LOS ANGELES — What's it like for an actress working on a network TV show?
Well, one pithy summary came the other day from Catherine Dent, who has played Officer Danielle (Danny) Sofer on the acclaimed cable show The Shield for five seasons. Before that, she had been a guest star or had occasional recurring roles on such network fare as L.A. Doctors, Chicago Hope and Nash Bridges.
"It was all about 'Look pretty and hit your mark,' " she said. "In the first season of The Shield, we did an episode called Cherrypoppers, and I saw the script and I was just terrified about what I'd got involved with."
The terror disappeared. Soon, she realized she was working on a tough-minded, adult drama that was actually something of substance. And she was glad it existed. Her experience mirrors that of the audience for a good deal of cable shows over the past few years.
In fact, amid the general gloom that grips the TV racket, the TV critics and the United States itself, there's one thing that everybody is cheerful about - the number of excellent dramas being made by cable channels.
The gloom, though, is pervasive. The TV critic for The Washington Post has, in her daily columns, been referring to this event as "Thank God We're Still Working Summer TV Press Tour 2008." Network TV executives arrive daily and tell the critics that, really, nobody understands the economics on TV any more.
On Tuesday, the all-news TV channels endlessly repeated a statement by President George W. Bush that reminded Americans that their bank deposits were insured. This was always accompanied by footage of people lining up in California to get their money out of failing banks.
Meanwhile, here in a ballroom at a Beverly Hills hotel, one John Landgraf, president of Fox's cable channel F/X, was crowing about how good things are. Referring to the F/X dramas Damages and The Shield (both shown in Canada on Showcase), he said: "These are not shows about the case of the week. They're shows that tell large, sweeping, serialized stories about characters that change and grow. These shows are taking on social commentary. They have grand, sweeping questions about human characters and human nature. To me, those are the best shows on television."
He's correct, and it's not just his channel that's making great TV. Cable shows are more sophisticated, gripping and creatively ambitious than ever. The good ones just keep coming. And when the Emmy nominations are announced today, they are likely to be completely dominated by cable dramas. One advance prediction is that Mad Men (airing in Canada on Sunday night on CTV) will sweep several categories.
When Landgraf talked about "case-of-the-week" shows, he was subtly jabbing at such network hits as the CSI franchise, House and the Law & Order series. He can be accused of sneering at TV shows that a lot of people watch and enjoy, but in many ways he's absolutely right.
As a cable executive, he is entitled to sneer. Sometimes, what the network executives - the people who put those case-of-the-week shows on the air - tell us critics here is downright laughable. On Wednesday morning, Stephen McPherson, president of ABC entertainment, told us, "We're rooting for broadcast television." Then he said he was thrilled by the success of Wipeout. In case you didn't know, Wipeout is a silly summer reality show featuring people doing physical stunts. Getting thrilled about it is a tad pathetic.
But the contrasting viewpoints of cable and network execs mean more than competitors in the marketplace making declarative statements about the quality of their goods. It all points to a changed situation in the television landscape: Just as there are now two kinds of TV being made, there are two kinds of audience. There are those who watch CSI or Law & Order, and might watch Wipeout; and there are those who watch only Mad Men, The Shield, Damages and all those HBO dramas.
Just as there are two Americas - red states and blue states, NASCAR fans and soccer moms, however you designate it - there are two types of TV and two audiences. One is interested in TV that is close to the level of art; the other is interested in entertainment.
Also on Tuesday, the cast and producers from Damages came here to take questions. Glenn Close is the star, playing the terrifyingly ruthless lawyer Patty Hewes. Joining her for the second season is William Hurt. Both are considered movie stars in this neck of the woods. And here they are on a TV show. Hurt said he had been wary of TV because "there's always a format." But after watching the first season of Damages, he realized that there was no TV format evident. And he stayed up until 5 a.m. watching the episodes.
Close, who also spent a season on The Shield, said she had just been to Europe to promote Damages and found that the press there was talking about "this golden age" of U.S. TV. She said that with the tone of someone delivering news.
But to that half of the audience watching cable instead of network shows, it's old news and, yes, very good news.
A clarification about yesterday's column: While the term "terrorist fist jab" - in reference to Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle - originated with Fox News anchor E.D. Hill, it was actually an unattributed approximation of the term "Hezbollah-style fist jab" which originally appeared in an online commentary.
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