Improvement in TV

When do you think it happened?

As a kid in the 70s and 80s, expectations for TV programming seemed pretty low. In Canada, we got a fair number of British imports which were okay, but mostly TV consisted of ‘The A Team’, ‘Airwolf’, ‘Knight Rider’, ‘Hart to Hart’, ‘Quincy, MD’, and other such nonsense.

Then, the 90s rolled around and the likes of ‘Northern Exposure’ and ‘Picket Fences’ appeared, which seemed to go places, narratively speaking, that no shows had gone before.

Since then, it seems, we’ve seen a gradual growth of more interesting shows, to the point where companies like Netflix are commissioning brilliant stuff such as ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘Orange is the New Black’. ‘Mad Men’ was utterly breathtaking at its best, and I have only heard good things about ‘The Night Of’.

At some point, it seems, there was a revolution at the studios, where writers with complex ideas were allowed to have a say, and now TV shows have become as developed as film.

What do you think? Have show radically improved? If so, what was the turning point?

TV was excellent in the 70s, maybe you didn’t get the good stuff. Have a google for “Play for Today” and take a peek at the cast list for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy.

Sopranos.

If I have to pick a single show that signposted the turning point then I’d go for Hill Street Blues.

Ah. I forgot the Sopranos. I think there is a connection between some writers on the Sopranos and those on Mad Men, incidentally.

For me it was shows like Oz and Six Feet Under that started the ‘box set’ revolution.

Six Feet Under

Good call.
First aired at stupid’o’clock on C4?,I felt like I was the only one watching it.

Yes, Hill Street Blues was a milestone. It’s hard to watch now, but back in the day it was revolutionary. Sopranos changed tv forever, incredible casting and scriptwriting. The Wire, Deadwood, and Breaking Bad were amazing too, but Sopranos did it first.

Its the way that TV can be consumed thats changed.

Back in the 70’s/80’s even though you had a series with returning lead characters all the episodes needed to be self contained as with a week between episodes you had to allow for the fact that the viewer would miss stuff. So the A Team / The Hulk /David Hasslehoff / Starky and Hutch/Scooby Doo would turn up in a situation with its own cast of characters – play their part – the story would resolve and they’d move on. Next week they’d enter a new situation, take nothing they’d learned in the past episode with them into it, meet new strangers and leave them again, with all the main characters pretty much unchanged, un-aged by everything they’ve just encountered, they didn’t even get a change of clothes or a haircut from one story to the next. With a series from that era you could watch the episodes in any order as the cast all return to exactly where they started at the end of each story.

With TV now a series has a life as a ‘box set’ either physically or digitally’. Which means rather than move from world to world and gather nothing along the way the story can sit in one world and grow and grow in it. So you get lovely TV like the Wire which starts on a bench on a street corner and grows to envelope the whole city- you get to know people, they get to know each other and the can grow, learn, and be changed by their experiences instead of being the weird ageless, immutable and amnesiacs they had to be in the 80s.

You still get stuff thats a throw back – the various CSI franchises are pretty old fashioned in still having each episode being self contained. The characters do have their own evolving story life but theres very, very little of it and its very much in the background of each episodes stand alone story line.

I remember an interview with Peter David (I think) talking about the difference between writing for Star Trek and writing for Babylon 5. Star Trek usually followed an A-B-A format: Everything starts in a known state, something happens to upset that balance, then it’s resolved back to the known state. Babylon 5 aimed for an A-B-C format: Everything starts in one state, something happens and once it’s stopped happening everything is in a new state.

Babylon 5 and other shows had strong ongoing narratives while still maintaining a weekly format so I’m not sure that the advent of “box set TV” is really the thing that inspired this change. It’s possibly something to do with the increasing number of options available – you need to put more effort hooking people into coming back to your show if there’s a lot of other shows competing for their attention.

