Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

There’s great TV and there is GREAT TV! Studio 60 is so much in the latter category it’s scary but it’s got me wondering how on earth it could have been cancelled after just one season? And likewise how come it got such a mauling by the media?

So Studio 60 for the uninitiated (go out and buy the DVD set now) is Aaron Sorkin’s follow up to the greatest TV show ever (The West Wing). The only reasons I can come up with for the cancellation are the following:

1) Those who criticised it / cancelled it never watched it
2) Those who did watch it and cancelled it anyway found it a little too much of a fuck you from Sorkin to the big machine of US network television
3) They don’t like intelligent television
4) They didn’t like Sorkins politics
5) They just pure and simple didn’t get it
6) OR and I have to concede this one – just not enough people watched. A damning indictment of the state of US television. Roll on the next series of “I Married a Millionaire”, “Police Stop Action” and 24 Season Infinity!

So before I say too much more I guess I have to give a précis of what Studio 60 is all about. So the whole concept of the show is that it basically tracks the behind the scenes goings on of a US Comedy Show that is basically a doppelganger for Saturday Night Live. When we enter the story in the pilot the previous writer/director hijacks the show on air after the network president bans him from telling an inflammatory anti-religious joke on the show. During his highjack he bemoans the state of modern television and buries the production values of the show, the network and the American nation. After sharing that the old producer is duly sacked and the newly appointed president of the channel recruits two old members of the team Matt Albie (Matt Perry) and Danny Trip (Bradley Whitford) who it turns out, were the original writers of the anti-christian sketch that was banned from the air and caused this whole mess in the first place! The show carries on from that fairly wild premise, blessed with a fantastic array of great actors and well drawn characters to explore the emotional spaghetti of this high pressure creative environment. And that is just the backdrop for Sorkin to explore his favourite subject: the discussion and exploration of what is right and just. Along the way he also manages to riff on subjects ranging from race, religion, the morality of the Iraq War, drug addiction, and what constitutes good tv. Add to that a little romance and the trademark smartest dialogue you’ll ever hear in a TV program and you start to get a feel for the richness of the work. If Bob Dylan is musics answer to Shakespeare, then Sorkin is TV’s Bob Dylan. Basically he’s the opposite of dumbed down TV (would that make it dump up TV???).

Despite loving every minute I’ve watched so far the show is not completely faultless in much the same way that Dylan’s voice can’t really be described as Operatic. His dialogue is, it has to be said, unrealistic. The sheer intelligence of it gives everyone the ability to wise crack like Raymond Chandler. And as a result every character is just so smart and so damn likable you can’t help but end up thinking gee I wish life was really like that. So if anything Sorkin’s palette of characters can lack variety. Thinking back through all the episodes of the West Wing and Studio 60 so far I cant think of any character who’s occupied any serious amount of screen time who can be described as dark, sinister etc. Considering the two series we are talking about play in the rather murky domains of TV and politics you might reflect that’s quite surprising. It’s not like you’d have to stretch your imagination too far to imagine such characters!

So the show is some sort of hyper- view of reality. Hyper what I’m just trying to figure out. Thinking about it the best I can come up with is hyper aspirational. It’s like both the people and the environment are what you wish they would be. And for me aspiration is a word and concept that is loaded with power, positivity and most of all hope. And what more powerful force for change is there in the world other than hope?