Good Television. Hmmm.
I do enjoy a good television series. In contrast to films, which last only a couple of hours, series can take their time to develop characters that you will start caring about. With regards to length then series are more closely related to books. Of course some series don’t use this advantage to tell a bigger story and simply use more episodes to do more of the same. Other series seem only to have one big multi-hour story, broadcasted in episode-sized chunks cut along 50-minute lines. I dislike both of these, and my personal recipe for good television follows a matryoshka-approach of having smaller stories within larger ones.
Another important ingredient are the characters. Fiction can get away with some really weird storytelling if the characters respond to it in a realistic manner. Characters on television start out flat, but if they change in time then that counts as a third dimension and gives them depth. You do need this change to keep things fresh after the first couple of episodes. Then you add a good measure of humour and also some nice dialogue – preferably fresh dialogue and not that dried stuff they sell in bottles. Voila, a decent television series, best served with a side dish of advertisement blocks.
As an example of how it’s done I’d like to introduce you to the series Chuck. As is customary with the photographs next to recipes, my example is quite a bit tastier then anything you could achieve by using the above instructions. Still, all the things I like about good television series are there.
Sarah, Chuck and Casey. This is an obligatory promo-picture, attempting to compensate somewhat the nonsensical use of a mouse as the only other graphical feature of this entry.
The series is named after the lead character, Chuck Bartowski, who is accidentally implanted with a CIA-NSA intelligence database in his brain. From that point forward Chuck, helped by two secret agents that have been sent to protect him, thwarts the plans of criminals all operating conveniently close to his home. Yes, the premise is mad enough to facilitate some excellent storytelling and character development.
On top of that, Chuck is pretty damn funny. Not the bad kind of television humour, the kind that involves locking the cast in a room for twenty minutes of joke-tapping each week, but the good kind of humour, where it flows naturally with the story and dialogue.
Currently two approaches to studying the behaviour of humour in a vacuum are being explored. One involves a mouse in a vacuum chamber containing low pressure nitrous oxide gas. The other project is known as The Sitcom.
The music is of the show is done particularly well too. Part of it is previously existing songs, part of it music composed for the series. Both are fun, but I particularly enjoy the latter part because of the way in which it continuously references all kinds of spy films.
What actually amazes me most about this series is that as much as I enjoy watching it, I wasn’t aware of its existence before the second season had already been broadcasted. In fact, finding out I liked it required some serious transatlantic internetting on my part. Where is this Big Brother society when you need it? Universal, next time you produce something that resembles the above recipe, please send me an advertisement!