At the same time I was planning the post on “classic” TV, I read a film review by Stanley Kauffmann in TNR. It begins this way:
Reviewing a recent film based on a television series, Michael Wood wrote, “What TV doesn’t seem to need is a world.” When directors want to make television series into movies, he wrote, “they mean, among other things, that they want to create a world, a location which is a kind of character.”
This was a throwaway line, as Kauffmann went on to cite two new movies that do create worlds: Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles and Le Petit Lieutenant. But I couldn’t get past this point. All I could think of were arguments against this charge.
Did he mean that films often were more likely to feel like they took place in this world, or at least in a 360° fictional world? TV shows are often staged on limited sets, so they can sometimes feel a little claustrophobic. No, I think he means the way that Monument Valley can be an additional character in some films of John Ford.
Doesn’t this also describe the Manhattan of Law & Order? The city of Baltimore in The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street? More narrowly, what about the emergency room of Chicago’s County General Hospital? The characters of ER come and go, but the setting is a constant.
What about towns, like Star’s Hollow on Gilmore Girls or Neptune on Veronica Mars?
What about Dunder Mifflin, Inc., a paper company located in Scranton, PA? Or a mysterious island somewhere in the South Pacific?
Maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe I’m coming up with bad examples. What do you think?
Tags: TV, Law & Order, The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Street, ER, Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, The Office, Lost