US sitcoms and dramas have the quality needed to beat reality TV at its own game, writes John Lane
American TV is in crisis, they say. Mired in cheap and abundant reality, the argument goes, the art of television drama and comedy is slowly dying, while Hollywood picks up the slack with escapism writ large, and the internet delivers thrills and fun at a much lower resolution and, crucially, on demand.
Last week, veteran sitcom producer Caryn Mandabach ( The Cosby Show, Grounded for Life, 3rd Rock from the Sun, That '70s Show) pronounced that the US sitcom is in its last throes thanks to the pervasive march of reality TV. For others (who cannot hear the faint echoes of proclamations about what TV would do to cinema or what home taping would do to music), YouTube and its contemporaries are the future.
But as reality TV has been gaining ground down the very middle of the road, a counter-current has been running strongly on the margins. Over a decade ago, writer and producer Steven Bochco coined the phrase "television novels" in reference to his new show Murder One, a legal drama that followed a single case over 20 episodes. It hit the headlines but, despite its promise, lost the viewers.
The idea of a longer story arc, however, struck a vein among a new generation tired of the lack of sophistication and constraining unreality of almost all TV. By 1999, writers such as Aaron Sorkin and David Chase were putting forth a new vision with shows such as The West Wingand The Sopranos.
The latter found an outlet on subscription channel HBO, which in the intervening years has been easily the most influential player in television, home to Chase's mob drama as well as Six Feet Under, The Wire, Entourage, Deadwoodand comedies such as Sex and the Cityand Curb Your Enthusiasm. HBO took risks and won audiences. The result was that for everyone else, edgy, involving TV was no longer such a risky proposition.
Fast-forward to 2007 and we are in a bravish new world: The Sopranosand The West Wingare acknowledged giants of TV, and cultivating nicely in their shadows is a brand of TV more stylistically adventurous than ever before - 24, Lost, House, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Scrubs, Desperate Housewives, Arrested Development, Heroes, Prison Break, The US Officeand My Name is Earlhave all garnered critical praise and, in most cases, huge audiences.
Beginning the week after next on TV3 is a Golden Globe- winning new sitcom from NBC called 30 Rock.The show had most mainstream critics clamouring for superlatives when it aired in the US last autumn.
A kind of Ugly Bettymeets Studio 60, but sharper than both, it was created by former Saturday Night Liveperformer and head writer Tina Fey, who also stars as the head writer on a live TV show. Singled out for praise, along with the sharp wit and sense of timeliness, has been the charged comic performance of Alec Baldwin, who plays Fey's unhinged boss with such maniacal glee that his Golden Globe was inevitable.
But whereas runaway success Lost has lost its way - with its putative story arc now deep in Twin Peaksterritory, full of plot holes and dead ends - 30 Rockand its ilk are taking the best of the long story arc idea and combining it with the best of the sitcom.
Add a sprinkling of zeitgeist with the help of speedy production and the input of an opinionated online community and you have the beginnings of a new approach that 30 Rockis trying to harness.
Like many of the new breed of programmes, Fey sees her sitcom as a crucible where pop culture, morality and politics can be formed and reformed. Good writers, plugged into the commentary they harvest online, can address the issues and have an onscreen response with greater freshness.
In symbiosis with the internet, producers and writers have immediate feedback, and their shows can look far more informed and immediate than ever before. The now-defunct teen drama The OCoften referenced jokes its fans were making online. And remember Isaac Hayes parting ways with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Parkand arch-plunderers of the prevailing zeitgeist? Outraged by their exploration in the show of the funny side of Scientology, Hayes resigned. In the next episode of South Park, Hayes's character Chef was ceremoniously torn to pieces by a grizzly bear. His eulogy included the line "We shouldn't be mad at Chef for leaving us, we should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains."
This ability of a show to respond to the cultural milieu is offering a new way forward for TV writers. The phenomenal, meandering Lost continues to exist in part because of the immediate bleating power of its fans.
But nowhere is the revolution more immediate than in the sitcom - far from being a dead art, as many claim, it has merely transmuted into something new. And 30 Rockis part of the vanguard in the way it offers something that has been missing from US comedy for a long time - real-world relevance.
Which is more real to an audience? Jessica Simpson's marriage woes? The fate of 23 scheming, role-playing castaways? The self- righteousness of a swapped wife? Or instead the palpable psychological truths of The Sopranos, the dilemmas faced by Ugly Bettysand Desperate Housewives, and the harsh, funny, resonant corporate and human truths of The West Wing, Studio 60and 30 Rock?
Reality TV offers little more than voyeuristic satisfaction; genuine reality, in the form of perceptive truths, is to be found in fiction.
• 30 Rockbegins on Thursday June 21st on TV3