Remote Patrolled - TV - From a producer's point of view » HALL OF FAME

Hall Of Fame: The West Wing

Richard Drew — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:58:44 +0000

It’s time for another Hall Of Fame entry here at Remote Patrolled, a strand we haven’t run for a while given all the new Fall TV Shows!

This time around we’re talking The West Wing, the groundbreaking NBC drama that ran for 7 seasons from 1999 to 2006, back in the days when the Peacock network was still capable of producing great shows!

The West Wing is one of those series that’s remembered fondly by a generation of TV viewers for a whole host of reasons. Foremost among them though was that it was smart. And honestly, smart TV doesn’t come along all that often.

Just like ER before it, The West Wing established its own style of dialogue and pacing. Who can forget all those one-shot walk and talks around the White House, as characters discussed complex policy matters and foreign affairs? The West Wing was one of those shows where you really had to work to keep up with what was going on. Often I wouldn’t fully understand a storyline until halfway through an episode. Put it this way – we’re not exactly talking Keeping Up With The Kardashians here!

Like all great TV, The West Wing was fresh and different. A series following the working lives of the people who work for the President wasn’t something viewers had seen before. As I’ve said many times before here on the site, viewers are attracted to shows that are original – whether it’s The West Wing or True Blood or Heroes or Glee. Sure you strike out from time to time (The Playboy Club) but for me that’s one of the most exciting aspects of the industry – you never know where the next big hit will come from.

The West Wing was anchored by Martin Sheen as Josiah ‘Jed’ Bartlett, the President we all wish we had. Bartlett was virtuous and passionate and a good man who sometimes had to make unfortunate compromises for the greater good. But through it all you believed he was trying to do the right thing for his country.

But the West Wing wasn’t just a one-man show – Sheen was surrounded by a team of great cast members who collectively elevated the quality of the show. There was Rob Lowe as impassioned Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn, doubtless intended as the original star of the show, who later became more of an ensemble character (which explains Lowe’s early departure from the series); Bradley Whitford as the cocky and sarcastic Josh Lyman, doted on by his quick fire assistant Donna Moss (Janel Maloney); Fearsome First Lady Abigail Bartlett (Stockard Channing); and my favorite of all – Press Secretary C.J. Cregg (Alison Janney). Who didn’t love C.J. with her snappy one-liners, intelligence and drive. It was a dream role for Janney and one of those characters who become a joy to watch each and every week. The only weak link in the casting? Dule Hill as Personal Aide Charlie Young, a dull actor in a thankless role that didn’t add anything to the series.

Over its 7 seasons The West Wing ran the gamut of storylines from Presidential assassination attempts to budget battles to re-election campaigns and hirings and firings. At times the show could be tough going – and if you weren’t a fan of politics the West Wing wasn’t the show for you – but mostly this was superior appointment TV. Central to the success of the West Wing of course was show creator Aaron Sorkin, famous for his trademark rapid-fire dialogue and to me one of the most talented guys in Hollywood. Sorkin wrote virtually every episode of the first four seasons and his departure from the series marked the beginning of the end. Seriously Sorkin should have a green-light at every studio in town!

Over the course of its run The West Wing won 26 Emmy Awards, including 4 nods for Best Drama. At its peak the show averaged over 17 million viewers in its Wednesday at 9pm timeslot. Nowadays NBC pulls in 7 million for Harry’s Law in the same slot – and that’s their HIGHEST rated series currently on air!

If you never watched The West Wing – well let’s just say that’s what box sets were created for! And let’s just hope NBC don’t resort to their usual remaking antics and leave the show well enough alone. You really don’t want, or need, to meddle with a show as good as The West Wing…

But what about you? Were you a West Wing fan? Who was your favorite character? And do you badly miss the show now that it’s no longer on air…

Hall Of Fame: Melrose Place

Richard Drew — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:52:25 +0000

It’s been a while since we last inducted a classic TV show into our Remote Patrolled Hall Of Fame, so I thought it was time to select another honoree – and this time around it’s one of my favorite slices of soap opera silliness, Melrose Place!

I am of course referring to the ORIGINAL Melrose Place, which ran from 1992 – 1999 on Fox, NOT the dreadful CW remake from last year. Boy, was that a misfire in every way. Shot like a music video with a non-stop soundtrack and with a far too young cast, Melrose 2.0 was everything the original wasn’t – charmless, over-calculated and bland.

