Believe it or not, it's almost over. The fall season for network TV is drawing to a close.
The other night, The Blacklist (on NBC, Global) stopped for a pause. They called it the "midseason finale." It won't be back for ages. Go figure. After some hesitation, several network shows have been cancelled – ABC's Selfie and Manhattan Love Story and NBC's Bad Judge and A To Z. Fox has also cancelled the bizarre, big-budget reality series Utopia.
So, what's a hit? What are the proverbial breakout shows that make competing networks wonder how to create copycats?
With that question we, like The Blacklist, need a pause. Things ain't the same. The measurement of "hit" is an obtuse and imprecise business. DVR usage means that instant, overnight ratings are redundant. Shows as different as Fox's Gotham and CBS's Scorpion have benefited enormously from counting the viewers who watch later. Tens of millions of viewers are added to the scorecard. Gotham's debut went from 8.3 million viewers to a total of 22.2 million across multiple platforms measured over a 30-day period.
Also, and this is especially interesting, the U.S. TV trade press has been far more emphatic in mentioning older viewers in ratings stories, not just the 18-34 and 18-49 demographics that the networks want to offer their advertisers. "Older-skewing Attractions" is one term being used and, in that category, 60 Minutes and Madam Secretary, both on CBS, are monster hits. Yeah. 60 Minutes is a Top 20 show. Codgers count too, you know.
But the real question is this: What content is drawing viewers to new shows in large numbers week after week? Let's examine the two sure-fire new successes.
Gotham (Fox, CTV, Mondays, 8 p.m.) is an "origins tale" about the beginning of the Batman story and that made it feel familiar from the start. But it turns out it's not really a superhero show. While it has the lurid, unreal look of comic-book dramatizations, Gotham is actually about scenery-eating actors inhabiting their roles and the show's hyperbolic tone, with gusto. The dialogue is arch and manic. Meanwhile, the sobersides Detective James Gordon, played by Ben McKenzie, is an oasis of calm. And Robin Lord Taylor as the vicious, soon-to-be Penguin is sensationally unmissable, all extravagant, spittle-flying malice. It works because it's a broad, fast-paced orgy of exaggeration.
The same description can be applied to some extent to How To Get Away With Murder (ABC, CTV, Thursdays, 10 p.m.). But it's a more sophisticated show. First, it doesn't have a linear plot. (Take note Canadian TV execs – it doesn't have a linear plot!) The viewer is watching a killing in the future collapse into events in the present. It's phenomenally fast-paced, with very brief scenes of pithy dialogue coming fast and furious. Even the sideline plots about sex, romance and relationships are short – there are none of the lazy stylistic tics familiar from other dramas. Two men frantically grasping each other sexually in a toilet stall is just that.
It's the pacing that helps make it a hit – the storyline is lurid, mad and even hoary, but the zest of its telling is what's appealing. Watching it, you realize how lazy network drama has become in recent years.
Finally, on the subject of hit-making, there's the matter of social-media buzz. That's now included in scoresheets. Interesting that How To Get Away With Murder is the second-most tweeted-about show. In first place is ABC's Scandal. According to Nielsen Social measurement in the U.S., Scandal generated 346,609 tweets in the first six weeks of the season and How To generated 142,406.
But social-media buzz amounts to a cautionary tale. If we are to believe social media, the most talked about phenomenon of the moment is Too Many Cooks, a satire airing on the Adult Swim channel and seen widely on YouTube.
Too Many Cooks is a lark – a short satire of the opening credits for a bland, 1980s-style show that goes on to become a satire about a murderous villain with a machete. It's clever and generates countless comments on Twitter. But that's all – it's cute trash causing people to go online and say, "cool!"
The real hits this season are hour-long, visceral exercises in drama, fulfilling our craving for fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat tales of rage, ruthlessness, murder, betrayal and fury. Manic is what viewers want and it's not easy to copycat.