An archive of articles about US television programmes and production.
Friday Night Lights and Studio 60 play swapsies
Friday Night Lights is getting Studio 60‘s time slot temporarily. Good news for the former, worrying news for the latter.
US TV
US TV
Third-episode verdict: Friday Night Lights
Friday Night Lights seems to have been almost magically created to answer Mark Wright’s question in TV Today, “Where are the shows that tell me what the condition of being a US citizen actually is?” Here’s one Mark – The Wire‘s another – although it should be pointed out that finding a show that illustrates the condition of being a US citizen is like trying to find a show that illustrates the condition of being a European, given the US is continent-sized and just as diverse.
The small Texan town depicted in Friday Night Lights, whose entire self-esteem hangs on how well the high school football team does and who say prayers at the drop of a hat (no ten-gallons in sight), is pretty much a Texas phenomenon* so can’t be described as representing the US is general. But thanks to the cast’s reasonably naturalistic performances and the show’s handheld camerawork and documentary style, you feel as though you’re seeing the gospel truth of what it’s like to live in such a town.
The focus of the show, perhaps even more so since the pilot episode, is the football, with large amounts of each episode dedicated to showing just how hard the team trains (it certainly makes all that rugby practice I did at school seem woosy by comparison). How much of that is tolerable depends on how much you can stomach football: while the match in the pilot episode was accessible to everyone, football fans and non-fans alike, football practice isn’t so riveting to watch.
Also, a considerable amount of time is being spent on the kids, rather than the adults, and on the fallout from a particular incident in the first episode. If angsting teenagers annoy you, no matter how wide-eyed and Christian they may be, Friday Night Lights is going to be something other than your cup of tea.
So, it’s starting to get a little dull, to be honest. I’m still enjoying it, but there needs to be some plot advancement soon. By the end of the third episode, it did look as though a corner had been turned and things are going to start progressing. But that could be an optical illusion.
A minor recommendation from me, then. It’s pretty much like watching a “drama-docu”: if a docu-drama is a dramatised version of a real event, then a drama-docu is a documentary-ised version of a drama. If you fancy sitting through a series of documentaries on the same high school town, Friday Night Lights is pretty interesting in its way and you probably won’t have seen anything like it before. But it’s not for everyone.
Incidentally, UK readers, ITV has picked up the series, so it will be airing in the UK at some point, particularly now NBC has commissioned nine additional scripts for the show.
* Footnote: I hear. But what do I know? I’ve been to Austin. Once. For a day.
US TV
Webisodes cause trouble for BSG
We touched briefly on Battlestar Galactica‘s webisodes on Monday: 10 three-minute dramas put out over the Internet to entice people into watching the third season of BSG. Unlike Doctor Who‘s mobisodes, these were most popular indeed, with 5.5 million people streaming them compared with the 2.2 million who turned up for BSG‘s third-season premiere. All this kind of backs up my point: if you’re prepared to invest creatively in something, even if it’s three minutes long, people are far more likely to watch it – and even pay for it eventually.
The trouble is the webisodes were almost too good: at three times the length of a Doctor Who mobisode and with a ten-episode arc, they were effectively an episode of BSG in and of themselves. But NBC, which owns the SciFi Channel, is refusing to paying any of the writers for their hard work, on the grounds the mobisodes are promotional material, not series content. So now exec producer Ron Moore and the writers have decided to hold the webisodes hostage and are refusing to make any more in future unless they get paid for their work.
Which comes to another point: if you’re going to invest creatively in something, you’re going to have to invest money as well. “360º commissioning” as it’s known needs to have a budget to match if it’s going to work.
PS Scott, over on TV Today, argues that two of the advantages BSG has over Doctor Who when it comes to making mobisodes/webisodes are “long term standing sets and a large regular cast list”, which enable the producers to film additional content when required.
All true to some extent, although it should be pointed out that the main cast members involved in the webisodes were also the main characters in the first four third-season episodes, so everything had to be squeezed in something chronic while they were filming those episodes (to find out who did what and for more details, Ron Moore’s blog gives credits and explanations).
Also, the standing sets used were short-term, rather than long-term, since they’re probably not going to be needed post episode four (no spoilers, my friends, I promise). So BSG had no real advantage over Doctor Who in producing its webisodes this time round. And let’s not forget that lovely TARDIS set Doctor Who has had for nearly three years now: Doctor Who is running out of excuses…
Madeleine Stowe joins the cast of Raines
Slightly old news this, but interesting all the same: Madeleine Stowe is joining the cast of Raines, Jeff Goldblum’s vaguely promising “I see dead people, but that’s cos I’m bats” vehicle. She’s going to be his psychiatrist. Talk about uphill work.
The BBC to experiment with telenovelas
Ugly Betty is all the rage in the US right now, so it seems appropriate that the BBC is now looking at developing its own telenovelas. The Media Guardian‘s article is actually a pretty good guide to telenovelas, so is worth reading if you simply want to know what they’re all about (although the Wikipedia article is equally good).