But oh how I loved the original Melrose. At the time I was still living in England when the show hit and had to catch episodes on Sky One in the UK, a minimally watched cable network which insured that Melrose never really took off in Britain the way it did overseas. I think I was one of the few people following the show, so I couldn’t exactly discuss the plotlines around the watercooler! And of course this was in the pre-internet age…

As you doubtless know, Melrose Place was originally conceived as a spin off from Fox’s own Beverly Hills 90210, and in the early days the show stuck to the worthy but sometimes dull tone of that high school drama. The result – Melrose was almost canned after its first year. But as the series developed the plotlines got soapier and soapier. Great move!

If you’ve never seen the show, it’s not exactly hard to get your head around the premise. Set in an LA apartment complex, Melrose followed the lives of a group of twenty and thirty-somethings as they flirted and fought with one another and endured a series of increasingly insane storylines. Originally, there was Billy and Alison, the show’s sweet golden couple. Matt, the token gay, at a time when featuring a homosexual character was a brave move for a show (Matt also had one of the first gay kisses in primetime which Fox censored!). Dr Michael Mancini and his fashion designer wife Jane. Jake, the bad boy hunk with a big motorcycle. And later Jo Reynolds, a photographer who moved into the apartment complex to escape her abusive husband.

Melrose originally also featured Rhonda and Sandy in season one – but both characters were later jettisoned in the first year to make way for a slew of new troublemakers who shook the show up and took it in a new direction. There was Jane’s sister Sydney, the flame haired bad girl who fell for Michael and famously fought with her sister in the Melrose swimming pool (while wearing their grandmother’s wedding dress – how camp is that!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then there was Amanda Woodward – played to delicious bitch perfection by Heather Locklear – who split up Alison and Billy, slept with Jake and caused all manner of problems as the new owner of the Melrose apartments.

But my favorite character on the show had to be Dr Kimberly Shaw, aka Marcia Cross – making headlines years before she became Desperate Housewives Bree Van Der Kamp. Kimberley had an affair with Michael and then supposedly died in a car crash. But Shaw came back, with a metal plate in her skull and not quite firing on all cylinders. Kim caused a whole lot of trouble including the show’s best – and most ludicrous – moment, where she placed explosives under the Melrose apartments and blew up the entire cast at the end of Season 4!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yep, Melrose place was totally absurd – and that’s why I loved it. Characters were abducted by religious cults, hit by cars (on their wedding day!), shot, drowned and electrocuted and constantly bed-hopped. It was everything a prime time soap should be. And yet, strangely enough, Melrose never took on the full absurdity of the daytime soaps. Yes it was a crazy show – but the show stuck to its own warped sense of reality. Plus the production values remained high, a far cry from the stilted awkwardness and budgetary restrictions of daytime.

I stuck with Melrose pretty much until the end, by which point Sky One had started to schedule the show erratically in the UK and it was a nightmare to find. And to be honest the show had reached the end of its run and needed to be retired. I was actually excited by the idea of rebooting the show but the new version aired on the wrong network (it should have been a Fox or ABC show) and the producers seemed to have no idea what made the original special in the first place. Killing off Sydney so early in the revamped run was the first of many mistakes.

Oh well, we’ll always have the memories. Melrose was great, delicious fun and made TV a heck of a lot more entertaining back in the 1990’s. Welcome to our Hall Of Fame guys!

But what about all of you out there? Were you a Melrose fan? Why did you love the show? Who was your favorite character – and plot? Start those comments coming…

HALL OF FAME: WILL AND GRACE

Richard Drew — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:27:07 +0000

Hey everyone – it’s Hall of Fame time again. And this week we’re not going too far back – in fact this show only finished its run in 2006.

I’m talking about Will and Grace, the straight girl / gay guy comedy that was pretty much the last gasp success of NBC’s once triumphant Thursday comedy block.

As a proud member of the gay community I remember being extremely excited about Will and Grace months before it launched, really hoping the show’s producers would get the mix right and deliver a show that was both laugh out loud funny and representative of gay life (and gay / female friendships). And by and large they did. Will and Grace made me laugh – a lot – but it also struck home with me in a way that other network sitcoms like Friends and Frasier never did.

