Pop Vultures

The body of a local beauty queen washes up on the beach…a group of airline crash survivors find themselves on a remote island inhabited by invisible monsters…a policeman finds himself transported thirty years into the past. These are great openings, and great openings demand a strong finish. How did he get back to 1973? How the hell are they going to get off this island? Who killed Laura Palmer? The problem is that when the networks find themselves with a hit on their hands, they don’t want it to ever end.

Twin Peaks was the start of something very special for the US networks, and for television in general. A prime-time, big-budget drama serial co-authored by the decidedly un-prime-time David Lynch, the show was one of ABC’s biggest hits and ran two seasons before being wound up and cancelled. It spawned enthusiasm for a raft of similarly right-brained projects, including Cop Rock, a short-lived musical version of Hill Street Blues, and more recently that big-screen ethic has given us Heroes, Lost and Alias. In 1990 the message was clear…TV could do weird every bit as well as the movies. Well…almost.

What network TV can’t do as well as the movies is deliver a blockbuster. Film executives want stories that open big, build and build, twist and turn and dump the audience out the other end thrilled, charmed and exhilarated. TV executives want all that too, but without having to end it. This creates a problem that writers of smash-hit dramas are yet to overcome. Writers refer to stories as having arcs, like an object travelling through the air. If you ask the world archery champion to hit a target, the chances are they’ll get it. They’ll factor in the wind speed, the distance, the weight of the arrow and let fly. But what happens if you move the target back after the arrow’s been fired?

That’s essentially the problem TV writers face when they find themselves delivering a hit. They’ve got the whole journey planned out, beginning, middle and end…but now the network wants them to keep it in the air for another 26 weeks. So they have to start padding.

The simplest solution is to convert your show into a soap. Soap’s not a dirty word in this context…indeed some of TV’s longest running and most popular shows are essentially soaps: Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and ER. The big driving plot idea isn’t such a big deal here. There are only a few settings, a big ensemble cast and it’s all about the loves, lives, wants and needs of the characters. People come, people go, but the drama of life goes on forever…and so, potentially at least, could your show. That’s why the ‘Others’ turned up in Lost and why new Heroes are certain to keep revealing themselves. It works, up to a point…and that point is where your audience realises you’re not going to deliver on The Big Idea. Will we all still be watching Prison Break in season five, when Michael Scofield turns out to have a business plan for opening a cosy, out of the way coffee house, full of curmudgeonly but lovable characters tattooed on his thigh? Not too likely.

Exceptions do occur, of course. The BBC’s Life On Mars, an instant ratings and critical hit, was never meant to run for more than two seasons, and short UK seasons too. From the first moment Sam Tyler appeared 33 years in the past, the questions of how and why were played to the fore. To try and delay answering them would have been like lying to a much loved friend, and when the answers came…ah well, let’s not spoil it for you.

The moral of this story is a simple one. TV executives, deliver on your promises. If you start big, you have to end bigger. We’re the audience! Entertain us! Satisfy us! Surprise us!

We love it when you do that.