Is TV's Golden Age Over?

David Simon thinks yes. 

It's an odd comment for the TV writer to make as fans flock to Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and True Detective. But that's exactly his point. Simon worries that people have caught onto TV, that Hollywood big wigs realize that fans will bite onto big budget shows with special effects and big name actors. If the great qualities of television--long story arcs, great characters, time to build an audience--have been found out by all cable TV network heads, then will they allow shows with a small budget and unknown actors thrive? David Simon worries that the time of risky and cerebral 'indie' shows is over. Will networks green light a shows like The Wire, Mad Men, or Breaking Bad? Or will more remakes of movies with big movie names get the go ahead before a show about a post-hurricane city?

Well it's hard for me to agree with Simon here. First of all, Simon comes from a world of drama. And while arguably there isn't a drama in the vein of the one mentioned above exactly, comedies are in a full heyday. Girls, Louie, Archer, The League, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Veep, Moone Boy (all shows that are low budget and niche, and barring maybe Louis CK, Danny DeVito and Julia Louis Dreyfus), don't have hugely popular stars, and certainly don't have huge movie actors crossing over to TV. Even Silicon Valley, HBOs newest highly promoted show, doesn't have a huge name to the cast.

Even if we turn away from the fact that comedies are incredibly creative and quality these days, dramas aren't exactly doing poorly. The Americans, Rectify, Orange is the New Black, and Justified are all great dramas with more seasons ahead. But perhaps the best part of TV right now is that America is finally coming around to the stand alone mini-series! This is something that other countries have been open to for a while. Top of the Lake and True Detective are two good examples of great mini-series that have had great success. Sure, they star Holly Hunter, Matthew McConaughey, and Woody Harrelson along lesser known stars, but they wouldn't have been made at all 10 years ago.

Simon might miss the counter-culture of pay cable that existed 15 years ago, but it's exactly because television is so high quality that Hollywood actors are willing to move to TV. As Matthew McConaughey said when asked what someone at the top of their game in film thinks about making a TV show:

For me, as we all know, it’s a different time in television.  There’s not that feeling of, if you’re having a successful film career and somebody brings up something on television, [then you wouldn’t even consider it].  At the time when I got this, we didn’t know where it was going to be.  All I knew is that I read the first two episodes, and I was in.  I was just, at the time, looking for quality.  So, it wasn’t something where I said, “I’m in, but wait a minute, it’s TV.”  That wasn’t a gauge.  That transition is much more seamless, in reality and perception, more now than ever.  It was, “Television?  Great!  Let’s go to the right place to do it.”  Some of the best drama going on has been on television, in comparison to some films.  It was a 450-page film, is what it was.  It was also finite.  It didn’t mean that we had to come back next year, if we were under contract.  In that way, it was exactly a 450-page film script.

There's two points here which are key. The first is that it's clear that TV is creating more of the best characters in entertainment, predominately because you can create so much more depth over multiple hours rather than around 2 hours. The second is that movie actors don't want to commit to years of working on TV, they want to keep their acting identity dynamic. Thus, it's unlikely you'll get Brad Pitt committing to 5+ seasons of TV, but he might just sign up for 10 episodes.

Now, while it's true that Game of Thrones is a piece of fantasy soap opera, nothing close to the subtle storytelling in The Wire, Deadwood, or Breaking Bad, but we're allowed to have some high quality junk food to go along with our more intense, though also tasty, healthy foods. We can read a noir murder mystery along with the Pulitzer winning novel. The good thing about TV these days is that the race for an audience has been made broad and there are options for all sorts of moods. What was once four major networks is now nearing a dozen networks that people can dabble in on a regular basis and get varying degrees of quality TV. So perhaps HBO will become the network for big name series, but there's still AMC, FX, Sundance, Hulu and Netflix, and maybe soon Amazon, too?

