Good TV is a bit harder to define. But generally it tends
to involve murky or otherwise arty lighting with people frowning, or alternatively
'realistic' documentary-style footage, usually involving people frowning.
Not that this necessarily means it'll be any good; it just means it might
be.
Once I've decided that what I'm watching isn't either
a talk show, another bloody sitcom, a game show or a 'docusoap', I may
actually watch it. But it's still pretty easy to tell the wheat from the
chaff, even if the chaff is very very similar to the wheat because it shamelessly
rips off the wheat, in order to appear to be wheat, when in fact it's essential
chafflike qualities show through. Or something.
First of all, acting. The first point is the actresses;
are they genuinely pretty? Or are just they blonde Pamela Anderson clones,
with about as much personality as concrete and just as thick? Generally,
if the actresses are bland cover-of-FHM 'beauties', the show is going to
be a load of crap. Any show which chooses actresses solely for their looks
is never going to be any good; the same can be said of actors, although
not to the same degree. Although it is true that by in large British TV
doesn't suffer from the cast-the-bimbo complex, probably because we don't
have Hollywood's never-ending supply of surgery-enhanced actresses. Then
there's the acting itself; often the script has a lot to do with this.
Do the actors start using clichés or sounding like they've
been scripted? That's bad. Of course, the worst TV actor can make even
the best lines sound bad, or vice a versa. The preponderance for using
crappy bimbos only compounds bad acting in TV series.
Third, scripting and story. Is the story nicked from one
or more other, better, TV series? Case in point; US teen sci-fi drama Roswell
High is an incredibly transparent crossbreed of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and The X-Files. This kind thing is capable of rendering any TV series
utter shite, regardless of how good the acting and directing is. A bad
idea, or someone else's idea, and you've got sure-fire rubbish.
Which brings me on to the fourth point; originality. Sadly,
whenever a new series comes along and is unexpectedly popular, suddenly
a clutch of rip-offs emerge, creating the illusion that the original series
wasn't original at all. Put it this way; before The X-Files there were
no alien/paranormal detective series, and before Buffy the Vampire Slayer
there were pretty much no occult high school TV programmes. Equally until
The Simpsons came along, there weren't many cartoons obviously aimed at
both highly-educated adults and stupid children. Only after their successes
did the copies emerge, making sub-genres which didn't exist until then.
It's because of the final element that the big networks
never make anything good. You can get good actors, directors and scriptwriters,
and you can copy what's been done before, but that's all; and because the
networks think originality is too 'risky', copying is all they ever do.
Of course, much of the 'public' want and need originality, something most
TV companies realize, which is why they give airtime to risky shows made
by smaller companies. True, there'll always be plenty of people who'd rather
not have to, you know, think while watching TV, but thankfully good
TV gets enough of a following to mean that for every twenty useless wastes
of airtime, at least one decent programme will get made. Such is the way
of the world.
So, that formula, then;
Good TV = acting +story
+directing
+orginality
Bad
TV is pretty easy to define, like bad music; within a couple of seconds,
I can usual tell if a record is likely to be any good, and the same goes
for TV. For example, a slightly overweight woman standing in front of an
audience, clutching a microphone and smiling, is generally going to be
bad TV. Equally three or so people standing and talking in a brightly-lit
room, with laughing in the background, is usual going to be bad. I could
go on.
Second,
direction. The sitcom director just uses the same two or three shots over
and over again, just with different characters in shot. This is kinda boring.
They're also obscenely brightly-lit (to make them more 'happy'), meaning
although you can see everything, the shots themselves just don't do
anything. Not that all sitcoms are bad, but uninspiring direction never
improves things.
Fifth
and finally, good TV never comes from the mainstream. Never. Ever. All
the good shows I've mentioned have become popular, but they were
originally made on very small budgets by semi-independent companies, often
commissioned by larger companies like 20th Century Fox, or in Britain by
Channel 4 or BBC2. Though both Channel 4 and BBC2 make many good programmes
of their own, I don't think any of the American networks are capable of
making anything decent themselves, but rather are only able to make copies
of shows made by smaller companies. But that's the same in all fields of
entertainment.
Bad TV = Good TV ( -originalty
-acting -story -directing +bimbo
)
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