Tag: Television

In my look
back at 2014, I bemoaned the wasting of good talent on bad TV. Fewer
things are more frustrating in film and television than a performer withering
under the bright lights of a production unbecoming of their abilities. As I
binge-watched TV over the festive season while adding 20 pounds raiding my parents’
fridge, I became more and more aware of how prevalent this neglect is. And then I was reminded
of it when J.K. Simmons won a Golden Globe on Sunday. Simmons is a character
actor with few peers. And yet, when he finds himself on TV, it’s in doomed-from-the-start series like Growing Up Fisher or
Family Tools. Alternately, pilot
season is filled with actors and actresses undeserving of their own programs who are regurgitated each year. What exec’s nephew thought we needed a Kyle
Bornheimer-led comedy? 

There is no shortage of acting talent wandering aimlessly
from lot to lot in Hollywood. True
Detective brought Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson back into the
public discourse, reminding us that they’re actors first and celebrities
second. In season two, the same revitalization will be attempted with Colin
Farell, Vince Vaughn, and Taylor Kitsch. But True Detective can’t provide every underused actor a path to
salvation.

What the industry seems to lack is the ability recognize
talent and find suitable vehicles for them to succeed in a series. What follows
is a list that could go on longer than an explanation for Anger Management, but recognizes a few actors and actresses who I
think could really excel in a series, especially in the new world of streaming
television where shows like Transparent
and House of Cards are not just made,
but celebrated.

David
Costabile

Costabile has had recurring or small roles in several of
the most interesting and innovative TV shows in recent memory, and more often
than not, he’s the best thing on screen. His CV includes Damages, Breaking Bad, The Wire, and Flight of the Conchords. Even in the soapy guilty pleasure of Suits, he stole scene after scene
stepping beyond the work of his co-stars. Costabile is a standout amongst his
peers, and would be excellent in a leading role in a show of the pedigree of
those he has guested on. Costabile is the least known on this list, and was one
of many character actors who I considered including, such as David Morse,
Margot Martindale, James Remar, and their peers. Here, Costabile stands for all
of them. A quietly accomplished screen presence who could no doubt define a
series if given the opportunity.

Mary
Louise Parker

I never liked Weeds.
The first few seasons were somewhat palatable, but the narrative got more and
more ridiculous and suffered from child casting gone awry with puberty so bad
that Robert Iler could feel better about himself. But Parker was always an
engaging presence, even in the later seasons when even she seemed embarrassed
to be enduring the silliness of the plots and wasted guest stars like Albert
Brooks and Richard Dreyfuss. Parker’s best role to date was the recurring Amy
Gardner on The West Wing. While Aaron
Sorkin is often maligned for writing poorly realized female characters,
Parker’s Gardner was a sublime revelation, and I often hoped she’d be added to
the full-time cast. Gardner’s mix of quirky intelligence and aloof indifference
to the chaotic world around her would’ve been an interesting spin-off, and a
series with Parker at its center that respected the quality of her performative
acumen. 

Gary
Cole

Gary Cole has been in everything. Seriously. He had a
cameo in my buddy Phil’s Bar Mitzvah video. The popular parlour game Six
Degrees of Kevin Bacon should be renamed for Cole. My introduction to Cole was
in the short-lived NBC series Midnight
Caller, and I’ve been a fan of his in everything he has done since. An alum
of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cole has been the best part of 36 episodes
of The Family Guy, stole laughs from
Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights, is
part of pop culture lore from his role in Office
Space, and was nearly elected President – in The West Wing. And the dude has great hair. Like, George Clooney great.
How he has never been part of the main cast of a (successful) live action
series is beyond me, but then again Jon Cryer has won two Emmys, so what do I
know?

Michael
Keaton

Fresh off his Golden Globe win for Birdman, and now a frontrunner for an Oscar, Keaton has revived his
career after fading from the spotlight in the past decade. The real Batman will
likely have his choice of film scripts to choose from, but to me his place is
on the small screen. After a lauded performance as a former superhero actor who
turns to the stage in an effort to find his place in the canon of contemporary
film, Keaton could learn from Riggan Thomson and turn to a more interesting
medium in the twilight of his career. And what possible better film role will
ever come his way? Keaton was a giant in the 80s and 90s, stepping seamlessly
between comedy (Mr. Mom, Multiplicity) and drama (Batman, Clean and Sober) unlike almost any actor of that era. He would’ve
made an interesting choice for new seasons of True Detective, and a series of that ilk built around Keaton would
be a welcome addition to the TV landscape.

