But man cannot subsist on novels
alone. (Anyone not in agreement can stop reading now.) So at the beginning of
this epic summerhouse sojourn, I hooked up to HBO Nordic online. It isn't TV
proper, as it doesn't come over airwaves or through TV cables or boxes. But as
the correct designation is "provider of on-demand internet streaming
media", methinks I'll just stick with plain old "TV" for the
purpose of this article.
For the uninitiated, Netflix,
HBO, Viaplay and other such content providers produce their own TV-shows
(example in point: the much-touted Netflix version of the excellent English "House
of Cards"), with some of them buying additional series or films they want
to have in their catalogue online. Some of these series (mostly HBO’s, so far)
have been bought by state broadcasters, to show on their national networks. Sopranos, Band of Brothers, Girls, John Adams, are series that spring to
mind.
However, the humdinger here is:
they create the content they spread via their own distribution channels. This is the brass-ring for these guys, and it
has proven a phenomenal success, and one that is still just in its infancy. As
a novice myself, I'll quickly point out the most impressive, in my mind,
aspects of this way of viewing TV. First of all, I subscribe to HBO for a
monthly fee of about 20 quid. That gives me unlimited access to all their series
(dozens of them) and a library of films they have bought the rights to
distribute, some of them produced by HBO, most not. But the simplest, yet most
practical feature of all this is: I can view it when I want and where I want.
On my iPad, mobile phone, laptop or indeed TV (via a gizmo that puts the
internet stuff into the old box). And there’re no commercials. Not a one.
Sounds silly now, writing it, but it has made me realize this is the future and
there's no turning back. Phone rings? Push pause. Boring film? Select another
one. Want to re-view a favourite series? Go right ahead. When I want, wherever I want.
I'm predicting that within five
years, traditional TV-viewing as we know it will be all but extinct. The vast
majority of us will have a brand-spanking new smart-TV sitting in our
living-rooms. In the evening (still the most common time to watch TV, after
all) we'll turn it on, and maybe first use one or several social medias
(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatevergram) to connect with friends and
family. Then, we'll continue over to the online TV-guide (your state
broadcaster's content will be here, plus whatever other channels or content
providers you subscribe to) and select the evening's viewing. Through point and
click, we will put together our very own evening’s entertainment. Let's say I
want to start with some news and weather, then the sport highlights, followed
by my favourite TV-show (selecting any number of episodes I feel like) and then
maybe top off the evening with a saucy thriller. To be watched when you feel
like, with as many pushes on the pause buttons as you please. While you are
simultaneously Skyping with your mate in Australia - through a screen-in-screen
on the smart TV - who is watching the same cricket game as you are. (In fact,
I'm writing this on my iPad, on Google Drive. The iPad in itself being a
mini-version of the current and future smart TVs, as on this screen I also
watch shows from Netflix and HBO, use different types of social media apps,
Skype, check news and weather, as well as finish articles or pitches for TV,
etc.)
*
It has been said that this is the
second golden era of TV (don't ask me what the first one was). And perhaps more
famously, that these series now coming out is the new novel.
Well, is it? Erh, no: it's TV.
Duh! However, one can easily understand where the notion came from. Creators -
namely, the writers - of these series of four, five or more seasons have a huge
canvas to paint on (with matching budgets). Dozens of hours to tell one main
story. Compare that to the ten hours it takes to finish a 300 page novel (my
guesstimate).
Traditionally, a novel would
comprise a start, middle and end, and it was most often the ending that was
seen as the essential component when judging a novel's greatness. This is not
hard at all to replicate in a 90 minute film, hence the three-act structure.
But hang on, now I'm going to outline 40 (forty!) hours of TV drama, and at one
hour per episode, that's neigh impossible to impart a three-act structure upon.
So what we get is TV-series with seemingly endless dramatic twists and more
dramatic scenes and storylines than Swedes in Thailand. Which isn't necessarily
a bad thing (the dramatic twists, that is) but what becomes hard to achieve in
a satisfactory way is a good ending. Classic examples of long running TV-shows
spinning out of creative control (to me) is Twin
Peaks and Lost, where the
narrative became so entangled and confused and silly that it became irrelevant,
and thus uninteresting to watch. Recent outstanding TV-series have battled the
same problem. Remember the furore that erupted over the final episode and scene
of Sopranos? Everyone moaning about
the last episode of Seinfeld?
Lacking the classic three act
structure, the prevailing tendency is to head towards safe waters, that is: sex
and violence. Graphic sex and explicit violence. This will wake ’em up, is the
thinking. And it does. For reasons unbeknownst to me, these providers of
on-demand internet streaming media are not beholden to the same censorship laws
that exist for "normal" TV in America, so there's a torrent of torrid
sex, cunnilingus, head-splitting, blow-jobs and gut-spilling. In close up. Now
I'm no prude and I swing a mean battle-ax, but it has come to the point (after
watching all there is of Game of Thrones,
Banshee, John Adams, Strikeback, Magic City, Band of Brothers, The Pacific,
Five Days, 30 Rock and Curb your
enthusiasm this summer - yes, I’m bragging again) where I’m starting to
wonder if one has to, just because one can. Sometimes - often, in fact - less
is more.
Novels have taken this up, of
late, and similar traits now have crossed over to the written word - the new TV.
Novel series like Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey and Hunger Games go for kicks of the
above-mentioned variety, where perhaps the structure is somewhat rickety and
the ending more inevitable than important.
So: find a great setting, say
Amish country, Pennsylvania. Add a new sheriff in town who’s really a crook in
disguise, and a bad guy who’s of Amish descent and quite decent and you got
yourself a show: Banshee.
Perhaps
imagine The Godfather as a
long-running series, set in the roaring twenties’ boot-legging gangster mayhem
and you have Boardwalk Empire. Or
(making it easy for yourself) take Boardwalk
Empire and transpose it to a hotel in Miami during the go-go fifties, and
end up with Magic City. Dream up
something similar, salt and pepper, roast for two hours and send it off to one
of the big, new, hungry providers of on-demand internet streaming media
(formerly known as TV) - and you’re home.
Ola Zaltin is a Swedish screenwriter living in Copenhagen, Denmark.
He has written for film and various Scandinavian tv-shows, amongst them Wallander. At the moment he's having a
screenplay considered in L.A and is developing a tv-series of his own. He also
does script-doctoring, albeit exclusively for nubile young women with illusions
of grandeur.
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