Or why are we so rarely making anything worth watching these days?
Back in the Eighties British drama outshone any other country's work. Whilst America was happily trotting out glossy soap after glossy soap, all with shiny super rich casts and prepostorous plots, we had acclaimed writers like Alan Bleasdale and Dennis Potter making some of the best small screen drama's ever seen. But twenty years on British drama is at all time low point, and it's really quite disgraceful quite how far we've fallen in the quality stakes.
Especially when you compare it to the cream of American tv right now. We tend to only get their best exports (on terrestrial tv anyway, as you'll no doubt know, digital tv channels will show any old crap), but shows such as Six Feet Under, The Soprano's, Nip / Tuck and The Shield are so ridiculously superior to the nonsense we tend to produce it's really quite shocking. And depressing. The above dramas are challenging, innovative and intelligent, and refuse to be
The biggest problem with UK drama is how formulaic it's become of late. Hardly any tv companies seem prepared to invest in original material, and so instead we've had about four hundred different cop drama's forced upon us. Innovation these days seems to be where they cast two women, or one young man and one older woman, in the lead roles, rather than actually come up with a new concept. ITV should be particularly ashamed of itself here, having in the last year produced (deep breath): Frost, Rosemary and Thyme, The Last Detective, Midsomer Murders, Murder in Surburbia and Murder City as well as two installments of The Bill every bloody week. None of which come even vaguely close to being as great as Inspector Morse was. And all too often instead of employing great actors, they simply throw a couple of hundred thousand at an ex-soap or sitcom star and hope that people won't notice how much of a one note performance they tend to phone in. The BBC aren't quite as bad in this area, but boy do they love their medical dramas, with Casualty and Holby City seemingly never off our screens, neither of which hold a candle up to E.R.
If it's not a cop or a medical drama, then it'll all too often be an inferior copy of a successful US show. Spooks is clearly 24 without any edge, Silent Witness is CSI but drawn out to tedious lengths, ITV's The Family tried to imitate The Soprano's but forgot not to make it laughably silly, Bad Girls is Oz but without any of the harrowing and disturbing events that take place in that show - sadly this list could go on and on. Even when we do come up with a drama which isn't a rip off of a US show, it tends to be all too familiar. Steel River Blues is just London's Burning but, hey, get this, with Northerners instead of Southerners. Making Waves was Triangle, but somehow even worse, and even new C4 effort Sex Traffic is a rip off of Lilya 4-ever, and adds nothing new to the debate.
It's not this alone though. Our drama's always seem like they have to be centered around a certain central subject matter / theme / social issue, and all too rarely will they simply centre around a group of characters and show good times as well as bad. The ones that do often pull it off spectacularly like This Life and Shameless both managed to. Much that is produced is misery driven, self-important and ultimately unenjoyable. There's no rule which suggests drama can't be a mix of upbeat and downbeat moments, but it seems that this has been forgotten of late. Also, we rarely seem to do subtlety, poignancy, or, strangely enough for a country famous for it, irony. And there's just no good reason for it.
Because it's not like we aren't able to make great drama series. Over the last decade, Cracker, Inspector Morse, The Sins, Cops Queer as Folk, This Life and The Lakes have all been outstanding viewing, but in the last year or so, only State of Play and Shameless have made the grade. So what's going on? Ultimately it comes down to laziness. Why bother commissioning a new drama which might not immediately get great figures when you can come up with yet another cop show, or some other tried and tested material. But there is a solution, a bloody obvious one at that too. Tv channels could stop plunging millions in to soaps and divert the money towards new writers and directors. Use leftfield talent more often, and, if necessary, replicate the US writing team situation. It's not something I particularly agree with concept wise, but it's proven to work. And please, please, stop with the bastard police dramas. Surely by now everyone in the entire country must have had enough of them.
Alex Finch.
Previous Say Anything Articles:
Mercury Music Prize 2004.
Top Up Tv - You Get What You Pay For?
Dr Who - Time For A Change?
Music For The Broken Hearted.
For Those About To Rock...Dolce and Gabanna Salute You
Classifying Music
My Name's Richard and I Am An Addict.
Nelly - Work It
British Film Industry "On The Rocks"
Freeview: You Get What You Pay For?
Good DVD, Bad DVD
ITV In The Doghouse
The Lack Of British Sci-fi / Fantasy Tv
Britain's Greatest Screen Actor?
Comic Movies
The Best Films of The Year...So Far
Whatever Happened To Sky One?
Timelash
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