I know a lot of the people that stop by this blog are not TV watchers, but I need my hour or so each night because my eyes are shot.
What I wonder is: why the Big Three or Four Networks seems unable to make crime shows that don't quickly rely on a formula. Is it cheaper to do things the same way every week? Watch a show like Saving Grace and The Closer and you are never sure how the story will play out. It allows personal life to intervene, it takes detours. Starts in the middle. Ends with ambiguity. And I am not talking about shows with long arcs like Dexter or The Wire.
But watch one episode of a show like THE MENTALIST or CASTLE or the LAW and ORDER and CSI franchises and every show in the series will follow pretty much the same blueprint as the first. Why? Is it easier to write, cheaper to make, safer for your fanbase?
What network crime drama does best to avoid this? And why can comedies avoid stasis more adroitly? Does solving a crime put a chokehold on the writing?
35 comments:
Well, I have a tiny amount of experience here, so I'll give it a shot.
Usually there are more episodes in a network series (22 instead of 13) and each one requires a lot more viewers to be successful. They say it's because the cable channels receive subscriber fees and the networks don't. Even though we usually get them all on cable now (there's a big fight going on over this in Canada right now).
So right away there will be less risk and any formula that seems successful will be stuck to pretty closely. We were told on the show I worked on that there had to be a crime before the opening credits and a solution before the final credits. In that way it's pretty close to a traditional murder mystery with the body as close to page one as possible and a big reveal in the end. there is a solid market for this formula, as Castle shows.
Medical shows are usually the same with a mysterious illness in the beginning and a solution before the end.
It's likely that in the not-too-distant future there won't be any network dramas with 10-15 million viewers making 22 episodes a season as the marketplace is becoming much more niche oriented. NBC has already given up on the ten o'clock slot and so far profits haven't been affected.
Probably because you don't have to think too much. Network crime shows are comfort food. It's nice to catch the bad guy in 48 minutes. Sometimes, like Castle, the journey is more fun than the ending. For others, like the CSIs, it's the process that's fun. For truly thought-provoking crime programs, you have to go to cable, basic and premium.
Thanks for the insight, John. I guess that holding onto the fan base is more important than ever. But when I can predict that the next scene will be something with Castle's mother in the kitchen, followed by one with a body being discovered, followed by one with some banter between the two leads, I get turned off. No matter how well written they are, or how well acted. Throw away the outline and start from scratch. Risk to me isn't necessarily about edgy plots-just different ways of presenting them.
Maybe because it's catering to advertisers? That's what I always assumed. Can't take too many risks or you lose Regular Joe and Jane, maybe?
Interesting topic.
Producers stick to successful templates, Patti. That's why almost all the plays on Broadway are revivals of old successful plays. That's why we have CSI and a bunch of CSI clones. That's why you can predict what the next scene in CASTLE will be. MAD MEN is great because you DON'T know what's going to happen next.
You nailed it in your post: easier to write, cheaper to make, safer for your fan base. As Scott said, comfort food. This is why I don't watch television anymore. Once or twice a year I can try a LAW AND ORDER rerun, on an episode of something that was recommended to me. That satisfies my curiosity and I can go several months again without feeling like I'm missing anything.
Until CBS finally gets around to airing THE BRIDGE, that is.
Studio executives have an unquenchable desire to take original ideas and pound them to death.
It's possibe Patti that you're no longer network TV's demographic.
I will say that in the year I spent in the writer's room we never once heard about what an advertiser or sponsor might want - only that they wanted a lot of viewers.
In the same years that the CSIs and Law and Orders have proliferated there have been many, many shows that have tried to find audiences as big and didn't.
We often forget how big a gap there is between network and cable shows. Mad Men gets about two million viewers and Castle about twelve million. The Wire never got more than a couple million but all the CSI shows pull in over ten million (usually).
Would greater storytelling risks get bigger ratings for network shows? It doesn't look like it.
I just want to say to Dana that for some of us they aren't easier to write ;)
I'm not asking for a radical change-just not a formula. Why does the story have to start at point A every time and go toward point B. The original L & O is the most egregious offender but all of the network crime shows quickly fall into it. And I hate that so many have the by- the- books female and quirky male--ever since Remington Steele for pete's sake.
Patti, the network execs fear for their jobs 24/7. If any of them comes up with an idea that departs one iota from the tried-and-true formula, and if that show doesn't work, guess who's out of a job.
They're not the least bit interested in innovation or creativity. They actually WANT the same thing over and over, because that's what is proven to work ("work" meaning "draw plenty of viewers who aren't looking for anything challenging").
Remember the scene in "Network" where the programming crew was sitting around brainstorming ideas for new shows and every idea contained a "crusty but benign" character, regardless of the genre of the show?
That's TV for ya.
At least the original Law and Order uderstood its formula enough to make it work. They used the seperation of arrest and conviction to look at both aspects from different points of view (I think the reason in the beginning was more practical as one hour shows were harder to syndicate so they were planning to sell it later as two seperate shows - see William Goldman was right, nobody knows anything ;).
Law and Order also used its formula as a way of getting to more interesting moral dilemmas, something very few shows attempt. Once the suspect was arrested an often more complicated story began. For me most mystery novels end when they are finally getting interesting. Whodunnit is never as big a deal for me as what happens then.
I haven't seen the show, but people tell me the male-female dynamic is flipped on Bones but otherwise fits your description.
I've now seen a few shows being pitched and rejected by networks. It's an interesting process and quite frustrating. People have to guess if it will be sustained long enough to et back the investment.
But why not, once a show is on the air take a few chances with it? I don't know.
Way down at the writer level we didn't have any actual contact with execs who had decision making power, but I did get the feeling Mike is right, people are afraid for their jobs.
