The Best Show on Television

It's like with books, where you've got popular fiction and literary fiction. Popular fiction is the stuff that gets churned out for the masses, generally using tried-and-tested formulas and familiar genres to deliver a particular entertainment product to an eagerly awaiting market. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's generally considered limited in terms of artistic merit. Then on the other hand you've got literary fiction, where the author offers a truly original artwork with an engaging insight into the human experience. That's the serious stuff.

Literary television is a rare thing, simply because it doesn't generally equal great ratings. But in recent years there has been quite a surge of it, mostly due to the existence of HBO (see : The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome). The only problem is, most of those shows have ended or are about to end. Looking at the current shows that might continue to carry the flag, two spring to mind and neither of them are HBO shows. The first is, oddly enough, a network show named Friday Night Lights, but the second is yet another cable show, which I consider to the best television show currently airing.

The first season of Dexter was dubbed as everything from "mediocre" to "grotesque" by its detractors, but generally the critics agreed that it was one of the best new shows of the year (in most cases second only to the aforementioned Friday Night Lights). In twelve episodes from October to December 2006 we entered the mind of Dexter Morgan, a serial serial killer killer. No, that wasn't a typo. A serial killer who kills serial killers. If another character shows up who hunts down and kills people like Dexter, he'd be a serial serial serial killer killer killer.

Anyway, we went on to delve into Dexter's past and childhood, learning how he came to be the way he is. There were some scenes in the final episodes which ranked not only as the best television moments of the year, but of all time. The second season, currently airing, moves things forward in suitably unpredictable directions and continues to develop all of the characters in the show. Nothing happens to these characters that doesn't affect them in some way, and nothing about them feels false.

At the moment it's cable that seems to be the haven for television of this calibre, but if Friday Night Lights keeps soldiering on then the networks, and the viewers, may eventually begin to see the light. Otherwise I say we unleash Dexter on them.

Urgh.

So yeah, the bad news is that the british sitcom Spaced is getting remade as an american show. The good news is that it's being made by Fox, which means it'll only last about four episodes or so before getting cancelled.

As far as I know there's only been one case in history where a british show has been successfully converted by an american network, and that was The Office. The most amusing incident was when a network bought the rights to americanise the show Coupling, not realising that Coupling was just a britishised version of Friends (and not a particularly good one). We now live in a world where television networks are just trading the same retooled ideas back and forth across the atlantic.

The main difference between the remake of The Office and the new Spaced remake is that the creators of the former, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, supported the idea of the american version. It's not the same story here, with Spaced co-creater Edgar Wright coming out with a rather bitchy blog entry where he makes clear that he only heard about the remake through the grapevine, and nobody even approached him to discuss the idea.

If anyone was ever going to miss the point a show like Spaced, two names come to mind. McG, and Will & Grace's Adam Barr; the only two names who have been thus far mentioned in connection with the show. We can all have a pretty good idea of the kind of show they'd see in Spaced, the kind of show they want to make, and to be honest I don't even know why they bothered buying the rights and calling it Spaced.

I'm with Edgar Wright in henceforth referring to the new version as McSpaced.

There's Hope For Us After All : ABC's "Pushing Daisies" Is A Hit

So it turns out american television audiences actually do have taste. While I still remain freshly bitter over the cancellation of Studio 60 and Drive, I'm delighted to hear that the best new show of the season is already a hit and has been granted a full-season run.

Pushing Daisies is one of those shows that defies genre, although I suppose its absurd quirkiness lends it to similarities with early Desperate Housewives and Ally McBeal, but it's oh-so-much-more than either of those. The show centres on Ned the Piemaker, who has the gift of bringing dead things back to life with a single touch. The catch is that if he touches them again then they die forever, and if they stay alive for longer than sixty seconds then something else nearby will die in their place.

