It is prestige TV that you can fold laundry to

April 27, 2024 6:04 AM

The Comfortable Problem of Mid TV "Mid TV, on the other hand, almost can’t be bad for some of the same reasons that keep it from being great. It’s often an echo of the last generation of breakthrough TV... Or it’s made by professionals who know how to make TV too well, and therefore miss a prerequisite of making great art, which is training yourself to forget how the thing was ever done and thus coming up with your own way of doing it... Mid is not a strict genre with a universal definition. But it’s what you get when you raise TV’s production values and lower its ambitions. It reminds you a little of something you once liked a lot. It substitutes great casting for great ideas."
posted by gwint (38 comments total)

I couldn’t finish this. It’s The NY Times in a nutshell. Why can’t things be much, much better, even though they’re good? I can almost hear the author complaining that the Democrats should run someone younger.
posted by coldhotel at 6:40 AM on April 27 [19 favorites]

I'm a bit surprised that Poker Face was included as an example of "mid" TV.
posted by simonw at 6:41 AM on April 27 [27 favorites]

I think part of the complaint is that no one has made a modern take on All in the Family with its relentless skewering of contemporary issues; TV that actually did change the social landscape by talking about shit that no one wanted to talk about. Bigotry, racism, war, feminism, policing, classism. It made people think. And you had to watch it because there were only three channels on TV. And everyone was going to talk about it at work and school.

Now everything is made to distract from life’s bullshit or to reinforce whatever narrative you already have. If it’s too challenging you’ll just stream some other show that’s more comfortable. So I don’t think it’s even possible to make such a show. No one would fund it.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:53 AM on April 27 [12 favorites]

I kind of liked the ideas in this article, but I thought it didn't go far enough to articulate the nuances and differences between a great show and a "mid" show. I would like to build on it and try to articulate what I wish it had.

I think the difference between mid TV and really good TV is vision, or ethos, or whatever the word is for "something unique that the show is trying to do/say/showcase, underneath its overt gimmick." So for example,

- in The Good Place, the gimmick of the show is "what if you were supposed to go to hell after you die", but the vision or ethos or whatever that drives the show and gives it its staying power is "let's do Introduction to Philosophy in the form of a TV show!"
------------ contrast this show with Loot, a show with some of the same cast members, big Apple TV prestige budget, and very similar tone and format as TGP. Its gimmick is "what if you got a hundred billion dollars in your divorce settlement?" And like TGP, this is also a show about an asshole learning how to be good and ethical under unrealistic circumstances. But as far as I can tell it does not have any vision or ethos or driving force behind it other than this wish fulfillment fantasy about a billionaire who is slowly trying to be good. And it is sooooo mid. I fold a lot of laundry to that show.

- in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the gimmick of the show was "what if the pretty blonde cheerleader in your high school is actually a superstrong hero", but the vision behind the show which made it good was "high school is literally hell."
----------- contrast this with later seasons of the same show. Once the gang graduated high school, it floundered for an entire season, then it had to reinvent itself over and over again - with varying degrees of success. The first three seasons in all their freshness and inventiveness and risk-taking were served extremely well by a certain unity of theme which the rest of the seasons lacked, and suffered from lack of. Buffy wouldn't have been Buffy if it had started with season 4 or even the splendid season 5. There would have been no "why" behind the gimmick to hook us and hold us.

- Seinfeld is famously a show about nothing, and damn, it really does work because of it. It gives the show discipline and makes it better.
--- contrast with Friends, which lacks any driving vision, and as a result tries to be all the things at once. It has no unity or integrity because of its lack of vision.

The thing is, I think both Poker Face and Loki DO have a certain vision driving the show from underneath it. Granted, Poker Face's driving vision is just "what if Columbo" which is meager - so yeah, it's "mid" in spite of the nominal existence of a driving vision.

