Once the poor relation, television now attracts the hottest talent and ideas while the film industry succumbs to cliche.
THERE'S A SCENE in The Sopranos where mob boss Tony Soprano, that big bear of the small screen, is unwinding at home after a hard day of extortion and thuggery. With a bowl of ice-cream in his paws, he sits on his couch and turns on the television, where he old western.
Tony Soprano loves Dean Martin, just as he loves Gary Cooper, both of them larger-than-life stars of a golden age of cinema. As Tony realises, Martin and Cooper are icons of a dusty, bygone time. Yesterday's heroes.
And here's the thing: who do you think has replaced them? Tony has. And Buffy the vampire slayer.
And Jack Bauer from 24. And even David Brent from The Office.
The icons of television are replacing the icons of cinema.
More than that, television is replacing cinema as the more significant medium. That's what the experts and insiders are saying: movies have become increasingly formulaic, generic and teen-oriented, just as there's been an explosion of television that's bold, edgy and smart. If you're after creativity and innovation, they say, forget cinema and embrace the medium formerly known as the small screen, idiot box or boob tube.
"We're living in a new golden age of television," wrote of the medium". Schwarzbaum, it's worth noting, is the magazine's film critic.
The Sopranos, described by The New York Times as the most important cultural event of the past 25 years, leads the way.
(Unfortunately, Channel Nine has less faith, having shunted the new the woods and shooting it in the back of the head.) In a television resurgence driven by US dramas, acclaimed productions include
Six Feet Under, Lost, 24, Sex and the City, House, The West Wing and Deadwood, among many others. Also noteworthy are several and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Last month, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the duo behind The Office and Extras, announced they were switching from comedy to drama for their next project.
America," Gervais says. "Things like The Sopranos and 24 and The Wire and The Shield.
All these things that we just can't do [in England] or don't do or anything close to it. They're innovative, audacious, they're done brilliantly." Merchant says: "Film seems to multiplex to flatscreen.
In the past, that would have been unthinkable, as actors such as Clint Eastwood, Billy Crystal and size of their screens.
In The Guardian, John Patterson describes the production boom of movies to television was considered slumming it, a suicidal burning of one's bridges," Patterson writes. "Not any more.
Actors, like many others, have cottoned on to one fact: we're now in the Second Golden Age of American Television."
The list of movie actors who have jumped to television is long, Woods is starring in a new legal drama, Shark. "I've been lamenting the horrible state of the movie industry the past few years," Woods told the Los Angeles Times in March.
"When I was young, everyone pooh-poohed television and now every time I turn [it] on, I see some extraordinarily interesting series."
Tellingly, Shark is produced by Brian Grazer (A Beautiful Mind) and its pilot is directed by Spike Lee. Other directors "slumming it" include Doug Liman and McG (The OC), Peter Bogdanovich, Lee So why is television attracting the talent?
Why is it booming? The first factor is technology. Home entertainment systems have picture and sound quality rivalling those of some cinemas.
New technology is also providing unprecedented convenience. In the US, watch the shows you want, when you want; and TiVo means your you to watch later, skipping through ads. In Australia, where there are about 100 channels, Foxtel's iQ Box does much the same thing as TiVo: that is, it allows for "time-shifting".
Digital television is opening new possibilities. Executives such as Anne Sweeney, boss of the Disney-ABC Television Group, are mobile phones, the internet, broadband players and portable DVD players. New modes of dissemination have the potential to The second factor is money.
Television used to be film's poor, shabby-looking cousin, but no longer. Lost's opening episode, for imagination, style and inventiveness, it was, well, cinematic.
writers.
Whereas film is a directors' medium, on television the writer/creator is god. If the auteur theory is regarded with suspicion in filmmaking, in television it neatly describes Chris ambitious visions then reap the huge profits.
"In TV, you can create a tapestry you can't create in any other medium," says Steven Bochco, creator of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, in a television documentary, Hollywood: The Rise of the Series.
"You wind up with an almost Dickensian world."
Martin Fabinyi, an Australian producer of television and films (Chopper, Wolf Creek) agrees this is a golden age. "American terms of story," he says "The writing is just brilliant.
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And given the speed with which they are made, television shows can be responsive and timely. The West Wing, for instance, was able to broadcast an episode dealing with the attacks of September 11, 2001, less than a month after the event. Film is an unwieldy, expensive beast; television is nimble and adept.
Films can feel been US channel HBO, the subscription-only service behind The Larry Sanders Show, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos and Deadwood, and co-producer of Extras with the BBC.
Meanwhile, cinema is struggling. "Film is still pretty much playing to a mass audience," says Brian Walsh, head of television and marketing at Foxtel.
"The majority of films are made, a) to appeal to a teenage audience, and b) to make the majority of their returns on the first weekend. With that sort of emphasis, the effect is a dumbing down. It's only a handful of films that are tailor-made to the 35-plus audience, whereas television can afford and film is highly relevant to Australians, given how much we consume.
As Fabinyi says, most popular culture consumed in Australia is served up with an American accent. But what about Australian television and cinema? Which medium is winning the local screen wars?
"Australian networks are very conservative," says John Wood, whose 13-year run on Blue Heelers finished this year. "I can't here, or for that matter Desperate Housewives. When people want to make something off-the-wall they usually end up making a movie.
worst I've ever known it. Neighbours is the only drama, for want of a better way to describe it, being made in Melbourne at the moment. Away.
Things are in a parlous state."
If actors are finding it tough, so are scriptwriters. "I think financed," says Sue Smith, who writes for television (Brides of Christ) and film (Peaches), and whose new project is Bastard Boys, next year.
"It's a hard, hard slog. Once upon a time the ABC wasn't as broke as now, but I think the emergence of pay operators is picking up some of the slack, not just in the States but here as well."
Indeed, the outlook isn't all bleak, as SBS Independent grows successes of HBO.
"To me the thing with television is we can take bigger risks," says SBS Independent general manager Ned Lander, who cites as proof Wilfred, a six-part comedy series that grew out of a Tropfest short and will air on SBS in March. Lander also spruiks The Circuit, takes his learning to the bush, and a six-part crime series from detective.
Like Sweeney, Lander talks about the new possibilities of the internet, mobile phones and DVDs - and Brian Walsh is singing from the same songbook.
As for content, the Foxtel boss says he, too, seeks innovation. "We haven't wanted a replica of what's on free-to-air," he says. "So we've gone to producers and told them to come up with something different or bold, or we tell them what we want.
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