Thinky Thoughts

[thornyrose42]

 So Torchwood and Torchwood reactions inspired more thoughts.

 

Torchwood Fandom has exploded. As far as I can tell for my little safe bomb proof corner over here the fandom seems to be split mainly between the people who were in it for Jack and Ianto, canonical gay, stopwatches and al,l and those who well, weren't. Actually it seems that the less emotionally invested in Torchwood and the fandom you were the more you enjoyed the series. I was lucky as I hadn't even watched most of the previous two seasons and had been living vicariously through people's reaction posts thus I was quite happy to watch five hours of gripping TV drama and not worry about the fact that this does seem to be Torchwood's swan-song.

 

I've seen some comments to the effect that they don't understand a) the character death and b) why RTD is basically killing of Torchwood just when it is doing so well and after only three seasons. I saw one comment that basically said that she would understand CoE being placed four seasons down the line but couldn't work out why RTD would use this story now.

 

Well for me a lot of this can be explained by the difference between American and British telly. 

 

Fawlty Towers, officially the best British TV program ever according to the British Film Institute who created a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programs in 2000, ran for a total of two seasons each containing six episodes. Fawlty Towers is often held up as the example which all other series should follow, it is cited when a series does pull to a close while still on top form and when the quality of a series begins to peter out critics start making snide remarks about how they should have "got out while the going was good". We also have a tendency to be snippy about long running American TV shows possibly due to jealousy :) the Radio Times’s reviews of season five of House have mentioned the words “tired formula” about ten times so far. Series as a whole just don't have as many episodes or last for as long in Britain as they do in America. (Even the American series that get canceled before their time often have more episodes than a successful British TV series.) This is obviously due to different levels of funding, management etc etc and it doesn't mean that we aren't disappointed when a favourite TV series stops (witness my mum upon hearing that both Robin Hood and Primeval had been canceled after their third seasons) but it does mean that we are a lot more used to it and perhaps more willing to accept it.

 

The same goes for character death. Our shows just have more of it. British actors have shorter contracts and the shows are written and shot in their entirety before the show airs. Thus you just don’t get the comfort of knowing that the only place a main character can die is in the finale and with a suitably dramatic death scene. Spooks is a prime and extreme example of this. The show has run for an unusually long time for a British production partly because the cast changes all the time. In fact there is only one original cast member left the rest having left or been killed in a variety of unpleasant ways. Although as astrogirl2  pointed out to me the American shows are getting more ruthless Lost and SCC being the obvious examples.

 

There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods of producing TV series (both being preferable to the reality TV that we get all too much of now) but they are ultimately different methods of production with a different set of values behind them. I guess that RTD and the Torchwood  gang would just prefer in ten years time to look back on five hours of quality television rather than five seasons of ok television.  

 

Comments

Re: Alsoalsoalso,

[thornyrose42.livejournal.com]

Kind of. I'm sort of hoping that I'm going to be able to go and see the movie as a movie rather than an extension of the book. I actually saw the trailer and for a second couldn't remember whether or not the Burrow had caught fire in the book. Which bodes well. But of course I will probably still spend the movie going, "That didn't happen in the book, neither did that... WHY DOESN"T THAT WEREWOLF HAVE FUR???!!!!!"

And then all will be as it was.