But damn, you guys, have you *seen* the fucking TVA sets on Loki? No matter how unreliable in quality the storylines of the episodes are (thanks, MCU :P) Loki stands head and shoulders above most other shows I've seen purely because of its over-the-top commitment to the visual design. I vehemently disagree that Loki is "Mid" for this reason. Its driving vision is "what if steampunk mid-century-modern?" and fuuuckkk I am so here for it!

Anyway - that's my thesis. I know there are fantastic shows out there without any kind of driving vision/ethos behind the show, I know there are badly executed shows with a hefty amount of vision behind them, all permutations and combinations do exist. But I do think it holds true in my experience and subjective taste, that more often than not, what makes a good and competent show great is when there's that unique vision behind it.
posted by MiraK at 6:59 AM on April 27 [40 favorites]

I liked this article because it's a phenomenon I've been frustrated with. My take on it is that so much of TV production is better. Sets, acting, production design, world building, cinematography, effects.. All just great thanks to higher budgets and lots of very skilled artists.

What's missing is the writing. The purpose of the show, the storytelling. I think it's because unlike so many things in a video production great writing can't really be managed for. Throwing more money at the writer may be appreciated by the writers but probably isn't going to buy you better writing.

I think about that in particular contrasting Atlanta and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Not just because of Donald Glover, it's a lot of the same production team too. Both shows are good. Atlanta is ground breaking and challenging and amazing. They didn't set out to do that again with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and there's nothing wrong with being mid and entertaining people. But boy do I appreciate works of genius like Atlanta.
posted by Nelson at 7:40 AM on April 27 [16 favorites]

"I think I've just invented the idea of 'middlebrow'" is an evergreen article format, apparently.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:53 AM on April 27 [33 favorites]

There are so many problems with television as a medium that it’s hard to even know where to begin, so I’ll just say that most of the tv shows described in this article would have been made as midbudget movies 20 or 30 years ago, and would have been miles better than the tv version. Stretching 100 minute of plot out to 700 minutes just because you can’t get the money to make a movie anymore is not a viable way to make meaningful art or meaningful entertainment.

Television should be relegated to the embarrassing place it was for most of the 20th Century and adults should go back to watching movies. At least if a movie is “mid” it only lasts for 2 hours or so.
posted by rhymedirective at 8:03 AM on April 27 [7 favorites]

> "I think I've just invented the idea of 'middlebrow'" is an evergreen article format, apparently.

haha touche! I think the "take" here is somewhat valid though because for a very long time "middlebrow" has meant not much time/effort/money spent on making the thing, and nobody truly famous is involved. But these days a lot of money is being spent on these productions, everything looks super slick, the cast and production team is A-list, and yet it's middlebrow. Not in the sense that they tried to make a great thing and failed, but it's clear they weren't even trying to make a great thing.

It's middlebrow but it's missing all the other markers of middlebrow except for the lack of substance.

Like if Toni Morrison at the height of her powers wrote a formulaic bodice ripper. The byline says Toni Fucking Morrison, and underneath her name it says Nobel Fucking Laureate. The cover is appropriately austere as all her book covers are. Hell maybe even some of the sentences in the book are Toni Morrison sentences, with all that beauty and jazz and reach-for-god-ness imbued. But imagine if the content was literally just a formulaic bodice ripper and there was nothing more to the characters or the story than anything written by a no-name Mills&Boon writer-mill ghost. It's a bit of a head trip, you know??
posted by MiraK at 8:05 AM on April 27 [10 favorites]

I appreciate the mid, because I like to have something to watch while I knit. A really compelling show makes me put down my knitting, which is good sometimes, but I don’t want everything I watch to need close attention. I think my definition of what counts as mid is lower than this author’s, though. Entertaining but fundamentally dumb shows like Bones or Murdoch Mysteries or Monk (my wife likes murder mysteries, but mostly we avoid super gritty violent ones) are reliable knitting shows. We generally try to have a rotation of one prestige, one mid, and a short comedy or anime right before bed.
posted by rikschell at 8:10 AM on April 27 [9 favorites]

