After Grog Blog: TURN UP THE VOLUMES

Stephen Matchett, in Saturday's Australian, writes about the literary nature of The Wire:

Literary classic, serially

ANYBODY who argues that television has helped destroy the great tradition of the novel is not paying enough attention to, well, TV, or at least to serial dramas.

This format, born on network TV, now has audiences independent of the networks.

Take The Wire, which has aired here on cable TV and is perhaps the most interesting example of the post-network world. Certainly this show uses the form of the TV drama, those 60-minute series (if you include the ads) that are broadcast at the same time every week and in which the same characters appear in stories that are entirely self-contained or form some sort of serialstory.

And, belatedly linked from last month's Age, Ken Nagoohen compares "sophisticated TV" for "discerning eyeballs", which is less painful than it sounds, with the turd flavoured Chiko roll that is modern film. For me, TV has been better than film since, oooh, around about the most recent fin de siècle.

Idiot box wises up

Kenneth Nguyen finds out why it's now hip to be square-eyed.

A FILM CAN BE SO carelessly made as to be vaguely humiliating. I learned that a few months ago while sitting through the Doug Liman science-fiction attempt Jumper. The young character's habit of jumping around the globe at will seemed a metaphor for the tossed-off screenplay, which did little but leap from one underdeveloped scene to the next with an adolescent's attention span. I read later that the offending script was inspired by a comic book. So too, it seemed, was the acting: the performances of Hayden Christensen and Rachel Bilson were not just blockish but appeared to have been manufactured wholly from recycled wood. As I sat in the Jam Factory next to my girlfriend - she grimacing at the fact that it was her choice that had subjected us to this profound underestimation of the audience's intelligence - I had but one thought: Oh, to be at home watching television.