The female leads who made TV great
A perk of the 500 scripted shows that aired in 2018 were the stories focused on women
In 2018, characters on television killed. They healed. They conjured things out of mid-air. They travelled through time and space and practised the dark arts. They sang and danced. They loved and lusted. And many just happened to be women.
We are currently in the midst of a massive glut of television programming, often referred to as “Peak TV,” which in 2018 alone counted nearly 500 scripted shows that aired on networks and streaming services. This means more good television, more bad television and an awful lot of mediocre television. And in a likely unintentional — if long overdue — side effect, it also generated more television stories focused on women. And in 2018, that started to feel natural rather than extraordinary.
That’s not to say that women haven’t been on TV before. Great shows about women range from The Mary Tyler
Moore Show to Grey’s Anatomy. But, for a long time, they were the exception, not the rule. For the most part, the roles actresses could play and the stories writers wrote for female characters were limited. They were often wives, girlfriends, flirtatious co-workers. They died a lot. They were judged and hated. If they were more than a stereotype, they got slapped with the reductive label “Strong Female Character.”
This year, not just a few but many shows were led by female protagonists. These female-led stories have been hits with audiences, critics and awards voters. Their representation is not tokenism; it’s good storytelling. And it’s making TV better.
The trend is perhaps most symbolically captured in BBC One’s Doctor Who (on Space in Canada, with a New Year’s episode airing Jan. 1 at 8 p.m.), a show in which actresses were once literally confined to the role of the “companion.” But all that changed when Jodie Whittaker arrived.
In October, she became the first woman Doctor in the 55-year history of the science-fiction franchise and proved herself an extremely capable performer. And to the surprise of a relentless army of naysayers, the world didn’t end. Whittaker’s casting was part of a more general upheaval in the show’s creative strategy that was hugely successful for both ratings and critical acclaim. In a TV show as old as Doctor Who, mixing things up keeps things fresh.
Moving female characters to the centre of a series has worked for other shows this year. NBC’s second season of goofy true-crime parody Trial & Error swapped John Lithgow for Kristin Chenoweth and blossomed creatively as writers mined a wealth of jokes about the absurdity of gender roles.
Mandy Moore’s multi-aged turn as Rebecca on This Is Us (on CTV) has long been overshadowed by Milo Ventimiglia’s role as Jack, Rebecca’s husband. But ever since the time-jumping series aired his death in February, Moore has taken a bigger piece of the spotlight, with more substantive scenes. Over on Freeform, the eldest member of ABC’s Blackish family, Zoey (Yara Shahidi), got her own spinoff, Grown-ish, which address the pressures of generation Z, especially for a Black woman, in a way few TV shows do. (Season 2 starts on ABC Spark in Canada Jan. 2 at 8 p.m.)
Perhaps the biggest indicator that roles for women are getting better on the small screen is the level of talent that is signing up. HBO had Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman on Big Little Lies in 2017, but Julia Roberts finally found a role worth coming to TV for in Amazon’s Homecoming. HBO nabbed Amy Adams, who proved women can be evil too, on Sharp Objects. HBO also lured Meryl Streep for a forthcoming second season of Lies. The number of actresses coming to TV is also likely a function of the scarcity of roles for women over a certain age in film, but what cinema loses, television gains.
New and better roles are giving overlooked actresses more opportunities. Sandra Oh, who laboured in “best friend” and supporting roles, most famously on Grey’s Anatomy, stepped into the well-deserved spotlight in Killing Eve and garnered the first-ever Emmy nomination for a woman of Asian descent as the lead drama actress. As Eve, Oh was messy and unkempt, rule-breaking and irreverent. The cat-and-mouse spy game that has been done so many times between two men took on a new dimension when Eve went up against Villanelle (the icy Jodie Comer), making a show that might have been dull incredibly tense and lively.
The list of great (if not morally good) female protagonists this year goes on. Escape at Dannemora, Showtime’s retelling of the 2015 New York prison break, highlighted a stunning performance by Patricia Arquette as a frustrated middle-aged prison employee, which helped the show avoid seeming derivative of The Shawshank Redemption. A remake of female-led Charmed fell flat, but another, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, is a dark delight that Netflix just renewed. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a candy-coloured fairy tale of female empowerment, made a triumphant sweep at the Emmy Awards in September before debuting a strong second season on Amazon this month.
Hulu’s feminist The Handmaid’s Tale (on Bravo in Canada) continues its slow conquest of the cultural and political zeitgeist, with red and white costumes popping up at both Halloween parties and political protests in 2018. FX’s Pose found a prime spot on television for trans women of colour with an empathy and realism unlike any show before. Lifetime’s You (its first season comes to Netflix Canada on Dec. 26) directly confronted TV creators’ habit of putting bad men front and centre, practically daring the audience to root for a sociopathic white man instead of the woman he stalks.
Pop-culture conversations took a special interest in the importance of representation and inclusion, in films like Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians and Love, Simon. On TV, the increase in representation is both faster and less noticeable than in film.
Shorter production schedules led TV to reach some of these milestones first. Marvel’s Luke Cage debuted on Netflix before Panther hit theatres. Before Constance Wu won our hearts in Asians, she was the funniest part of ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat. Greg Berlanti, who directed Simon, has introduced multiple LGBTQ superheroes on the DC Comics series he produces, something no mainstream superhero film has yet to do. But with smaller audiences, none of these shows made as much noise as their cinematic counterparts.
It’s why the breadth of women who populated TV this year is so exciting. In a world with so many shows, it’s harder for any one of them to be a breakout hit as Panther was. Normalizing across networks, genres and dozens of very different TV shows is likely the way forward for more impactful representation on TV in the future, as audiences get even smaller and more fractured.
Female characters on TV were heroes and villains. They were magical and mortal. They were oppressors and the oppressed. They fronted good shows and bad shows. They were simply, happily there.
For a long time, women were the exception not the rule. For the most part, the roles actresses could play and the stories writers wrote for female characters were limited