I’ve been having a bit of an HBO frenzy lately, watching the second seasons of Six Feet Under and–thanks to friends–The Wire, and now embarking on the second season of Deadwood. It wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to give HBO credit for the golden age of US TV drama we seem to be living through at the moment, even though they’re not making all my favourite shows. (But Battlestar Galactica might be even better as an HBO show…there’d be more nudity at least.)
Of these three, easily my favourite is The Wire. When I first read about this show I thought it would be good but maybe a rather dutiful watching experience. Gritty police drama, unparallelled authenticity, no happy endings, yeah great. What I couldn’t have imagined was how much sheer pleasure this show brings; yes, it’s “gritty” but it’s never dour, instead there’s an effusive richness about its clash of different dialects and the way it relishes the possibilities of the spoken word without ever stepping outside the boundaries of realism (unlike Deadwood which also relishes the spoken word but in a much more stylised way). The huge cast of characters, too, has a Balzacian scope (major characters from one storyline becoming bit players in another) and you find yourself oddly caring for even the ones who on paper seem most irredeemable. The storylines unfurl with meticulous patience, and the show manages the clever trick of dramatising what much of the time amounts to intense boredom and mundane repetition (whether it’s talking about police work, drug dealing or whatever) without itself becoming boring and repetitive. Then there’s the uniformly brilliant acting, direction, etc., the location shooting in Baltimore which I’m afraid I can’t avoid saying “is a character in its own right”, really it’s hard to find a flaw in this show.
On the other hand, I’ve never quite understood why so many of my friends regard Six Feet Under as the Best TV Show Ever. It’s diverting enough, the characters are interesting, it’s well-made, and I’m quite happy to keep watching it for the remaining three seasons, but to me there’s always been a basic smugness about it which is no doubt associated with Alan Ball, its creator and the writer of American Beauty, a film I found positively unwatchable. This sense is only enhanced by listening to the commentary tracks, where in between encomia to the cast, crew, writers etc (”I just love Rachel in this scene, she’s such a great artist, look at the way she’s slouching in that chair, that’s a risky choice, most actors wouldn’t do that, etc etc etc”) the viewer is instructed to take note of the turgid sub-Jungian “symbolism” running through the show (”here’s Ruth’s sister with a watering can, she’s a nurturing person”; “notice how Nate is always running, that’s no accident”). There are also so many of the departures from verisimilitude that in theory I don’t care about but in practice annoy me because they seem to indicate that the writers are so happy with themselves that they can afford to neglect details (eg a funeral will be going on, we’ll cut to scenes that supposedly spread over several hours, then we’ll cut back to the funeral still in progress…I mean I know Americans like expensive coffins, do they also have funerals that go for days?).
Anyway enough curmudgeonliness. I don’t really have anything to say about Deadwood. I mean obviously it’s great, but I don’t feel like I have a “line” on it yet. Is is possible to make some overall point about how the success of HBO as a subcription pay service backed up by DVD sales is an analogy of something in the history of the book…from periodical publication/circulating libraries to single-volume/private ownership publication perhaps? I’m not really a History of the Book person but there does seem to be a parallel between the extra attention required by a long-form show like The Wire, with its lack of clear narrative signposts and episodic devices like cliffhangers, and the shift from say a Dickens to a George Eliot. A stretch?
Also am I going to be alone and embarrassed if I admit that I sometimes watch The Wire with subtitles?