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| (FX) |
The
January TV premiere calendar is bound to give you a headache. You can’t miss the
(latest) filmmakers making the crossover: Danny Boyle! The Duplass Brothers!
Lee Daniels! Lisa Cholodenko (again)! If you’re enjoying the Marvel universe-takeover, ABC’s newest addition
to the canon, Agent Carter, is around the corner. Fan of
peculiarly-located small-town murder mysteries? Why, there’s another
channel breaking out with a prestige drama, in Pivot’s Fortitude, which includes in its cast Stanley Tucci and Michael
Gambon. FXX is expanding its comedy brand with Man Seeking Woman, a Jay Baruchel vehicle that sounds not too far
off from his She’s Out of My League. Oh,
and History’s got another modestly-cast, lavishly-produced reenactment in Sons of Liberty. On new shows alone in
January and the beginning of February alone, the following actors will be
gracing your television screens (along with those already mentioned): Peter
Sarsgaard, Uma Thurman, Zachary Quinto and Melissa George in NBC’s Cholodenko-directed
miniseries The Slap; Eugene Levy and
Catherine O’Hara in Pop’s (hey, another new channel!) sitcom Schitt’s Creek; Terrence Howard, Taraji
P. Henson and a delectable recurring cast in FOX’s Daniels-created Empire; and Hope Davis in NBC’s The Americans rip-off Allegiance. That’s just on the new shows
– and those are just the big names.
Okay,
take a breath.
The
month is the perfect epitome for the rapidly evolving television landscape, as
more filmmakers throw themselves into the ring, as more “film” actors make the
jump, as more channels get into the game. And all of these things can have a
substantial impact. Cholodenko jumped from indie film to television to make
2014’s best small-screen offering; Frances McDormand, Maggie Gyllenhaal,
Matthew McConaughey and others shifted mediums and churned out career-best performances;
and Amazon proved that more voices and more venues for programming remains a fantastic
thing by releasing Transparent, a
legitimately groundbreaking piece of storytelling. But if you feel like it’s
getting a little bit overwhelming – “too much good stuff” – you’re quite right.
In my year-end Top 10, I couldn’t help but notice that my selections of shows
like Rectify, The Honorable Woman and Getting
On barely registered despite receiving strong reviews. Others like Veep and Transparent may not be smash hits, but they have a place in the
dialogue; everyone knows them (Once I get into Fargo and Orange Is the New
Black, people know what I’m talking about, finally). And despite my own
varied favorites, I missed out on a lot of good stuff – being behind on The Good Wife and Hannibal rings loudly, and daily.
So,
January: I’ll be checking out HBO’s Togetherness,
which comes from Mark and Jay Duplass and stars, among others, Melanie Lynskey
and Amanda Peet. The Duplass team is a favorite of mine in the indie film
world; for practically nothing, they’ve release small-scale gems like Cyrus and Jeff, Who Lives at Home (they’re solid actors too: Mark starred in
Lynn Shelton’s terrific Your Sister’s
Sister, while Jay is a leading cast member on Transparent). Boyle’s political satire Babylon, premiering on Sundance and described as an even less
coherent version of Armando Iannucci’s The
Thick of It, intrigues me, as does Daniels’ subversive hip-hop soap Empire. As for The Slap, I’m not a big fan of creator Jon Robin Baitz’s past work –
I found his play Other Desert Cities derivative,
and he created ABC’s marvelously-cast but razor-thin Brothers & Sisters. Again, he has a tremendous group of actors
attached. But he’s also got Cholodenko, and I’m curious to see what her deep
and authentic touch brings to the production.