But people react to that fear differently. Certainly if something is working they stick with it but sometimes someone takes a chance and it pays off so there's always a little of that in the air. Ego plays a pretty big part and people like to be known as the person who took a big chance that paid off.
It seems it's not just TV. The original Perry Mason books were formulaic. From what I can extrapolate from reading two novels, I suspect the Doc Savage titles are formulaic, too. Maybe it's just mainstream tastes for mainstream folks?
I dunno. I find THE CLOSER and what I've seen of SAVING GRACE pretty formulaic, as well...certainly moreseo than HOMICIDE was, on NBC. But HOMICIDE was as close to a niche audience as a major broadcast network was willing to come--excellent demographics for "upscale" advertisers, but constantly on the verge of too-small mass audiences from their perspective...like THE JAY LENO SHOW, a too-weak lead in for local news shows.
Some shows, such as CSI (then still at the top of the ratings) and HOUSE (likewise) have been allowed to experiment or deviate a bit...but you've been missing HOUSE, Patti (the Tarantino episode of CSI and a few others were interesting variations on their usual formula).
L&O, like THE SIMPSONS, is simply too settled after decades on the air...it needs shaking up to be worthwhile again, though L&0 has impoved somewhat over the last season or so. A little less rote mimicry of last year's Hot Trials helps.
Even mildly adventurous series, such NUMB3RS and the Scott Bros. newer show, THE GOOD WIFE, either can or easily could fall too easily into easy patterns. But I suspect that other episode vets such as Lee Goldberg would tend to agree with the points John has raised.
It's usually less the existence of formula as the hackneyed use of it.
Formula becomes formula, usually, because it's satisfying at some level, as my old friend writer friend A. A. Attanasio has been among the folks who've pointed out over the years. As he noted that Ezra Pound commanded, Make it new.
Once again, Fleur has nailed it with her comment "catering to the advertisers". Since money drives the media, and advertising is the money source, we get what the advertisers think will keep us watching, and that's rarely anything original or experimental. The proven formula will get produced every time.
The parallel is with film, the big companies produce remake after remake because if something worked once...
I would like to watch HOUSE but it is the scariest show on TV. Watching spinal taps week after week--now what is scarier than that.
Neither CLOSER or SAVING GRACE is uniformly good--but they don't move in straight lines. I like curve balls.
It's been probably 20 years since I've watched seriously any network crime drama. I did watch a few episodes of The shield, which sometimes broke the rules, but I couldn't maintain even that.
The only crime series I've cared much about in recent years was Monk. It was clever and fun, something network v rarely is these days.
Monk was fun although I never got over the loss of his first assistant who had so much more personality than the second.
TV executives have taken an important marketing lesson from the auto industry. You may remember quite a few decades ago that the big three auto makers were going along nicely (and generally similarly) in the U.S. until someone came up with the bright idea for the Edsel. It had great engineering and design. However, it was a colossal failure because it deviated from the norm, it did not fulfill the customers' expectations (for more of the same), and it looked too different (and not the same). TV executives--generally not being dummies and not too adventurous because they value the bottom line and their jobs--learned from the Edsel experiment, one of the most thoroughly studied gaffs in marketing history.
But perhaps if they had pre-convinced the public they were getting something special...
Edsel Ford's house is a few miles from me. A fabulous house even if the car is lacking.
It's funny, I thought you were going to compare the TV networks to the American car companies and the cable networks to the Japanese car companies in the 1970's.
Here's a blog post by the guy who created Sons of Anarchy about the business of TV in Hollyood.
There's swearing involved.
Now that's one I haven't watched. Should I?
I don't know, I haven't seen it either. We don't get it in Canada yet and I haven't picked up the DVDs.
The same thing happens with some best-selling books. Look at J.D. Robb or James Patterson.
That's something we need to talk about, Joe. Write too many books and you go to that terrible place...
I keep forgetting Canada is a foreign country because it's 20 minutes away.
TV is the same over here = they play safe with the tried and trusted formula and what was once fresh becomes stale. Personally I'm sick of all the CSI type shows. Over here in the UK the, once excellent, The Bill has lost its way and becomes something of a soap opera set in a police station. Oh for the likes of Morse, Cracker and Frost.
ratings...find a formula that receives ratings then beat it to death before you have to find another mix that receives ratings...and on and on and on.
SONS OF ANARCHY, like THE SHIELD, is a little too impressed with How Raw We Are and sentimentalizes its characters more than they deserve (one way in which DEADWOOD was clearly superior--the latter series never pretended that demonstrating how its utter bastards came to their current states excused them, nor the cruelties the better characters indulged in at times), but I enjoy it. It certainly hasn't clambored into the trap that HILL STREET BLUES and THE SOPRANOS did--letting the protagonists become a little too much the Long-Suffering Middle Manager we are expected to sympathize with more or less completely, to the point of pity, one of the structural weaknesses of MAD MEN now. One of the secondary leads is a doctor at the local hospital, though, Patti...fair warning.
I'd be tempted to try it if I could start at the beginning. Hate to jump in midway through.
I'm with Archavist on this. Sorry, but the formula doesn't work for me. And it has crept into British shows as well.
But I did get rivetted by a 13 part seial 'Harper's Island' that combined a detctive story with horror genres. Now that was good.
First body in the opening ten minutes and big reveal two episodes before the end but still with twists and turns. It was really good television.
your are write friend, it is very good topic. the tv show like The closer is very good. I have watched the closer episodes so many time.....
The closer and Saving grace both tv serial is very good. But I like Saving Grace tv show most. it is my favorite. The closer is also good But Saving grace is the best.
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