Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
I always thought the mark of a successful dramatic show (and ofttimes a comedy) was in having characters the audience could identify with and like, and therefore have a visceral stake in their successes and failures.
'Course, I don't write for TV...
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No, you're right.
But I think about a comment Samuel R. Delany made a while back, talking about romances. The traditional view of the romance is that the plot is "Boy mets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl." Chip pointed out that that wasn't true. Yes, it happened, but "boy met girl, boy lost girl, boy got girl" in the context of doing something
else. Boy meets girl wasn't the plot, it was the
sub-plot. The Luna Books line Harlequin has been publishing revolves around that premise, where romance may not even be a sub-plot, and may be incidental to what is taking place in the foreground.
I think my friend has a point, but I think another part of it is that the daily work of police, firefighters, lawyers, and doctors is the stuff of drama. While it's certainly possible to make a family show ala the Waltons with characters the audience can indentify with, the difficulty is the drama. I'd like to think I'm someone with an assortment of virtues an audience could identify with, but my daily life is (largely deliberately) dull and boring, and so it would be with most of us. We'd be poor source material for a dramatic series. (Though we might be the stuff of comedy.)
Cop shows, lawyer shows, and doctor shows are simply easier places to start in crafting a dramatic series, because the drama is inherent in the occupations.
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Dennis