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US Cable Drama in a Time of Trump

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    #26
    Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
    Blue Bloods is an interesting case of whitewashing the NYPD and having some stereotypical black and Latino characters but also sometimes including Latino cops and throwing in liberal platitudes. An updated Starsky and Hutch?
    Blue Bloods is certainly a whitewash of the NYPD -- there never is a bad shooting, except when a bad cop has to be dealt with to show that the NYPD always acts fairly. It's a fairly right-wing show, with its colours flying somewhere between Hilary Clinton and George W Bush. Even the liberals in it are quite conservative, and when a character dabbled in slightly radical politics, she learnt the errors of her ways. It's an awful show in many ways, though it also makes a case for basic decency as a desirable (and supposedly fundamentally American) value. At a time of Trump, when decency is a sign of snowflakery, that is a necessary message to impart.

    My goodness, is that what things have come to? The values of decency being a subject of mitigation for a conservative TV show?

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      #27
      Amor, I think it's a bad idea to make the lead actors executive producers. Looks good on the credits, maybe, but leads to role confusion and actors getting inflated egos.

      G-Man, yes, it's even worse than the West Wing in dressing up conservative values, and defending the status quo, in liberal garb.
      Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 17-04-2018, 11:21.

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        #28
        Once a show has become successful it's pretty much routine for lead actors to get executive producer credits these days It's mostly a way of getting more money.

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          #29
          We've started watching a show on HBO called Succession.

          It's fantastic, funny and very mean. It looks like a straight up drama, about bickering rich kids fighting over their future estates, but appears to be much more than that. So far I'm only 4 episodes in, so mark this post in the "not quite certain yet" column, and everything can change.

          Anyway, Brian Cox (not the one from D:Ream) is the aging head of a massive media empire, and his kids are - in different ways - fighting about who gets what, who becomes CEO, and so on. Cox, though, doesn't want to really relinquish control. So, there's a huge amount of Murdoch in this show.

          But the kids remind me so much of Don Jr and Eric. Scheming but stupid, and nasty. And there's an in-law who could very, very easily be Jared.

          The nice thing about this, as a show during the Trump era, is that while it's spectacularly bitchy and nasty about the family and character of the Trump-Murdochs, there's not yet been the slightest suggestion of politics. This could exist entirely outside the political universe, and just be vile rich people in New York in almost any era (give or take the widespread mockery of rich people failing to understand tech).

          It's not a straight up comedy, but it is viciously funny.

          It appears to be the era of high-end drama about very rich people, because I'm also watching something called Yellowstone on the Paramount channel, about an obscenely rich rancher played by Kevin Costner. This is much more actually Trumpist: there's fights with native Americans over land rights, there's a whole lot of guns and shooting, and sufficient deaths that it feels borderline Sons of Anarchy. Yet the scenery is spectacular, and the show is engaging. Almost every character is utterly horrible but one, the daughter of Costner's character, is somehow wonderful at the same time as being rotten.

          It's interesting to contrast the two, but if you were to pick one, pick Succession.

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            #30
            I should add the one of the ironies about Succession's apparent assault on the Murdochs is that I found out about it from an advert on Sky (while I was watching a dodgy cricket stream, but let's ignore that part)...

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              #31
              Politics does come into it as shiv becomes advisor to a presidential candidate (party not named but strongly implied) who despises her father, and vice versa. It is a highly watchable show.

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                #32
                Sky's various sister companies can have edgy stuff, presumably because not all of it goes before the Murdoch gaze. Australian series Secret City, albeit pre-Trump, was good and that was Foxtel.
                Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 12-08-2018, 02:02.

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                  #33
                  Similar deal with Fox TV and FX. Owned by Murdoch but have no obvious connection to Fox News from a content PoV.

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                    #34
                    Jesse Armstrong, the principal writer for Sucession (ex Peep Show and The Thick of It, among others), wrote a treatment/script for a series called Murdoch several years ago.

                    It was never produced, a fact that was widely attributed to a Rupert blackball.

                    It would be interesting to compare the two texts to see just how much needed to change for it to make it to the small screen.

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                      #35
                      As a by-the-way, Eric Bogdosian is one of those people who never seem to age. It's thirty years since Talk Radio but he looks exactly the same.