Ellen
Page

Where’d you go, Ellen Page? Her Oscar-nominated turn in
Juno was eight years ago, and since then, Page has been seen only sporadically on
screen, and often lost in the grandiose of the franchise (X-Men) or the scope of the premise (Inception). Page’s coming out in a speech at the Human Rights
Campaign’s "Time to Thrive" conference reminded us of her remarkable
presence despite the absence of the false Hollywood sheen. As
a Canadian, I recall Page from her start in TV on Pit Pony and ReGenesis,
and would love to see her return to her roots in a series befitting her
marvelous talent. The problem is, Hollywood has no idea what to do with a 5’2”
Canuck lesbian who’s best known for an indie romcom role as a pregnant teen.
Ideally, they’d like to pair her with Michael Cera in Juno 2: Twins! but she deserves so much more.

Joan
Allen

Hollywood’s inability to cast women over 38 as anything
other than mothers and quirky older sisters is not just a plague on the
industry, but an indictment of its lack of imagination. There is perhaps not a
more captivating yet underappreciated screen presence than the three-time Oscar
nominated, Tony Award-winning Steppenwolf alum. If she had a penis, she’d be
George Clooney. One of my favorite films of the past two decades is The Contender, in which Allen’s
performance outdoes brilliant turns by Gary Oldman, Jeff Bridges, and Sam
Elliott. She’s the only life in the antiseptic aesthetic of the Bourne films.
In fact, I’d love to see her CIA Deputy Director Pamela Landy in a series of
her own. Who do you call at Netflix to get that done?

Adam
Driver

Girls is
awful. I mean, it’s beyond awful. I’d rather spend the rest of my life in Chuck
Lorre’s screening room than endure another episode of HBO’s series about
privileged white girls in Brooklyn trying to monetize their MFAs is exhausting
self-indulgent tripe. But Driver, is excellent. And wasted. He’s similarly
excellent and wasted in the disappointing This
is Where I Leave You, and the only reason to suffer the Daniel
Radcliffe/Zoe Kazan romcom The F Word.
With a prominent role in the upcoming Star
Wars sequel The Force Gets Up Early,
Driver is likely meant for more big screen turns, but is better suited for the
character driven serial quality of TV. He has the manner of a character actor
and the charm and presence of a matinee idol, traits that beg for a series. But
not NCIS: Greenpoint.

Beyoncé
Knowles

This isn’t a list of performers who need a break, it’s a
list of those who need a vehicle to fit their talents and engage viewers in the
genre of TV. Perhaps I’m still smitten by my WATCHABLES
podcast episode one Beyoncé learning from Arielle Bernstein, but
the star among stars Ms. Knowles is a presence unlike any we’ve seen in a
generation. And she has held her own in films such as Obsessed, Cadillac Records,
Dreamgirls, and even Austin Powers 3: More Britishy and Silly.
Does she need a TV show? No. Would it immediately be a hit not matter the
quality? Yes. But talent intrigues me, and just as I wondered
aloud recently about non-TV auteurs could revitalize the sitcom, I
would love to see what Bey could do on the small screen. And I’m not talking
about Z & Bey @ Home. I’m talking
about real TV. Like, Yoncé in twelve episodes directed by David Fincher written
by Gillian Flynn. But, you know, funny too. Hell, there’s already a trailer:

Mike Spry is a writer, editor, and columnist who has written for The
Toronto Star, Maisonneuve, and The Smoking Jacket, among
others, and contributes to MTV’s PLAY
with AJ. He is the author of the poetry collection JACK (Snare
Books, 2008) and Bourbon & Eventide (Invisible Publishing, 2014), the short story collection Distillery Songs (Insomniac Press,
2011), and the co-author of Cheap Throat: The Diary of a Locked-Out
Hockey Player (Found Press,
2013). Follow him on Twitter @mdspry.