What really gets me about the show is the likeability of the characters, and how incredibly well-suited the actors are to playing these roles. Lee Pace is an absolute revelation, fresh from a theatrical background and well-poised to begin a lucrative career in film and television if his performance as Ned is anything to go by. Chi McBride, Anna Friel and Kristen Chenoweth are also unreservedly superb in the immediate supporting cast.

The only foreseeable problem that I can see for Pushing Daisies relates to its aforementioned quirkiness. There's a fine line between quirkiness and kookiness, and if you're not careful then kookiness can lead to zaniness. And nobody wants that. The second episode was a worrying indication of what direction the show could go in if they're not careful, but if they can keep up the same quality of writing then it should be able to tread the line with confidence.

Superman versus the Supermen

Smallville has already gone on well past the point where it could seriously be considered interesting. It must surely be in it's final couple of seasons now, as even The CW can only milk a dead cow for so long ... the time has surely come to analyse this show, how it compares with other recent incarnations of the character and overall what it has brought to the superman franchise.

I thought this would serve as a critique on the shows shortcomings, but it turns out that it actually holds up surprisingly well against the other incarnations. Let's take a look at some key areas:

Clark Kent

All things considered Tom Welling has done a pretty good job overall, and it was interesting as this was his first big role and you could actually see him learning to act as the seasons rolled on and on. He probably did a better job of bringing across the small-town charm of Clark Kent than any other portrayl I can think of, so that definitely earns the show some points, but he wasn't nearly nerdy enough to be consistent with previous versions of the character.

You could argue that Christopher Reeve played the best Clark Kent, but what he actually played was Superman playing Clark Kent. Smallville, like Lois & Clark, holds that Clark Kent is the real man and that Superman is the invented character (a character which still hasn't even appeared in the show, I might add). Tom Welling is probably the best Clark Kent that has appeared on the screen so far.

Lex Luthor

This is another area in which the show excels itself, and quite often I found that the only reason I continued watching Smallville was for Michael Rosenbaum's performance as Lex Luthor. His portrayl showed so much depth, and the character was often so well-written, that at times it actually seemed a bit inconsistent with the overall quality of the rest of the show.

Gene Hackman's performance as Luthor never screamed of depth, and Kevin Spacey was just annoying. You could argue that Smallville was actually the first screen interpretation to take the character of Lex Luthor seriously. The addition of his father Lionel Luthor, played by Jonathon Glover, definitely sweetened the pot. Once again, Smallville holds it's own against the other supermen.

Lois Lane

Okay, so this is where the show starts to let itself down somewhat. For the first few seasons, Lois Lane didn't appear in the show at all and instead we had Lana Lang and Chloe Sullivan, who pretty much possessed the combined qualities that make up the Lois character. Then Lois shows up all of a sudden, which causes a problem for the writers since they've already spent three years establishing that Lana is the love of Clark's life.

Instead they just decided to have the two characters playfully dislike each other, which might have worked if Erica Durance didn't come across as so annoying. The character doesn't bring anything at all to the show, which is odd since she's supposed to be such a huge part of the Superman universe. Give me Margot Kidder, Teri Hatcher or Kate Bosworth any day.

Special Effects

Smallville has always been quite impressive in this regard. The quality of special effects that have been gracing our television screens in recent years have really been something, and this show is no exception. It doesn't measure up to the massive blockbuster Superman Returns in this regard of course, but for a TV show it competes pretty well by producing quality special effects on a weekly basis.

Irony

Lets face it, you can't have a take on Superman these days without a healthy dose of cleverness and irony thrown in ... Richard Donner probably did the best job of it in Superman I & II. The first season of Smallville laso did extremely well in this regard, with twists and turns such as Lex being best friends with Clark, the love of Clark's life just so happening to have a treasured kryptonite necklace which she wears at all times, Clark being kidnapped and having an 'S' painted on his chest as part of a high school prank ...

Since then, the show has suffered from something of a multiple personality disorder in this regard. At times it can be extremely clever, and at others times routinely dull and low-brow. It's never quite got back up to the level of its first season, which is a shame. But it was super while it lasted.