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                        #36
                        Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
                        Sky's various sister companies can have edgy stuff, presumably because not all of it goes before the Murdoch gaze. Australian series Secret City, albeit pre-Trump, was good and that was Foxtel.
                        Here it's because it was an HBO show, and Sky run almost everything on HBO on Sky Atlantic on a short (by TV standards) delay. Though not, annoyingly, Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas.

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                          #37
                          I know that Sky take a lot of interesting stuff from the US, and that's one of the ways they were able to pretend that they're a serious broadcaster back before they produced any worthwhile content.

                          But I'm just surprised that they managed to let this one slip through the net - you'd think they'd buy it and not broadcast it.

                          As other people are watching it, I'm wondering if you see Kendall and Roman more as Lachlan and James, or more as Don Jr and Eric? And is it unfair on Tom to think of him as Jared?

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                            #38
                            Heh! Could even Jared be as dense and sycophantic as Tom? TBH, though the Murdoch parallels are clear, I hadn't made the Trump family connections at all. So is Marcia Melania, or Wendi Deng?

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                              #39
                              Roman feels very Don Jr to me. Dumb, convinced of his own brilliance, mean, and unable to hold a thought together for more than about 2 minutes.

                              5 episodes in, Marcia feels a little more superficially passive and Melania-like (that might change). A Wendi Deng role would be more in-your-face and inside the corporate building twisting arms and bullying and getting in the face of everyone she disagreed with.

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                                #40
                                Marcia's claws do emerge, against Shiv (as the only other alpha female in the family, naturally.)

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                                  #41
                                  Kendall is clearly too intelligent to be either of the Trump kids, mind you, and Logan seems too smart to be Trump (although the hidden loans feels very Trumpy). It feels to me like a hybrid of the two families.

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                                    #42
                                    I was not interested in Succession at all based on their previews, it made it looks like it glamorized the rich and wanted us to care about their internal family politics. Then I read that it basically savages all of them and the show's message is that the rich are awful, and encourages us to laugh at them (or at least a review in the Ringer said). That makes me more interested in watching it, but not completely.

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                                      #43
                                      Great thread. Congrats.

                                      One of my first ever threads on otf was "soothsayer movies," which predicted the future. Like Do The Right Thing predicting David Dinkins' win and the end of conservative Democrats as city leaders, Network still predicting the next 40-50 years after it was made, etc.

                                      Not a tv show, but I'll be damned if Captain America: Winter Soldier wasn't a dead ringer for what happened next: Russians and Nazis teaming up to accomplish a silent coup in the US Government.

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                                        #44
                                        It has strong Ianucci vibes and connections. Episode 2 was written by Tony Roche, regular writer on The Thick of It and VEEP.

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                                          #45
                                          It has strong Ianucci vibes and connections. Episode 2 was written by Tony Roche, regular writer on The Thick of It and VEEP.

                                          You even had David Rasche in it, he of In The Loop and Veep. Surprising to see Mark Mylod directing the second episode, as I always acquainted his name with The Fast Show and other British comedy. He did a fine job, though.

                                          Echoing what people are saying about Succession. It's fascinating stuff.

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                                            #46
                                            I watched all of Succession but don't love it as much as everyone else does. Fine acting, but everyone on it is so deplorable that I have a hard time caring what happens to any of them.

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                                              #47
                                              I think Greg is the character you can care about — if you need to. He does try to have a consistent moral centre, albeit a bit shaky at times due to him being a total fish out of water.

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                                                #48
                                                Just wanting to say thank you for suggesting The Good Fight, it's brilliant so far.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Cheers. No problem. I'm looking forward to the next dose. It has had an odd sort of schedule here. Shortish seasons which succeed each other relatively rapidly. I suspect it might have something to do with being able to stay very topical compared to other cable shows.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                                                    I think Greg is the character you can care about — if you need to. He does try to have a consistent moral centre, albeit a bit shaky at times due to him being a total fish out of water.
                                                    I'm not rooting for him either, really. Maybe it's his mom's fault - or maybe it's the actor's fault - but he seems to think the world owes him something because he's the great-nephew of this colossally rich asshole. Or, at least, does not seem to have any other idea how to get by in the world other than working various hustles and angles. That's not very sympathetic.

                                                    I was interested to learn more about his relationship with his mom and Canadian grandfather and the backstory of that side of the family, but then they just dropped all of them mid-season. Maybe they'll come back in season 2.

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