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Favorite Dramas
E.R. (Yeah, I'm an American, so sue me)
Homicide: Life on the Streets
When Homicide first aired, I was put off by the see-me-create-art directing style, which made Hill Street's "shaky camera" look downright self-effacing. So I didn't watch for the first couple of years, till Clark and Kathy Kidd urged me to watch a taped-for-later-viewing episode with them. When I finally got past the camera work (which I now rarely notice, except that in every episode there's still a "signature moment" that makes me want to snicker and which will look dated and silly ten years from now), what I found was a level of intelligence and intensity that I admire greatly. It's hard to love these characters, but that's NYPD Blue's territory anyway. Nor is the focus ever really on the cases, the way it is in Law and Order.
By the way, even though this is a fine ensemble of very good actors, one stands out: Andre Braugher. This man is simply too hot for the box. He has what Bogart (and, to a degree, Cagney) had, a dangerous beauty-in-disguise that attracts and repels. In an era of virtually interchangeable action-hero stars, here is an actor worth writing the best, most demanding scripts for. I would be proud to have him in any movie I wrote; I just hope he doesn't spoil things by taking on really stupid action-movie projects (cf. Keanu Reeves in Chain Reaction and Christian Slater in Broken Arrow — or was it the other way around?)
NYPD Blue
It's still a first-rate show, though I miss the tortured goodness of David Caruso's character from the first year. It skirted the edge of silliness with the Dennis Franz subplot — until they killed off his son and woke the plotline up again. Jimmy Smits works better as a cop than he did as a lawyer, and this time the lesson of Moonlighting and L.A. Law seems to have been learned: Sure, the private-lives subplots are fun, but at the center of every episode there must be a really gripping story that is about someone else.
It must be said: Never, not once, has any of the nudity been remotely important to the storyline. Never, not once, has it been anything other than the series- creator's adolescent need to say nanner-nanner, I got away with it. Stories are not advanced by nudity, they are broken up by it, as the audience stops thinking about what happens next and is either attracted to or repelled by or shocked about or simply distracted by somebody's breast or butt. I can't wait to see what this brilliant creative mind can accomplish when he finally grows up.
Law and Order
This show has survived myriad cast changes, and so it goes for another year. I miss all the old characters, but then I can see them whenever I watch A&E at 11:00 p.m. or 3:00 a.m. The basic situation still works: The first half hour is about the cops trying to solve the crime, and the second half hour is about the prosecutors trying to get the case to work before the jury. The writers manage to get "echo" shows on the air a remarkably short time after the real news stories they're loosely based on, and while the continuing characters are real, we see their working personalities, not their personal lives. It remains the most reliable hour on television, in part because good writing rules, and no character is allowed to distract from the stories week to week.
The X Files
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