Thank God It's Friday Night Lights

So now Friday Night Lights is a few episodes into its second season. It's quite depressing that there was ever really any question of the show not returning, even though it was the most critically-acclaimed new show of last season.

The world would probably be a better place if television could just do away with the ratings system, and instead they'd have to rate each show on its real merits rather than on how many people tune in ... just think about it. Joss Whedon's Firefly would be now entering its sixth season, and we wouldn't have had to suffer Joey for more than a couple of episodes before it was cancelled on suspicion of extreme crappiness.

Friday Night Lights centers on a high school football team in a small town in Texas, but it's about football only in the same way that Aaron Sorkin's Sports Night was about sports. The football team is just a backdrop for well-written stories about believable characters, and above all it's refreshing to see a show set in an american high school which not only avoids but actively rebels against the usual clichés. In the first season the stories incorporated everything from conservative racism to the flooding in New Orleans.

The one major aspect of life in red-state Texas which seemed to be curiously absent was religion, but this is something which has now been introduced in the second season. There have also been some eyebrows raised over a new somewhat melodramatic plot-thread which isn't really in keeping with the shows realistic, everyday tone. They might have a point, but I doubt it will detract too much from the show as a whole. It's just too damn good.

Why Should We Care About These People?

Scrubs has always been a bit of a weird show. It's strange to imagine that these characters could actually walk around a hospital all day caring for patients, and yet still think about nothing but themselves. But we stuck with them, with JD and Elliot, because we were foolish enough to believe that deep down they must surely be good people. Somebody who has as many reflective, thoughtful voice-overs as Zach Braff must eventually come to grow as a person, right?

Well, not really. As the doctors power up the defibrillator one last time in one final desperate attempt not to let this very very dead show die (rolling on now into the seventh season), our principal characters still continue to show a surprising lack of depth. Towards the end of last season, JD and Elliot found themselves a whisker away from happiness ... Elliot had found her perfect, subservient male and they were engaged to marry, and JD was about to become a father thanks to a gorgeous, caring girl who seems perfect for him in more or less every way.

They could have ended the show there, and allowed these characters to live like normal people, but no. The season ended with JD and Elliot lying side-by-side about to kiss each other. Now Elliot has decided that she doesn't love her fiance, and JD has decided he doesn't love the future mother of his child. They've hinted that he might stay with her anyway, for the sake of the child, but from what we've seen of this character for the past six years I find it to be a deeply unlikely possibility.

I won't deny that Scrubs is still funny at times, even entertaining, but in most ways it's more or less become just like Zach Braff's debut movie project Garden State. Well-made, lots of sheen, quirkiness and good music, but ultimately completely devoid of any real substance.

Journeyman (New NBC Show)

Dan Vasser is a family man, who for some unknown reason has become 'unstuck' in time. At random intervals he jumps backwards from his own time, where he becomes involved in episodes of a particular persons life. It is unclear to him at first how exactly he's supposed to affect this person, but once his mission is complete he always discovers that his actions have brought about some kind of benefit in the present.

There are quite a few things to like about Journeyman, though it's far from being one of the best new shows of the year. Kevin McKidd is the star, who was superb in Rome and does a pretty good job here. It's not primarily a fantasy show, as the writers mostly seem interested in how Dan's random disappearances and trips through time affect his marriage, with outsiders simply seeing him as an unreliable and unstable husband. Unfortunately, we're only five episodes in and this is already starting to feel a little old.

Another thing that might annoy viewers is the random and obligatory nature of Dan's 'missions', and the fact that the character isn't really made to wonder all that much about what it is that's actually happening to him. It'd be nice if he travelled somewhere more interesting than the 1970s for a change. They don't seem at all interested in bringing in concepts such as the Butterfly Effect, or exploring what the actual implications of time travel could be. Here it's a storytelling device, nothing more.

I'm not quite sure who the target audience is for this show, maybe middle-aged people who are nostalgic about Quantum Leap. Journeyman is hardly groundbreaking, but so far it does make for decent television. It airs on Monday nights, forming a Heroes sandwich along with the fellow NBC newcomer Chuck.

