Is it just me or has TV gotten better?

Cafe Society
1

I suspect that it has gotten better … but I’m coming off a self-imposed TV exile of approximately 15 years (with some exceptions) and I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying the programs I now watch.

For example, though I “wasn’t watching” TV, while on maternity leave eight years ago I watched a lot of ER and Judging Amy during the day on TBS, I believe. During this period I also got interested in CSI and watched that with some sporadic regularity. I enjoyed all these shows. Previously, my TV viewing centered around Seinfield and the like, but as I say I more or less dropped all TV around 1996.

Now, however … wow. With the advent of Netflix streaming, I’ve picked up all kinds of programs that have been introduced in the last five to seven years and I can’t believe how much richer, more layered, more complex and compelling they are! Some of my favorites are Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead and Doctor Who and to a lesser extent, How I Met Your Mother and 30 Rock.

Am I just freshly entertained due to a lack of stimulation, or has television gotten better in the 2000s?

2

Oh and I also watched tons of Sparticus on Starz, and whether it was for the drama or naughtiness, I’m not prepared to say. :wink:

3

It’s because of Netflix and other availability. We don’t have to watch whatever crap is on TV when we sit down to watch. We have access to the really great shows and not just the mediocre ones.

4

I think somewhere in the last decade TV became better than movies. I find most movies nowadays huge disappointments, but TV shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Louie, The Shield, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and even most of Lost are better-written and richer than the formulaic crap Hollywood’s churning out and dumping into the multiplexes. Part of that is no doubt the amount of time TV shows are able to put into developing characters and allowing stories to unfold, but I also think the writing has matured.

5

You should add the BBC Sherlock series to that list. Easily as good as Stephen Moffat’s work with Doctor Who.

6

I agree. It’s part of the trend toward shorter, higher quality seasons rather than churning out 36 episodes of crap every year.

On the other hand, you’ve go the reality shows dragging down the average, but they are easy to ignore.

7

Reality TV is part of the reason I fled from TV to begin with. Well, that and all the Exhaustion of Raising Small Children.™

8

Oo good to know. I work in public television, so I’m versed on the program; I just haven’t watched it.

9

Channels like AMC are putting out good stuff, but I still wouldn’t say that TV has gotten better. Lots of channels have converted partially or primarily to reality television, and a large portion of the new shows are really terrible sitcoms. Even the dramas aren’t doing very well IMHO, there’s a huge glut of police procedurals and “detective” shows, not a lot of originality in general on the core networks.

10

I started watching a lot of BBC programs on Netflix lately, including Sherlock. I watched Torchwood, MI-5, and several others, which I really enjoyed.

When I used to watch British television shows, they always seemed to have much lower production values than American shows. Now they seem every bit as well produced, or better.

I’d gradually ceased watching American TV almost completely. Mainly because of the ridiculous amount of commercials that are programmed now.

So I wonder if American TV overall has improved in a way that I am unaware of because I stopped watching most of it.

And I wonder if British television, in general, has become better than American television.

11

I’d say that in general British terrestial tv has dumbed down quite considerably.

When its good is very, very good, but much of it is crud.

As a Brit who watches a fair amount of American tv my opinion is that it produces a larger amount of medium to good stuff, not world shaking but very enjoyable.

12

The old stereotype was that British dramas had great scripts and fantastic actors who would work for peanuts - the miniseries of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, or The Singing Detective, the early Taggart, Edge of Darkness - and more willingness to approach difficult subject matter, but wonky production. This started to turn around in the 1980s, though, I surmise because British television realised that it needed to sell its shows to the States in order to retain its funding. This was one of the reasons for Dr Who’s lengthy hiatus; the BBC knew that it couldn’t match the production values of Star Trek: The Next Generation, so what was the point? Inspector Morse, there’s another one. No-one thinks much of it nowadays, but at the time it was noticeably more stylish than The Bill, for example. Or Sharpe, which had - gasp - action! A rarity for British TV.

No, Neverwhere. That was the thing. The last “good script, absolutely appalling production standards” TV drama I can remember the BBC committing to. 1996. Shot on video and looked rubbish. What was the point? You either spend a lot of money and sell to America, just like Lew Grade, or you spend a pittance and end up with nothing in the end. A few million viewers one Sunday, a few thousand DVD sales, nothing. And until CGI came along there was no way for the BBC to match the original Battlestar: Galactica or The A-Team or even Magnum PI with the resources at hand. There’s a parallel universe where the UK government in the 1980s put a tiny quota on the airtime devoted to US imports, and nowadays we try to fool ourselves that the shoddy shoestring rubbish we have on TV is quality drama, and the rest of the world has moved on.