I can already hear the denizens
of Good Wife fandom anger-typing
emails in dispute of my title. And I’ll admit to a bit of click-baiting here,
but as much as I
bemoaned the death of the sitcom in my last column, the
network drama stands in equal peril. The medium of dramatic television is
successful only if it’s interesting, entertaining, or a form of escapism. At
its best, it’s all three, and a survey of the current network television
landscape finds little if any of these qualities. The frustrating lack of
dramatic programming worth indulging in on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW is
almost enough to drive audiences to pick up a book or listen to a podcast. But
hold on y’all, before you put on the latest episode of Serial and mosey on down to the local bookery to fetch a new
hardcover, take a minute or forty-two and settle in to ABC’s Nashville.

Networks lack imagination in
their programming. They have long ceded creativity and ambition to cable,
satisfied with an unhealthy affection for naval crimes and criminal forensics. Primetime
network dramas are exclusively about fighting crime, fighting the supernatural,
fighting disease, or fighting government. The only exceptions are Once Upon a Time, a show that from what
I can gather is about House’s Allison
Cameron slipping into a coma in which she exists in world populated by drunken
fairytale characters; Parenthood, a
show about actors who were once on good shows; and Jane the Virgin, which I have not seen nor read of, but assume
borrows its plot from Tom Waits’ story from the preamble to “Train Song” on Big Time, in which a stray bullet pierces
the testicle of a Union soldier, and then lodges itself in the ovaries of an
eighteen year old girl.

Nashville is a throwback to primetime soap operas of
yesteryear. It’s about beautiful people doing exceptional things while getting
laid and singing about it. And it is absolutely fearless and unapologetic about
its intentions. In the adolescence of my affection for television, I was raised
on the saccharin frivolity of Beverly
Hills 90210 and Melrose Place, which
themselves were the TV offspring of Dynasty
and The Love Boat, Aaron Spelling
productions so wondrously escapist that we forgive him for Tori and Randy. These
shows serialized the medium, and created loyal fan bases who, in the absence of
DVRs, needed to find themselves in front of a TV at an appointed hour to find
out if Dylan would choose Brenda or Kelly, and how long our sideburns should
be.

There was nothing revolutionary
about these programs, and they didn’t aspire to revolution. They weren’t
preaching. There was very little in the way of murder. Vampires and aliens only
appeared in Halloween episodes. The beauty in shows like Spelling’s were that
they didn’t condescend to the audience, they weren’t written to be lauded by
critics, or celebrated by those who claim to not watch television except for
Ken Burns documentaries and The Wire.
Primetime soaps were built for escape, to provide a breath from the day, to
revel in the frivolous.

Nashville is wonderfully reminiscent of those programs
without being derivative. The show is soapier than a Dove factory and often as cloying
as that simile. Set in and around the country music industry in Music City,
USA, Nashville boasts what few other
dramas can: Two strong female leads. Connie Britton’s established country
superstar Rayna James and Hayden Panettiere’s embattled rising star Juliette
Barnes anchor the program in their representations of polarized embodiments of
the American dream. Rayna is old money privilege. Juliette is a trailer park
rescue. They’re the old and new country . . . music that is.

The show is rounded out by a
cross-section of not quite stock but not quite unique characters. Deacon Claybourne
(Charles Esten) is the lovelorn recovering alcoholic. Gunnar Scott (Sam
Palladio) is the aw-shucks fella doomed to heartbreak. Scarlett O’Connor (Clare
Bowen) is the shy talent waiting tables. Will Lexington (Chris Carmack) is the
rising star with secrets. Avery Barkley (Jonathan Jackson) is alt-country,
where punk meets Patsy. Maddie and Daphne Conrad (Lennon and Maisy Stella) are
Rayna’s daughters who aspire to be just like Momma. And though there’s nothing
exceptional about these characters by description, each actor and actress
portrays them with an honest simplicity and subtle tweaks that eschew any
notion of stock.

Oh, and they sing.