Which brings me to a final point, it takes less of an audience to support the continuation of a show these days. Veronica Mars was cancelled for having just over 4 million viewers a week. At the time that was a sign of being 'unwatched', yet these days those numbers would signal a huge CW hit. This is true for many shows and most networks. The competition is tough out there, but the bar is lower, at least in terms of audience size. What a show needs now is a decent sized cult following. This is what the A.V. Club argues in an article stating that the fear of cancellations are becoming a thing of the past--though they should try telling that to fans of Community, Almost Human, and Believe. The A.V. Club might be simplifying things a wee bit, but their key point seems accurate. It takes a much smaller audience to keep a show on air than it used to.

In the end, the truth is that TV has been the most important entertainment medium for a long while. Long gone are the days of popular poetry,opera and plays, novels, and finally movies. And while video game might make the most money of any entertainment medium, that's predominately based on market factors that extend beyond broad popularity. Consider the high price of new games and consoles, as well as the fact that gaming companies still haven't found a way to entice the female market very well.

No, TV is still in it's golden age. It's just that finally more people have noticed.

Is Ripper Street The British Answer To Deadwood?

Ripper Street is not as gritty, not as brash, and not as fucking brilliant at swearing as Deadwood. Moreover, the show isn't a classically downtrodden critical darling. But, so what? Ripper Street isn't in the top echelon of TV, but it's got good writing and good acting and it's entertaining. You should try it out.

Like Deadwood, Ripper Street is a show about a dark time and place in history where chaos was being tamed into order. It has whorehouses and violent murders. The main character, Detective Reid, is on the outs with his wife after the recent death of their child. Sound familiar?  It's got a modern feel, even through historical dialogue and a set that shows the dirt and dust of lower class Whitechapel. Though this takes place almost at the same time as Deadwood is supposed to it's not as anarchistic and crude as the American silver rush, but we're dealing with the British, they're generally a bit more refined.


Unlike Deadwood, Ripper Street is largely a procedural with a few background arcs that focus on learning about individual characters... and there's some Jack dude people seem to mention a lot. Deadwood was never a procedural. An individual episode of Deadwood makes no sense whatsoever on its own, it was complex, fascinating, and had lofty ambition, but the TV landscape would be pretty boring if every drama was serialized and aimed for grandeur. Sometimes it's good enough to be a high quality mystery week to week with a decent dose of character depth. Not as good as HBO, but better than CBS.

The show gets it's name from Jack the Ripper, but it really takes place after the Ripper murders in what is a very grim looking Whitechapel. Times are changing, the Tube is only just being built, London is becoming more and more international and industrial. The media is a force to be reckoned with, as are the criminals who thrive in the fast growing city. This show makes good use of this era of a huge change, both as a background and juxtaposed against the lives of the characters who are struggling to maintain morality in their neighborhood and in their own lives.

The perspective of Ripper Street mainly comes from three law men, with various and different degrees of upstandingness. The cast is superb. There's Jerome Flynn (Game of Thrones) as the muscle, Adam Rothenberg as the smart, lovable criminal and surgeon (think Malcolm Reynolds or Han Solo), and the brains of the operation played by Matthew Macfadyen (M1-5/Spooks, Death at a Funeral, Frost/Nixon). Charlene McKenna who plays the somewhat dim but constantly ambitious Rose has a talent for stealing scenes, which is impressive given the caliber of those whom with she's acting. MyAnna Buring, who plays the owner of an upscale Brothel is underused in Season 1, but she gets more to work with in Season 2. Then there are guest spots from great British actors, such as Joe Gilgun (This is England, Misfits) and Iain Glen (Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, MI-5), speckled throughout the show.

Ripper Street has two seasons with eight episodes each. It was canceled by BBC in late 2013 only to be revived three months later thanks to Amazon and a streaming deal which gives Amazon exclusive rights to stream the first two seasons and the right to air season three a month or so before the show airs on BBC. A fact which might have interesting implications for the landscape of television and shows with low ratings but dedicated fanbases. I, for one, am happy to have this scrappy period drama back on the air for at least one more season so that it can solve some more East London crimes.