There is a sense in the UK that we’ve been thrashed by the Americans over the last few years, notwithstanding Sherlock and Downton Abbey. And those two programmes have the stigma of period drama about them (okay, Sherlock’s set in the modern day, but still). They’re popular, but why do they always have to be bloody period dramas? Can’t we have something modern and edgy like The Wire? With poor people actors and swearing? And people being melted in acid baths, that kind of thing? Here’s sweaty fat little turd Mark Lawson agreeing with me.

We tend to only get the best of the US shows - I’m sure there’s masses of dross we never see - and so from our side of the pond it seems that everything on American telly is the same standard as The Shield, Mad Men etc. Really, though, British TV is exactly like Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Specialised in a few areas, never enough resources, can’t sustain two major defeats, dedicated to the total extermination of world Jewry. Except for the last point.

13

I agree. I think it is particularly true that the roles TV is offering women are much meatier that most of the roles movies are offering women.

14

The premium channel TV series like Spartacus (already mentioned) Deadwood (already mentioned) and

Fricking
Game of
Fricking
Thrones!

are REALLY good series. TV has gotten better, I believe because writers have escaped from the nasty little censors the big networks employ.

Also, the SyFy Channel series “Lost Girl” (actually an import from Canada) is worth checking out.

15

While there’s no denying that you’ve gotton better, Ellen, perhaps great even, TV has improved too. As a huge movie buff I can’t get over the volume and quality available. Some of the channels like MGM and Sony and Retro have a constant slew of good stuff and the DVR makes it perfect.

I also enjoy all the shows that follow the hobbies and interests I have, like Mountain Men, Abandoned, Diggers, Shark Wranglers, etc. Plus there’s always at least one comedy that comes through every couple of years, Modern Family a case in point. It’s all good.

16

I’m not much of a TV viewer (and most of what I watch is actually cartoons), but I have noticed some things that are probably contributing factors.

  1. Tech has advanced substantially. You can manage decent production quality a lot cheaper now than you could a decade or so ago. Animation and special effects, in particular, have benefited from this, but it affects other aspects of shows as well.

  2. Tim’s point about shorter, more focused seasons. They eliminate the need for a lot of filler that bogs down actual storytelling. Also, in combination with the previous point, they may make it easier to get funding for a show with an unusual concept, as there’s a smaller commitment. Certainly it leaves room for more different experiments; they have time to fling more stuff at the wall.

  3. Arc-based storytelling, as opposed to purely episodic. Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine were in their original run fifteen years ago, and they were noteworthy in large part for having an overall story arc, as opposed to the all-powerful reset button. While arcs of that scale have hardly become dominant, I think they have influenced even largely episodic series to pay more attention to continuity.

  4. People have more entertainment options now than they did fifteen years ago. More channels are available, plus streaming video, plus other internet-enabled entertainment options. Video games have become more mainstream, especially casual games. Vegging out in front of the TV is not necessarily the default anymore; if the show’s a bore, people will grab their laptop and watch YouTube videos, or play Angry Birds on their tablet, or what have you. TV is finding itself pressed to hold onto its share of eyes, and that competition is driving some studios/networks to turn out better shows. (Others, of course, joined the race to the bottom with reality shows.)

17

I’ve noticed it too - particularly in relation to movies. For whatever reason, TV shows are willing in some cases to take all sorts of artistic chances that movies in general are unwilling to risk - so on the one hand you get Breaking Bad while on the other you get another re-make, another superhero movie, or another remake of a superhero movie - because they reliably make money.

I know this is not a totally fair analysis, it just seems that’s the trend.

18

I gave up on TV for a few years beginning in the late 90’s when I felt that every sitcom was a clone of Friends, every Sci Fi show was a clone of Star Trek, and every drama was too sanitized to be believable.

Now thanks to DVR, Netflix, and On Demand I have discovered the shows that are on HBO, Starz and AMC and like the OP I completely agree that these are the shows to watch! I still don’t watch anything on the Networks and I rarely watch anything first run until I’m invested in the show. I just listen to what shows my friends are interested in and if it seems to be worthwhile I throw it in the list. There are far too many good things to watch to get bogged down by things that I think are sub par.

19

When Friends ended, I was borderline despondent. My wife and I had basically considered the series’ run to be like the soundtrack to our courtship and early marriage. Not to mention that it was, up until that time, the funniest TV show I had ever watched. I thought nothing would ever come close to making me laugh, or making me cry, as much as Friends did.

Modern Family, The Middle, and The Big Bang Theory are all as good as, or better than, Friends.

20

This is exactly what I tell people when they bemoan the state of American TV. “The Brits have Sherlock, and we have Dance Moms!” they say, and they seem to get very upset when I point out that there’s a lot of mediocre and downright shitty stuff from around the world that we don’t see because no U.S. station wants to touch it. Not to mention that comparing the best foreign show to the worst American show is dumb on so many levels.

Don’t get me wrong; there is a metric ton of horrible American TV out there. But that’s what people don’t seem to get about imported TV shows (and movies, for that matter). Why is the foreign stuff usually so good? Because we’re only bothering to import the good stuff.