TV shows are going Boom! like a supernova, exploding in every direction. There is too much good TV for anyone to keep up with, except the man who fell to earth.
The subject is going boom too, in my brain and around the internet: How TV shows tell stories, and all the ways those TV shows are enlarging, growing more complex, and covering brand new ground. Our culture is expanding its consciousness through shared stories and our deepening engagement with them.
The poll below lists 15 shows, which each tell a different kind of story. They're each brilliant in their own direction. My poll is too small! please help me enlarge it. Comment on a favorite show of yours, and what that show does better than any other.
21st Century Boxes, and Showrunners
A new aristocracy is calling the shots in TV - we live in the age of the Showrunner. Hardworking visionaries like Joss Whedon, J. J. Abrams, Jenji Kohan and Jon Stewart are building and running TV shows where artistic goals trump commercial ones - or rather, carefully honed artistic ambitions lead to popular and financial success. But the art comes first.
The best showrunners look in three directions at once: They have inspiring original visions; they're hands on, making sure that all the nuts and bolts of production are in order; and they're strong team-leaders, who can manage a loyal group working together on large projects under pressure.
The powers have changed, and so have the platforms. Audiences now buy DVDs of their favorite shows to watch many times, or stream every episode of a series over one weekend. These dedicated fans have changed the game. Quirky shows which don't succeed overnight usually vanish after one season, or even less. Now, some of them can grow through word-of-mouth, find a niche, and get a few seasons to blossom into a phenomenon (Breaking Bad was a pretty small show when it started). Other shows, like Arrested Development, die for years, and then get resurrected by fans who spread their infatuation with the first DVDs.
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A Larger Palette of Deeper Characters
In spite of all the GOP's worst efforts, we live in an age of expanding humanity. What it means to be an American, and what kinds of characters we find empathy for - well, if we're looking at a rainbow of humanity, that rainbow keeps getting larger, and we keep finding new hues in between the bands of primary and secondary colors.
The most important change, in the TV stories we share, is how they're reflecting a larger, subtler and more authentic humanity back at us. Because that more honest and inclusive humanity is a lot of what Daily Kos is fighting for. That 21st Century meaning of American is what the Democratic Party needs to realize in our culture.
I won't name the dozens of shows enlarging our palette of humanity, because I'm hoping you'll do that. Which shows are giving us a deeper understanding of women, with all their potential and all their human struggles? Which teach us new things about grandmothers, women bosses, and sisters? Which show us LGBT characters who aren't always the punchline for a stereotype, but are fully-fleshed characters who happen to also be LGBT? Any kind of show can do this. Ellen and Rachel, just by being such smart, funny, warm and complicated humans, who also happen to be lesbian, have reduced a lot of people's unthinking prejudice.
There have been a lot of sympathetic portrayals of heroines and heroes facing mental challenges in recent years. We've seen leads with OCD, bipolar disorder, split personality, substance abuse, even a serial killer. Some of these characters have been very well-researched and written, and acted with enough nuance and heart that they've helped educate the public on knotty issues, which are hard to grasp from the outside.
In other areas, the dream factory hasn't been so brave and accurate. There are more minorities on our screens than before - but I'm sure if you looked at the most popular shows, their casts are far whiter, richer and prettier than the public watching them. Are there any shows you feel show us a less white America, and make it ring true? Are there any shows which are telling the greatest hidden truth in America: What it's really like trying to live in poverty here, and still keep your dignity?
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Weaving Tales on Many Levels
My favorite TV show of the 21st Century is The Wire. I enjoy the particular excellences of dozens of shows, but The Wire achieves something I never expected to see on TV: It has the architecture of a cathedral; it has better plotting, between the grand design and all the small details, than any novel I've read.
Viewers used to watch TV shows in weekly installments, interrupted by frequent ads, with gaps of several months between each series. Once dedicated fans were able to buy a whole series in a DVD box, with directors' commentaries and extra features, it changed the relationship. Now we can watch every episode a few times, at our own speed. We can catch details, even freeze-frame to read a document that flashes past the screen, and discern levels of significance we never would have spotted or remembered before.
I was amused and impressed, watching the director's commentary on season 1 of The Wire, when its creator said the first season was really intended to teach people (who had only watched regular TV before) how to comprehend The Wire. Actually, two men created The Wire. The density of the script comes from all the experience and work, the many years of their lives they put into it. They knew Baltimore from their work in law enforcement and journalism. They aimed to capture their city's whole story, especially its hidden darkness, and put it onscreen.
The Wire is masterful at juggling the three story arcs that go into a multi-series TV show: The story in one episode; the story in one series; and the story the whole show tells. Breaking Bad is brilliant at this too, as are many recent shows. The Sopranos and Buffy the Vampire Slayer each broke new ground on this 3D approach to plotting, and the whole industry was watching and learning from them.
There are plenty of shows which cannot balance the the local, the series, and the grand show plot. They're more than 90% about this week's story, and just give you one or two larger details in each episode, so you feel like the whole ship is going somewhere - at a glacial pace. It takes a lot of time and effort, writing a show where the three levels of plot mesh like clockwork, and all three levels advance together. The downside of this craftsmanship is, to see the whole of The Wire requires your full attention, watching all five seasons in order.
The hardest part of this diary was whittling down my list of TV shows to 15 for the poll. Here are a load of other great 21st Century TV shows - but if I forgot your favorite, please scold me in a comment, and tell me why your favorite does something you've never seen another TV show achieve, even if it's as small as the way Dr. House can crack a joke in a dark scene, and get the full punch of it without lightening the mood.
Here are the shows that almost made the poll:
Deadwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Freaks and Geeks, Firefly, Six Feet Under, Weeds, The Office (U.K. & U.S.), Justified, The Walking Dead, Louie, Sherlock, House of Cards, Girls, 24, CSI, Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Rescue Me, Parks and Recreation, Colbert Report, Futurama, Boardwalk Empire, House, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, Alias, Fringe, Grey's Anatomy, Parenthood, Downton Abbey, Orange is the New Black, Life on Mars (U.K.), Glee, Dead Like Me, The Shield, Homeland, Blue Bloods.
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What are the best 21st Century TV shows?
What are the best shows you've found in the last year?
What specific things do certain shows achieve, or certain actors, that you never saw on TV in the 20th Century?