Keeping the subtitles on

Text: an original contemporary television-review-style practice extract.

I turned the subtitles on because the kitchen fan was louder than the detective. Once the kettle had boiled, I could hear perfectly well. I left the words on the screen anyway. A line I had taken for a casual complaint turned out to contain the date on which the case depended.

The subtitles also made silence less empty. A description of a distant train arrived before I noticed its sound; later, the train explained why a witness had misheard a name. I began attending to what the episode had placed at its edges. There was a cost. When a sentence appeared before an actor finished speaking, I sometimes reached the joke too early. Looking down could also mean missing a face.

For this episode, the gains were greater than the interruptions. The words helped me follow both the evidence and the small noises around it. That is not a claim that every programme improves when read. A dance performance might ask for a different kind of attention. But I had treated subtitles as a repair for failed hearing and found, on one evening, an additional route into what I could already hear.

In this extract, the writer tries to convince readers that subtitles can enrich a viewing experience.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.