How Tightly Scripted TV Dramas Became the Highest Art Form of Modern Civilization
Bart and Fleming express some of the thoughts I’ve had for a long while. I used to sneer at television and avoid it like the plague but in this decade and at this time, TV Dramas have become the highest art form we have. The reasons are multiple, but chief among them are Length. If you look at the type of story you can tell in a movie compared to the type of story you can tell in a short story or novella, you find a parity. Full dramatic great novels converted to movies rarely play well because there’s too much shorthand to cram it into 90 minutes. Meanwhile if you wanted to put any great american novel on screen, you would do it chapter by chapter, and take the length of time needed to do it right.
Can you run a serial into the ground? Sure. There’s a natural arc in this art form — going beyond 6 or 7 seasons seems to make most TV shows collapse under their own weight into an insipid stew of repetition and actors going through motions but not connecting.
The other reason is the one that Bart & Fleming state - all of the good writers have flocked to television, and many grew up there. So now I watch television if I want to enjoy true drama and pathos and not moment by moment canned script blockbuster thrill rides. Television drama is where the Adults hang out, movies are where the kids go. I enjoy a good comic or short story just as I enjoy a good movie, but when I want to really reach a pinnacle I look for a new Television Drama series that’s good.
Fleming: Working on the Deadline/Awardsline Emmy issues prompted me to binge my way through cable series like True Detective and House Of Cards. It really got me depressed about the movie business.
Bart: Why?
Fleming: Because those series and 10 more like them are better than anything I see on a movie screen. For the 25 years I’ve covered it, film has always been the sexiest, most prestigious part of the business. Sure, TV packages drove the bottom line, but agencies and studios were measured by the feature stars and directors in their stables. TV, particularly pay and basic cable, has gradually overtaken movies and become the trendsetting cool place to work. Why leave the house for the theater when so many movies regurgitate past success, especially at studios? Look at the projects put in development last week. Revamps of Power Rangers, The Flintstones, Private Benjamin. Uninspiring.
Also noteworthy: most of the Marvel studios comic adaptation movies are not single shots either - instead they are a series also having an epic arc of their own. The movies that are succeeding well are not retread with sequels, but instead serial stories that have not yet been told full scope on screen. (LOTR, Hobbit, Marvel, etc. etc.) So will television pick up the next great adult fantasy series, or will the movie studios do it? My money is on TV. (Nine Princes in Amber? The Broken Sword? David Eddings works? anyone? anyone?)
More: Bart & Fleming: Are Feature Films Losing Their Prestige Mojo to Television? - Deadline.com