Character Issues

An interesting read from Virginia Heffernan on the new genre of television dramas for The New York Times

"Television acting has long been dismissed as merely hitting marks and reading cue cards. But the arrival of “The Sopranos” in 1999 changed all that. Television fans had been waiting for something like this for a long time. ... Finally, we had our very own aesthetic paradigm shift. In a single bound, TV became cinema — understated, baroque, potent, adult.

Vincent Canby of The New York Times defined this emerging genre of TV-as-the-new-cinema as the “megamovie".

Today, nearly a decade after “The Sopranos” began, megamovies are what virtually all producers of hourlong TV shows strive to make: nervy, cinematic dramas with inventive soundtracks and ferocious, high-status central characters. “Mad Men” and “Damages” are just such megamovies.

... In the Chase paradigm, a show’s main character must be fundamentally evil, and this evil must undermine the tenacious American fantasy that there are morally responsible roads to power and moreover that the achievement of power is itself a moral responsibility."

Read full article

The Wire, The Shield and Dexter: The devil is in the detail

According to Times Online, The Wire isn’t just the best thing on the box: its brilliant writing means that it - and series such as The Shield and Dexter -amount to America’s national theatre.

... "You may not like what the stories tell and, indeed, sometimes the relentless moral equivalence of The Wire is a little too easy, a little too close to student nihilism. But it is saved by the writing; and The Shield and Dexter are always saved from mere melodrama by their unerring dramatic instincts. The cities are in ruins, the devil is out of his hole, but artistry, for a few hours, makes sense of it all." - Bryan Appleyard.

From West Wing to the real thing

There's a reason why the parallels are so uncanny: "I drew inspiration from (Obama) in drawing this character," says "The West Wing writer and producer Eli Attie, a former Al Gore speechwriter, who wrote many of the Santos episodes.

Attie tells the Guardian: "When I had to write, Obama was just appearing on the national scene. He had done a great speech at the convention (which nominated John Kerry) and people were beginning to talk about him."

Attie even called Obama's aid to say, "'Tell me about this guy Barack Obama.'" As The Guardian puts it, "The result is a bizarre case of art imitating life -- only for life to imitate art back again."

[The Guardian via TV Tattle]

The buzz on 'Gossip Girl'

Gossip Girls is the most downloaded television program on iTunes. But despite the program's online popularity, the network hasn't been able to translate the Web buzz into substantial TV ratings. LA Times reports.

"Even after a marketing push, just 2.6 million viewers on average tuned in to watch the show's first 13 episodes -- about 500,000 of them teens, its target demographic.

"It's sort of become the first show that has managed to achieve some level of cultural permeation and success in the new world order where ratings don't really seem to apply," said executive producer Josh Schwartz.

That the CW is still trying to boost interest in a program originally regarded as one of the hottest new entrants of the season speaks to the difficulty in gauging how new media are reshaping television watching.

"The disconnect seems to be with teens who love to speculate and comment online but rarely turn it into direct viewing," added Cole, who advises networks and advertisers on the changing landscape. "Teens, while still interested in television, are less interested in television than any generation that has come before them."

... One of the major hurdles the show faced was its Wednesday night competition: two of the most anticipated new shows of the new season, ABC's "Private Practice" and NBC's "Bionic Woman," along with CBS' highly rated "Criminal Minds"."

What they don't say speaks volumes

The Boston Globe attempts to explain the appeal of TV's morally ambiguous charters.

"Michael C. Hall (Dexter) Damian Lewis (Life) and Hugh Laurie (Dr House) seize attention by making a lot out of the smallest gestures.

"Hall, Laurie, and Lewis preside over their shows like conductors directing an orchestra. They don't just set the tone, they provide the moral tensions that drive the entire series forward.

... While Laurie's House is a showboat performance, awesome for its acerbic rants and flagrant puppeteering, Hall and Lewis play recessive figures who say more by what they don't say."

Be that as it may, I'm not sure their appeal says something entirely positive about us as viewers.

Jeff Lindsay on Making A Serial Killer Likable

The Wall Street Journal interviews Jeff Lindsay, author of "Dexter in the Dark," the book that inspired Showtime 's successful TV series Dexter , or American's favorite serial killer. And he answers some of the questions that have been plaguing me: why do women like the show and why is Dexter so appealing?

WSJ.com : Showtime estimates that 65% of your viewers are men. Any idea what percentage of men is buying your books? Most book buyers in this country are women.

Mr. Lindsay: I am getting male readers, but I assume that most are women. In general they have a very strong reaction to Dexter as part of the bad boy thing. He's naïve and sort of child-like, and trusting in a lot of ways."

