Quality television

At the dawn of the medium and in the Golden Age of Television in the 1950s, there had been complex dramas in the form of live anthology series each week such as Playhouse 90, Kraft Television Theater, Studio One, Goodyear Television Playhouse, and other such shows featuring writers along the lines of Rod Serling and Paddy Chayefsky who wrote stories about the human condition, often through a dark eye and a cynical or ironic outlook on life and social issues. These were live dramas broadcast for New York City 52 weeks with no hiatus, and such shows faded out of existence more and more with television dramas now being filmed in Los Angeles, California. However the essence and format of these dramas continued in the form of filmed anthology dramas such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. With anthology series now being filmed in Los Angeles, these shows were broadcast for 39 weeks with a hiatus in the summer.

The 1960s and 1970s gave rise to two complex narrative formats which would come to dominate the American television landscape decades later. The primetime serial (radio and television) with Peyton Place based on the Grace Metalious novel and the successful movie of the same name starring Lana Turner. It was the first American television series to feature a frank discussion of sexuality in dramatic storylines. It was also the first primetime series to adopt the more serialized character-driven approach to storytelling more often seen on daytime soap operas as opposed to the typical primetime series of the era which had a more episodic plot-driven nature.

The Fugitive was the first to introduce the concept of story arc and character arc, in spite of the show's episodic nature, with David Janssen playing Dr. Richard Kimble, a man on the run to prove his innocence and to reveal that a one-armed man was in fact his wife's killer. This led to a huge showdown in the final episode which resulted the broadcast being one of the most watched television programs of all time and the concept of a series finale becoming popular ratings grabbers instead of the previous method of using a clip show as a final episode. The Fugitive also spawned a feature film starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones (who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor) along with a short-lived remake of the series starring Timothy Daly.

The original Battlestar Galactica was perhaps one of the first dramatic series on American television to delve into a show mythology, long before Twin Peaks, Babylon 5, The X-Files, or Lost which involved mixing both serialized and episodic narratives in a regular television series. The premise involved a ragtag fleet of survivors from the now destroyed Twelve Colonies of Man fleeing an attack from a destructive cybernetic race called the Cylons, hoping for a utopian thirteenth colony called Earth. The series starred Lorne Greene of Bonanza fame. The series was cancelled after one season due to rising budget costs but spawned Galactica 1980 a year later, and a reimagined version of the series on The Sci Fi Channel which garnered much more recognition, critical acclaim, and a longer run than the original series or Galactica 1980. By this time, television series were 26 weeks per season with hiatuses now in both the summer and winter.

In the 1980s, both serials and story arcs made a comeback with hit primetime soaps Dallas, its spinoff Knots Landing, and their sister show Falcon Crest (all three series were produced at Lorimar) along with the Aaron Spelling–produced Dynasty; in spite of their mass appeal, campy nature, and sensationalism, these shows prompted more primetime dramas to use the serial format. Among these were dramas such as the Steven Bochco–produced shows Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, L.A. Law, and later NYPD Blue and Wiseguy. These latter dramas were known for their deep characterization and multiple narrative threads. These serialized dramas without the melodramatic trappings of a soap opera helped popularize the term story arc.

In the 1990s and 2000s, a new model of television storytelling began being used in some US television programs such as Oz and The Sopranos, and later on with shows such as The Wire and Six Feet Under for HBO which adopted a business model of producing 13-week dramas over the course of five years or so. This was a marked departure from traditional network dramas which would start with thirteen episodes at the beginning of the season with another back nine episodes to finish the season, and allowed these cable dramas to have a shot at succeeding by not cancelling them within a year, but concluding them before they moved past their prime. These shows were darker and occasionally more graphic than the typical network drama, establishing dramatic television on cable as a solid alternative to network television. In the years following the end of the run of The Wire, several colleges and universities such as Johns Hopkins, Brown University, and Harvard College have offered classes on The Wire in disciplines ranging from law to sociology to film studies.

