Is Peak TV Dead?
#258: "True Detective: Night Country," Oscar nominations, "Raising Arizona," "Asteroid City"
Edition 258:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: We’re taking stock of the television landscape during a slow week at the movies. Is it just me or has the medium lost the juice? Plus, my thoughts on the Oscar snubs for Barbie, a Coen brothers classic, and a forgotten Wes Anderson gem. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” it’s also a TV series, coming to Netflix with an awesome showrunner and a great cast.
The State Of Television
This year is the 25th anniversary of “The Sopranos,” considered by many to be the greatest TV show of all time. It’s not an understatement to say that Tony and the boys changed the entire definition of what TV could be, from simple crowd-pleasing entertainment filling the time between commercial breaks into a respected art form, kicking off a run that has been called at various times a “Golden Age” and “Peak TV.”
Yet showrunner David Chase has been on the interview circuit telling anyone who will listen that this era is coming to an end, a “blip.”
“It is a funeral,” he told The Times U.K. (it’s behind a paywall so I’m linking to an aggregation). “Something is dying.”
“We seem to be confused and audiences can’t keep their minds on things, so we can’t make anything that makes too much sense, takes our attention and requires an audience to focus. And as for streaming executives? It is getting worse. We’re going back to where we were.”
It needs to be said up front that Chase has always kind of hated TV and wanted to make movies, and then when he finally got a chance to make one, thanks to Covid The Many Saints Of Newark went straight to streaming. HOWEVER, he may be on to something.
One of the main reasons why TV was able to take off the way it did was cost. The blockbuster-ization of the movie industry over the past 25 years coincided with a drying up of funding for independent film — both driven at least in part by the disappearance of after market DVD revenue — and at some point people realized that while the economics of a $20-$50 million movie no longer made sense, that same investment was enough to produce a high quality series.
Enterprising screenwriters rushed to adapt their feature scripts into shows (the origin of “Mad Men,” “Mr. Robot,” “The Queen’s Gambit,” “Squid Game,” and yes, “The Sopranos”). Middling movie stars could be considered the biggest actors on TV (most famously Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in “True Detective”). Shows got better, a lot better, and soon the stigma about TV being the lesser of the two mediums was broken.
But once executives saw the blockbuster potential for TV, with something like “Game of Thrones” capturing just as much attention and generating as much profit as any movie could, they began chasing that high. Studios and streamers started spending more and more to put more shows on the air (this was also part of a subscription growth strategy that went away with higher interest rates, but that’s a different story for a different day).
Multiple times I’ve complained about how, especially now at the beginning of the year, there are way too many shows starting simultaneously to keep up with. TV stopped being a communal experience, because everyone you know is watching a totally different show and has never even heard of that show you’re obsessed with. Or in desperate attempt to capture the monoculture, Amazon reportedly spent some $465 million on just the first season of its “Lord of the Rings” show, which I don’t think anyone outside of the LOTR nerds even liked.
During the Hollywood strikes last year, TV took a back seat. Big shows got delayed, and for a few months nobody I knew was watching any new shows they were excited about. As the strikes settled, everyone is saying there will be significantly less shows on the air. And in a contracting market, there’s far less opportunity to take chances. Shows have to be commercial first and quality second.
For my purposes, as a movie lover, that’s bad news. A few years ago I put together a list of mini-series that were basically movies, and I’d put that list against any best movie list I’ve ever done. I wonder how many of those shows would even get made today.
That’s why I’m choosing to embrace the new season of “True Detective.” It’s one self-contained story, “Night Country,” about a small town in upper Alaska where the sun doesn’t rise for 30 days, driving everyone insane. Jodie Foster stars as a detective investigating a bizarre crime at a remote research station, and like all other seasons, there’s a hint of the supernatural going on. No spoilers!
The production is of the highest quality, and Foster proves once again why she’s both a mega talent and mega star. Through two episodes I’m interested in the place, the characters, and the mystery.
