18 July 2013

This is what should be on a TV Studies degree curriculum

A swift jog through past the TV shows that laid the bedrock for the programmes we're enjoying today.

I am the beneficiary of a good university education. I studied journalism – a long ago time when we believed we could save print media. Now, we know we’re doomed but the skills and knowledge I picked up in those three years – shorthand, media law, how government and politics work, radio and TV editing – have held me in good stead in this brave new world.

So let’s turn that logic to a possible TV studies degree. What television shows of the past 10-15 years would we include in the curriculum? What would we consider utterly indispensable to understanding modern telly? What laid the foundations for the telly landscape of today? What is worth studying for clues on how to do it, or how not to?

The list below is entirely subjective and not at all exhaustive, and crucially, the shows listed are not flawless: they all have issues around racism and representation, and the treatment of women. But they also planted the seeds of whatever TV goodness we are reaping today. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

Deadwood. On first look, this HBO series starring Timothy Olyphant and Ian “Lovejoy” McShane looked like worthy American drama: real “how the west was won” stuff. But then it slowly becomes something altogether more complex, with two amazing men at its centre: one an opportunist in the best (and worst) way; the other a principled, rigid man who falls and cannot forgive himself. Alongside their stories are smaller, less showy ones, urgently told, with a cast and direction that is basically flawless. Without Deadwood, there would be no Game of Thrones and no Justified, and how much poorer would we be for that?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy is television and television is Buffy. It’s that simple. Every show that came after had a little Buffy Summers sprinkled on it. Iconic episodes such as “Hush”(where there are only 17 minutes of dialogue in a 44-minute show), and the gut-wrenching “The Body” (where Buffy discovers her mother, dead from a brain aneurysm, on the sofa) are as good as any television show has a right to be. It had season-long storytelling arcs, complex heroes to root for, villains to despise but understand, tricky pairings and truly high stakes (the end of the world, several times). Ten years after it ended, it’s still influencing telly. Every zippy pop-culture reference in Happy Endingshas some DNA from Buffy; and Teen Wolf, Fringe, The Vampire Diaries and so many more series owe it a huge debt.

State of Play. The TV version, not the Russell Crowe film. It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since this was on. A Paul Abbott script and acting masterclasses from James McAvoy, John Simm, Kelly Macdonald and David Morrissey created a memorable BBC drama. Its impact can be seen in everything from The Shadow Line to Spooks (after series one) to the recently reimagined House of Cards, Hunted, and Scandal.

The Office. Whatever he has become in the years since his defining sitcom, Ricky Gervais invented one of the great television characters in David Brent.

This was human telly, cruel and funny and tender, with no laugh track to guide you. A properly influential programme, as evidenced by its many, disparate offspring: Parks and Recreation, Party Down, Armando Iannucci’s Veep, and its own US version, starring Steve Carell.

Sex and the City. It has become fashionable to call SATC vapid, dated and just plain silly. This is largely, I think, down to the two movies it spawned, although I will loudly and passionately defend the first of them with my dying breath.

But it bears repeating that the TV series succeeded in every way that it set out to do: it was a damn fine comedy, bold and often unflinching, unafraid of criticism, and crucially, it captured the zeitgeist. Girls is what it is because of SATC, as is Entourage, and any number of recent comedies.

The Wire. You knew this was coming? If you still haven’t watched it – why? Every small-screen, long-form narrative show of the past decade is a descendant of this, from Mad Men to Breaking Bad to Homeland to The Killing. To say The Wire is great is only a cliché because it’s true.