For most of its run Will and Grace delivered belly laughs week after week. Will was neurotic and anal. Grace was flighty, impulsive and clumsy. Together actors Eric McCormack and Debra Messing just zinged off one another. No wonder the two remain friends in real life – you can’t fake chemistry like that. Their relationship was so real and heartwarming – and on a personal level it reminded me of my own ‘Grace’ back in London – who also happens to be an interior designer (and I am kind of anal!)

Of course Will and Grace wasn’t just a two-header show. The show struck comic gold with its two co-leads, Sean Hayes’ Jack and Megan Mullally’s Karen. Jack played the bitchy, shallow queen to the straight acting Will – but the character was always likable and funny even at his worst (take note Glee producers – this is how Kurt SHOULD be!) And as for Karen – well she was just a force of nature. Rude, bullying, snappy and always fabulous – she said the most outrageous things year after year and was pretty much a guaranteed laugh-fest every time she opened her mouth.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When the four leads appeared together the show was truly comedy gold. Remember the episode where Karen’s husband Stan ended up in hospital and her friends placed bets on who she would be the first to break down to? Or the funeral where Jack and Karen had to go cold turkey on coffee and booze? Or that fantastic Sound of Music episode in the final season?

Of course Will and Grace wasn’t perfect. The show eventually bore the brunt of a rotating roster of guest stars imposed by the NBC bosses. Some were terrific – Matt Damon scored major laughs in his appearance and Minnie Driver was terrific as the recurring Lorraine Finster. But many celebrities just appeared for street cred or to plug their latest movie – remember Madonna’s underwhelming guest spot or Josh Lucas or Sharon Osbourne’s blink and you’ll miss it appearance.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And then there was that last episode in which Will and Grace fell out and didn’t speak for almost 18 years, before finally reuniting at the end of the show. I remember being so angry by this finale and the careless way it treated its characters. For 8 seasons we’d become invested in Will and Grace’s friendship – and to see that relationship casually tossed aside was heartbreaking. Plus it effectively killed off any potential TV movie reunion down the line. Just ridiculous.

But overall Will and Grace will always retain a place in my heart as a true TV classic. Gay characters on TV were so few and far between before the show debuted and a year earlier, when Ellen came out, it effectively torpedoed her self-titled sitcom. For years Hollywood had assumed that a gay lead would be the death of a show. But Will and Grace’s 8 seasons and numerous awards – all four of the main cast would go on to win Emmys – proved how wrongheaded that notion was. Now we have many more gays on network TV – Kurt (Glee), Cameron and Mitchell (Modern Family), Bob and Lee (Desperate Housewives), Kevin and Scotty (Brothers and Sisters), Teddy (90210) and many more if you head to cable. I think Will and Grace played a huge part in this evolution…

So welcome to our Hall of Fame, Will and Grace – and thanks for all the laughs. And here’s a few reminder of some of those great moments…

Click here to view the embedded video.

HALL OF FAME: TWIN PEAKS

Richard Drew — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:48:41 +0000

It’s time to induct another show into our Remote Patrolled Hall of Fame and this week it’s another old favorite from my teenage years – David Lynch’s evocative and disturbing murder mystery, Twin Peaks.

Peaks launched in 1990 on ABC, though as usual us Brits got the show a little further down the line. I remember watching the show on BBC2 in the UK, on a small portable TV in my bedroom – the series was certainly not my parents’ sort of show! I was 16 at the time and in love with all things Americana. And of course I was instantly hooked on this bizarre depiction of small town USA.

Let’s be honest, Twin Peaks was one very strange show! At the time I knew little about David Lynch but Peaks was unlike anything else on TV. I mean how many other shows featured a character like the Log Lady, a woman with a pet log that she conversed with – or malevolent spirits possessing people’s bodies. And then there was the show’s pacing (slow!) and frequently improvised style. It really was totally unique. But while the show could come off as kooky, most of all it was disturbing. Twin Peaks has to be one of the darkest TV shows in history, especially with the appearance of the terrifying Killer Bob further down the line. I’m still rather amazed the series made it to network TV…

Click here to view the embedded video.

At its heart Twin Peaks was a twisted soap opera, gradually unpeeling the layers of secrets within a northern small town where everyone led a double life. I’m a sucker for a good soap opera and Peaks was therefore exactly my kind of show. I remember being obsessed with all the show’s secrets, affairs and blackmail plots – as were many of my school friends. Twin Peaks was water cooler TV, even before we knew what a water cooler was!

