The early 2000s was where the Golden Age of Television began with HBO knocking it out of the park with shows like Sopranos, The Wire, Rome, Six Feet Under- Television was being made by film makers and story tellers with high production value previously reserved for movies. This was a gamble and it was paying off in spades. Instead of 2 hours of quality film at a time, we had multiple seasons worth of top notch filmic storytelling. You could really dig deep and develop characters slowly in ways we hadn’t really seen before with this kind of fidelity.
But like all good things under capitalism, the financial success that accompanied this shift was analyzed by marketers and distilled into formulae. Now, those high production value shows are written by algorithms and directed by focus groups. Film makers and storytellers aren’t the leaders anymore, they are forced to work on projects and within the boundaries the marketing department set up. Hearing my favourite writers lament for the TV culture of 20 years ago is heartbreaking.
That said, there are some diamonds in the rough. The reason Fallout was so good is because it was a project of love from the Nolan bros. Filmmakers making shows is how you make great shows. Marketers making shows is how you temporarily increase stock value for shareholders.
The early 2000s was where the Golden Age of Television began with HBO knocking it out of the park with shows like Sopranos, The Wire, Rome, Six Feet Under- Television was being made by film makers and story tellers with high production value previously reserved for movies. This was a gamble and it was paying off in spades. Instead of 2 hours of quality film at a time, we had multiple seasons worth of top notch filmic storytelling. You could really dig deep and develop characters slowly in ways we hadn’t really seen before with this kind of fidelity.
But like all good things under capitalism, the financial success that accompanied this shift was analyzed by marketers and distilled into formulae. Now, those high production value shows are written by algorithms and directed by focus groups. Film makers and storytellers aren’t the leaders anymore, they are forced to work on projects and within the boundaries the marketing department set up. Hearing my favourite writers lament for the TV culture of 20 years ago is heartbreaking.
That said, there are some diamonds in the rough. The reason Fallout was so good is because it was a project of love from the Nolan bros. Filmmakers making shows is how you make great shows. Marketers making shows is how you temporarily increase stock value for shareholders.