should lie.

Spoiler alert - if you think this is a series you'll want to watch you might want to stop reading now, because there's a certain amount of plot detail I need to go into to make my point.  Or if you're like me and forget stuff easily it may not matter!

Our heroine is been held captive by the baddie, one wrist handcuffed to the ceiling framework above.  She manages to kill him, but nobody knows she's there awaiting rescue so she has to devise her own way out.  Which requires the severance of one of her own body parts.  While we don't see the part itself being hacked off, there's more than enough blood and sound effects and blade action to get the point across strongly, and this is not a scene for the overly squeamish.  But we're now well used to our modern thrillers involving a lot more blood and guts than Dixon of Dock Green stretched to.  Our societal disgust levels aren't what they were.

Yet in another area of sensitivity we don't seem to have moved on much.  Sara is held in the room for four or five days.  While her captor lives he allows her food and water.  Under those circumstances it would be a bit much to expect someone not to have a few bladder and bowel movements.  But there's not an inkling of a tinkling, no notion of a motion.  No wee smelly piles on the floor - and no wee at all.  Her clothes look crumpled and grubby, but not soiled.  

So it seems OK to show someone cutting into their own body, a rarity to most of us I hope, but not something every one of us does every day.  Is the piss and shit taboo still to be broken?