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the idea that the 5 best television shows are all dramas from the last decade or so is ridiculous.
Not to say it's necessarily true, but the argument holds some water. The medium has changed a lot in the last decade or so and it's still evolving.
― Coke Opus (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 1 October 2013 23:56 (ten years ago) link
I'll confess that as a UK resident, it feels like ever since The Sopranos was imported, I've been opening newspapers and conversations and being hit WHOOSH by a mighty wind of people talking with high speed and volume about good tv that you've got to watch.
Now I think I do believe that something called a good television program exists. I think Dennis Potter had the intention of making them and so did a bunch of people in the BBC/pre-Murdoch era. I think British television post-Murdoch Shift cared a lot less about making them and in fact probably didnt have much in mind apart from making something that sold a lot and assumed you got sales via lowest common denominator.
As far as I know there never really was a Reithian idealism in American television and you know if American ppl felt like there wasn't any good TV and then some came along and they wanted to celebrate that, well, fair enough, and in as much as the good tv you've got to watch rhetoric comes from that, fair enough.
But I also think that talk is a blatant marketing gimmick at the same time, used to get people to subscribe to the services offered by a company called Home Box Office and also get them watching TV generally, and it kind of pisses me off watching ppl who generally can see through this kind of thing getting dragged along with it.
I don't five a flying fuck about this 'good tv'. The Sopranos, The Wire and Breaking Bad are three exciting, enjoyable and particularly well done crime thrillers (a grand tragic one, a brutal realism one and a crazy fucked up one) that I really like, on their own merits.
Mad Men, on the other hand, is so blatantly trying to work on you by pressing the 'good tv' button installed in your head by the Sops and the Wire. The plot is not interesting, the period references are stupid and clumsy, its designed with the aim of getting people to talk about this new Good TV Show. It isn't actually a very good period drama at all.
Seeing those four titles in a box at top of this thread is really depressing because it suggests that our general what a good television show might be is now circumscribed by this 'good tv' concept that blew up in the wake of the sopranos
― cardamon, Wednesday, 2 October 2013 02:48 (ten years ago) link
two weeks pass...
The Prisoner is cool but a bit of a trifle? MacG is great, of course, and Portmeirion is fun to look at.
If you like people saying random numbers to you for a half hour I recommend bingo.
― polyphonic, Monday, 21 October 2013 17:41 (ten years ago) link
seven months pass...