Thomas Roach on whether television is producing better shows than Hollywood is films…
Hollywood films do tend to all be the same: predictable, and sometimes lacking in substance. This is not always the case but still. For example, this year Transformers: Age of Extinction is the first film to break a billion dollars at the global box office and that is really annoying. Critics and fans have slated the film saying it’s just explosions after exlosions and the occasional hot girl. Well that’s Michael Bay for you. The Dark Knight was a comic book film that not only made over a billion dollars at the global box office but was praised by fans and critics alike. This is a rare occurance though. Many people will only go to the cinema to watch trashy films. They are essentially paying for crap. However there are so many good films that don’t do well at the box office yet audiences would still like them if they went to see them.
To me it seems that this is the age of television over films. I would say over the last few years we are in a Golden Age of television. Shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, The Walking Dead, Hannibal, True Detective, House of Cards and many more have all been praised for being pieces of art. It seems that the future of the entertainment medium is in television and not movies. That’s not to say there are not bad television shows, and like I said not all movies are bad, but the medium of television seems to have evolved drastically over the last five or so years. There is so much more substance to these shows than we get with most films, they have more style, better characters and better acting. And most televeision is free, whereas people pay to go to the cinema. Other than HBO, BBC and Netflix the shows are paid for by advertising and not for the price of a ticket. Yet when we go to the cinema we are still shown a great deal of adverts.
With television audiences can watch shows over several weeks and over several years if they have muliple seasons and you seem to get a lot more. Most US shows will range from 10 episodes up to 24 episodes a season. Most shows will be around 45 minutes long so a 10 episode series will give you close to 10 hours of entertainment for free essentially. Other shows will be way over 10 hours of entertainment. Yet people will pay to go and see a film that doesn’t even last two hours and has no substance. Even British shows are of higher quality than they used to be. BBC shows like Sherlock and Luther only have 3 episodes a season but they are of a much higher quality than most films. Despite being British, these two shows have both been recognised at the Golden Globes as well as the Emmys, so smaller budgets in no way means you have to sacrifice quality.
Audiences have become mature and they like good quality shows. The movie industry seems driven by greed and the fact that audiences will pay to see blockbusters over decent movies. Prices for cinema tickets continue to rise and the introduction of most films in 3D has also bumped up prices. It is a real shame but the film industry is in decline and the good stuff is on television. A lot of the television shows have tiny budgets compared to these blockbusters, yet they can make longer lasting entertainment that is better quality. Frankly I’ll stick with television shows over the cinema for now and you should too.
Do you think television shows are better than movies these day? Let us know your thoughts…
Thomas Roach
Originally published September 3, 2014. Updated April 15, 2018.
