Why I love American TV
British television could once boast the best writers, actors and
directors in the world! But no longer. The greatest shows on earth
now come from the United States.
In May 1961, Newton Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission, gave an address to the owners of America's television
stations. "When television is good, nothing - not the theatre, not the
magazines or newspapers - nothing is better," Newt said. "But when
television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of
your television and keep your eyes glued to that set. You will observe
a vast wasteland."
The phrase "vast wasteland" stuck. US television's self-image never
recovered. In Britain, by contrast, we acknowledge TV's place in the
culture. Britain is supposed to have the best television in the world...
Which may have been true until recently. These days, I find that the
programmes we most enjoy are American.
Few Britons have resisted forming an attachment to Moonlighting
or LA Law in the 1980s, ER or The X Files in the 1990s, and Ally McBeal
or Six Feet Under currently. Emotionally and intellectually, these
programmes provide all we need from television drama.
The critic Charles Williams once argued that popular narratives
all elaborate the same plot: the family is threatened; the family is
reunited. This theory applies not only to the Ewings of Dallas or the
Waltons of Virginia but to the cops of NYPD Blue, and the doctors of ER
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1. Is the author British or American?
How do you know?
2. What is the general view of the public
concerning British and American
television?
3. Explain why the author stands against
this traditional view.
4. List all the series mentioned and
pick out the names of characters.
5. What qualities does the author find
in American TV series?
What is it, exactly, that we admire in American
drama? Part of it is the big budgets that crowd
hospital wards with extras, the slickness of the
filming and editing, the soundtracks that mani-
pulate our reactions, the standards of acting.
Yet production values are not everything. The
area where we crucially fail to match the
Americans is writing.
Narrative, the art of telling, is one aspect of
good writing. Characters come with a back
story-even down to the short-order waitress
with a speeding conviction and a broken mar-
riage... The next great American novel may be
a television series.
There must surely be lessons in these series
for British broadcasters. When the masses are
offered something of real quality, every now
and again, they have the good sense to embrace
it. They agree with Newt: when television is
good, nothing is better.
Andrew BILLEN,
The Observer, July 2002.