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» Features » Maguffin » Reviews
| THE MAGUFFIN Is TV the new film? Kathy Hofmeyr
Over the past ten years, mainstream Hollywood has lowered its standards considerably. Pandering more and more to the MTV generation, with its jaded and increasingly limited concentration span, film has been forced to change – for the very much worse. Gone are the tight, intelligent single-minded noirs. Farewell to the smart, light-hearted and talkily sexy romantic comedies of the John Hughes generation. Aufwiedersehen, you gloriously absurd spoofs such as “Top Secret!”, “Airplane” and “Ghostbusters”. Dramas have been reduced to the shamelessly manipulative and blatantly implausible schmaltz of “Titanic” and “The Aviator” (oh, Marty! Where are your “Mean Streets” now, you heartless traitor?). Comedies gush out more bodily fluids and crude, intolerant humour than Coke is sold in the lobby before the show. Beyond the occasional treat from the Coen Brothers or M Night Shyamalan, all that is left for the discerning cinema-goer is the Nouveau circuit (foreign or indie films) – and let’s face it, even the discerning cinema-goer needs a bit of blockbusting fun more often than the serious stuff. In response, television has compensated us by givething what the movies have takeneth away. It all started with HBO. Home Box Office, once the producer of cheap, made-for-tv films, had in the US the advantage of being a pay channel unfettered by the conservative censorship that caused public broadcasters to produce diluted, unrealistic shows in which characters bore little resemblance to anything in real life. Some genius at the station made the necessary changes, and within a relatively short space of time we had “Oz”, “Sex and the City”, “Nip/Tuck” and “Six Feet Under” – groundbreaking shows that combined the best of “realistic” adult entertainment with the fantasy and the glamour of film. Before too long other channels followed suit, and at the time of writing we have access to a positive goldmine of intelligent, mature TV shows of every generic description – “Desperate Housewives” (intrigue-crammed comic drama), “The Sopranos” (post-Coppola Mafia soap-opera), “Scrubs” (sparkling, side-splitting dialogue chronicling the imperfect relationships between hilariously flawed characters who just happen to work in a hospital), “24” (“Die Hard”-style action played out in real time for six months at a go) and “Lost” (mind-bendingly mysterious island survival with a dose of surrealism thrown in), to name but a few. The result is that while our cinema screens are swarming with Lindsay Lohan, the Olsen twins and their brainless ilk, performers of quality and talent are flocking to the domestic medium – once the place where careers went to die, now the very place to re-establish oneself and develop a following. We have the illustrious likes of William Shatner, Patrick Dempsey, Lorraine Bracco, Rachel Griffiths, Sarah Jessica Parker, James Gandolfini, Alfre Woodard, Kiefer Sutherland and many other notable performers gracing our lounges once a week. On the other hand, the new brand of TV has catapulted many under-recognised performers into a medium that far better showcases their talents. James Spader leaps to mind. This sexy and very capable actor was wasted for twenty years in lacklustre thrillers and sexploitation trash just this side of softcore porn (with occasional segues into passable indie films), and his Alan Shore role in “The Practice” and “Boston Legal” has provided a perfect platform for his considerable comic ability. Spader saved “The Practice”, once a compelling legal drama, which had dwindled into a formula-driven, predictable schmaltz-fest whose plotlines and pathetically dramatic soundtrack apparently centred around the movements of Dylan McDermott’s eyebrows, from continuing to become one of the most annoying shows in television history. His insertion into the programme brought it new life, a comic soul and a moral – rather than a legal – compass. Its success was such that the other characters had little left to do beyond casting disapproving looks in his – or the exquisite Rhona Mitra’s (incidentally the original inspiration for Lara Croft) – direction, and so “The Practice” was ultimately abandoned in favour of “Boston Legal”, created around the Shore character and incorporating the marvellously mad Danny Crane (William Shatner). Television of course has the added bonus of far more screen time. Forty-two minute-long episodes in a twenty-four episode season mean producers have, in essence, 1008 minutes for greater complexity of plot and character development, psychological realism and suspense – far more than filmmakers, who have to squeeze all this into 90 to 120-odd minutes of screen time. This means that “Lost”, for example, can move as slowly as it likes (although, of course, it never feels remotely as though it does), with twist after twist holding us utterly enthralled. The suspense as the audience waits for the next dramatic revelation is tangible – and decidedly audible. It is little wonder that DVD box-sets are appearing in video shops around the country. The series currently being broadcast are of such quality that one wants to rent them, never miss an episode, and often own them outright. This is how we used to treasure classic movies, and these shows are the new classics. | | |
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