IMHO, the fragment cited in FPP is an unbelievably spot-on, uncanny even, illustration or example of the "mid" quality, that, surely, is not limited to TV productions. Writing can feel like that too, and it's just as easy, if not easier, to stumble into it unintentionally
posted by Green-eyed grenade at 8:21 AM on April 27 [1 favorite]

I dunno, this article seems weird. It picks out shows as ‘mid’ that I thought were terrible and/or pretty good. Masters of the Air was terrible, beautiful but the writing was awful, so boring and ungrounded. Loki seemed to me to be one of the more ambitious Marvel offerings, especially compared to, say, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
posted by bq at 8:23 AM on April 27 [2 favorites]

I hear what you're saying MiraK, and there is some truth to it.

We are still about fifteen years into people writing about TV remarking, with surprise, that production standards on TV often rival those of film. Even allowing that we are at the higher end of that spectrum now, it's still an article that we get over and over again.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:26 AM on April 27 [2 favorites]

Poker Face is one of the best shows of the decade. It's a show about a beautiful sky blue 1967-69 Plymouth Barracuda taking a road trip across America. It has adventures with lots of other cars, and the whole thing builds to a terrifying "what happened to the car?!" cliff-hanger in the penultimate episode, which is satisfyingly resolved in the finale. The only thing that could have made it better would have been more car chases. Also it had a Columbo-style b-story, I guess.
posted by surlyben at 8:55 AM on April 27 [19 favorites]

I think I've bumped up against this recently. Twice I've watched, or tried to watch, a movie that has shown up on Netflix, and found myself thinking, "Why is Adam Driver, say, in this really middling and not very interesting sci-fi movie?" Last night I watched Damsel, starring Millie Bobby Brown, which styled itself as an against-the-grain fairy tale but which was ultimately pretty dull, with many plot elements that made me think the writers weren't really keeping an eye on their plot and theme. Damsel, especially, had really beautiful settings and gorgeous costumes. It felt big-budget, as the article says. It's not new at all to have zillions of mediocre, tolerable-but-not-great shows and movies out there, but it does seem possible that high-budget mediocrity is a new iteration of the mediocre.
posted by Well I never at 9:05 AM on April 27 [1 favorite]

I sometimes need mediocre entertainment...Background TV as it were. Just noise to fill my space while I am busy doing something else. ..
posted by Czjewel at 9:35 AM on April 27 [4 favorites]

for a very long time "middlebrow" has meant not much time/effort/money spent on making the thing, and nobody truly famous is involved

Interesting - we may be working off different definitions of "middlebrow," but I'd have called lots of high-production-values movies middlebrow. "Oscar bait" like The King's Speech or Shakespeare in Love would be a case in point - great on paper but not anywhere near as artistically ambitious as they'd like to think.
posted by Jeanne at 9:51 AM on April 27 [13 favorites]

One thing to keep in mind with mid tier tv productions, it's not like a feature where the script is complete and massaged before the trucks even show up. Instead they are writing it as we are shooting it. Episodic TV shoots on an 8-10 day schedule per episode, and other than a rough outline most shows don't get farther ahead than a few episodes beyond the one we are shooting.

Part of the reason for this is production will adjust the budget based on test audience response. So if it's doing poorly the writers have to murder some their darlings and things get scaled back, or increased if it's doing well.

Inevitably the writers will fall behind and at some point we end up starting to shoot episodes without a final approved script. With the writer monitoring the set, and furiously writing the next episode which is currently starting pre-production.

At the end of the day, most shows are not about art, it's about making sausage.
posted by Pink Fuzzy Bunny at 9:59 AM on April 27 [10 favorites]

Nelson: What's missing is the writing.