At the time I remember just how much of a pop culture phenomena the show became. For a brief moment in the early 90’s, Lara Flynn Boyle, Madchen Amick and most notably, Sherilyn Fenn were the hottest girls in Hollywood. It was presumed all would go on to huge movie or TV careers – and to be fair Boyle and Amick have worked consistently – but none ever regained their red-hot status again. I also remember buying the spin off book, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, and poring over it for clues. And everyone knows that haunting theme tune, Falling, by Julee Cruise…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course Twin Peaks is now also widely remembered for its short life. After it’s well received first season the show’s ratings dwindled in series 2 and Peaks was finally cancelled after a mere 30 episodes – although it did get one extra burst of life in the brief movie prequel, Fire Walk With Me.

The biggest problem for the show of course was that so much weight was given to the key questions of ‘Who Killed Laura Palmer’, the ‘angelic’ schoolgirl memorably found murdered and wrapped in plastic in the show’s first episode. Ultimately Twin Peaks became a murder mystery and when that murder was solved, midway through the second season, the show had nowhere to go. In retrospect the show should have followed the Desperate Housewives route, a series that despite its sunnier tone shares a lot in common with Twin Peaks, and features a different mystery each season.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But in a bizarre way Peaks short life was probably for the best. Now the show is fondly remember as a cult classic. If it had continued maybe it would have become more conventional, more contrived, and ultimately more compromised.

Yet even though Twin Peaks didn’t last long the show’s legacy still persists today – just look at ABC’s similarly themed Happy Town (which died a death earlier this year). In a way the show was way ahead of its time, a cable series before cable was really ready. Nowadays I could absolutely see the show enjoying a long life on AMC, HBO or FX.

But no worries, we’ll always have the memories. And lots of cherry pie and coffee… so for these reasons let’s welcome Twin Peaks into our Hall of Fame.

But what about you? Were you a Twin Peaks fan? How and where did you used to watch the show and what do you remember from the time? Start sharing your stories….

HALL OF FAME: THE GOLDEN GIRLS

Richard Drew — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 14:26:22 +0000

So here’s a new strand we’re going to be running on Remote Patrolled – our own Hall of Fame, where each week we’ll be inducting a different TV classic from over the years. First up – it’s The Golden Girls.

Yes, I know it’s an obvious choice and given that the series is still in constant reruns it feels like The Golden Girls never went away – but I can think of no better way to kick off our new feature than with a show that never fails to put a smile on my face, over 2 decades after it first began.

The Golden Girls ran on Saturday nights from 1985 – 1992 on NBC but I used to watch it on Channel Four in England. At the time I was just 12 years old – young enough for some of the humor to go over my head – but old enough to know that something adult was going on. It’s one of the things I loved about The Golden Girls – those ladies were dirty little minxes – and even now, all these years later, the humor retains its edge.

In fact The Golden Girls is one of those shows that for me hasn’t really aged. Sure the fashions look a tad dated now – it’s always hilarious to see the girls getting ready for a night out complete with glittery outfits and shoulder pads – but the essence of the show remains as fresh as ever.

And boy, were those women ahead of their time. Whether standing up for gay marriage (below) or debating artificial insemination, it’s amazing to me how modern the girl’s values were – and that we’re still debating some of these social issues today…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course none of this would matter if The Golden Girls wasn’t so darn funny. The show still makes me laugh now – who can’t help but smile at Rose’s doziness, Dorothy’s impatience, Sophia’s sly schemes and of course the glorious Blanche Devereaux, still my favorite of the fab four…

Click here to view the embedded video.

But I think for me the most endearing aspect of The Golden Girls was how it reframed the concept of growing old. In most TV shows and movies before – and since – being old was a miserable affair. Most single women over the age of 60 were portrayed as lonely, sad, sexless and tragic – ladies who pined for the past while their health slipped away.

But The Golden Girls gave us a new version of old age. Suddenly being old didn’t seem scary – it was fun – actually something to look forward to! These girls lived in a constant state of sunshine (literally) with wild escapades and adventures, blind dates and nights out and a cozy pastel hued home in Miami. Who wouldn’t want to spend their final years with firm friends like these?

So welcome to our Hall Of Fame you Golden Girls… a true classic in every sense of the word and a show that will truly never age…

But what do you think? Were you a Golden Girls fan first time around – or have you discovered it in later years? Who’s your favorite girl? And what do you think is the secret to the show’s success? Start weighing in…

Click here to view the embedded video.