HBO has a knack for broadcasting award winning television shows. It is the place to be for any writer, producer or actor. Shows like True Blood and Game of Thrones have demonstrated the potential a book series can have on a television audience. With the right people they can be developed into captivating 12 part seasons and engross a wide audience across many areas of the world.
Ginia Bellafante’s review in the New York Times claims …the network ventures away from its instincts for real-world sociology, as it has with the vampire saga “True Blood,” things start to feel cheap, and we feel as though we have been placed in the hands of cheaters. What Bellafante does not understand is that HBO has shown that it is a channel of diversity and unique shows that you just don’t see in everyday television. It’s where creativity thrives and enables people to really expand their imaginations and turn away from the usual reality based television that people are far too used to. There will however always be those who just like plain old drama, romantic comedy or the unusual sci-fi fantasy genres.
Popularity of a show comes and goes. While the initial viewers of a show may not be increasingly high in time the show can boost in numbers. Take for example True Blood. It hardly had a booming popularity until the first season came out on DVD and slowly to other countries. I personally had never heard of the show until the posters started popping up at sanity etc. after its release in Australia. Once the word spread around that this was a new sort of television show and it had the HBO name tagged to it people became progressively more attuned to the true blood world. Now in its fifth season the show has become one of the most popular television shows in the last few years.
The thing with different, unique shows is that the corporate side have a nasty way of cancelling them due to the complicated narratives and just out of this world places. Take Joss Whedon’s Firefly television show. After the successful Buffy and Angel series it was a shock to see that the world was not completely taking off with the Whedon universe. While it indeed had a big fan base the viewer ratings were not that good in FOX’s eyes. So the show was cancelled before the first season was even finished. The retaliation from fans showed that once again fox has no idea what is good and what is bad. Whedon gave FOX the middle finger and brought the show to the big screen with the $ 40, 000, 000 budgeted film Serenity. It did reasonably well. After Dollhouse, another television show that didn’t quite make it Whedon actually got a big time roll of writing and directing the big blockbuster movie The Avengers which has been claimed as the best super hero movie of all time. So popularity vs. Taste can be a very foggy topic, just because someone watches it does not always mean it’s good.
Film and Television Appreciation 