On television

Television may have too many repeats as it is, but it's a moot point whether this is such a big problem as certain elements of drama and comedy are repeated so often you could often guess the next ten minutes worth of dialogue after one little clue... (cont)

Last night's Coupling had the familiar "blindfolded striptease in front of surprise party guests" routine. Which was, admittedly, pretty funny, but it still made my heart sink. Quincy, which is lumbering away in the background as I type, just wasted 2 full minutes of screen time with the old chestnut "refusing to believe a young, attractive woman can hold a position of responsibility". I may be being a little harsh on a show that was made roughly around the time I was born, but it's a pretty recognisable scenario.

Farces in general seem to have a tighter formula than most, and Frasier seems to suffer undeservedly from the rigidity of its rules. Maybe creating a show stuffed with high-brow references, haute-bourgeois mise-en-scene (pompous? moi?) and wordy set-pieces, which lives or dies by how many knots the lead character gets his love life into, is doomed to thrash around impotently in a sea of crudeness, where a dog jumping on a chair gets a bigger laugh than David Hyde Pierce, role model for a generation.

The main reason I worry about this is because, in my capacity as a writer and editor (stop laughing at the back), it's so, so easy to create something that fulfils expectations precisely by refusing to stretch, undermine or challenge them. When I was writing my scripts for children (who, admittedly, require a good deal more fidelity to the static frontiers of familiarity and cause and effect) I freely borrowed from every relevant source when it came to constructing my plots and gags, hoping that the small amount of individuality and unpredictability I was able to inject myself would be enough.

But this was a hurried job, and there was little time or inclination to play with words and ideas as I would have liked to. And I know that professional writers, especially the most talented (and hence the most in demand), are constantly working, and often find themselves being drawn further from their own inspiration into churning out respectable but ultmately predictable tales that really aren't going to challenge anything.

Perhaps I'm also asking if this is a bad thing. You can certainly argue that the mundane is necessary to appreciate the gems that outshine the dross, but this sounds suspiciously like an excuse. A more justified defence may be that the public, on the whole, don't actually want to be surprised, unsettled, or made to think. TV represents lazy, passive leisure to 95% of its viewers; those who have the intelligence and desire to increase their intellectual experiences know that arthouse cinema, literature, performing arts and music all offer far more scope for experimentation than the idiot box in front of which they flop, exhuasted, at the end of a long day.

It still sounds like an excuse, however, and I'm wondering whether I feel uneasy about the concept of originality in my chosen medium because I feel society lacks it, or because it reflects my own concerns about my limited abilities. This little piece hasn't answered any questions, and it quite probably a pointless indulgence. So if anyone has got this far, feel free to comment on anything that may have come to mind.

Posted by biondino at July 16, 2002 02:49 PM