Ive been thinking a lot about the "bloatedness" of long form drama over the last decade.
Ok... so... vaguely...
Our main understanding of dramatic form is Aristotle (and its corruption in the plethora of act structure screenwriting books). You name the main problems with our current long form drama: I suspect these writers want to drag out the 3 act structure over many series. NYPD Blue and The Wire both pointed the way by examining 'themes' and a wider community of characters to eke out individual stories over a longer time period. Large ensemble casts help extend and delay the point of "resolution". Breaking Bad delayed its "catharsis" by pretty much holding to a "sitcom" form - character repeating small and big versions of the same problem over and over again.
The prestige budgets have allowed for something that long form never had before: they no longer are tied to unity of time and place. In recent years I have noticed that long form is playing far more with dramatic flashbacks/forwards. Therefore a traditional unity of time and place is broken apart. This has a deep impact upon "character" and the audience relationship to the story. When a significant time jump happens we are faced with a deep change within the character and often no ability to reorientate ourselves to it. A character in "present" day is not the same person in a different period of their lives. Examples where I see this a problem and not a virtue - The Peripheral, Bodies, and Mrs Davis. My suspicion is that these time jumps are written to delay the resolution as a consequence of the time demands of 10-12 hours of story.
Aristotle only looked at a specific form in a specific country for a specific time period. We are moving into a place where we now have enough new material to start to see "new" deeper structures. We have suffered in this examination of long form from the uncertainty of shows being renewed or cancelled unexpectedly. How can we know what was really there or what was mere expedience?
Great as always sir!
Ive been thinking a lot about the "bloatedness" of long form drama over the last decade.
Ok... so... vaguely...
Our main understanding of dramatic form is Aristotle (and its corruption in the plethora of act structure screenwriting books). You name the main problems with our current long form drama: I suspect these writers want to drag out the 3 act structure over many series. NYPD Blue and The Wire both pointed the way by examining 'themes' and a wider community of characters to eke out individual stories over a longer time period. Large ensemble casts help extend and delay the point of "resolution". Breaking Bad delayed its "catharsis" by pretty much holding to a "sitcom" form - character repeating small and big versions of the same problem over and over again.
The prestige budgets have allowed for something that long form never had before: they no longer are tied to unity of time and place. In recent years I have noticed that long form is playing far more with dramatic flashbacks/forwards. Therefore a traditional unity of time and place is broken apart. This has a deep impact upon "character" and the audience relationship to the story. When a significant time jump happens we are faced with a deep change within the character and often no ability to reorientate ourselves to it. A character in "present" day is not the same person in a different period of their lives. Examples where I see this a problem and not a virtue - The Peripheral, Bodies, and Mrs Davis. My suspicion is that these time jumps are written to delay the resolution as a consequence of the time demands of 10-12 hours of story.
Aristotle only looked at a specific form in a specific country for a specific time period. We are moving into a place where we now have enough new material to start to see "new" deeper structures. We have suffered in this examination of long form from the uncertainty of shows being renewed or cancelled unexpectedly. How can we know what was really there or what was mere expedience?