In the not-too-distant past, this show would’ve been a hit. Now I wonder if it’ll even make a ripple. And like all other TV, if it’s not seized in the moment it’s forgotten in the next. Did you watch this latest season of “Fargo”? Did you see “The Curse”? Have you even heard of “Monsier Spade”? My point exactly.
Something New
Oscar Nominations: Let’s talk about Barbie for a second. All anyone can talk about is how Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie got snubbed, easy fodder for faux-outrage about the sexism of the movie industry and the Academy etc. etc. despite the fact that the movie received EIGHT nominations, including Best Picture!
These same people probably don’t even know who Justine Triet is, another (*gasp*) white woman who was nominated for Best Director (Anatomy of a Fall). This isn’t sexism, and in fact if anything Triet was picked precisely because of a more diverse voting pool, which has let in hundreds of international members in recent years.
The thing I don’t understand is why people can’t accept that Barbie’s true award (and by extension, the Oscar-less Marvel movies) was the $1.5 billion it grossed at the global box office. It doesn’t need to be given trophies to celebrate that. Gerwig and Robbie now have the power to make anything they want in Hollywood for as much as they want. They’ve already won! The Oscars are rewarding artistic achievement, and to that end have shown a preference for decades now toward artsier dramas over anything broad and commercial, particularly comedies (three categories Barbie falls squarely into). I’m not saying either of them wouldn’t have been worthy, but there was no injustice in their snubbery.
As for the rest of the nominees, it feels unimportant. Oppenheimer is going to win everything anyway.
Something Old
Raising Arizona (1987): I’m jones-ing in anticipation for Ethan Coen’s Drive Away Dolls in late February, and this week’s announcement that his next project will star Chris Evans, Aubrey Plaza and Margaret Qualley (again). The trailer and vibe of the forthcoming offering remind me most of the Coen brothers’ second movie, which stars Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter as a childless couple who decides to steal one of a neighboring family’s quintuplets.
It’s a screwball comedy through and through, a tone that is rarely found today and admittedly could turn off younger viewers. But! This is among the funniest movies ever made, and its cleverness can disarm even the most skeptical viewer. Most “dumb” movies aren’t nearly this smart, and certainly not this well made. It’s fast-paced entertainment for 90 minutes, and many people consider this the best thing the brothers have ever done.
Something to Stream
Asteroid City (Amazon Prime): In a few years I think we’ll look back and think it’s absolutely baffling that this star-studded Wes Anderson romp pretty much flopped commercially and critically, including landing exactly zero Oscar nomination this week. The only explanation I can come up with is what I’ll call “The Mank Problem,” in that it’s a movie that really takes a second viewing to appreciate for what it is. Even in my full review from last June, I said I didn’t think it was among the acclaimed director’s best movies (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom, A Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou). After a second viewing, I think that it is.
It’s a Russian nesting doll of a story, with artifice stacked upon artifice expertly crafted together into a Rube Goldberg machine of plot and theme. Oftentimes all that machination can protect Anderson from revealing anything deep, but this might be his most emotionally vulnerable movie in a decade. Plus, I’m not kidding when I say that practically EVERY famous actor is in this movie. Now that it’s streaming, I hope more people give it a chance (or two).
Trailer Watch: Ripley
All that bemoaning about television flies right out the window the moment you see a trailer like this, for a series coming to Netflix in April that is either a retelling or a continuation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, a Patricia Highsmith novel turned into the iconic 1999 film starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
This version stars Andrew Scott, best known as “Hot Priest” from “Fleabag” and most recently in All Of Us Strangers, but the main reason to be excited is the showrunner, Steve Zaillian. He is one of, and could make a case to be THE, best screenwriter of the past 30 years — Shindler’s List, Searching For Bobby Fisher, the first Mission: Impossible, Moneyball, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and his only other showrunner effort was “The Night Of,” a masterpiece. There’s just very little chance this isn’t fantastic, and I can’t wait.