While I realise that a lot of TV from my earlier years was pretty rubbish, and I recognised the quality of many of these shows with ongoing stories, I find that I’m quite a light watcher of TV these days. I rarely feel like I want to put in the commitment to watch a show for an extended period of time to get the best out of it. That means when I do dip into TV these days I tend to end up watching quite a lot of sitcoms or cartoons as there aren’t so many dramatic shows that are worth watching if you haven’t seen all preceding episodes and plan to watch all those that follow.

Dexter?

Some mothers do ‘av ’em?

Open all hours?

In the 70s Timker tailor, house of cards then smileys people all great shows, telling epic tales but

Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Godfather, spielberg epics like ET etc etc etc movies were king

I think it was Twin Peaks that really put out something bold enough to challenge cinema’s dominance

Star Trek, next gen did have some ABC stories, by the time Ronald Moore was doing it it was pretty good, and he aced it wth DS9 (and then paramount ruined things with Voyager)

Buffy
X-files -both long term story arcs as well as ‘monster of the week’

B5 was very impressive, from the get go

Oz, was where it got grown up

Sopranos, it is what it is

Since then its just got better

while cinema has become afraid to take risks- remakes, reboots, adaptations and sequels only

The whole boxset thing is great for watching the characters grow and building on all the historical storylines,but there was something exciting about when you had to wait a week for the next episode. 🙂

I agree with The Sopranos in ’99 being the turning point, it wasn’t night and day, it took a good few years before anyone was brave enough to spend that sort of money on TV and really invest in writers, directors, cast, crew etc.

I think it’s great, when Sky came around TV went rubbish, choice up, quality through the floor – I’d rather binge on a series of ‘The Wire’ over a few nights than watch a good film even. After Game of Thrones, Star Wars 7 all seems a bit rushed.

for me it seemed the box set watch em all in a day binging began with ’24’ and Kiefer Sutherland running around never going to the toilet or sleeping. The first series of that was 2001. Seems about right.

Hill St. Blues had story lines that extended past one episode and wasn’t alone. There were good and bad programs in the 70’s as there is now. It’s not all great stuff now.

I think it was Twin Peaks

+1

Just watching it again now, hasn’t aged nearly as much as I expected – possibly because it was more ’50s than ’90s anyway.

There were quite a few shows that set the tone really, most have been mentioned.

I recently re-watched most of X-Files and I think this was an important series. I’ve read before that TV and Cinema switched roles somewhere 2000 ish – all the really good stuff was on TV and films became shite.

It’s taking off even more now with Netflix etc – distribution cost is so low that they don’t have financiers and studios trying to reduce risk by sticking to the usual formula and bastardising the plots.

I rarely feel like I want to put in the commitment to watch a show for an extended period of time to get the best out of it.

Don’t need to. You can polish off Man in the High Castle in a week. We didn’t though, we wanted to savour it 🙂

Incidentally, some of the best telly I’ve ever seen is Daredevil series 2. I was amazed how a TV show could be that deep and that good.

You can polish off Man in the High Castle in a week. We didn’t though, we wanted to savour it

I did two series of Game of Thrones over a weekend. it felt dirty, like eating all your easter eggs before lunch.

I do that too 🙂

I don’t think there has been one “golden era” of TV. For me, the 70s were great, because of MASH and Porridge, and the 90s highlight was the X-Files. I don’t really remember anything as good about the 80s, although Moonlighting and Miami Vice were probably the pick of the bunch.

/thread.

St Elsewhere?

Mark Frost was a writer on Hill St Blues and later put together Twin Peaks with David Lynch. Still one of the strangest and most unsettling pieces of network television I have ever seen. Ok, the second season largely sucked because Lynch had gone (till the final episodes) but still…..

Noseybonk was also quite unsettling, I might add, but nothing to do with this. 🙂

Agree with ChrisL’s synopsis. Very accurate.

TV programs with films budget due to a “smaller” world allowing a larger market.

and

Now films more like big budget TV programs … Marvel series of films or Star Wars with its new spin offs.

It good until you flick on the TV, on a saturday evening and there’s absolutely nothing to watch on “normal” Tele…. Casualty vs X factor

How about the West Wing for an ongoing story, or even earlier Edge of Darkness.

