 Starring: James Spader, William Shatner, Candice Bergen, Rene Auberjonois, Mark Valley
Director: Various
Year Of Release: 2004-2008
Plot: The Boston law firm of Crane, Poole and Schmidt is not your normal bunch of lawyers. Alan Shore is a womanising sleaze with a penchant for only taking bizarre cases, the once legendary Denny Crane is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and becoming increasingly erratic, while Shirley Schmidt tries to hold it all together. However despite being an odd bunch, they have a knack for winning their strange cases. |
I love Boston Legal. It’s smart, funny, has a wonderful appreciation of the absurd and in William Shatner, Candice Bergen and James Spader, one of the best casts on TV (indeed both Shatner and Spader won Emmys for the series, while the former also picked up a Golden Globe). Until it was cancelled in 2008, it was one the few shows that really engaged with social issues, however unlike most series that vaguely try to be relevant, Boston Legal did it week in, week out, with episodes that covered everything from religion to race. While that may make it sound like it’d be a slog, it was also one of the funniest shows on television.
I also loved the way it broke the fourth wall, ensuring the audience knew it was well aware of the absurdities and silliness that surrounded the often serious issues it was talking about. For example Denny Crane might say he was looking forward to the next episode, Alan Crane would talk about how he knew he’d get letters when he launched into a liberal diatribe and my favourite was when William Shatner turned up towards the end of an episode, complaining about how he’d hardly been in the show that week at all. Yes it’s daft, but it was cleverly done and very funny.
However throughout its five seasons the show struggled. After a strong start, the show dropped in the ratings, suffered network interference and budget cuts (hence the almost revolving door of cast members, some of whom literally just disappeared between episodes) and was always on the edge of being cancelled. In fact at the end of Season 4, the makers thought there was such a good chance they wouldn’t be coming back for another outing that they ensured the season finale would work as a closing to the entire show. However it got picked up for a fifth season, but only made it to 13 episodes (out of a normal 24) before getting canned forever.
The failure of shows like Boston Legal (which was also one of the few US TV shows where the majority of the cast were over 40) always makes me think it’s our fault that TV - and film for that matter - generally seems to be getting dumbed down. Newspapers may bemoan how television is becoming drivel designed only to satiate the brain dead and that something ought to be done about it, but at the end of the day, TV isn’t a charity.
The fact is, whenever they put intelligent shows on TV that go beyond the purely generic, they tend to struggle in the ratings. Few TV stations can afford to keep a show around just because they knew that it’s smart and clever, as they need the ratings to get advertising (and even the publically funded BBC needs to strike a balance between public service broadcasting and getting ratings, because while people may complain it’s now too commercial, if it became more niche, people would moan about that instead). Without viewers a show can’t survive, and the fact is, in recent years most smart shows have struggled, particularly in the US.
For example I would class Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip as one of the best programmes of the past 10 years, however it was lucky to be allowed to finish out its first season. The wonderfully quirky and clever comedy Wonderfalls lasted only half a season, while in sci-fi circles, the failure of Firefly is legendary, which was a show that tried to do something new and different with the genre.
Every year there seems to be at least one new show that’s beloved by the critics for being smart and engaging, but which quickly gets cancelled, while more generic shows that don’t ask the audience to actually think about what they’re watching, keep running and running. It’s difficult to take the moaning about the dumbing down of TV seriously if nobody’s going to watch the things that try and dumb it up.
Admittedly the massive explosion in the number of channels hasn’t helped, as while networks had more of a captive audience before, now they really have to compete and so the chase for ratings is more pressing than ever, but the fact remains, if they’re going to get money to make more shows, TV channels need viewers. If the general mass audience doesn’t want smart, socially engaged shows, they won’t be made, and that’s our fault (not individually, but collectively). If enough people wanted these shows, networks would make them, but as it appears they don’t, things get dumbed down.
There are some bright spots, notably in the US with HBO, and the Movie-A-Day article on Angels In America noted why that channel’s shows can afford to be a lot smarter and better quality than most other stations (largely because they don’t need the sort of huge audiences other stations have to have, and they don’t rely on advertising).
There are a couple of other issues, such as stations being wary of socially engaged shows in case they annoy advertisers (if you deal with a lot of controversial subjects, there’s a good chance that at some point you’ll piss off the wrong people and they’ll launch a letter writing campaign, designed to get advertisers to pull their promos from a show), but the fact is, good ratings will trump controversy. For example a lot of people thought Will & Grace would be lucky to survive on network TV in the US, because they reasoned that advertisers would be less likely to pay for ads during a ‘gay show’ and would spend their money elsewhere, but when the series got good ratings, advertisers flocked.
It’s also true that a lot of shows get cancelled too soon, before they’ve had a chance to find their audience. That is a real problem, and US TV stations really need to let some things bed in longer before they pull the plug. However, in recent years many of the low rated shows that networks have kept going in the hope their viewership would grow, such as The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Jericho, have seen their audiences continue to dwindle even after they got a second chance, so it’s hardly surprising that currently TV networks think it’s better to just drop underperforming shows and try something else, rather than keep throwing money at them.
One of the few bright spots in the last few years has been with Friday Night Lights, an excellent, critically adored show that struggled on NBC in the US and was on the verge of being cancelled at the end of its second season (it was lucky not to get canned after season 1, but the network stuck with it in the hope audiences would pick up). However while it wouldn’t normally have come back for Season 3, satellite TV service DirecTV stepped in and said it would help with production costs if it could show episodes before they went to NBC. Because of this deal, it’s now onto Season 4, and shows a possible way forward for series that have an insanely dedicated core audience, but which don’t attract enough general viewers for the networks to keep showing them in the normal way.
Undoubtedly a lot of great shows struggle in the rating and often get cancelled, while brain-dead series keep going, but the fact is that TV is getting dumbed down because more people want it that way than want it smart. It would be good if there were a broader range of shows, but television can only keep shows going if enough people want to watch them to make them profitable. As it seems that only a handful of smart shows can be sustained at any one time, it really is our fault as a society that television is getting stupider. If we want better TV, then people had better watch the shows that try to offer that, because at the moment, they aren’t.
TIM ISAAC
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