So,
yes: prestige close-ended productions, indie film transitions, more of these ongoing
trends. Check out these shiny new toys – a few are bound to turn out well – but
don’t forget about the rusty ones. Two hour-long programs that soared in 2014 –
Showtime’s veteran Shameless, and FX’s
blossoming The Americans – are back. There’s
a dearth of quality hour-long programming out there right now – that is, continuing
hour-long programming – and these two shine even brighter as a result. Both are
studies in the exclusive and profound power of longform television – especially
Shameless, a tonal mashup that
finally reached greatness in its last season and heads into its fifth year with
an enviously-deep bench of characters and relationships. Obviously, as my 2014 favorites
indicate, I’m not exactly wincing at the new, filmic opportunities being
presented by television. But there’s something intimate and special (okay, as
greats like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos imply, perhaps slightly
masochistic) about continuing on the journey of characters year-in and
year-out, living and breathing with the writers as they propel their story
further and further. Shameless gets
no respect, really – I don’t think people know what to make of it. But I can’t
think of a show that began so scruffy and so uneven that, year by year, built
itself into such an indispensable and powerful piece of work. Can it keep the
streak? I see no reason why not. As for The
Americans: as I mentioned in my year-end wrap, this brilliant Soviet spy
saga feels like a relic of past time. We’re bidding farewell to another great
in Mad Men, and an almost-great in Justified – that laundry list of terrific,
hour-long cable drama is nothing but strikethroughs now. The Americans had a second season as good as Justified had – that’s a big compliment – but it also had a much
better freshman season, and has such richly-drawn relationships and such
immense themes to consider and contend with that its eminence should remain
in-tact for some time. That’s a rare, essential quality in 2015 TV.
Comedy
is segmenting and changing too. It’s fitting that Mad Men’s departure is occurring in the same season as Parks and Recreation’s – the NBC comedy,
too, represents the last of an era. NBC’s slate of brilliant network comedy,
from The Office to 30 Rock to Community (still alive, but picked apart and now on Yahoo) to Parks, has finally passed. These weren’t
commercial hits, but they were series that a diverse group of fans could rally
around passionately; their intelligence and vitality were near-unquestionable.
That doesn’t happen with FOX’s The Mindy
Project, meritorious as it may be, or Brooklyn
Nine-Nine, proving in its sophomore season not to be at the level of its
tonal siblings (Black-ish earned
solid reviews as the season’s breakout sitcom, but talk has quietened
substantially). In fact, network comedy is in a very strange state right now. Critics
are, instead, rallying around programming that makes Parks and Rec feel like Two
and a Half Men: the brash and confident Broad
City; the cynically sappy You’re the
Worst; a pot-centric web series in High
Maintenance.
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| /Huffington Post |
Broad City
is returning – as are HBO’s divisive, not-quite-comedies Girls and Looking – this
month. But rather than point to Parks and
Rec, still a worthy sitcom but certainly not the one it once was (not to
begrudge it; it’s a fate that befalls nearly every network sitcom), look to FXX’s
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
This 21st Century Seinfeld
has been going strong for nine years (entering its tenth), and in its past few
seasons have been more innovative and creative than ever before. That’s rather
incredible. It still features TV’s most killer comedic foursome, especially in
Charlie Day and Kaitlin Olson, and its writing is still more blistering and
vibrant than most anything else on the air. Again, for whatever reason, this is
a show that, even in its early and most popular years, has never really probed
the critical consciousness. Is it too mean? Too small? Too slight? I’m unsure,
though Sunny’s uncompromising nature
is certainly uncommon to an Office or
30 Rock or Parks and Rec. In any case, it may be an aged work, but it’s in a
sweet spot: it’s old enough where it knows what works and what doesn’t, and yet
its team remains determined to go to new places and try new things. Personal
taste aside, that’s a fact, and there’s something to be said for that. Considering
how profoundly TV comedy has changed in the past decade, Sunny’s qualitative endurance is quietly remarkable. Like HBO’s Veep, its comedic sensibilities transcend
era – its wit and its characters feel timeless.
I
don’t mean to diminish what critics and audiences are gravitating to
right now; those aforementioned “niche” comedies are all terrific. And, as I
see it, it’s where comedy is going. NBC’s comedy block is dismantled. Even CBS’
new sitcoms are flailing. All the while new outlets are getting weirder, with
lower expectations. Sketch comedy is making a welcome comeback, from Amy
Schumer to Key and Peele, and HBO’s typical half-hour is, at this point, themed
more by poignant drama than out-and-out comedy (for every Silicon Valley, there is a Looking
and a Togetherness). I guess the
argument here is: some of the new stuff will work and some of it won’t, some of
it will appeal more than others. But look out for Sunny this January, which stuck it out through five Modern Family Emmy wins and three 30 Rock wins (seriously, it’s been
around that long). And, for that matter, look out for The Americans and Shameless.
I’m as excited as anyone about the strides TV is making, about the new,
essential voices littered across the channel spectrum. But these three very
different shows demonstrate TV’s enduring and everlasting power: to change, to
grow, and to reach something genuinely exceptional.
Click
here for a
list of all January/early February premiere dates.