Stay tuned: Why TV has never been better

Let’s talk about TV.

As you may know from a casual look around this blog, I’m a pop culture buff. And heavily into films. I don’t restrict myself to just Indian or Hollywood and watch pretty much anything that interests me, whatever the language or country of origin.

As far as Indian films are concerned, there are films that can compete against the best in the world.

TV, not so much.

A pile of excrement has a better entertainment value than our TV shows. Maybe I’m overlooking something, but I can’t think of a single Indian TV show in the last 20 years that I’d willingly watch.

Faced with such a shitty situation, one must look elsewhere for alternatives.

And that is where foreign television series fill the void.

It is accepted that television all over the world is generally geared towards the lowest common denominator, and short on series that don’t belittle the viewers intelligence. Europe may have fared a bit better than America, but overall TV was generally seen as the poor cousin of films.

Films were daring, experimental, with complicated plots and morally gray characters. And TV in contrast used to be populated with inane series and dull sitcoms with predictable plots and horrible acting.

Not anymore.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, there has been a massive renaissance on TV, especially American. Starting in the early ‘00s, TV has gradually been building up stream and now, they are giving films a run for their money. Present-day series are edgy, complicated, with morally ambiguous characters, and extraordinary acting. No longer are TV shows treated as pariahs by Hollywood A-listers, case in point, Matthew McConaughey in True Detective, and Tom Hardy in Peaky Blinders, among numerous other examples.

The lines have blurred to such an extent that you can’t say that a certain subject is taboo for TV audiences and that it’ll never be made.

And even the much maligned super-hero franchises that are renowned for their childish plots and FX-heavy visuals have small screen variants that are critically acclaimed, e.g. Daredevil.

My theory is that this renaissance has come about, as individuals have realized the power of TV as a medium, and the opportunity it offers them to fully flesh out their ideas and not fit everything into a pre-set time limit.

Showrunners are more conscious of the fact that they need to end the series once they reach a certain point, and not keep flogging a dead horse just because it’s successful and has made them a lot of money.

More recently, streaming services like Netflix also play a part by giving critically successful series with low cable viewership figures a second chance. This helps keep alive series that might otherwise have been cancelled. They also encourage new and relatively off-beat content – deciphered using viewership algorithms - which otherwise might not get a chance to air on major networks.

These factors have, IMO, contributed to TV series becoming as creative and complex as films.

Of course all these factors by themselves don’t mean much, after all you need a sizeable audience that watches the content. The viewership figures would also serve as an impetus for the development of similar content.

It seems like a significant portion of the TV viewing audience has matured, and are seeking more from their TV than just mind-numbing reality shows. And this is reflected in the kind of boundary pushing series you are starting to see on TV. I’m by no means saying that all TV is now intelligent and perfect (far from it), however backed by an ever increasing, discerning audience, TV executives and showrunners are betting on intelligent content more than ever. TV is now starting to thrive on complexity.

Just take a look around, there are shows about an anthropomorphic talking horse, a Colombian drug lord, and a schoolteacher/drugkingpin. We also have a series on a Coen brothers film (reviewed here), a realistic crime series set in Baltimore etc.

As mentioned earlier, while European TV was not as bad as its American counterparts, it had a lot of awful shows as well. However, they seem to have stepped their game up, and now have a lot of brilliant series like Forbrydelsen, Les Revenants, Sherlock, War and Peace et al.

A pet theory of mine is that once certain things reach critical mass, they succeed and become the new norm. It’s not like there were no good American TV shows before 2000. It’s just that things coalesced around this period due to audience maturity, exposure through internet, and alternate viewing vehicles. Once TV executives see that their risks pay off and that there is a market for intelligent storytelling, they tend to take more of the same risks.

This is already happening with our films - with a more mature audience asking for meaningful cinema, and rewarding those that make them.

And it gives me hope for Indian television. Once our audience evolves, maybe a decade or so down the line, we will start seeing our very own Breaking Bads and Fargos.