Except for Nucky of course. The real guy was a big, burly guy with a booming voice. A physically imposing person and a real hard ass.
Although his generosity to civilians is allegedly historically accurate.
I saw an interview with the creator of Boardwalk Empire in which he said that if he wanted an accurate physical portrayal of Nucky, he would have hired James Gandolfini.
<hijack>Hehe. Emphasis mine.</hijack>
Anybody watch yesterday’s show? It’s not Deadwood or Rome, but I’m starting to look forward to it. And NOW they tell us there’s only 3 more episodes??!!
I did watch it. What’s going to happen to Margaret? Eek!
Really. That’s some bullshit right there. But I think that is SOP for cable shows. I think Dexter has always been 12 episodes. Spartacus was 13. Same for all of the summer (and I think regular season) shows on USA, TBS, etc.
I just hope we don’t go the way of British television and only do like 5 shows for a new series (eg, Primeval) and it takes 2 or 3 years before you get even a half of a season worth of shows.
I disagree. I think planning a series as a set run of a small number of episodes with a completed story makes for higher quality programming.
I couldn’t disagree more. I hate the British-style season length, and don’t think it adds one bit of quality.
I question the very idea that more of something necessitates a drop in quality. By that logic, three-hour movies should suffer compared to their 90-minute counterparts, but the opposite is true. And before you justifiably claim a vast difference between a series and a movie, how much actual screen time is in a 5-part series run compared to a three-hour movie?
The point is that the British system requires the writers to confide of a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end. The American system presume there will bs no end, which screws up the art of storytelling. That’s why American series, no matter how food at the start, largely end in mediocrity. The exceptions tend to bs the ones that the show’s creator has already sketches out the complete story and resists pressure to stretch it out.
I don’t think they did that very successfully with Primeval. To all appearances there were several aspects of that show that seemed ad hoc at best. Also, I don’t really see that logic applying to something like Inspector Morse or Midsomer Murders.
Morse was produced as short seasons made up of discrete mustery stories and the number of stories was limited by the number written by the original author nit wasnt passed on to anteam of writers to produce 25 episodes a season for 14 years if thwy had tried it, Morse would have been as memorable aa Murder She Wrote. If you analogioze a movie to a short story a short season of TV episodes can be like a tightly written novel or anthology. The American system is like a hackwritten endless series of cheap paperbacks. Every once in a while you might hit upon a genius team of creators who can sustain the quality but it’s better not to make that the default assumption. The pileimary virtue of the British system is that the control is in the hands of the author/creator and a decent author can produce only so much material. The U.S. system requires the control tommove up to corporate level and a team of writers to crank out the volume of material needed. The diffusion of control is what dilutes the artistic vision.
I enjoyed the exchange between Nucky and Jimmy where Jimmy demanded he come out and say he wants him to kill those guys.
I’m surprised how much menace Steve Buscemi is able to pull off, considering he usually plays the squirrelly harmless weirdo.
Yea, I don’t know anything about the British system, but I agree with you that American Television dramas suffers because very few series bother to outline complete story arcs ahead of time. I kinda fear Boardwalk is suffering the same syndrome, it started out strong, but its kinda just meandering now. Hopefully it will tighten up before the seasons end.
So – how did the few of us who are watching enjoy yesterday’s show?
That government agent is a reeeaaaal sicko. Oh, yes, he is.
Another very strong episode in my opinion…
“Whattya gonna do shoot, big guy, shoot me?”
“Well I wan’t going to, but you kinda talked me into it.”
BANG
Lucy. Yowza.
Holy crap. Van Alden is completely out of control.
Van Alden is bananas. Does he think he’s just going to be able to walk away from killing another agent in front of dozens of witnesses?
As soon as the doc asked for a hair sample, I called it. It was a pretty big clue though.