It is often said nowadays that we live in a new, glorious golden age of television.
And to a large extent that is true with television increasingly the medium where gifted storytellers choose to tell their stories in preference to movies, many of which tend to be relying on the same tired formulas. (Reality TV is, of course, not part of this televisual renaissance since Survivor and The Amazing Race, little to no imagination goes into its production.)
The rise of cable powerhouses such as HBO and AMC, and new technology platforms such as Netflix and Hulu, have accelerated the trend, with these new channels eager for eyeball-catching content that will hook viewers and get them to stump up the money to view programs that in the “good old days” were free on networks like NBC and CBS.
All of which has meant that discerning TV viewers are now drowning in quality choices, with more great programs to watch than there is time or space on the PVR.
For those who love good storytelling, and specifically good storytelling on TV, these are halcyon days, stuffed-to-the-megapixeled-gills with more programs that a mere mortal can watch in a lifetime.
And therein lies my problem.
Too much stellar TV and too little time.
I talk often about the shows I am, by some feat of Herculean scheduling effort, managing to watch faithfully but what about those gems that have fallen through the viewing cracks?
They become victims of what I euphemistically call “Aspirational Viewing”, collections of TV box sets waiting on the shelves for that day, that far off mystical day, when I will finally have time to watch them.
These shows are legion but here are five that I particularly wish I had time to do justice to, and eternally regret that I have yet to fully appreciate their many and varied superlative qualities …
NURSE JACKIE
SNAPSHOT
Nurse Jackie is an American series that premiered on June 8, 2009, on Showtime, Movie Central and The Movie Network. The series stars Edie Falco as the title character Jackie Peyton, an emergency department nurse at All Saints’ Hospital in New York City. For Jackie, “Every day is a high wire act of juggling patients, doctors, fellow nurses and her own indiscretions. (source: Wikipedia)
I adore Jackie (Edie Falco).
She is one of the most real characters on TV, all her flaws and virtues on full display, doing her best to fashion a life that means something, surrounded by a cast of quirky, and sometimes just plain wacky, colleagues all trying to do the same.
Mostly they’re all failing miserably but it’s all handled with grace, superb one liner-laden humour, and the sort of insightful observations about life that only hard won experience can buy.
Apart from feeling much better about life after watching the talented cast in action, I am also reminded that none of us is perfect and that life is pretty much all about hanging on grimly and hoping you make it through.
And remembering, of course, to laugh like a madman while you do.
PARKS AND RECREATION
SNAPSHOT
Parks and Recreation is an American comedy television series on the NBC television network, starring Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope, a perky, mid-level bureaucrat in the parks department of Pawnee, a fictional town in Indiana. Conceived by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, the series debuted on April 9, 2009 and concluded its fifth season in May 2013. It uses a single-camera, mockumentary filming style, with the implication being that a documentary crew is filming everyone. (source: wikipedia)
God bless Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler).
No matter how much hypocrisy or bottom-feeded behaviour she encounters in the halls of power, both local and national, she somehow maintains a positive, though occasionally battered view of the nobleness of public service.
Even surrounded by the unrelenting cynicism of co-workers Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) and Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), and the indifference and sometimes down antipathy of the general public, Leslie Knope soldiers on believing that it is possible to make a difference and that by golly, she’ll be the one to do it.
You could call her foolishly naive but that would be missing the point.
She is a smart, intuitive woman who knows the reality of the situation at hand but who nevertheless refuses to concede that it is irredeemable.
And that isn’t naive, so much as its inspiring … and funny, oh so very deeply endlessly funny.
REMEDY: An episode a day before work will not only get me through seasons 2 – 5 in no time flat but will get me on the train a little more convinced – just a little mind you – that you can make a difference in life.
THE BIG C
SNAPSHOT
The Big C is a Showtime original television series created by Darlene Hunt which premiered on August 16, 2010. It drew the largest audience for a Showtime original series premiere in eight years. The second season premiered on June 27, 2011. The third season premiered on April 8, 2012. On July 31, 2012, The Big C was renewed for a fourth and final season, which premiered on Monday, April 29, 2013. (source: Wikipedia)
I have been in awe of Laura Linney ever since I saw in Love Actually.
