Yesterday I promised you that I'd pimp some 'smart' TV shows. I'm not about to break that promise.
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip had all the ingredients for success. It was created and (mostly) written by Aaron Sorkin, the man behind the successful show The West Wing. It was quite clearly an intelligent show - the pilot episode showed Judd Hirsch ranting about the sharp decline in quality of American television - and it had a cast well-known enough (starring Matthew Perry) to appeal to the average viewer.
Studio 60 was one of the most-looked-forward-to shows of the 2006/2007 television season, and the first few episodes really didn't disappoint. But as ratings started to drop a bit, NBC pressured Sorkin into focusing less on the behind-the-scenes aspect of a Saturday Night Live clone, and more on the romantic relationships between its characters. Once it started doing this, it seemed like the message Sorkin wanted to get out was being lost, and it was quickly turning into just another primetime drama. However, Sorkin managed to highly politicize the final few episodes - although he also included a storyline featuring a jeopardized pregnancy, and thinly-veiled shots at his being forced to include it.
On what basis can I call Studio 60 'smart'? Well, they told us that they were smart. Then they told us again. And again. And again. Et cetera. Somehow, this didn't take away from the quality of the first few and last few episodes.
In the end, Studio 60 was cancelled, because there weren't enough people watching it while it was intelligent - and once they dumbed parts of it down, it wasn't good enough to satisfy the original fans.
Going back a few more years, The Mole was another 'smart' program. How can I call this one smart? Well, MENSA is full of smart people, and they once called it "the smartest show on television". I'm not really in any position to argue with that now, am I?
The Mole was a reality show - and while I hear your growns, at least hear me out on this one. The premise of the Mole was that a group of people - ten in the first season, fourteen in the second - were working together to complete tasks, which would earn them up to a million dollars. However, one of the contestants was a 'mole', picked by the producers to sabotage the rest of the team. At the end of each episode, the contestants took a quiz on the identity of the Mole, and whoever scored the lowest on the quiz was 'executed' (i.e. taken off the show).
Part of the fun of the show was simply picking a favourite and rooting for them to win, but there was also the intrigue of viewers trying to figure out for themselves who the Mole was. It was a really fun show, and I still have most of season two on VHS tapes somewhere.
Of course, the ratings didn't really agree with my assessment - and in an effort to boost them, ABC introduced 'Celebrity Mole'. They clearly stretched the definition of 'celebrity' for this one, as I just looked at the player lists, and for each season of Celebrity Mole (there were two seasons), I recognize the name of exactly one person. Since the celebrities weren't as smart as the carefully-chosen participants in the first two seasons, and they were mainly out to get their name back into the public consciousness, Celebrity Mole was nowhere as good.
Do you see a pattern here? Two great shows, both very intelligent (despite Studio 60's self-righteousness, it was intelligent)...and neither with enough people to watch them. Going back to my rant from yesterday, it goes hand in hand with what I suggested about people not wanting to focus on their television set and have to think about what they're watching.
On a similar note, CBC is introducing a new series next week called 'The Border'. I don't know a lot about it, other than the fact that they've committed far more resources to it than they do to the average show, but I'm looking forward to it. The preview I read in The Record the other day made it seem as though the show will actually look at the social and political dilemmas faced by border guards (racial profiling was given as an example), rather than just be a drama that happens to take place on the Canada/US border. So I'll be watching, and maybe I'll be able to add The Border to the above list before long.
--Ryan
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