Megan McArdle, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... , writing over at Bloomberg, has this thought-provoking article (well, it is to me) about why so-much acclaimed television is so dark and depressing in its content:
We are in a golden age of television, I am told, where television shows are taking the risks, doing the interesting things that are no longer possible in movies that need so many tens of millions of dollars to cover the cost of production and marketing. I largely agree with this assessment. So what does it say about modern society that it considers shows about meth cookers, crack dealers and gangsters to be the finest mass market entertainment we can produce?
She goes on to this explanation for the trend:
We watch so many crime dramas because there are no big stakes in middle-class American life. The criminal underworld is one place where decisions actually matter -- and can be shown to matter, dramatically. You look at novels of the 19th century and they are filled with terrible, dramatic dilemmas that actually did face ordinary people. People lost everything, and risked starvation; they performed terrible, cruel, dangerous work for years on end in order to make a little money; they died from the risks of their job or the ordinary diseases that used to carry off so many people in their prime. Women had to choose between love and the economic security of a well-off suitor. The result of a regrettable night of passion could be expulsion from polite society, or a hasty forced marriage. People in the 19th century, and into the middle of the 20th, faced a lot of dilemmas wherein doing the wrong things could permanently destroy their lives.
She's got an important point: as our lives (in the West, certainly), have become more comfortable and the risks associated with making very bad decisions have fallen, it is possible to see how drama, to hold our interest, has to focus on the more extreme sides of life. I understand that. However, I think McArdle's assessment might let off the TV producers a bit too easily. Over half a century ago, Ayn Rand was already pointing to how, in the name of "realism", makers of films and TV shows increasingly focused on the seedy side of life. And this was not just because of a desire to fill a need for drama, but also reflected what she saw as the "anti-life" mentality of the producers of such works.
Rand also, to be clear, also realised that a lot of popular TV culture, books and films that were sneered at by the "high-brows" of the time contained a lot of what she called "Bootleg Romanticism", full of stories of cops, vigilantes and other characters (think Superman, think Dirty Harry, Bruce Lee or James Bond) dealing with the bad guys.
This "Bootleg Romanticism" issue has shifted. A lot of the most lauded TV programmes of today, such as "Breaking Bad" or "Mad Men" or "The Wire", are very stylish in different ways, and often very well acted, but apart from a few momments such as in Mad Men (it actually had a scene when reference was made to Atlas Shrugged), I tend to find such shows fall into the danger of becoming pretentious, or almost too much in love with their own hipness. For example, I am sure I am not the only person to have been bored by the dinner table companion trying to impress us all with his coolness by going on about "The Wire".
Of course, there is a varied pattern. For what it is worth, here are my favourite TV shows, past, present, and some of them British, and some, American:
24 (especially series three)
The Sherlock Holmes Casebook (Jeremy Brett version)
Firefly
The remake of Battlestar Gallactica
Inspector Morse
Twilight Zone (the old one)
The Prisoner
Danger Man
Babylon Five
Spooks (the first series)
The Tom Baker Dr Who series
CIS Las Vegas (yes, it is dark at times but I also like its problem-solving dynamic, which I think celebrates Man as an efficacious being).
So, SOLOists, what are your favourites?
(BTW, I haven't seen a single episode of Downton Abbey).