cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/television/t/761868
David Chase says 25-year golden period was a ‘blip’ and he is being told to ‘dumb down’ productions.
I think it’s who you know and who you are in Hollywood that matters most, but especially who you know. I consider Barry to be a masterpiece in terms of directing and acting. Perfect popular media can exist, it’s just extremely rare under capitalism, everything needs to work like clockwork for a show like Sopranos to exist again, but that takes a lot of time and effort and the right people for it to be a possibility. Streaming fucked everything over too so that’s an issue. Can you really recall any decent shows that existed around sopranos era? There’s only as many as you can count on your hand and the same applies today, it’s not like every show during that period was great and the same stays true today - but it’s probably a lot harder today since the algorithm is mostly in charge of what shows are getting more seasons. Enshitification is true but it’s always been shit it’s not like much has changed.
I buy it.
It struck me (and I'm speculating here) that TV now is produced/green-lit mostly on a season to season basis with each season being produced like a Lord of the Rings Trilogy ... ~10 hrs of screen time, all written at once and then filmed at once.
Under such constraints, I don't think there is any room for the show, its story and its characters to breath, and I think I've been feeling this.
Some may say that we're getting longer arc now and that that its better. But I'm not sure I'm convinced. I think we're getting longer arcs in an MCU sense where the characters aren't invested in as much compared to the broader "universe" (eg, how many decent villains has the MCU actually had ... Endgame's success being a clue as to when they got the villain right). We're also getting shorter screen times and less organic/chaotic episodic writing (because so much screen time used to be produced) ... that allowed characters to be understood and filled out.
It feels like everything is trying to be a hit and more like a film and the feeling of organically getting to know a world and its character has been lost.
I can't help but think of season 8 of Game of Thrones. It had twists and drama and "subverted expectations" but felt dumb and unearned compared to the foundation of the fandom developed in the more meandering and character developing early seasons.
It really depends on the producers. On one hand netflix is greenlighting everything it can hoping to get a new Squid Game, killing everything that does not become viral in the first season. But then you have series like Fargo, not even producing a season per year, while maintaining the quality constantly stellar over 10 years.
Has the amount of disposable tv series increased? Absolutely. Has the number of overall series increased? Also yes. I cannot tell you the ratio between shallow/complex, but saying that "nothing new is made anymore" is just wrong.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The creator of The Sopranos has decried what he views as the death of quality TV, blaming risk-averse executives and distracted audiences.
David Chase, who wrote the HBO series about the New Jersey mafia that many credit with starting a golden age of television, said that era was now over.
Talking to the Times 25 years after The Sopranos first aired, Chase said the last quarter-century of ambitious and complex drama was “a blip”.
He believes the type of show that was synonymous with The Sopranos – such as The Wire, Breaking Bad and Mad Men – would not be commissioned now.
He told the Times about a show he has been trying to make with the young screenwriter Hannah Fidell, about a high-end sex worker forced into witness protection.
Chase recalled the climate in the late 1990s, when The Sopranos was commissioned by HBO, having first been turned down by many other networks, including Fox.
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