In that movie, she played Sarah, a woman who has been in love with the creative director at the company she works at for years and who finally gets a chance to consummate that love when her mentally ill brother calls, effectively ending the nascent relationship. She embodied a breathtakingly touching mix of fragility and strength in a role that was one one of the most affecting I have ever seen in a romantic comedy.
And she’s at it again in The Big C, playing Cathy Jamison, a high school teacher with terminal Stage 4 melanoma who throws caution to the wind after her diagnosis, determined to finally, and belatedly suck the marrow out of life before it’s all gone.
In the process she runs to all points of the emotional compass, playing crazy, circumspect, defiant, happy, sad and all points in between with a seamless honesty and authenticity that left me breathless.
She managed that rare feat of being funny and raw all at once and I have found the episodes I have watched, including yes the finale, some of the funniest and most powerful television I have seen.
REMEDY: Watch all the episode I have missed. There is definitely a place in my life for another brutally honest, flawed, authentic woman who looks what little she has left of life in the eyes and dares it to deny her anything.
GAME OF THRONES
SNAPSHOT
Game of Thrones is an American epic fantasy television drama series created for HBO by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. It is an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin’s series of fantasy novels, the first of which is titled A Game of Thrones. Filmed in a Belfast studio and on location elsewhere in Northern Ireland, Malta, Croatia, Iceland, and Morocco, it premiered on HBO in the United States on April 17, 2011. The series has been renewed for a fourth season, to air in 2014.
Lord knows what happened with me and this magnificent, sprawling epic.
A hit across just about every demographic you care to mention, and one of the few water cooler shows in this era of fragmented media intake, not to mention sitting smack bang in the dead centre of one of my favourite genres, fantasy, I have somehow only managed to watch a show here or there.
I even have the books for goodness sakes (although unread they are at least there on my bookshelf; yes aspirational reading!).
What I have seen I love.
It is superbly acted, brilliantly plotted, replete with the sort of epic drama that I could very easily get absorbed in.
So the question is why haven’t I?
Oh only about 10 other sprawling dramas all looking for a piece of my time, a number of which got there first.
REMEDY: Think this will have to be a Christmas holidays effort when I have 2 weeks off and sitting around watching nothing but greed, murder, betrayal and lust is what every slothful holiday maker needs.
HUNG
SNAPSHOT
Hung is a comedy-drama series, which ran on HBO from June 28, 2009 to December 4, 2011. The series was created by Dmitry Lipkin and Colette Burson and stars Thomas Jane as Ray Drecker, a struggling suburban Detroit high school basketball and baseball coach who resorts to male prostitution. The second season premiered on June 27, 2010 and concluded its 10 episode run on September 12, 2010. On September 2, 2010 it was announced that HBO had ordered Hung for a third season consisting of 10 episodes, which ran from October 2, 2011 to December 4, 2011.On December 20, 2011 HBO decided not to renew Hung for a fourth season. (source: Wikipedia)
So you’re life has gone to sh*t in a big way – wife left you, house burned, low wage job – and you want your children to have everything you ever wanted for them so what do you do?
Sell lots of stuff on ebay? Alas no, it all burned to a crisp in the fire remember?
Get a second job flipping burgers? Kind of – you become a male prostitute making use of your greatest, ahem, asset.
A ballsy (sorry …no, not really) move, it means that Ray Drecker may have a shot of clawing himself out of the cesspool his life has fallen into and make something of his less than spectacular existence.
It could also result in all sorts of messy entanglements too, which of course it does making this compelling, wryly amusing drama that I must, repeat MUST, watch more of soon.
REMEDY: Hey the episodes are short, the writing and acting are superb, and Thomas Jane is a handsome man so this should be easy right? Right. I will commence Operation Well (watched) Hung as soon as I possibly can.