Like almost everything, there is very rarely a huge jump, more incremental changes from year to year as quality of the best stuff improves and challenges others to step up to the mark.

The West Wing has 7 series. First thing I ever binge watched.

Also, I think TV wasn’t considered “worthy” for actors for a long time.

Now you’ve got some of the greatest actors of their generation really pushing the format (Spacey, West etc).

Didn’t make it past series one of The West Wing, saw it as an infuriatingly self-satisfied liberal soap-opera/fantasy.

Did anyone watch “Homicide: Life on The Street”?

Written by David Simon who went on to do The Wire. Was on at 1130 on a Tuesday night or something. Channel 4 naturally.

Oz was brutally compelling TV too.

It’s thought that we’re currently enjoying “The Golden Age of TV”, I think that might have passed as now there is too much TV to watch everything!

Hill Street Blues had a lot of serialized story arcs, it moved away from a purely episodic format. It also used hand held cameras, which made it feel very different to the average tv show back then. Most major characters had serious character flaws: alcoholism, drug use, gambling, racism, etc. Many of the criminals were somewhat sympathetic characters, especially the gang members. Nowadays, we take all those things for granted, but back then, it was revolutionary.

But surely the pinnacle of TV *was* Knight Rider? 😀

To be honest, most TV I watch is old stuff. Only Game of Thrones of modern era peaks my interest and even then I’ve got bored of it for some reason. Well, there is Doctor Who of course. Always good, well mostly.

But surely the pinnacle of TV *was* Knight Rider?

Knight Rider had nothing on The Dukes of Hazzard. BJ and the Bear was pretty awesome too.

Did anyone watch “Homicide: Life on The Street”?

Written by David Simon who went on to do The Wire. Was on at 1130 on a Tuesday night or something. Channel 4 naturally.

I watched it after ‘The Wire’ ended and they refused to make any more, it’s pretty good.

For me, really great TV series need a central core story with a begin and an end. There will always be little sub-plots and stuff, but without a core story it’s loses meaning for me.

Yeah it was shit but modern TV is awful with only a few exceptions.

BillOddie – Member
Did anyone watch “Homicide: Life on The Street”?

Written by David Simon who went on to do The Wire. Was on at 1130 on a Tuesday night or something. Channel 4 naturally.

Oz was brutally compelling TV too.

It’s thought that we’re currently enjoying “The Golden Age of TV”, I think that might have passed as now there is too much TV to watch everything!

POSTED 27 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST
holst – Member
Hill Street Blues had a lot of serialized story arcs, it moved away from a purely episodic format. It also used hand held cameras, which made it feel very different to the average tv show back then. Most major characters had serious character flaws: alcoholism, drug use, gambling, racism, etc. Many of the criminals were somewhat sympathetic characters, especially the gang members. Nowadays, we take all those things for granted, but back then, it was revolutionary.

Tom Fontana created (wrote/produced) Oz and then Homicide,

For me, really great TV series need a central core story with a begin and an end. There will always be little sub-plots and stuff, but without a core story it’s loses meaning for me.

You’re totally right, but one of the very best shows of the last decade (Deadwood) didn’t get an ending. Tragic when so much dross gets recommissioned now.

fear not chkaping !!

http://collider.com/deadwood-movie-update/

A lot of stuff that seemed lightweight as a kid wasn’t so fluffy- I remember watching Cagney and Lacey as a throwaway silly US cop show, I don’t remember the whole alcoholism arc thing…

chakaping – Member

Didn’t make it past series one of The West Wing, saw it as an infuriatingly self-satisfied liberal soap-opera/fantasy.

Did you not even make it to episode 3, “A Proportional Response”? Not any sort of liberal fantasy. That’s one of the things that made it so good, Sorkin was obviously in love with his characters but that doesn’t stop him making them screw up, be arseholes, and generally fail to get the job done, often because they’re self-satisfied liberals. And a lot of that is prescience; Bartlett is basically foiled by stalemate in congress and much of it is about dealing with that, or not- the west wing had a fiscal cliff before fiscal cliffs were cool.