Growing up, I’d always operated on the assumption that movies were better than television. They cost more. You have to go out to see them, etc. And although I was not consciously aware of it, TV was censored in ways that movies are not.
But lately I have found movies to be, for the most part, not as good at television. I’ve gotten FAR more pleasure out of the HBO series “Game of Thrones” and the Starz series “Spartacus” than I have out of any movie or movies that have come out of late.
And of course, this may be because the premium channels aren’t censored, but that’s not all the goodness. The Simpsons season 3-8 was freaking HILARIOUS! It’s still good, but for a while there almost every episode had me rolling on the floor with laughter in a way no movie has in a long time. And the TV series MST3K did a MUCH better job of bringing the funny and smart than any movie I’ve seen in a long time. I mean “Easy A” was smart and fun but it was no match for any of the Mike episodes of the Misties.
And some episodes of “The X-Files” had a weird, strange sense of wonder to them that I have not seen reproduced anywhere else.
The last movie that I saw that could match what I’ve seen on TV was “Watchmen.” And it wasn’t as much fun as “Game of Thrones.”
So I’m thinking that for some reason, despite the huge numbers of dollars that gets put into movies, they just haven’t Got It any more … that television, in it’s multichannel cable system incarnation, has somehow managed to steal all the good writing and directing talent and whatever that ineffable thing is that makes for cultural relevance, and run away with it, leaving movies the dull, random things most of them seem to be nowadays.
I dunno. There are crap movies and great movies, crap TV shows and great TV shows, crap novels and great novels, and so forth. I’m not sure it’s valid to generalize an entire medium.
Is “Game of Thrones” better than “Madea’s Big Happy Family”? Probably.
Is “The King’s Speech” better than “Two and a Half Men”? You betcha.
Forgive me if I’m misreading you, but it sounds like you’re comparing two-hour movies to (in the case of The Simpsons season 3-8) 71.5 hours of television.
I would be more surprised if there weren’t more good stuff in a container 35x as big.
Movies nowadays have a blockbuster/action film mentality (especially in summer). And the big budgets required for a Hollywood film means that few are willing to take a chance or trust their instincts. Thus you have comic book films, lots of remakes, and plenty of films based upon well-known properties. Also, the biggest sector of the movie audience is teenaged boys (it’s been that way for a couple of decades) and they are generally not interested in sophisticated drama or comedy.
HBO or Showtime, OTOH, don’t have the same expectations. When they commission a series, they aren’t dependent on ratings or audience. Their philosophy is to do something good to make people subscribe and to sell the DVDs. Also, they aim for an older audience that can appreciate drama.
Other TV networks have to worry about ratings, but they do appeal to a wider demographic than movies.
Now this doesn’t guarantee that all TV shows are better than movies, but the intelligent and well-written moves get overwhelmed by the expensive blockbusters, while intelligent and well-written TV shows have at least a fighting chance.
For much of its history, TV was working under several disadvantages:
The screen was relatively small (the “family TV” might have been a 19-incher), so the “cinematography” had serious limitations.
You had to watch it when it came on, and if you missed an episode or wanted to see it again, you had to wait for a rerun later in the year. So episodes were made to be more “disposable.”
Almost every show was interrupted with commercial breaks.
You were assumed to be watching in an environment where there might be distractions, or while doing something else that might take up part of your attention.
They had to crank out an episode a week for about half the year, and so time and budget constraints limited how much care and money they could put into each episode.
Because of these constraints, you didn’t see as much in the way of
Cinematic-quality action/drama shows with high production values
Densely-written comedies that you had to pay close attention to and/or rewatch in order to catch all the jokes
Series with continuing story arcs spread over several episodes or seasons, that pretty much have to be watched in order
Nowadays, TV series have fewer of these limitations. Movies, meanwhile, still have to introduce new characters and situations and tell a complete story that wraps up in a couple of hours. The competition between them is a lot more even.
I’m comparing movies as a medium to TV as a medium and saying that TV has the better end of it as far as good drama/comedy/whatever. Didn’t used to be that way.
