Genre + Period: Dramas in Development Season

[Sylph]

First of all, do you too have a problem with genre, what exactly is genre?! Someone called Marty asked the same down below, I thought I was the only one. It must be some kind of synonym for niche.

Anyway, do you think genre and period per se are the problem or is it the shiteous writing? Then again, if the writing were above average, is it something that would attract a significant audience, a show being either genre or period? Does mainstream exist today or are the audiences so much fragmented served by so many specialty networks, cable channels etc. that there really is no point in attracting such audience?

[All My Shadows]

Yes, I'm going to need someone to explain to me what a "genre show" is. I've seen it before, but I thought maybe I was reading something wrong or someone made a typo, but nope, here it is, referenced several times. Honestly, it seems to me just a pretentious way to refer to sci-fi/fantasy shows without owning the stigma of sci-fi/fantasy shows. Stupid, but whatever.

I think shows like that have to work harder to attract an audience because most people aren't interested in period pieces. Well, it depends on what period. When I hear "period piece," I think of 18th/19th century stuff set in England. But apparently 80s New York qualifies as well.

[quartermainefan]

Genre is basically a type and in modern fiction it usually comes to mean a type not based in realism like cop shows, lawyer shows or medical shows. Hawaii Five-0 is not really genre, but Smallville is. Dracula is genre, but Nip/Tuck is not. True Grit will be genre, but Little Fockers is not. Science-Fiction, horror, superheroes, fantasies, westerns, spies with crazy gadgets...this is basically the modern definition of genre.

Period basically is anything that requires costumes and sets that you would not find today--trying to capture a time. If you did a movie set in 1983 with a group of girls all dressed like Madonna from Desperately Seeking Susan you have a period piece, but in 1983 it was not a period piece at all. Jack the Ripper is a period piece, Sherlock Holmes too, but so is that TV show on HBO about the roaring 20s.

I love genre because when a show steeps itself in genre it is allowed to be crazy and embrace all kinds of unrealistic conventions that if you plopped them down in the middle of Law&Order it would be seen as horrible. Do Science Fiction and Fantasy have a stigma anymore? The box office would indicate otherwise. They were once the domain of shlock movies and TV shows for kids, but all the biggest movies from Harry Potter and Twilight to LOTR to Spiderman and Dark Knight to Star Wars are all genre. Smallville has been running for ten years, that zombie show set records, True Blood seems to be a water cooler show, LOST was too...it seems easier to find a genre show than a non-genre show that makes its mark in the pop culture these days.

Mainstream has a mild success in Hawaii Five-0 from what I read, but the thing with mainstream "normal" shows is they don't seem to get the passion going the way these niche/genre shows do. I have never heard of anyone saying "Oh my God! Did you see Gray's Anatomy last night?!?" the way I have heard people talk about True Blood which has a smaller audience.

[Sylph]

I don't know, I just find that stupid. Swashbuckler, horror, thriller, spy, noir, yakuza... Those are some examples of genre. Everything belongs to a certain genre, there are no TV shows, movies, novels etc. that aren't a type of genre.

I don't remember who it was, I believe it was alphanguy, but I think it was a nice thesis: X generation and the generations which follow it closely have increasingly produced a bunch of insipid, lifeless, fake TV shows no one really gives a damn about. Either they're half-as$ed attempts at something or are so convoluted they fall under their own burden of importance and shock value or whatever.

Lost being a flagrant example of utter irrelevance and nonsense, the show which went from top to flop.

[All My Shadows]

Totally.

If it's science fiction, call it science fiction. And good lord, if you're going to use another word to sound hip, make sure it's a word that isn't already tied heavily to the concept you're referring to. It's like referring to strawberry as "flavor" and anything else as non-"flavor."

Oh, God, yes. It's hard to get into many shows today because there's just too much [!@#$%^&*] to remember, and it's very overwhelming.

[quartermainefan]

I see in the primetime forum pages devoted to Greys Anatomy--a show I would be ashamed for myself if I ever watched it. I see pages devoted to Shonda Rimes, and I had to google the name to learn who Shonda was. I think it is possible you are just coming from a different area of taste and what you see as legit TV and what you see as nonsense. I look at all those shows on ABC like Brothers and Sisters, GA, and all their cousins, and it baffles me how anyone can watch them--they can only be described as piffle and tripe if you ask me. I don't think I have ever met anyone in real life who watches any of those type of shows. But I knew a ton of people who watched LOST, and watch True Blood and all the others. Then there are people who live for cop shows and watch L&O and Dexter. That's why they make all these shows: so some people can watch domestic dramas aimed at women, others can watch cop shows galore, and still others can watch byzantine science fiction dramas. And maybe some people will watch all three and sitcoms too.

[Sylph]

Um, what? Shonda Rhimes [!@#$%^&*] "legit" TV?

Where did I say that?

[Sylph]

The way I see it, you're a fanboy (yes, with y) – you are very, very, extreeemely hit and miss plus dismissive; you lack width. One the one hand, you find DOOL superb and defend the shiteous Lost finale, on the other, you have some very, very nice observations (all of which I'm forgetting right now).

All My Shadows, in many ways your antipode, has missed the century (in which to be born) – or at least the decade.

[quartermainefan]

I can be very dismissive I admit. I know garbage when I see it, and even before I see it.