Article - Is Television Surpassing Film?

Immersing yourself in a film isn’t quite as delicious as losing yourself in an excellent television series. You lie static on the sofa for hours; when you go to work, your mind is full of the characters’ concerns; you even dream about them.

The new generations of television we have seen evolve since the late 1990s is consistently pushing the boundaries of the small screen. These shows exhibit incredible storytelling, scintillating characters and cutting edge content. Shows like The Sopranos and Game of Thrones are prime examples of the quality television that now graces our television sets and are two of the most cinematic. They are literary in their breadth, social in their narratives and have gargantuan followings because of their cinematic production values and elemental leitmotif.

Quality television was made to break rules. It attempts to take an established genre and transform it, or challenge basic generic frameworks and etch out new narrative territories previously uninvestigated by television. This style of television can be defined by its adherence to certain characteristics. For example, quality television more often than not has a full ensemble cast with the diversity of characters authorizing a collection of perspectives and plots to accommodate all characters. Whether or not the show is serialized in continuing storylines, these quality shows also refer back to events and details from previous episodes. Quality television tends to conform towards realism, with its subject matter regarded as rather controversial, Game of Thrones being the most prominent example. Series that exhibit such characteristics, amongst others are usually fanatically hailed with awards and critical acclaim.

Although the three big American networks pushed the bounds of small screen and evolved the concepts of cinematic television, one channel can be seen as being the origination of this decisive growth, HBO. HBO is a full service cable provider with a subscriber-based system. Because it financially relies on monthly subscriptions, the channel is faced with the continued challenge of having to generate programs that are worth paying for. For years, broadcasters constructed shows with an eye toward acquiring and satisfying viewer loyalty, but HBO must provide value for money. HBO is fully ingrained in the history of quality television storytelling and uses its positions to take risks and walk the line between recognition and complexity.

As soon as you hear the static buzz that opens every HBO show, you know you are in for a treat. Even if you’re watching gangster with family disputes, a struggling seventies record label, or Sarah Jessica Parker and three women exchanging sex tips over a coffee, HBO has on more than one occasion proved that it can push boundaries and demonstrate just how much potential television truly has. HBO’s vow to give its creative employees the independence to pursue their impulses to compose courageous, inspired work with ingenuity is what makes their output so widely diverse. The scripts take full advantage of the freedom to show everything that network television could only dream of; sex, violence, drugs and language and these scripts don’t feel like they’ve been squeezed to death by focus groups or fed through the typical formulaic blender aimed for target audiences, scripts that are used for the all to common film franchise of today.

‘The easiest way for HBO to distinguish itself from any network and studio has been through explicit content’ writes Dean J. Defino in his book The HBO Effect. HBO has always frustrated convention, gratuitous violence, sex and swearing were allowed and the channel is responsible for broadcasting indecency and bestowing it to the masses. In the drama that HBO produces we see some unvisited features such as verisimilitude, moral ambiguity, psychological realism and narrative irresolution. Nothing is candied and narrative conventions are dismissed, questions are also often left unresolved, for example, the end of The Sopranos six seasons run finished in the middle of an ambiguous scene. Characters comply with minimal morals and their stories are begrudging to surrender hard truths about human nature and social institutions to the cursory ‘happy’ endings that once governed traditional film and television.

The Sopranos shaped HBO into the established name that it is today. Chronicling the inner workings of a New Jersey family, run by gritty mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), The Sopranos gathered applause for its nerve-racking stories, entangled and intriguing characters, and inconceivable acting. What caused The Sopranos to be so filmic were its overarching plotlines, which not only carried across one season, but from one season to the next. The design and outlining of each season forces us, the captivated spectator to view the show from the very start, disregarding the pure episode concept that television most often confides in. The characters had such complexity to them that the compulsion to view the show from the very start was essential, not only for following the story line, but in order to distinguish the characters and where they belonged in the extensive story.

24 was essentially Fox’s The Sopranos, in the sense that it employed the same overarching story mechanics previously used, however it altered the way we watched, talked about and recommended television shows. 24 took the concept and level of quality television further, the individual seasons stretched over the period of 24 hours in the life of Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and each episode ran for one hour of real time. This in addition to the exceptional application of split screen coined a brand new way of observing, evaluating and conversing about television.

Rome departed our screens after its first two seasons but it was crucial to HBO and the quality television movement as it was a stunning precursor for Game of Thrones. Rome hastily became the cardinal historic drama on television that made a name for itself, laying the way for others as it used the recognizable quality television ideas and told a known story from alternative perspectives. What drove both studios and audiences towards the idea of historical drama appropriating itself as the next big thing on television was the collaboration and budgets acquired for a series like Rome. The growth in budgetary requirements between film and television was already fractional due to the costumes, props and sets required, but Rome secured cinema budgets for television shows and made them an obligation. The pilot of Game of Thrones alone had a budget that ended up costing between $5 million and $10 million; production budgets for television will very soon be opposing their film equivalents.

Now lets break down the advantages of television. When executed befittingly, the longform storytelling possibilities bestowed by television assets cinemas tattered trust on the menial work of film. Breaking Bad a prime example, a televisual rollercoaster that displayed the protagonist transforming over a period of his life in a way that at no time could be achieved in film. Television also still has the ability to bewilder an audience and at its peak a television show can cross genres, changing from thriller to comedy and back again. Where as films tend to simplify themselves through their desperate need to be marketed correctly.

Word of mouth is key in the succession of quality television. A HBO show, such as Breaking Bad starts off with a small subscriber based audience and thanks to new means of dispersion, accompanied by crazed word of mouth the show became a juggernaut. Television is such an intimate form; it is its intimacy integrated with the lengthy periods of time that actors often spend in television roles that sees viewers devote much more of themselves to television characters, unlike film characters.

As television is progressively moulding into a writer’s manifestation, it is drawing the attention of the highest acting talents. Actors that would have dismissed working on television over a decade ago are now involving themselves due to how high the quality is, with the likes of Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey starring in HBO’s True Detective. It’s not just the best actors who are being attracted to television, Terence Winter, most notable for his writing on films such as The Wolf of Wall Street and Get Rich or Die Tryin’ has become somewhat of a television auteur due to his work on The Sopranos and the critically acclaimed works of Martin Scorsese, with Boardwalk Empire and Vinyl.

What makes the rush in quality television shows so inspiring is the fast paced progress and expansion that comes with its growth. In just over a decade we have observed networks and channels employ cinematic themes and grant colossal budgets to production teams, all so audiences can get the same cinema feel sat in front of their televisions at home, week after week.

Though it is a capacious alteration from how we as an audience normally watch and engage with stories and characters on television, the cinematic transformation is not simply good, but indispensible. The want for escapism is not incarcerated in a cold, dark, ample and noiseless movie theatre anymore, as shows like Breaking Bad, Vinyl, Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones give audiences the same elation from the silver screen. No wonder our television sets are getting bigger.