Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
Like I said, I am not sure what you mean. Maybe if you could come up with some examples.
I guess I am going to have to ask you to show some examples of this too. Lead characters with questionable morality populate stories all over the world. It is how the story is presented and rolls out that makes more of a statement about society (if you really want to go so far and make that stretch).
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mmm, I kind of see what their getting at. A lot of popular American dramas like CSI and so on tend to home in on the gritty 'everything is going to the dogs' factor. You get it in the UK too; a drama now can't be really dramatic without someone shooting up, someone else going through a nasty divorce and someone having some other sort of crisis all in the same week, and with all the details dissected for the viewer. They take on this stance of 'tackling your real-life problems through the medium of television' sort of thing, as though an entertaining show HAS to have that kind of purpose. It's depressing.
Then there's car-crash TV. The ones like dating in the dark where they deliberately set up people who will behave atrociously with one another and then slag each other off. Crass telly. So it's kind of like being stuck in a rock and a hard place with TV sometimes. You get the old-people quiz shows and feature shows (antiques roadshow, mastermind etc mostly yawn yawn),
then crap like Big brother,
then a police drama with an exploded corpse on close up.
ha-de-ha sitcoms. Which are only funny to the canned audience
Or a soap where everyone hates everyone else and is miserable
or, god help us all, kid's telly like Hannah Montana, which is all so acidic-ally, forcefully cheerful I want to claw my own skin off.
Although I'd disagree in saying asian TV doesn't have all of this as well, it seems to be easier to find fairly innocent, gentile drama programs aimed at adults that are still entertaining. Sometimes I want something a bit grown-up that's outside of the misery-guts, sex and violence circus.
Still, having said that, I'd say some of the BBC dramas are much better than anything asian I've seen.