Perhaps we have entered the third great era of television drama, partly because the next great era of television comedy simply refuses to begin. None of the broadcast networks can seem to come up with a sitcom to challenge “Seinfeld,” which retired undefeated (and prematurely) in 1998 and still haunts the airwaves in reruns. It may have constituted a “great era” all by itself.
Drama is another story. The 2005-06 TV season probably boasted more solid hours of good drama than television has seen in many years.
It was a golden era, or at least a golden season, for television drama, thanks in part to HBO’s “The Sopranos.”
The networks showed what could be done when they let producers dare to stray from the familiar and formulaic—from the old cops-and-robbers and doctors-and-nurses templates. You know: the sick and the dead.
There was so much good drama it reminded me of years long ago when I religiously watched every episode of “L.A. Law” and was first struck by something I call the 10:50 syndrome.
The 10:50 syndrome involves anxiety, dread, maybe even a hint of panic, but is by no means a negative state. It’s a simple thing: You try hard not to look at the clock during a great show such as “The Sopranos,” because you just want to sit there undistracted and enjoy it. You simply don’t want it to end.
Anyway, no matter how hard I tried not to, I’d often glance at the clock in the fourth quarter of “L.A. Law” and discover to my dismay that 10:50 had either come or passed. And that meant only a few more minutes, and maybe only one or two more scenes (a bedroom scene was usually among the last few) until the “executive producer” credit appeared on the screen, that immutable signal that another episode was over.
Complexity replaced simplicity
“L.A. Law” was so rich and relished that it was a jab in the eye (or, maybe, a slap to the back of the head) to have it end. Television had seen dozens and dozens of courtroom shows come and go in the years since it began, but “L.A. Law” was something different. And though some complained that it was too slick and polished when compared to its grungy “Hill Street Blues” predecessor, “L.A. Law” was Drama Deluxe, a preview of the movie-quality TV series that now, in TV’s current drama renaissance, have grown fairly common but shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer is responsible for much of this, with the exceptionally gorgeous luster applied like a final coat of car wax to the “CSI” dramas he makes for CBS. It could be argued that the home audience doesn’t consciously give a hoot about “production values,” as the trade papers refer to them, but viewers notice them nevertheless. If you put a drably overlit, statically shot, hideously designed episode of “Dynasty” up against a stylishly shot, briskly edited episode of “CSI: Miami”—replete with the kind of dazzling special effects that are still relatively new to prime-time TV—the two shows would look like they were from different planets, not just different eras.
Complexity has replaced simplicity in these shows, both in terms of plot and character development. Some producers take the new liberty and go cuckoo with it, with the results snazzy but implausible. But for the most part, it’s resulted in first-class, high-gloss television, this liberation-born-of-desperation (broadcast networks were steadily, annually leaking audience to basic cable, but that hemorrhage has at least temporarily been halted—in part because the new-age dramas are so addictive).
It’s only a guess—though one based on the evidence of the weekly prime-time schedules—but it seems that network executives, those perpetually vilified philistines and clods who supposedly like to shoot down new ideas the way Dick Cheney shoots down, er, whatever, are more receptive now to concepts that are off-the-wall, out of left field, even radically nuts. Neither the audience nor the TV Academy appears to know with absolute certainty whether ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” is a comedy or a drama, but whatever it is, people love it (wobbles in its ratings this season may be largely because HBO put “The Sopranos” up against the housewives on Sunday nights).
Whatever the precise or mercurial causes, it does seem that the 10:50 syndrome has returned—that there are a larger number of 10 o’clock dramas that one hates to see end than there have been in years. And since the Fox network stops programming an hour earlier than its predecessors, there are shows that prompt the 9:50 syndrome as well—none more proficiently or artfully than “House,” perhaps the most recklessly ambitious variation on medical drama ever—although “Grey’s Anatomy,” on ABC’s Sunday nights, runs a close and provocative second.
“House” is distinguished, elevated and made riveting not only by superior writing and a top-notch supporting class but, especially, by Hugh Laurie in the title role—no, not that of a building but of a doctor whose last name is House. TV has seen cantankerous antiheroes before, but Laurie’s House may be the most uncompromised and least sentimentalized ever. He can have you on the edge of your seat just waiting for a smile, even a half smile, just the merest hint of a twinkle in one eye (of course, that could be the symptom of a disease picked up from a patient).
“House,” with its graphic displays of hospital gore, can be difficult viewing, but the show has consistently placed among Nielsen’s Top 10 or 20 this season. Of course, a skeptic would be justified in pointing out, it can’t hurt “House” that it follows “American Idol,” the most talked-about sensation in all of prime-time television (and after five seasons yet!). But the fact that a huge percentage of those who watch “Idol,” the epitome of all that’s (relatively) bright and shiny in television, stick around for “House” is an awe-inspiring tribute to the power of the show and, particularly, Laurie’s ferocious performance.
Sorkin soap opera
One of the sadder soap operas of the year was the backstage story of how “Commander in Chief,” ABC’s drama about the first woman president, eroded in both popularity and quality as the weeks wore on. ABC booted the show’s creator, Rod Lurie, and brought in Stephen Bochco, the Aaron Sorkin of his era (which brings to mind a somewhat related problem: Aaron Sorkin seems to have turned into the Aaron Sorkin of another era, too. Can someone be the “poor man’s version” of himself?).
Perhaps there are just too many faux presidents on the airwaves. Thus it’s hard to get very weepy over the demise of “The West Wing” on NBC. Fox’s “24” continues to be can’t-miss TV for its fans, but you’d think even the loyalists would get tired of having hero Kiefer Sutherland save the world from destruction every single season. And I knew from the first glimpse of the first episode of the new season that the president was going to turn out to be the bad guy, if only because the actor cast in the role always plays bad guys.
And who, after all, could follow actor Dennis Haysbert, previous occupant of the White House in “24” but assassinated as the new batch of episodes began. But Haysbert would bounce back in a big way, as star of “The Unit,” an extraordinary military drama created by playwright David Mamet for CBS—a combination of “Platoon” and “Desperate Housewives.”
As for HBO, which arguably kind of set the new age of drama in motion with David Chase’s spellbinding “Sopranos,” things are not looking so peachy. The old “it’s not TV, it’s HBO” smugness is definitely inappropriate when such hugely imperfect projects as the muddled (and muddy) “Rome” and the bloated “Big Love” are passed off as daring departures. “Entourage” remains titillating and scintillating escapist fun (though the show is hurting itself with too much predictable and repetitious shtick by Kevin Dillon) and will be warmly embraced by fans when it returns on June 11, but otherwise HBO has logged another season less stunning than so-so.
There are even widespread industry rumors that HBO chief Chris Albrecht, having failed to fill the shoes of predecessors Michael Fuchs and Jeff Bewkes, may be on his way out. He deserves some sort of punishment for failing to renew “The Comeback,” a delightful comedy-drama starring Lisa Kudrow as an actress bravely refusing to face certain facts of life and weathering humiliations that would sink most mere mortals. Kudrow and Michael Patrick King, the creator-producer, came up with a series that was truly, even in a time of hard-to-define genres, uncategorizable—bitterly funny one minute, crazily moving the next.
Was it comedy? Was it drama? Whatever. Like the TV season itself, I hated to see it end.
