There isn’t a whole lot going on in the movie world this weekend. The Superpowered Pet Express, or whatever that movie was called, slinked into first place with 25 million dollars. In a somewhat surprising development, “Nope” only dropped 58% from its inaugural weekend. Some thought, with the weak word of mouth, it would dip as much as 70%. Maybe the film is better than I gave it credit for.
The lack of movie excitement gave me an opportunity to take in the TV landscape, more specifically the rapidly rising popularity of showrunners. Now I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say Shonda Rhimes, Taylor Sheridan, and and Eric Kripke have supplanted the names of Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and James Cameron. But people are definitely becoming more familiar with those names. And it seems like when all these splashy directors retire, their namesake in popular culture will not be replaced by new movie directors, but rather by showrunners.
This got me thinking about how big the current TV space is. Some days it seems like there are more TV shows than there are people to watch them. And because there are so many shows, only a select few rise to the top and become what I refer to as, “The Talked About.”
“The Talked About” are the shows that have found a footprint in public discourse. Movie sites write articles about them. Reddit creates subreddits about them. Content creators vlog about them. These shows are hash-tagging their a$$es all the way around Twitter. And, of course, most importantly, when you see the show yourself, you want to tell a friend about it.
“The Talked About” shows are not to be confused with the critical darlings or shows that get a ton of Emmy nominations, even though you’ve never heard to them. A good example would be that show Ramy, on Hulu. It won an Emmy even though not a single person was aware the show existed (which the creator admitted in his acceptance speech). Side note: Go watch one episode of that show and you’ll know exactly why critics loved it despite it being overwhelmingly average. We’ll leave it at that.
I admit this even for shows I loved. I thought “Devs” was great. But I’ll be the first to admit that it was not talked about other than the times I talked about it to myself. I don’t think Severance is a talked about show. I don’t think Hacks is a talked about show. I don’t even think personal favorite, The White Lotus, is a talked about show. The TV landscape is littered with shows like this.
See
The Wheel of Time
Big Sky
Virgin River
Equalizer
New Amsterdam
Loot
The Stand
Lost in Space
The Wilds
The Gilded Age
Foundation
Life and Beth
Invasion
Irma Vep
Good Girls
Physical
The Orville
Outer Range
Night Sky
Our Flag Means Death
I’m not saying you can’t personally like these shows. I’m just telling you that nobody, and I mean nobody, talks about these shows. Meanwhile, you have “The Talked About.”
Only Murders in the Building
The Boys
Squid Game
Game of Thrones
Umbrella Academy
Stranger Things
Euphoria
You
Ozark
Barry
Yellowstone
Ted Lasso
Better Call Saul
Succession
Peaky Blinders
Fleabag
Cobra Kai
Billions
Killing Eve
Big Little Lies
The Handmaid’s Tale
Bridgerton
What We Do In The Shadows
Normal People
Riddle me this: What are shows like Ted Lasso, Billions, and Euphoria, doing that shows like Foundation, Outer Range, and Virgin River are not?
To understand this, you need to break these “talked about” shows down into two categories. Big-budget and Normal Budget. Big Budget would be shows like The Boys, Squid Game, Stranger Things, and Peaky Blinders. Normal Budget would be shows like Barry, You, Euphoria, Cobra Kai, and Better Call Saul.
When it comes to Normal Budget, the formula seems to be, first and foremost, create a really interesting main character. The best bet appears to be a “bad” character who does bad things who we still like, usually because they’re taking on even worse people. Barry, You, and Better Call Saul fall under this category. Even the goofy Cobra Kai is built on this premise, as it celebrates the character of Johnny, a “bad” karate instructor who teaches his students how to defeat “even worse” karate students.
If you’re going low budget and don’t have a standout character, you need to add something to the plot to counter-balance this hole. I’d argue that neither Only Murders In The Building or Big Little Lies had stand out characters. But Murders is built around an intriguing mystery and Big Little Lies is a thriller constructed around a woman trying to escape a marriage. Both shows have genre components that help keep the plot zipping along.
From there, we move into the comedy space, and that’s where it’s harder to pinpoint what makes a show stand out. Ted Lasso is definitely an outlier in that the main character is the nicest guy in the world and endlessly optimistic. Usually shows have main characters with issues that they need to overcome. So I confess I don’t know why that show is popular other than people find it funny. Both What We Do In the Shadows and Fleabag are also really funny, each in different ways. Although I might slide Fleabag into the same category as Barry, Better Call Saul and You in that the main character is heavily flawed, yet we still want to see them succeed.
And Euphoria and Normal People are also outliers in that they cover extremely familiar territory (high school and romance) but do so with unique directing flairs that make them stand out. Euphoria goes deeper into the underbelly of high school than any other high school show you’ve seen. And Normal People is much rawer, and therefore realistic, than any young romance show.
Things get more complicated once you move into these bigger shows. But one thing that pops out at me immediately is that many of these shows embrace a, “We’re not going to sugarcoat s#@t” attitude. The shows aren’t afraid to kill characters off. They’re not afraid to say controversial things. They’re not afraid to be risky or unpredictable. Squid Game falls under this category. Game of Thrones does, especially the early seasons. The Boys. Succession. Billions. It’s been a while since I saw The Handmaid’s Tale, but it felt like that show embraced that mantra as well.
One of the things that’s surprised me in the last five years is how much audiences love a great period TV show. They love that big budget high production value period setting. Yellowstone, Peaky Blinders, The Queen’s Gambit. The more authenticity you can bring to these shows, the better. Audiences really want to live in these worlds. So you can’t half-a$$ your research. The Queen’s Gambit team had been trying to make that project for 15 years. They knew every single thing about that time and place so that when it was time to make the series, it felt authentic.
Then you have shows like Stranger Things and The Umbrella Academy which seem to be outliers in that I don’t think they exist in any clear genre. I’ve honestly never met anyone who’s seen The Umbrella Academy. But it’s definitely a talked about show on social media. I suspect that may be because the media really wants it to succeed. But Stranger Things, man…. I don’t know if there’s anything to learn about this show. It’s like Lost – the ultimate “caught lightning in a bottle” show. Remember how every single showrunner in Hollywood created a Lost knockoff and they all failed? That’s what I mean by “lightning in a bottle.”
I’m curious what you think the reason for Stranger Things’ success is and if it can be replicated. Because I don’t think it can be.
The big thing that inspired today’s post was hearing so much about this season of The Boys that I decided to give it another go. I want to see what it is about the show that makes it so “talk-worthy.” So don’t be surprised if you get a few “Boys” articles in the near future.