No, that's bullshit. As Pink Fuzzy Bunny has alluded above, the writers are constricted by the jobs on offer. What's missing is studios willing to spend money to produce untested IP. Everything has to be familiar and easily digestible because of how fucked up economics of the studio-and-streaming system are and the absolutely clusterfuck of non-stop economic growth being more important than interesting ideas (or anything else). It's not that no one is writing The Sopranos anymore, it's that Netflix and MAX and their competitors would never risk investing in something like The Sopranos today. Your choices are "easy to have on in the background while the viewer is scrolling their Insta feed" - meaning the plots can't be complicated, attention can't be demanded for too long, and the intro-build-climax-end has to have a familiar enough rhythm to it that the viewer knows when to look up for the "important" parts, or Harry Potter/GoT spin-off/rip-off with a guaranteed whopper of a built-in audience.

The TV and movie industry is not suddenly devoid of creative people with original visions. They just can't get past the pitch meeting.
posted by tzikeh at 10:47 AM on April 27 [9 favorites]

I wonder how this take jibes with the article from Harper's last week.

I agree that this is a business being considered, despite how much we like to think it's about art and creativity. My view is that technical capability leads story creativity for the most part. I see stuff done by one person on youtube that looks amazing, and would have been unbelievable 20 years ago on such small scale.

It's not that no one is writing The Sopranos anymore, it's that Netflix and MAX and their competitors would never risk something like investing in The Sopranos today.

I'd disagree. Netflix and Max have no problem investing in something on the level of The Sopranos. The trick is that nobody knows what will become the next Sopranos. If somebody had that formula, they'd be using it all the time. In fact, I'd say Max is pretty close.

Current state of the industry serves many more niche tastes than it could have supported 20 years ago, let alone in the three network era. Your middlebrow is my gold. I think this is a good thing overall.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:06 AM on April 27 [4 favorites]

tzikeh, I'm glad we both agree that the problem is the writing!
posted by Nelson at 11:09 AM on April 27 [5 favorites]

The premise of Seinfeld is "Where do stand up comedians get their material?" That premise is highlighted in every episode which starts & ends with Jerry's standup set.

I'm not sure what it means about the strength of "premise" when everyone remembers the premise of the fake, failed sitcom from Seinfeld more than they remember the premise of Seinfeld.
posted by muddgirl at 11:39 AM on April 27 [5 favorites]

I'd disagree. Netflix and Max have no problem investing in something on the level of The Sopranos. The trick is that nobody knows what will become the next Sopranos. If somebody had that formula, they'd be using it all the time.

Well, that's sort of the point tzikeh was making: HBO was making a big leap when they greenlit The Sopranos. James Gandolfini talked about early days of shooting the pilot and the cast being "a bunch of fat Italian guys in shorts" and expecting the show to fail because who would watch this? No big names in the cast or production, no pre-existing IP, just the hope that audiences were still interested enough in mafia stories to watch a family drama about the death of the American Dream dressed up in mafia clothes. But no one knew that it would redefine the medium for the next century. It was a risk, not a product of "the formula." Today, HBO (and everyone else) is much less likely to make such a big risk.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:58 AM on April 27 [3 favorites]

I think one problem with a lot of writing is that it's based on visuals which means world-building and character building are dumped in the service of a "great scene." And actors are more involved than ever - TV and movies - which means you have a movie that is structured to allow Superstars A and B both the all the great scenes they want. And 90% of the notion of "prestige TV" is productions values.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 12:53 PM on April 27

It has to be a very hard time to write episodic TV because the world is so much in flux.
posted by smelendez at 1:13 PM on April 27 [1 favorite]

It's a good point, but loses something in the observation at times.

Like, if you tell me that Poker Face is mid, you lose me a bit because it is so unapologetically episodic and committed to the mystery genre and the Colombo form of it. To accuse it of not being The Sopranos is to miss the train, IMO: there is a breath of fresh air here, if you are interested in taking it, but one that is predicated on the reality that The Sopranos is old now.