Jim Emerson, the editor of Rogert Ebert’s website wrote about this regarding the quality of Mad Men vs. movies.. (Note also the links at the end to his earlier MM columns.)
This is a movie critic who has fallen in love with MM (as have many of us) and thinks of the show as a movie critic does, not a TV critic.
Certain shows, for part of their run, just somehow hit it and few movies can compare.
I am currently reading Desberg and Davis’s “Show Me the Funny”* where they interview a lot of (comedy) scriptwriters. TV mainly but a lot have done movies.
The writers contrast writing for TV vs. movies. You really have to write a lot more for TV (well duh!) and plan a much longer story arc (double duh), so that is harder. OTOH, you don’t have to convince people to shell out $12 plus driving, etc. to see your show. And TV audiences are more forgiving. You do a couple poor shows, and people will come back and watch more. You do a bad movie in a franchise and you’ve killed it Jim.
You can get by doing a crappier job on TV than people expect in a movie, but if you do a great job, then you get things like Mad Men.
I wonder if DVD sales and such is changing things regarding quality TV series. The producers know that if they do it right, they can make a mint on the DVD/Netflix sales.
*Not recommending this book, BTW. I may not finish it.
Also, another factor that had TV at a disadvantage was censorship. Starting in the 60s when the Production Code was lifted, movies had more freedom to deal with so-called “adult” subjects and themes whereas broadcast TV was still tightly controlled by FCC-imposed restrictions on material content and subjected to greater pressure from sponsors and the various religious-right interest groups. Of course, premium cable channels like HBO were later able to by-pass all that and the proliferation of other cable channels has led to a weakening in the power of the FCC and various interest groups to influence content. However, on occasion–and usually when the Republicans are in power–the FCC will reach out and smack one of the broadcast networks with a hefty fine if somebody drops the f-bomb or exposes a nipple.
I think we’re in a Golden age of television. It has bigger budgets than ever before, it takes bigger risks than ever before, and it attracts better talent than ever before.
I agree that it has surpassed movies for many things. The one thing it’ll never match movies on is special effects, but on every other level it can be the equal to and surpass movies. Add in its advantage of being able to tell in a story in dozens of hours rather than two hours, I think we only have better things to come.
As per Thudlow Boink’s insightful observation, the constraints on TV meant shows had to focus on a more stage-like presentation – smaller casts, fewer sets, less action and more dialog, plus more emphasis on close-ups and reaction shots. Movies, OTOH could and did exploit advantages like location shooting, more action, better sound and special effects.
The differences between the two mediums led to a difference in storytelling, and while technical advances have narrowed the split over the past few decades, but audiences who prefer dialog and character driven stories will more often gravitate to TV, while those who prefer visually and action driven stories will generally prefer movies.
I don’t think that’s an advantage. I’d argue very few stories need, let alone deserve, much more than a couple of hours.
TV also comes with its own set of unique constraints, such as shoehorning every episode into the exact same time length every week, and also the lack of a clear series end in most cases, which leads to wavering quality throughout the series’ run, if not the season.
I don’t agree with this. I generally detest visually and action-driven movies and vastly prefer movies as my medium. I’m not even sure how you would begin to measure the general populace’s preference based on that criteria.
I think another key factor is dvd’s. Videotapes allowed the sale of tv series but it was a poor format for extended series. Dvd made buying a tv series convenient.
And the dvd money opened up a major new market for television production. Series were no longer limited to just the income they could derive via broadcasting.
DVDs could go a long way toward explaining. I’ll bet quality stuff sells a lot better on DVD generally than garbage. This does not mean there is not a market for DVDs of “The Best of Two And A Half Men” but I bet the market for “The Best of The Simpsons” is MUCH larger. Hell, the Misties are still selling DVDs quite actively to their fanbase. Maybe the DVD market has put more of a premium on quality work than there used to be.
We strongly disagree, then. I very much enjoy a year-long, well payed, slow-burn story arc; something that can’t be done in a movie. But tastes vary, of course.