Genre Makes the World Go Round...

I find it curious and, to be honest, rather bizarre when an occasional critic condemns the BBC Sherlock television show for not doing something new. Why? Because Sherlock is a genre show. It is a detective show that plays off of the work of detective fiction that set the template for detective fiction, detective films, and detective television shows and from which intellectual and action detective fiction has their origins and gets their formulaic themes in large part, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. It is a show that doesn't attempt, in other words, to be anything other than what it is, a detective show.

Genre literature, film, and television as a general rule doesn't offer anything new. It generally offers sameness. And it is this sameness, this repetitiousness, that audiences, as Hollywood learned long ago, loves, or can be taught to love, and which, along with stars, draws audiences into the cinema or onto the couches in front of TV sets. Hollywood, be it Hollywood film or Hollywood TV, is the ultimate genre cinema and television and has been so essentially since its beginning. There is, as far as I know, no art cinema auteurs in Hollywood. Hollywood has no Ingmar Bergman, no Federico Fellini, no Eric Rohmer, no Alain Resnais, no Robert Bresson, no Jean-Luc Goddard, no Dardennes Brothers, though I do realise that these giants of art cinema do have their American counterparts in American cinema particularly American independent cinema. Woody Allen was, at least in his early days, in part, an American Bergman and Fellini and the poster child for serious Hollywood "art". But even Woody tried his hand at the Hollywood thriller (Match Point), uses Hollywood stars (Will Ferrell), and today seems relegated to making picture postcard films set in mythical European cities for Americans with an irrational fear of foreign films and subtitles. Richard Linklatter is an American Rohmer. Todd Solandz is an American Bresson. David Lynch is a very pale and depolitisiced version of Luis Bunuel

It is Hollywood cinema's and Hollywood television's generic repetitiveness that is one reason, the other is its childishness, why I find so much contemporary Hollywood cinema and television to be, aesthetically, one of the least interesting national cinemas in the world. Now don't get me wrong. I like the occasional genre film and television programme. I love the films of Howard Hawks be they Westerns, Screwball comedies, action adventure films, or musicals. I love the suspense films of Alfred Hitchcock. Ah the days when Hollywood made films for adults with thinking brains. I like the original Dragnet, I Love Lucy, the Honeymooners, the Dick Van Dyke Show, and the Twilight Zone. I love the genre blending knowingness of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. Genre blending and reflexivity seem one of the few ways a genre cinema and television can be innovative in today's Hollywood. And I love the BBC Sherlock which, like the wonderful American TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, plays with genre and plays with genre expectations in fascinating ways and which adds something somewhat new into the cinematic mix in its use of text on screen and in its use of montage to reflect what is happening in the jump cut mind of its protagonist, the great detective himself, Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock is a show made, in part, by Sherlockians for other Sherlockians and that is one of the reasons why I like it so much.

Oh, by the way, I will take the BBC Sherlock over that tired, cliched dinosaur of an American Sherlock meets Mentalist rip off Elementary any day, I will take the more visually innovative, better acted, and more Sherlockian BBC Sherlock over the Hollywood version starring Robert Downey any day, and I will take the more interesting and innovative, if I can use that term in reference to television situation comedies, Channel 4 nerd sitcom Spaced over the tired and cliched CBS "nerd" sitcom Big Bang Theory any day. Comparing Elementary to the BBC Sherlock reminds me once again why I have long found British television so much more interesting, emotionally compelling, and intellectually stimulating than American TV. British television has always seemed to me more willing to experiment and more willing to take chances, even with genre shows.

This Ain't Your Older Sisters Prime Suspect...

So, dear unreaders, I actually watched one of the crop on "new" shows on American television this week, NBC's adaptation of yet another British television show, ITV's seminal Prime Suspect.

The original Prime Suspect ran from 1991 to 1996 and from 2003 to 2006 on Britain's commercial broadcaster ITV. Prime Suspect's main protagonist was Jane Tennison played by the great Helen Mirren, the first DCI in London's Metropolitan Police Service. Up against an old boy's network Tennison has to push and shove for everything she gets, including her first case, a case she gets after the detective in charge dies of a heart attack in the midst of the investigation. Tennison as written (the first series by Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante also creator of the wonderful, at least during its first and equally feminist series, Widows) and as played by Mirren is portrayed warts and all. She is sometimes pushy, because she has to be to make it in an old boy's world, she has family problems, and she is, as we see in later series, an alcoholic.

The new Prime Suspect was developed by Alexandra Cunningham whose resume includes Desperate Housewives, NYPD Blue, Fastlane, and Rome, and stars Maria Bello as Jane Timoney a tough as nails female cop trying to make it it a man's world. It debuted on NBC on Thursday 22 September 2011 to some 6 million viewers according to the website TV by the Numbers, ratings that may suggest that NBC's latest adaptation of a British show, which is this week up against the mediocre Mentalist and that mediocre fantasy show Grey's Anatomy, may be destined for that ever growing dust pile of American TV shows headed for cancellation and that aren't on the CW where 2 million plus viewers will get you renewal. American TV is, after all, dominated by commodity aestheticism, the notion that it ain't good if it don't get the viewing numbers and, as a result, advertising dollars. TV by the Numbers, of course, is a shill for this commodity aestheticism, inc.

