TV is bad again. I mean bad in the way of fifty years ago, when we referred to it as a vast wasteland. Game shows have made a comeback, and not game shows like Jeopardy; game shows like contestants fall into a vat of lard over canned laughter and commentary from a smug, insipid host. There are no high concept dramas, nobody seems to think that deeply anymore. There is no humanity in anything; nothing is personal, everything is social, or worse, political. There are no characters, only amalgams of ideologies and shallow habits. There are no timeless themes, only reflections of headlines. Comedy has pretty much ceased to exist; we're really not allowed to laugh at anything anyway.
All this occurred to me as I was watching HBOs latest drama, Perry Mason. For you young'uns, Perry Mason was a courtroom drama show back in the '60s. Mason defended a (falsely accused, of course) client of the week in what was reasonable quality, if highly formulaic, drama for the time. Actually the character goes back to a series of potboilers written by Earle Stanley Gardner in the '30s. HBO's series is supposed to be something of an origin story. We start with Mason as bum, scraping by as a private eye. In the course of the series, the father figure lawyer he works for dies and Mason is compelled to scam his way into passing the bar exam and stepping in as a replacement lawyer for a client that is being railroaded.
It's not a bad show. The production values are far beyond the old TV series, of course. It's a solid attempt at grit and character building in a period drama. It has the correct positive references to alternate sexuality and racial injustice along with the negative views of religion and authority that are required for any show to get greenlit, but they are held in control or at list skippable via fast forward. There is also a correctly formulated amount of luridness to hold attention if the plot can't. I've been watching it so I obviously must like it. But I've been watching it the way I might have watched...oh, I don't know, something from the 70s or the 80s, like Kojack or L.A. Law or something. It's on, I'm familiar with the characters, it's mildly entertaining, it doesn't require much thought or attention. Contrast this to something like Deadwood, or Sopranos, or The Wire, where I was riveted and then immediately rewatched it for any subtleties I'd missed.
I should caveat this with the observation that the universe of TV is huge and global and I am not aware of everything, so there may be gems out there. For the most part, I feel safe saying that the vast wasteland has returned. Or, more accurately, we have returned to it. I miss David Milch.