The Critics List

At the end of every year, prominent TV critics in the US have a tradition of putting out a list of their top ten shows of that year. It would actually make more sense for them to do this at the end of each season, which falls around May of every year, but never mind.

The following rankings are based on how prominently the shows featured in the critics top ten lists in recent years (2005 & 2006). If a show only aired for one of these years then that's been taken into account. Basically it will give you some idea of which shows critics have been going ga-ga over lately ... I'll compile another one when the top ten lists come out at the end of this year, so you'll also know what good TV you missed in 2007.

1. The Wire (2002 - present)
2. Friday Night Lights (2006 - present)
3. Lost (2004 - present)
4. Arrested Development (2003 - 2006)
5. Dexter (2006 - present)
6. Ugly Betty (2006 - present)
7. Battlestar Galactica (2004 - present)
8. Heroes (2006 - present)
9. 24 (2001 - present)
10. The Daily Show & The Colbert Report (1996/2005 - present)
11. The Office (2005 - present)
12. The Sopranos (1999 - 2007)
13. Veronica Mars (2004 - 2007)
14. Rome (2005 - 2007)
15. Rescue Me (2004 - present)
16. 30 Rock (2006 - present)
17. Deadwood (2004 - 2006)
18. House (2004 - present)
19. My Name is Earl (2005 - present)
20. Greys Anatomy (2005 - present)

See Also: The Shield, Weeds, The Comeback, Entourage, Six Feet Under, The West Wing

New Shows for 07/08

So far it's been a pretty good fall season for new TV shows, and the main ones that I've been sticking with are Pushing Daisies, Reaper and Journeyman. I'll be writing about all those in detail later.

Other new shows which seem to have attracted interest are Gossip Girl, a soap which I haven't seen based on the fact that it's been compared to The O.C. (and also because it's a soap), but apparently it's quite good if you like that sort of thing. You've probably also heard about Chuck, a new comedy about a guy who gets a government database downloaded into his brain.

Our critically-praised new legal/crime/medical dramas are Damages (high-stakes litigation made exciting), Dirty Sexy Money (drama about the personal lawyer of a powerful, wealthy family headed by Donald Sutherland) and Life (slightly pretentious character drama about a philosophical cop). There's also Private Practice, a Grey's Anatomy spin-off which has generally recieved pretty bad reviews.

And with every new fall season of course comes a torrent of crappy new sci-fi/supernatural shows which proceed to make a mockery of the genre. The worst offender so far has been the sci-fi channel's new take on Flash Gordon, but we've also got Moonlight and The Bionic Woman to choose from this year round. Huzzah!

What We Did This Summer

Remember the days when summer television was just a wasteland of repeats and failed TV pilot movies? Okay, so we still haven't quite left those days behind. But at least we now we do have at least a few shows to watch over those hazy summer months.

Probably the biggest new arrival to the summer scene this year was Burn Notice, in which we follow blacklisted spy Michael Westen as he tries to figure out who put a burn notice on him whilst also doing Random Acts of Kindness in the sunny, friendly underworld of Miami. It isn't exactly revoultionary television, but it is a lot of fun, particularly the segments in which Michael tells us all the secrets of his trade in occassional 'Spy 101' voice-overs.

Plus the show features Bruce 'Evil Dead' Campbell, so it must be good. All-in-all it made for perfect summer distraction, and I'll definitely keep watching the show when it returns for another season next summer.

I also heard a lot about Greek, a college-nostalgia show in which a high school nerds tries against the odds to join a fraternity. I'll have to check that one out at some point, in time for its return early next year. In the meantime we also had the return of Monk and Psych to fulfill our quirky detective needs, along with The 4400 and Kyle XY for our melodramatic sci-fi mystery needs, and of course Entourage is always there to service our adolescent-fantasy-of-being-a-movie-star needs.

Who needs to go on vacation, anyway?