So what did I think of the new Prime Suspect? I thought it paled in comparison to the original in a number of ways all of which are revealing about the increasing irrelevance of American television. The great thing about ITV's Prime Suspect is that, except for series four which was divided into three 100 or so minute episodes, most episodes of Prime Suspect clocked in at around 200 minutes plus. This meant that viewers like me who enjoy a good mystery and great acting could savour the plot and savour the acting of some of Great Britain's finest like a fine slow cooked meal. It also meant that there was often a degree of ambiguity built into each episode. The first series, for instance, played on viewer ambiguity as to whether the prime suspect in that episode, George Marlow, played with superb ambiguity by John Bowe, really was guilty.

There is no time for savouring the American Prime Suspect, reveling in its acting, or enjoying its ambiguities. The American version, after all, only has forty or so minutes to get from crime to suspect to the capture of that (right) prime suspect. It is the television equivalent of the male wham bam thank you ma'am sex mentality and McDonald's fast food.

The pilot of the American Prime Suspect (and I know I shouldn't judge an entire show on the basis of one episode but it often times works with US TV) was OK but it was not the British Prime Suspect. Given that it is an adaptation of the original British series comparison here is unavoidable. It is simply not as well acted, not as well written, though it did borrow several plot points from series one of the British series, nor as important and seminal as Prime Suspect (and earlier Morse and later Cracker) was for ITV and for British television. In the world after Scully and Buffy, in fact, it seems rather passe. I am not sure I will watch the US Prime Suspect next week. What I am sure of, however, is that this latest adaptation of an adult British TV show makes me yearn for the great writing, superb acting, fascinating arcs, and ambiguites of X-Files, at least for its first five seasons, and Buffy, again at least for its first five seasons. Whatever happened to the second golden age of US television?

Postscript:
I watched the second episode of the American Prime Suspect and I liked it better than I did the first. It was much less indebted to the British version and while still following slavishly the good old wham bam thank you ma'am formula that dominates American television these days, it wasn't bad. I actually enjoyed it even if I wasn't moved by it. I particularly liked it that the episode portrayed the cops warts and all and that it wasn't your standard caricatured and stereotyped portrayal of a child molester. Still it wasn't the British Prime Suspect, a programme to savour and revel in rather than to have quickly pass before your eyes and quickly out of mind.

The Sky is Falling, the Sky is Falling, or, Skins Has Come to American TV...

The teen show Skins debuted on MTV this week on 17 January 2010. MTV's Skins is a toned down version of a E4 show about young teens, Skins, which has run on E4 since 2007 and is now in its fifth series.

Despite being a toned down version of a British show (http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/jan/18/mtv-skins-us-being-human) Skins is drawing the ire of many of America's self proclaimed protectors of public morality. The Parents Television Council, the same group that named Buffy the Vampire the worst television show of 2002 in large part for its portrayal of pre-marital sex and a lesbian couple, has called Skins "the most dangerous television show for children that we have ever seen" (MTV's 'Skins' Is 'Most Dangerous Children Show Ever,' TV Watchdog Group Claims, Huffington Post, 23 January 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/22/mtvs-skins-is-most-danger_n_812589.html) and has accused Skins of trafficking in child pornography (TV Watchdog Calls For Child Porn Probe Of "Skins", New York Times, online edition, 20 January 2011). The PTC is urging the US government, the same US government, one assumes, they prefer to downsize save when it comes to moral regulation, to investigate in order to ascertain whether or not Skins is violating child pornography laws (TV Watchdog Calls For Child Porn Probe Of "Skins", New York Times, online edition, 20 January 2011). The US Mexican food chain Taco Bell pulled its adds from the show presumably displaying their commitment to their own image and profit margins ("Taco Bell Pulls Ads From Skins", 21 January 2011, online edition). Conservative Fox demagogues Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity blasted MTV for airing the show at all ("Taco Bell Pulls Ads From Skins", New York Times, online edition, 21 January 2011).

Of course this is not the first time that America has seen moral panics over TV shows. I can still recall the moral panic over PBS's Sesame Street (1969-). Sesame Street, some said, with its psychedelia and jump cut editing would, they feared, turn American school children into LSD addicts. I remember the moral panic helmed by conservative North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms over the Channel 4/PBS adaptation of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (1993, 1994) because of its portrayal of drug use and homosexuality. I recall Jerry Falwell's claim that the BBC's and PBS's Teletubbies (1997-2001) was a homosexual plot to brainwash American children into toleraating of homosexuals. I remember the controversy over NBC's short lived Book of Daniel (2006) for its portrayal of an Anglican priest addicted to pain killers who talks to a Jesus and who questions some aspects of modern church doctrine. I recall the controversies surrounding CBS's short lived Swingtown (2008) for its portrayal of a group of 1970s sexually liberated swingers.

One could say a lot of things about American moral panics over TV programmes. One could point out how limited the commitment is of some Americans to "artistic" freedom. One could point out how some American corporations are seemingly committed only to the freedom of commodity fetishism (art equals number of readers or viewers "art" reaches which equals money) but only when the show will not impact its bottom line, profit. One might ask why PBS has been a major target of America's moral watchdogs. One could wonder why a show that got generally good reviews from British critics and was only limitedly controversial in the UK has, even in its toned down US version, proven to be so controversial in the US even before it aired. Or, if you are a misanthrope like me you might simply revel in and be entertained by yet another silly moral panic erupting on the American cultural landscape yet. Don't beam me up yet.