We, the public and the critics, have become very picky.
There is a lot of good, challenging TV drama and arguments now abound about what's truly great and what could be better. The volume and intensity of the arguments tell us that there is a lot to choose from, and an awful lot to say. This is good.
But, in a way, we've lost sight of the great leap forward that television has made, lost sight of how ordinary and banal old-school network TV was, and remains.
Take HBO's Vinyl (Sunday, HBO Canada, 9 p.m.) and ABC's new drama, The Family (Sunday, ABC, CTV, 9 p.m.).
Vinyl has already been renewed for a second season. But it has received very mixed reviews. While I adore its energy and raucous quality, its never-ceasing vitality and droll portrait of the rock-music business, others see something else.
All movies and TV series about music and the music industry will draw out naysayers whose experience of music is deeply personal. All fictions about music will also compel pedants to point to alleged lack of accuracy. But the negative reactions to Vinyl are more specific.
In The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum, as usual, faulted its emphatic maleness. One of her criticisms, which is fair, is that such dramas about "a genius-thug with a sad wife and a drug habit" is presumed to be a large statement about American culture. She also called it "a preachy mess, cock-blocking any sign of fun."
Well, everybody's sense of fun is different. Especially when it comes to pop music. There is no doubt that Vinyl is very male, as you'd expect, having been extrapolated from Mick Jagger's personal notion of an epic history of a male music-industry boss.
Continuing the male theme, The Washington Post in an otherwise positive review, stated, "testosterone is still clearly HBO's most addictive (and preferred) substance." A Slate review by Willa Paskin cringed at the male-female relationship in Vinyl and complained that the series is about "a very specific kind of raucous rock, while ignoring what Vinyl ignores overall: the other more interior, plaintive emotions that good music can make us feel, too."
The fact that there is nitpicking is good. It speaks to the depth of the material and what can be deduced from it. (Oddly, while the sexism of the 1960s in Mad Men was accepted as verisimilitude, the testosterone-fuelled 1970s seems to make some critics and viewers very uneasy.) Fact is, we're lucky to have HBO pushing boundaries and telling stories that have a ferocious drive and take us to unexpected and unnerving places.
The Family shows us where network drama gets stuck. Watch a teaser for it and it looks like a compulsory-viewing drama. There's a mystery, there's lust and there is politics.
We are in a town in Maine where Claire Warren (Joan Allen) is the popular mayor, eyeing a run for governor. In part, her success is based on sympathy – 10 years earlier, her son, Adam, was kidnapped and, as far the family and police are concerned, murdered. A local man, Hank (Andrew McCarthy), was convicted and jailed for the crime. But in a sensational twist, a teenager walks into the local police station and announces that he's Adam. This twist will, of course, upend everything in the Warren family.
And the family is a mess. Mom is all about her career. Dad (Rupert Graves) has been having an affair with the female police officer (Margot Bingham) who broke the Adam case years earlier. Daughter Willa (Alison Pill) has become a scarily devout Christian and son Danny (Zach Gilford) is a drunk. There are endless flashbacks to the time of Adam's disappearance and the start of dad's affair. Adam, when he finally speaks, hints that he was kidnapped by a mysterious figure who is still out there, preying on young boys.
For all the sizzle of the plotting, nothing is subtle or captivating. People make speeches at each other and glare. While it has an excellent cast, none seem quite right in their roles. The clunky dialogue challenges them. And everybody looks way too glamorous, as if the photo shoot to promote the series was more important than crafting a plot that didn't careen into the ridiculous.
No doubt there is fun to be had in watching The Family. If you don't mind jarring lapses and manipulative twists. But it has network limitations stamped all over it. ABC pulled off a remarkable coup with two seasons of American Crime but The Family has nothing like the same creative reach and subtlety.
So, while we nitpick at the best of cable, we can be thankful that we actually have drama to dissect and analyze in a serious manner. Meanwhile, network TV is offering material that exists as trash, whether high grade or low grade. And isn't worth analyzing at all.
Also airing this weekend
On the reality-TV front, I Am Cait (Sunday, E! Canada, 9 p.m.) returns. "Cait and her friends start a cross-country road trip in a tour bus, and the other women corner Cait about her sexual orientation and her politics." And Tour Group (Sunday, Slice, 10 p.m.) arrives and promises, "Eleven strangers travel to Marrakech, Morocco, where they explore its winding streets, crowded markets and food stalls; the travellers strip down in a traditional Moroccan bathhouse; wealthy playboy Jared sets his sights on twin sisters." But it seems to be about a bunch of vulgarians interested in hooking up.