So I’ve started The Wire, as mentioned below, and I don’t really get why people keep on telling me you need to watch for a while in order to ‘get into it’. Seems pretty much excellent from the word go. It pretty much wipes the floor with most recent British drama, as Dominic West
has been very keen to point out, but he’s kind of missing the point a bit.
American TV is not hundreds of shows this quality, American TV produces possibly an even higher proportion of drivel than UK TV (and UK TV produces a lot of drivel). We just get the highlights, and so stare enviously across the Atlantic, wishing we had what they had. Further to the point The Wire isn’t even a current show, it’s been finished for a year now, and is a past glory as a result. The only currently running American drama that holds a candle to it, at least off the top of my head, is Mad Men.
We’ve seen this before though, in the mid nineties, with American comedy. I remember it well, it was the heyday of Frasier and Seinfeld (another American show relegated to a disgracefully late slot by dear Aunty Beeb), before Friends had started its relentless march towards filling 25% of Channel 4’s schedules. And the first thing anybody would say was that if only British sitcoms were made the American way they’d suddenly be good again. Admittedly it was a very bad time for British comedy, particularly the lowly sitcom, which seemed perpetually hung-over from the eighties, and incapable of anything better than the Thin Blue Line.
And then Frasier and Seinfeld ended, and suddenly it became clear they were as rare as those great British series had once been - Porridge, Blackadder, the Young Ones and the like - and the best cross Atlantic humour seemed to be the limpid, derivative Dharma and Greg. Even worse a British sit com was made using American writing techniques. It’s been a ratings hit but My Family is utterly bland, I feel embarrassed watching actors as good as Robert Lindsey and Zoë Wannamaker prostituting themselves to appear in it (and what’s the deal with Cecilia Imrie appearing in that horrid affair with Rodney Trotter?).
This is likely to happen to these American productions soon, already some of the highlights (Lost and 24 notably) of American drama look embarrassingly cheesy when compared to The Wire (and are getting worse) while HBO seem increasingly desperate for a replacement flagship show (interesting to critics of British TV, HBO are currently adapting the ever wonderful Shameless for the US). West is missing one of the central points of the argument to my mind, Britain can do great drama beyond the corset mafia - and great drama writing, we have a booming theatre industry that ensures the country is never short of experienced actors or writers after all - but what Britain can’t match is the budget. Britain can never create shows that have that same feel because the BBC and others can’t afford it (or at least find it hard to justify the cost), and many attempts look feeble in comparison. Can you imagine the BBC period drama crew making Rome for God’s sake? Oh we can give it a fair go - a trawl through British past glories bring The Lakes, Taggert and Cracker to immediate mind - but it’s not the same. Recent Priests v Satan thriller Apparitions is a case in point, it had a massive budget, but its production looked shoddy because we see such better from the US. (And in fairness it was pretty badly written.) The less said about the production values of Spooks and Torchwood the better.
One thing West is spot on about is period dramas though. And I like period dramas, but I feel gluttoned on them. The problem goes back to the Andrew Davies’ adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, it was very good, became amazingly popular, and became imitated far too much. And its spawn - of a very mixed nature - have become ridiculously bad. He mentioned Cranford, which I actually hated, but has anybody seen the second Lark Rise to Candleford series? Drama on a par with Hollyoaks. The irony is of course I could easily see this happening with The Wire, too much imitation and diminishing returns sets in, and suddenly everybody looks at the original through a less pleasing perspective.
I would love to see more decent drama on British TV, I really would. But looking to The Wire is the wrong way to go about it, it’s brilliant, but firmly American. And who wants to watch the Brits pretending to be Americans? In TV as much as music it’s just embarrassing. No, Britain needs to do it its own way; grim oop north dramas are one way of course, but there’s others. When was the last time anybody tried their hand at a series in the mould of the BBC John le Carre adaptations? Both Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People were absolutely perfect television. You needed an attention span, you had to follow them closely, and of course Alex Guinness was sublime; this wasn’t action with guns, when British TV tries to do slick gunplay it feels far too Fisher Price. It’s the reason America makes Battlestar Galactica and the X-Files (two shows Britain could not make) while Britain makes Doctor Who and Shameless (the only American I’d even consider trusting with either would be Josh Whedon - I have low hopes for the adaption, HBO or not).