But there is a there there: prestige drama is the thing now, and there is a lot of comfy work being done in that format. Some of that is the economics and business structure of the new platforms (creators have far less power and are making far less money), but not all. I doubt that we can go back.
posted by billjings at 1:38 PM on April 27 [7 favorites]

I dunno, I feel like I've been hearing "Great TV is over, it used to be so much better just a few years ago" for a few decades.

And each year there are still new shows that make people fall over themselves trying to express how good they are.
posted by trig at 2:03 PM on April 27 [3 favorites]

All TV is middlebrow, except when it’s lowbrow. Middlebrow and lowbrow, if we’re going to use such outdated terms, aren’t about quality. They’re about the production and the work necessary to appreciate the aesthetic experience.

“Prestige TV” is compelling and has a strong point of view, while “Mid TV”, to use the term the writer is trying to make into a thing, is empty. Prestige TV has something to say, while Mid TV is empty.

While watching The Wire, I never once wondered why it existed. When watching Capote vs. the Swans, that was all I thought. Why does this exist and what was the thinking behind making James Baldwin Truman Capote’s imaginary friend. So baffling and terrible.

Additionally, there needs to be a name for NY Times trend pieces that exist to remind you that you haven’t yet finished Connections for the day.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:21 PM on April 27 [6 favorites]

Honestly my attraction to mid tv is that I never have put on subtitles for it because it is all about everything being extremely obvious so they don't fuck around with the sound like the auteurs do.
posted by srboisvert at 4:57 PM on April 27 [5 favorites]

I mean, when I watch modern shows I'm not seeing *any* fights in fancy supper clubs set to the tune of Les Toreadors. And you call this "mid" ... ?
posted by credulous at 5:02 PM on April 27 [2 favorites]

"It reminds you a little of something you once liked a lot."

This should have been the article. To me, this is the worst sin TV, film, and music can make. If you remind me of something better I'd rather be watching our otherwise enjoying, it's over, you're done.

Fading photocopies is how a creative industry dies. Min-maxing ROE for streaming that is obsessed with individual shows in a way cable never was is only going to result in a kind of indistinct grey product. When Netflix first decided to greenlight everything, there was a backlog of great ideas that couldn't get traction in the old media. The gold rush is over and now it's just shovels all the way down.

Sure, the big names can get it right every so often, mostly by accident. Innovation has moved on. I couldn't tell you where, I guess I'll know when it leaks into the mainstream again.
posted by krisjohn at 5:18 PM on April 27 [4 favorites]

I think, like most popular art, there has always been "mid" stuff that rounds out the TV schedule, is on screens 21 through 25 at the multiplex, and keeps the radio station from being the same eight songs over and over.

The thing is the mid stuff doesn't get remembered. In hindsight you only remember the really good, and a few of the really bad. So you only think there was more better stuff and bad stuff, and it's hard to see the current good through the mid forest.

The mid, on the other hand, is what pays for the whole industry. It's where up and coming actors, directors, cinematographers cut their teeth. You may complain that it's not your thing, but you don't get the good stuff without mid paying the bills.

Edit: I guess that's kind of what the article was saying, but I don't think their definition of mid is a problem, it's the way it always has been
posted by AzraelBrown at 5:34 PM on April 28 [1 favorite]

IMO there are lots of 'mid' shows made because nobody has any idea what the good stuff is and barely has any ideas of what the bad stuff is. I would even describe The Sopranos as a Godfather ripoff, except as episodic tv, and the kids were terrible actors. Was The Sopranos good because people generally like watching mafia movies, or was it actually good?

I think, like most popular art, there has always been "mid" stuff that rounds out the TV schedule, is on screens 21 through 25 at the multiplex, and keeps the radio station from being the same eight songs over and over.

I can't really cotton to this definition because most of the most popular stuff is extremely 'mid'. If we're going by ratings, people like football way better than any TV show, and the Big Bang Theory (last tv show with high ratings) is way better than The Sopranos.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:56 AM on April 29 [2 favorites]

. I would even describe The Sopranos as a Godfather ripoff, except as episodic tv, and the kids were terrible actors.