The soundtrack of each episode
is a marvel, and a testament to the exceptional work of music supervisor
Frankie Pine and established by Season One’s supervisor, Grammy and Oscar
winner T. Bone Burnett, who just happens to be married to Nashville’s creator and showrunner Callie Khouri. Being set and filmed
in Nashville allows the show to use the city’s exceptional talent pool of
professional songwriters, not unlike the ones on the show portrayed by Esten,
Palladio, Jackson, and Bowen. The original compositions, the Tennessee set, and
that the actors play and sing themselves gives the show an authenticity that is
rare on television. And counter to Hollywood tendency, the authenticity escapes
contrivance. Executive producer Steve Buchanan is president of the Grand Ole
Opry Group. The actors playing Scarlett, Avery, and Gunnar have all worked at
the legendary Bluebird Café, where Rayna and Deacon are known to drop in for a
quick set, and which the show has reproduced as a set of its own. Nashville’s sincerity is augmented by
the producers’ inclusion of contemporary country music artists in the show and
its narrative (if peripheral), which contributes to the audience’s comfort and Nashville’s genuine and natural
escapism.

[And, if you’ll indulge me and
pardon a quick digression: Connie Britton is a criminally underappreciated and
under-celebrated actress. Very few performers have the range to play such a
diversity of roles and in different genres. She makes Christopher Walken look
limited. Britton has starred in a hit sitcom (Spin City), a seminal TV drama (Friday
Night Lights), a redefining mini-series (American Horror Story), and owns “y’all” like she invented it.]

In an era of instant gratification
and unparalleled media attention, shows are rarely given time to grow into
themselves, to discover what they truly are. Nashville went through its growing pains. In Season One, it tried
to be Dallas set in Tennessee. Powers
Boothe played Rayna’s baron-like tyrant of a father, who perhaps killed her
mother, and was manipulating her husband, who had committed fraud in a land
deal, who burned papers in the fireplace while drinking scotch, and perhaps
wasn’t the father of their eldest child. The show created complex mythologies,
but they seemed contrived and tired. Granted a second season by ABC, the show
quickly retooled, and made the country music industry the centre of the show’s
universe, an industry that comes complete with heroes and villains, defying the
need to create them from borrowed characters like Boothe’s. Nashville’s music, authenticity, and placement within the actual
Nashville and industry immersed the show’s characters into the mythology of
country music, and gave it a life it lacked in in its first season.

And that’s what sets Nashville
apart. It aspires to be itself and nothing else. It’s amplified by well-crafted
characters and measured performances. It’s a soap opera, but one that the
audience can invest in because it feels genuine. It’s at once a tribute to
country music and a bygone era of primetime television. And you can tap your
toe to its both its musical and narrative exposition in that they’re familiar
and new. Each episode is a new album from a band you’ve loved since you were a
kid.

The network drama is in dire
straits. Lost is but a distant
memory. Friday Night Lights was
perhaps the last of the medium to truly excel in craft and creation, and is the
last to be nominated for a Best Drama Emmy (along with The Good Wife in 2011). Grey’s
Anatomy is long past its expiration date, now that Derek and Meredith’s
grandchildren work at Seattle Grace. Scandal
is parody that refuses to admit its parody. Madam
Secretary is West Wing-lite. CSI’s legacy will be the poisoning the
national jury pool with false science. Blue
Bloods, Elementary, NCIS: Bowling Green, The Blacklist, et al. are all ultimately
forgettable. I’ll admit I’ve never seen The
Good Wife, but I couldn’t bear the experience of another show about
lawyers. Hidden within the cacophony of nondescript programming is a burgeoning
gem. Nashville is not a seminal
masterpiece, nor does it want to be. It’s an homage to a genre of television
that is inexplicably absent from the current network programming landscape.

Mike Spry is a writer, editor, and columnist who has written for The
Toronto Star, Maisonneuve, and The Smoking Jacket, among
others, and contributes to MTV’s PLAY
with AJ. He is the author of the poetry collection JACK (Snare
Books, 2008) and Bourbon & Eventide (Invisible Publishing, 2014), the short story collection Distillery Songs (Insomniac Press,
2011), and the co-author of Cheap Throat: The Diary of a Locked-Out
Hockey Player (Found Press,
2013). Follow him on Twitter @mdspry.