The United States of Television: America In Primetime - BBC

Recently I've been watching this four part series called 'The United States of Television: America in Primetime' on the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p3hht . Each week it focused on different aspects of American Television and how it was effecting, as well as being effected by, changing cultures and society, using a couple of programmes a week as examples. These were discussed by writers and actors in these shows (and others) creating a rather an impressive league of guests. They highlighted different characters traits and roles in their worlds and how it reflected and helped change society and views.

I really enjoyed the series as it discussed and broke down elements of stories and characters and how they worked, which on further thought could be applied to other shows.

Episode Three focused on 'The Independent Woman' and illustrated the changes in women's portrayal on television. One show it spoke of was Nurse Jackie, a series I like a lot, and her character (played by Edie Falco). Nurse Jackie is a show with a complex character at the heart of it. We feel for Jackie and can see she's a good person, however she constantly does 'bad' things and battles a drug addiction that slowly spins her life out of control. This is a giant step from the 'wife' roll given to almost every women character in television from the past and illustrates how women are increasingly being seen as 3Dimensional characters with their own motives and desires that don't necessarily revolve around men and family.

The American In Primetime was very informative whilst simultaneously entertaining and has made me consider the depth of character a lot more. Recently I've been more and more interested in script and dialogue and motives between characters and this series has been very helpful in explaining why things, though in theory shouldn't be appealing to the audience, are. For example there is a discussion on the show 'Dexter' which follows the story of a serial killer but justifies the characters reasons for it and therefore in someway wins over an audience.