Catching up with TV

Like Metacritic, I offer a hearty endorsement to Downton Abbey (2011, MC-92), which I did not see when it was broadcast on PBS Masterpiece Theater last winter, but caught up with on dvd (streaming video also available from Netflix).  I simply found it outrageously entertaining, mixing all the pleasures of British heritage productions with a winking wit that managed to collect a host of old clichés into a postmodern soap opera delight.  The seven episodes follow the life of the title character, a massive old pile sure to impress, from the sinking of the Titanic to the start of World War I, brilliantly sketching in the lives of a score of characters upstairs and down.  I don’t know when I have seen a better ensemble of actors, every last one making the most of his or her minutes on screen.  Julian Fellowes wrote Gosford Park and here combines that with Remains of the Day and many a BBC production, but comes up with something that seems totally fresh.  The subsequent revival of Upstairs, Downstairs seemed pallid by comparison.

I hope you are taking in the fifth and final season of Friday Night Lights (MC-82), now showing on NBC but already out on dvd, which I previously watched on DirecTV last fall.  If not, you really ought to start with the first season and watch the whole series.  It definitely ranks in my Top 10 of all time.  Yes, it’s nominally about high school football in Texas, but it offers one of the great continuing portraits of a marriage in the coach and his wife, superbly played by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, to go with a believable and involving group portrait of a community, intelligent about currents of race and sex and economic reality.  Lots of cute chicks and studs too.  Really, give it a try, it will surprise you.  Though it wandered from its core inspiration into melodrama in the second season, the show reinvented itself in subsequent seasons and ended its five-season run on a perfect series of notes.

In that, it couldn’t be more different from Big Love (MC-85 -- you've got to be kidding!), which utterly fizzled in its finale, spinning further and further into absurdity.  As with another recent HBO miniseries, Mildred Pierce (MC-69), at the end I was not just disappointed but wanted back all the time and attention I had invested to that point.  But just when I was thinking about canceling my HBO subscription, the second season of Treme (MC-84) began.  To me, David Simon can do no wrong, with The Wire my all-time favorite tv series, and Generation Kill ranking pretty high too.  This multifaceted look at the music and culture of New Orleans as it tries to come back after Katrina may lack narrative drive, but steeps the viewer in a creative gumbo of diverse characters.  Again the acting is strong across the board, carrying multiple storylines forward in a way that makes one care about each and every one (though Lucia Micarelli most of all).  And for somebody who can’t get enough of Bunk and Lester, it’s great to see Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters again.  And Kim Dickens coming over from FNL, etc. etc.

I’m a latecomer to Men of a Certain Age (MC-86) on TNT, but after my interest was piqued by one new episode, I went back and caught up with the first season on dvd, and am currently watching reruns of the second in preparation for its resumption with new episodes on June 1^st.  I was definitely not among the Everyone who Loves Raymond, so I was not alert to Ray Romano’s new show, but now I have to say that at least I like him.  And even more I like Andre Braugher and Scott Bakula as the guys with whom he hikes, eats lunch, shoots the shit, and negotiates the vicissitudes of midlife.  More affectionate and truthful satire than sitcom, this show presents believably rounded characters in characteristically believable situations of work and family.  Try it, and if you’re at all like me, you will find a pleasant surprise.

Another new show I was slow to see, but now look forward to more of, is The Big C (MC-66), Showtime’s attempt to match the success of Weeds, a show I sampled but decidedly did not get hooked on.  The new series stars Laura Linney, however, and I’ve been half in love with her since You Can Count on Me, so I was inclined to give it a try when I had the opportunity, despite not being drawn by the idea of a comedy about cancer.  And Ms. Linney is indeed a delight, but the whole show is wittier and sharper than I expected, definitely worth catching.