WSJ.com : What is Dexter's appeal? Shouldn't we be repulsed?

Mr. Lindsay : That was one of the writing challenges I set myself: to make him likable. Writing in the first person helps because you are seeing "I" do it instead of "the killer picked up the knife." That alone makes it more sympathetic. Another thing, he only kills people who really deserve it.

Then we learn Dexter seems like an ideal co-worker, he's good to his girlfriend (now his wife), and if he kills somebody now and then, well nobody is perfect."

... The first season, which debuted October 2006, was the network's highest-rated original series, says Stuart Zakim, a Showtime spokesman. Nearly 2 million viewers a week watched each episode of "Dexter" during its first season. Showtime has 14.5 million paying subscribers. The second season begins Sunday.

Showtime orders pilot of Spielberg's "Tara"

I can't imagine a better combination than Showtime and Steven Spielberg. So the good news according to The Hollywood Reporter, is that "Showtime has given a pilot order to "The United States of Tara," a single-camera comedy from Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks Television centered on a mother with multiple-personality syndrome. "

"Showtime Networks president of entertainment Robert Greenblatt said the half-hour project is a "family comedy with a big twist" and described it as "Weeds" meets "Sybil." He said it will show Tara, a wife and mother, in all her various personalities, including an aggressive male biker or promiscuous teenage girl or Martha Stewart-like homemaker.

"It balances the real drama and comedy of a family dealing with a parent" with multiple-personality disorder, Greenblatt said. "It will attract an extraordinary actress looking for a tour de force opportunity."

The Sopranos - "Made in America" Final Scene

The final scene of The Sopranos "Made in America" can be viewed here.

These are the last five minutes of the last episode. For all frustrated Europeans who missed it last night on HBO. It's the best I've found so far - because I'm looking for the complete episode.

Read Variety's review after watching the clip.

Tony Soprano Lives -- or Dies: Place Your Bets

Will Tony Soprano get whacked? That's the question nearly everyone's asking, reports Gambling911.

"But some viewers are taking it further than others. "The Sopranos" fans are hitting the Web, opening their wallets, and placing wagers on the mobster's fate in time for Sunday's series finale on HBO.

But the overall wagers aren't too high. The maximum single bet on Bodog.com, for example, is 50 bucks.

That relatively low wage is supposed to help prevent people with insider information from betting heavily before the show airs. And it's possible that insiders know the spoilers. The final episode was filmed back in March.

Plot lines of previous episodes have leaked before, but Christopher Costigan, publisher of Gambling911.com, says that producers have been doing a fairly good job of keeping the finale's outcome under wraps.

... Not a betting man or woman? Many viewers are weighing in on how "The Sopranos" will conclude, stirring up debates at home and in the workplace.

About 40 percent of people said they want Tony Soprano to live, and 21 percent think he shouldn't, according to a poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University's Public Mind. Avid watchers are twice as likely as more casual fans to root for his survival."

Why The Sopranos has been a cultural and ratings sensation

As the final episode of the TV saga of a New Jersey Mafia family goes out in America, Tim Geary salutes this hugely influential show in The Telegraph and explains why The Sopranos has been a cultural and ratings sensation.

"Praised by Newsweek as "the best show on television" and by the New York Times as "maybe the greatest work of American pop culture of the last quarter century", The Sopranos has always been resolutely suburban, speaking to the petty concerns and existential fears of middle-class Americans.

The show's deeper draw was the story of Tony Soprano, a 40-year-old man seeing a shrink to talk about his overbearing mother, his teenaged kids, a business heading in the wrong direction and an affair he was hiding from the wife he loved. "The only difference between him and everybody I know," Albrecht said, "is he's the don of New Jersey."

But more than that, for eight years The Sopranos has tapped into the deepest aspirations and hypocrisies of the American people. It's no wonder that Tony Soprano, with his Jersey mansion and two-inch folds of $100 bills, should be an aspirational figure to Americans. But the glint of his material wealth has also distracted viewers from his criminal thuggishness.

Like the rest of us, Tony wants a nice income, a long life, successful kids and a happy marriage. He just has to commit murder, extortion and adultery to get there. But that's OK. At the heart of The Sopranos are the ethics of expediency - you do what you have to do to get to the top.

Likewise, the religious faith in the show feels particularly American. Carmela, Tony's wife, may sport a semi-permanent frown on her brow at the spiritual discomfort she feels about her husband's philandering and murderous ways, but she can't quite walk away from Tony's gold.

Tony, meanwhile, goes to a therapist and has been on Prozac. By asking for help, he has won America's forgiveness for his crimes. "

... The quality of The Sopranos episodes, shot on location and costing up to $10 million each, has helped attract actors and directors from film to television. ...