Robert Iler and Jamie-Lynn Sigler are incredible actors, they did so much great work on The Sopranos. Robert in the last season is absolutely stunning.

I don't see much connection to the Godfather either, to be honest. It's much more about the pedestrian bits of being a mafia guy.

Oh and the show is actually good. My opinion, and millions more, of course.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:07 PM on April 29 [1 favorite]

At least if a movie is “mid” it only lasts for 2 hours or so.

Ooh, while we're excoriating the imperfections of modern video entertainment can we also bring back the notion that 105 minutes is about the sweet spot for anything that isn't a grand, sweeping epic? I feel like the once the average film length crept above two hours, films started getting generally bloated.
posted by jackbishop at 3:37 AM on April 30 [2 favorites]

I haven't watched Cloud Atlas, for example, because it's ridiculously long. I can barely keep it together for a standard Kdrama episode at 70 minutes or so. Three hours? C'mon. At least there used to be intermissions where the story had a natural pause and you could go pee and refill the popcorn.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:24 AM on April 30

I think we're blaming the victim, here, the TV output is skewed by deranged business drivers (vertically-integrated studios and streaming delivery, a lack of 'watercooler moments' and adjustments needed for a global pandemic, a writers' strike and upcoming end-of-democracy election season) and bizarre inferences about what viewers want (which must be misusing the vast amounts of user tracking data to further some Exec Producer's career and not find untapped demand) and the people with power to direct what gets made facing little-to-no-accountability for playing mid.

I guess an example worth looking into is Patricia Arquette's High Desert, a compelling and funny human drama which features a family rebuilding itself around Arquette's character, who is recovering from opioid addiction and becoming a P.I. The story flowed, the characters were likeable and had enough depth that it's a shame there won't be another season learning more about them. Which metrics were used to justify that decision? Who got the money instead, and would I enjoy getting to know these other characters as much as Arquette's?

Some of the following might have been played on a side screen while doing chores. I've enjoyed:
Pantheon (humans upload intelligence, conflict ensues -- AMC+ / might need help from 'the high seas')
Monsieur Spade (Clive Owen plays a Sam Spade who's retired to a quiet life in France, his past follows him there -- AMC+)
The Fall of the House of Usher (pastiche of Poe's stories, the future is a raven evermore-ing a human face -- Netflix)
The Last of Us, Pt 1 (North America returns to lawlessness because of a meat-replacement flavour of zombie -- HBO)
Fallout (North America returns to lawlessness after corporations distil the right amount of nostalgic 1950's Americana to farm human life in controlled underground bunkers -- Amazon)
Obliterated (Las Vegas returns to lawlessness when a mixed team from across clandestine services party hard thinking that they're off duty and have foiled the detonation a suitcase-size nuclear bomb. Sudden shocking sobriety ensues -- Netflix)
Our Flag Means Death (a toff attempts to join piratical lawlessness to fulfil his childhood dreams, and it's much better than he dreamed -- Disney+)
Slow Horses (British contempt for British civil servants persists as we follow the dregs of the Security Service, those who failed down or were noticeable liabilities, to Gary Oldman's spa for broken spooks -- Apple TV+)
Poker Face (Whatever Columbo did, Natasha Lyonne does backwards and in kickass boots. I grew up with mid-afternoon detective mysteries, so this earns cozy nostalgia while also showing precarious employment, the best friend of Lyonne's character murdered for knowing too much and Lyonne's character going on the run from people who want to kill her -- HBO)
posted by k3ninho at 10:00 AM on May 1 [2 favorites]

"old spa for broken British spooks" uh is there a Lotus Seven in the title sequence
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:06 AM on May 1

It's a spa in the sarcastic sense: it's a wasteland. (There's no Lotus in the title credits but one character drives a Proton, which is a crap British car made in partnership with Lotus when they were resurrected by Malaysian investment, before they died again and were resurrected by Chinese investment.)
posted by k3ninho at 1:30 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]