Robert Thompson says quality television has the following characteristics:

• It must break the established rules of television and be like nothing that has come before.
• It is produced by people of quality aesthetic ancestry, who have honed their skills in other areas, particularly film.
• It attracts a quality audience.
• It succeeds against the odds, after initial struggles.
• It has large ensemble cast which allows for multiple plot lines.
• It has memory, referring back to previous episodes and seasons in the development of plot.
• It defies genre classification.
• It tends to be literary.
• It contains sharp social and cultural criticisms with cultural references and allusions to popular culture.
• It tends toward the controversial.
• It aspires toward realism.
• Finally, it is recognized and appreciated by critics, with awards and critical acclaim.[12]

Paul Buhle's review of Quality Popular Television[13] states that "high-culture critics almost uniformly considered films to be dreck until television—when they enshrined the cinema auteur. At the next stage...some television... [programs were] accorded the status of "art." Some British professors[14] and television writers argue that US television programming includes a number of quality shows. In April 2004, Janet McCabe (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Kim Akass (Manchester Metropolitan University) organized a conference on "American Quality Television" to examine the "particular strand of American television known as Quality TV" (e.g., St Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, thirtysomething, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ER, The Sopranos, Sex and the City and Six Feet Under).

The BBC’s television listings magazine, Radio Times had an article in 2002 which asked "Why can't Britain's long-running dramas be more like America's?". David Gritten argued that the "...cream of American TV now stands for real quality", because US television dramas have "...the edge in portraying a broad gamut of human experience" and they are "...fast-paced, complex, smart and beautifully written."

Kristin Thompson, in Storytelling in Film and Television,[15] argues that US television shows such as David Lynch's Twin Peaks series have "...a loosening of causality, a greater emphasis on psychological or anecdotal realism, violations of classical clarity of space and time, explicit authorial comment, and ambiguity." Thompson claims that series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and The Simpsons "...have altered long-standing notions of closure and single authorship", which means that "...television has wrought its own changes in traditional narrative form." Other television shows that have been called "art television," such as The Simpsons, use a "...flurry of cultural references, intentionally inconsistent characterization, and considerable self-reflexivity about television conventions and the status of the programme as a television show." Kristin Thompson compares David Lynch's film Blue Velvet and the television series Twin Peaks and "...asks whether there can be an "art television" comparable to the more familiar "art cinema."[16] An art film is typically a serious, noncommercial, independently made film that is aimed at a niche audience, rather than a mass audience. Film critics and film studies scholars typically define an "art film" using a "...canon of films and those formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films."

Jason Mittell, an associate professor of American studies and film and media culture at Middlebury College, notes that many of the innovative television programs of the past twenty years have come from creators who launched their careers in film, a medium with more traditional cultural cachet," such as David Lynch, Barry Levinson, Aaron Sorkin, Joss Whedon, Alan Ball, and J. J. Abrams.[17]

In the US, an organization called Viewers For Quality Television was formed in the 1980s to encourage the production and broadcasting of shows that the group argued were "quality television". The group polls their membership and builds consensus through a monthly newsletter. The group's founder, Dorothy Swanson, argued that "A 'quality show' is something we anticipate before and savor after. It focuses more on relationships than situations; it explores character, it enlightens, challenges, involves and confronts the viewer; it provokes thought and is remembered tomorrow. A quality show colors life in shades of grey."

For the group-supported comedy shows such as Frank's Place, Designing Women, or Brooklyn Bridge, and dramas such as ER, Murder One or NYPD Blue, the group's annual rankings were monitored by broadcast industry executives, as the rankings showed the preferences of the so-called "high demographic" programming that appeals to university-educated, higher-income television viewers, a niche audience that is sought out by advertisers.

As television shows become increasingly as popular as DVD rentals and purchases, media industries have been attempting to increase the "rewatchability" of programs. If a television program has a simple plot that can be understood in a single viewing, viewers will be less likely to want to purchase a DVD recording of this television show. However, if a show provides a complex narrative construction and richly detailed content, viewers will be more inclined to want to "rewatch episodes or segments to parse out complex moments."

As well, the "...rise of narrative complexity has also seen the rise in amateur television criticism, as sites like televisionwithoutpity.com have emerged to provide thoughtful and humorous commentaries on weekly episodes." According to Steven Johnson, narratively complex television shows provide viewers with a "cognitive workout" that can help to increase their "...problem-solving and observational" skills.