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It's only rubbish on the telly
How very ordinary the selection of Top 50 Greatest Dramas was.
First of all, it wasn't varied in form. The list is predominantly one-off plays and the short serial form (6-8 episodes, 1-2 seasons). Where were the TV series? You know, those long-running things that people actually watch? Most of the TV series that appeared were US shows, The West Wing, The Sopranos, Hill Street Blues - I'm not complaining about including any of these (except 24), but aren't there quite a lot of British programmes like this too? Or are they too populist? If you're going to have Z Cars, you're going to have to think about including The Bill, even if Z Cars was the one you watched as a kid, and The Bill is only on ITV.
Second, it was way too realist. There were four 'speculative' dramas altogether, if we stretch the definition as broadly as possible: 'Threads' (the post-Bomb drama set in Sheffield which you could argue is well within the British realist TV drama tradition); Twin Peaks, Doctor Who, and The Prisoner. Come on, couldn't you have even nodded to Nigel Kneale? Nineteen Eighty-Four? Quatermass? The 1970s Quatermass miniseries with John Mills even fits their tediously narrow range.
Thirdly, where were all the women? You know, women? What about Tenko? Where was Tenko?! The first British TV drama to have a cast predominantly made up of women. The programme they wanted to cancel because the ladies in it didn't look pretty enough. (Do you know what I would love to see? One of those big 'state of the nation' social history dramas, like Our Friends in the North, but about the women's movement. Or, if we're going to keep on making WW2 dramas, one about the home front. Something like Jocelyn Playfair's A House in the Country.)
And, finally - and related to this - why so much Dennis Bloody Potter? I can't stand Dennis Bloody Potter. Women=fuck=dirt=death. Misogynist nonsense. There, I've said it. So pretentious. And TV drama is so not about pretension. If you want to be pretentious, go and make a bloody film, not television. Plus, if you shed the Potters and a couple of Poliakoffs, you'd definitely have room for Tenko. Which I bet people actually watched. Poliakoff they just read about in The Observer.
All in all, it added up to a list of drama about the British male experience, c. 1940-1990. My guess is that other things were happening during this time. Quite a lot of which was even shown on television.
First of all, it wasn't varied in form. The list is predominantly one-off plays and the short serial form (6-8 episodes, 1-2 seasons). Where were the TV series? You know, those long-running things that people actually watch? Most of the TV series that appeared were US shows, The West Wing, The Sopranos, Hill Street Blues - I'm not complaining about including any of these (except 24), but aren't there quite a lot of British programmes like this too? Or are they too populist? If you're going to have Z Cars, you're going to have to think about including The Bill, even if Z Cars was the one you watched as a kid, and The Bill is only on ITV.
Second, it was way too realist. There were four 'speculative' dramas altogether, if we stretch the definition as broadly as possible: 'Threads' (the post-Bomb drama set in Sheffield which you could argue is well within the British realist TV drama tradition); Twin Peaks, Doctor Who, and The Prisoner. Come on, couldn't you have even nodded to Nigel Kneale? Nineteen Eighty-Four? Quatermass? The 1970s Quatermass miniseries with John Mills even fits their tediously narrow range.
Thirdly, where were all the women? You know, women? What about Tenko? Where was Tenko?! The first British TV drama to have a cast predominantly made up of women. The programme they wanted to cancel because the ladies in it didn't look pretty enough. (Do you know what I would love to see? One of those big 'state of the nation' social history dramas, like Our Friends in the North, but about the women's movement. Or, if we're going to keep on making WW2 dramas, one about the home front. Something like Jocelyn Playfair's A House in the Country.)
And, finally - and related to this - why so much Dennis Bloody Potter? I can't stand Dennis Bloody Potter. Women=fuck=dirt=death. Misogynist nonsense. There, I've said it. So pretentious. And TV drama is so not about pretension. If you want to be pretentious, go and make a bloody film, not television. Plus, if you shed the Potters and a couple of Poliakoffs, you'd definitely have room for Tenko. Which I bet people actually watched. Poliakoff they just read about in The Observer.
All in all, it added up to a list of drama about the British male experience, c. 1940-1990. My guess is that other things were happening during this time. Quite a lot of which was even shown on television.
no subject
Well, most of the series they include are US shows, and I think they cover, "Programmes we wish we could be making."
the fantastical elements in Kneale remain as objective, unforgiving facts that the characters and the audience must come to terms with
Perhaps this is what I was getting at with 'speculative' (which I was basically setting up as a catch-all term to cover "not kitchen sinkish"). Which would explain why "future histories" like Threads or A Very British Coup can make it to the list, because the fantastical element isn't, say, a BEM. (And also because they also fit nicely into other genres: drama-documentary, or political thriller. So, "It's not science fiction, it's an alternative history.")
what about a series which, taken as a whole, wouldn't merit inclusion, but which has a particularly outstanding episode that deserves individual recognition
We were saying last night Morse should probably have been in (as we were watching Lewis). Why not include them? It's quite possible that a fair chunk of Z Cars looks awful by contemporary standards; doesn't stop it being significant.
But who knows where that would lead us? To including Coronation Street, perhaps, and that would obviously never do.
no subject
Basically, in the expression "Best Television Drama", only the word "television" is unproblematic. And in a few years we won't even be able to say that.