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ShareTelevision was all over the map in 2007—from a diner in North Jersey to the depths of the oceans around planet Earth.
But it wasn’t just the intimate end of “The Sopranos” and the far-flung focus of “Planet Earth” that marked a year of wide scope for the medium. That broader reach also asserted itself, beyond what we watch, into how we watch.
Digital video recorders accelerated their march into American homes, by TiVo or by cable/satellite DVRs—so much so that Nielsen extended its ratings reports beyond live broadcasts to include time-shifted viewing and digital-cable video-on-demand usage.
TV DVDs cemented their importance as a prime way to view the tube in delayed fashion—and binge mode—growing a new class of viewers ever vigilant for “spoilers” as they tried to preserve the suspense of watching “Heroes” or “24” four or six months down the road.
Web-linked computers became a better viewing option, too, with larger screens, faster Internet connections and increasingly low-priced storage options. Fans could catch up quick with new episodes streamed online straight away, or record them with cyber-TV gadgets for later viewing.
Even cell-phone TV became a workable reality. NBC, CBS and Fox hopped on board with Verizon Wireless’ new V CAST Mobile TV platform. Customers with TV-capable phones could start watching simulcasts of many prime-time shows, news programs and especially the topical likes of Jay Leno and David Letterman.
Just in time for those shows to go untopical—thanks to the fall Hollywood writers’ strike.
Late-night laughfests felt its impact first, going dark Nov. 5 after the Writers Guild and the producers’ consortium broke off talks as wrangling got ugly over DVD residuals and payment for such new media work as original online content. (Recently it was announced that many talk show hosts, including Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, plan to return to the air in January.)
Prime-time series and daytime soaps mostly had enough episodes finished to complete their 2007 schedules. But the broadcast networks’ new-year midseason lineups quickly shifted to “unscripted” fare like games and competitions.
Funny thing, that—happening just as critics like me were mulling over our best-of-the-year picks. Other than ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” a relatively classy and feel-good affair that had the whole country buzzing, reality shows weren’t likely to even be considered for making the cut. Instead, we’d be debating ourselves as to whether “Dexter,” “The Shield” or the “Sopranos” non-end ending should top the list, and whether such unsung gems as Sundance’s wondrous comedy-drama “Slings and Arrows” should displace such other under-heralded thrills as Sci Fi’s “Battlestar Galactica.”
And we’d be wondering if 2008 would have anywhere near the richness to choose from when we pondered our picks a year from now. Somehow, I can’t see such midseason entries as the pump-you-up “American Gladiators” remake (debuting next Sunday on NBC) or the polygraph-using “The Moment of Truth” (Jan. 23 on Fox) making next year’s “best” list. Or even a “top events” list, really.
The strike itself could easily end up there, though, depending on how long this creativity-sapping catastrophe drags on. And so could one of its few intriguing byproducts. “Quarterlife,” a drama from producers Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick (“thirtysomething,” “My So-Called Life”), was picked up by NBC for a Feb. 18 debut, after being developed as an Internet webisode series/social networking site gone public in mid-November.
It’s just the kind of multimedia hybrid that’s at the heart of the strike. What happens to “Quarterlife”—in terms of both viewing and finances—could well indicate where we’ll see TV head in 2008 and beyond.
1. THE SURGE OF SHOWTIME. Premium cable’s perennial also-ran raced into the lead this year—creatively, at least—thanks to a seemingly continuous stream of compelling series about oddball outsiders. “Dexter” challenged our moral assumptions with its serial killer with “good” motives (or are they?). The suburban drug-dealing comedy “Weeds” sustained its hilarity and heart. “Brotherhood” remained a gritty, layered city saga of family, crime and politics. “This American Life” transferred beautifully from National Public Radio, and “Penn & Teller’s” debunkery kept delighting. Add the period pomp of “The Tudors” and the show-biz sleaze of “Californication,” plus the suds of “The L Word,” and there isn’t a more provocative slate of series anywhere.
2. THE FINALE OF “THE SOPRANOS.” Well, we sure talked about it. Creator David Chase’s non-ending ending of the HBO classic was either an ingenious allegory, a monumentally galling cop-out, or a brilliant solution to an intractable dilemma. I’m saying, all three.
3. “THE SHIELD.” This FX drama gets my vote as the best series ever. Creator Shawn Ryan’s L.A. police saga isn’t just week-by-week dramatically thrilling. It also incisively explores cause-and-effect in crime, race, urban corruption, modern moral trade-offs and hypocrisies when it comes to keeping citizens “safe.” It’s also, at its most elemental, a near-mythic depiction of the murkiness in men’s (and women’s) souls. Good people do bad things, and vice versa, and Ryan never lets any of them off the hook.
4. WOMEN PROTAGONISTS. This year’s wealth of resonant, wide-ranging female leads in cable series has been exhaustively noted: Glenn Close in “Damages,” Holly Hunter in “Saving Grace,” Mary-Louise Parker in “Weeds,” audience favorite Kyra Sedgwick in “The Closer.” But the networks know a good thing when they see it. Don’t forget Tina Fey in “30 Rock,” Connie Britton in “Friday Night Lights,” Angie Harmon in “Women’s Murder Club,” and—most surprisingly—Christina Applegate in ABC’s underrated comedy gem “Samantha Who?”
5. “DANCING WITH THE STARS.” Just when you think it can’t get any bigger, it does. ABC gave us sports for women who hate sports, complete with instant replays of Marie Osmond fainting.
6. HUGH LAURIE. The title actor in “House” is as vexingly magnetic as his Fox medical-mystery series is procedurally predictable. What a glorious jerk.
7. “PUSHING DAISIES.” Here’s to audaciousness. ABC’s lushly cinematic, color-crazed, supernatural-yet-grounded fairy tale dazzles us weekly, while throwing a spotlight on the networks’ conspicuous failure of imagination elsewhere.
8. “PLANET EARTH.” Television was designed to bring distant events into our living rooms. This megabucks, mega-dazzling Discovery/BBC series delivered the entire natural world—in awesome close-up. How many high-def TVs did it sell?
9. “SLINGS AND ARROWS.” Sundance Channel’s Canadian import concluded its three-season run with perhaps its strongest six-hour tale: A dying and heroin-addicted old actor rises to the challenge of “King Lear” at a theater troupe struggling to survive in the cutthroat corporate world of modern show biz. Its vibrant humanity delivered epic comedy/tragedy/romance/satire, difficult to describe, impossible to resist.
10. “THE WIRE.” HBO’s other thunderously acclaimed (but much less watched) drama series kept fans of its novelistic urban odyssey spellbound once again, vividly depicting the victims of our crumbling education system. With his fifth and final season turning to the corporatization of media (starting Jan. 6), creator David Simon will have grittily assessed the sociology of law enforcement, politics, the drug war, the death of the working class, and the institutions through which we try to understand them. Frankly filmed on the streets of Baltimore, this is a cinematic mirror in a league all its own.
