The Monday Moan: Drama – the clue is in the title

By johnberesford on May 21st, 2007 2 comments

I had a go at comedies last week so today I thought I’d turn the rantoscope to television drama. When I say the clue is in the title, I mean it’s called drama. Which kind of suggests to me that it should be, you know, dramatic. Everyone has drama in their lives at one time or another. Everyone has a tale to tell. But watching TV dramas you’d think only “the professions” lead a dramatic life. People in the forces (uniformed, detectives, Special Branch, army, MI5), medics, lawyers and teachers.

I’m sure this is why Hustle is so popular – a really fresh take on drama with something new to say. So where are all the shows about the fear and angst suffered by plumbers, architects, computer experts, lumberjacks, market gardeners and the like?

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Category: Monday Moan
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Jezza

The drama is out there John, but for the purposes of your rant you seem to be selectively ignoring it. A whole slew of them got BAFTAs last night – “Longford”, “The Street”, “Life on Mars”, “Housewife, 49″, and several other notables were nominated.

I think “Hustle”, like “Spooks”, is derivative, lightweight shit, but I agree, it is an attempt to do drama. Of course drama is not wholly generated in the context of a job or profession. Sometimes it derives from well-written characters in challenging situations. But I suppose that would be to esoteric and complex an idea for the media wanks who think we are all to dumb to grasp real drama, as opposed to the scenery-chewing emoting over stock characters in cliched situations (but wearing a different uniform, so it must be original). Plumbers be damned. I want to see drama about necrophiles and morris dancers.

So I don’t understand the point of your complaint. A bit like your “where’s the comedy?” rant from last week. You can’t bemoan the lack of new comedy AND the slew of experimental comedy in the same article. It makes you look like an idiot. The new comedy will eventually be born out of the experimental comedy despite the fact that most of the experiments will fail.
johnberesford

“You can’t bemoan the lack of new comedy AND the slew of experimental comedy in the same article.”

Of course I can. The point is I don’t want to be experimented on. “Hmm, can’t be bothered to conceive, write, develop, rewrite and polish an idea until it’s *really* funny – let’s just throw this at them and see if anyone laughs” is not what I want to be spending my few precious telly-watching hours on. Comedy of the kind whose lack I was lamenting didn’t start as an experiment. It was funny from the start. Too much of today’s output starts off unfunny and goes downhill from there.

Coming back to today’s rant, yes clearly there are some jewels about, but don’t they stand out? Even BAFTA had to stretch to find anything worth nominating this year. Four or five out of how many? What is it – never mind the quality, fill the hours?