TV's Golden Age May Be Slipping Away

Last year about this time, I tossed nostalgia to the wind and sang the praises of modern network television, inferring that the real "golden age of television is now". A year later, I'm still very impressed with the writing and production values of today's television programming (give me an hour's worth of scripted/produced network television drama over the average overhyped film blockbuster any day), but it's becoming evident that the good times are probably in their final hurrah. The 2006-07 season was not kind to the sort of ambitious big-budget fare that I lap up. Last fall's most promising new entries (such as "Vanished", "Smith", and "Kidnapped" were among the first shows of the season to be cancelled), partly because the storytelling quality of those series was not living up to the shows they were largely imitating....and partly because the TV audience has reached its saturation point with serialized thrillers. And that's understandable, all part of the ebb and flow of audience preferences that generates a swinging pendulum of network fare that results in either an abundance of riches (the 1980's and again today) or an embarrassment of swill (the 1990's, and if current trendlines continue, the foreseeable future).

Aside from the fruitless bounty of new shows this past season, save for the nicely done hit science fiction serial "Heroes", most of the old standbys that have made the last few years of television so enjoyable are past peak. At the top of this list is "24", which had three very strong seasons from 2001-2004 followed by a couple seasons that were overly contrived but still highly enjoyable in 2005 and 2006. Then came 2007's sixth season, which has been a trite regurgitation of stale plot elements from past seasons. There has not been a single original idea thus far this year and the season is two-thirds over. Predictably, viewers are in retreat as "24" just registered its lowest rating in three years on Monday night.

Even "Prison Break", the action-adventure serial which I so thoroughly sang the praises of last season, is likely to overstay its welcome and alienate many current fans. Season 1 of Prison Break was perhaps the most masterfully crafted season of network television in the medium's history, but it was hard to see how the quality of the show would hold us as well once they escaped the prison's walls last spring. All in all, season 2 was still very entertaining, but I suspect most neutral observers will say the series has now jumped the shark, extending its limited-run premise far beyond its natural boundaries. Now, with Prison Break poised to begin a third season in the fall, the show seems almost certain to spiral into an unanimated cartoon. From a business standpoint, you certainly can't blame Fox for wishing to keep Prison Break alive at any cost given that the network wouldn't begin making money on a big-budget series like that until a syndication deal comes to fruition....and a series that last only two seasons don't yield very lucrative syndication deals. Nonetheless, I'm counting on a significant percentage of the series' faithful viewers will roll their eyes as they see the series plodding onward, ultimately vacating the series in droves and soiling the reputation of what has been one of the all-time best programs on television.

On the other hand, I've been very impressed with the unexpected creative resurgence of a series I thought I was on life support as recently as a month ago......ABC's "Lost". After a blockbuster opening season, the excitement level noticeably waned in Lost's second season, and some poorly conceived scheduling choices by ABC (bad scheduling decisions by ABC.....who woulda thought?!?!) managed to erode more than a third of Lost's original audience in this year's third season. While those viewers are gone forever, the impressive roll of well-crafted episodes the series has put forward in the last month should at least stop the bleeding and give the series a chance for another successful season or two. Thus far in 2007, "Lost" has once again reclaimed the throne of network television's best series.

Beyond these three, there is still an abundance of procedural crime dramas on the air that are much better done than anything network TV gave us a decade ago. I'm bored with the overextended "Law and Order" and "CSI" franchises, but TV is nonetheless better for these series' successes. Among the best series in this genre are "Cold Case" and "Without a Trace", the latter of which is not as consistently strong as it was back in its 2003-04 heyday, but still produces its share of solid crime drama moments. Another marginally interesting entry is CBS's "The Unit", created and produced by highly esteemed playwright David Mamet, which profiles the globe-trotting adventures of a top-secret military battalion headed by 24's Dennis Haysbert. The show has its problems, but also has its moments of top-caliber action-adventure television.

"Desperate Housewives" doesn't fit into the crimefighter show mold that I am instinctively fond of, but I am nonetheless intrigued by its intentionally campy appeal and clever writing. After a so-so sophomore season last year, DH has actually had a fairly strong resurgence.

And while in previous television eras, I would have likely bemoaned the onslaught of reality shows, most of the ones on primetime aren't all that bad. "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race" have outstanding production values, and in many ways fit into the adventure show theme that I can't get enough of. The "American Idols" and "Dancing with the Stars" have less appeal to me personally, but I would not begrudge audiences of those shows their viewing pleasure so long as the cost savings the networks reap from those series allows room in the budget for the big-budget fare like "Alias" and "24".

Unfortunately, the networks are looking for an excuse to cut costs, and "successful reality shows versus unsuccessful crimefighter shows" is a perfect formula for dragging network television back to a close variation of the misery foisted upon us throughout the 1990's, when an endless barrage of trashy sitcoms and tabloidy newsmagazines cannibalized all the networks' schedules. Ever since 2000, the threat has been looming that the reality show would push all scripted television off the cliff, but that hasn't been the case thus far. Still, NBC announced last year that they would dedicate the first hour of every primetime evening, beginning this coming fall I believe, to nonscripted reality shows or game shows as a means of cost-savings, so the threat still looms, particularly as the networks continue to hemorrhage viewers to cable.

Fortunately, cable is the silver lining in this cloud....an alternative that did not exist in any serious manner back in the late 1980s when TV's most recent golden age started to slip away. There's now a well-oiled TV production machine outside of the networks churning out large numbers of widely acclaimed series. Most of the current standouts, such as "The Sopranos" and "The Shield" have been below my radar screen in recent years, largely because I have not had full cable until recently. Given the quality of primetime network TV in recent years, I haven't felt the need to venture into the waters of cable, but if network TV lapses into an all-"Deal or No Deal/Dateline" mode, original cable programming will be shouting for my allegiance, much as it did in the 1990's with the decade's best series, "La Femme Nikita" on the USA Network.

On the other hand, I'm not counting the networks out just yet. Fox is heavily promoting a new series called "Drive" that looks like a smorgasbord of campy fun. If the show is as well executed as advertisements suggest, the networks may continue to think big with upcoming programming. If "Drive" flops, however, brace yourself for an avalanche of low-budget claptrap as the pendulum will almost certainly continue its swing back to the uninspired.