THERE’S A SURPLUS OF GRIEF ON TV
SAD SONGS, if you know your FM radio history, say so much. Elton John was right when he sang about the cathartic powers that come from a Top-40 wallow in hurt and heartbreak – the satisfaction of recognising one’s own pain in mainstream pop.
As much as we’re willing to cry along with ballads, I keep running into viewers who don’t want to be brought low by watching sad TV. They insist the material be lighter – TV is, for them, an escape.
Long accustomed to shows that exist under the large, catchall description of “dark”, viewers are willing to stomach a lot of unfortunate events, violent outcomes and fatal plot twists that define most of TV’s most praised recent classics. Antiheroes, massacres, dystopian struggles in post-apocalyptic settings and surprise deaths – all are routine occurrences. The sadness is usually an afterthought and not a theme.
It’s harder, I find, to get viewers interested in shows that feature a more subtle form of darkness – the rain-cloud moods that are more about existential dread, universal loneliness and human grief.
There are several such shows premiering or returning this year in which characters find themselves trapped in low emotional ebbs and visually drab circumstances. It’s a surplus of sad TV, and not merely the two-Kleenex-per-episode kind practised so skilfully by the Emmywinning drama This Is Us, which returns for its third US season later this month. Another upcoming show, A Million Little Things, sees three men try to cope with their friend’s suicide.
Nearly two years into President Donald Trump’s presidency, one might have expected Hollywood to produce more confrontational shows about the American political mood. Instead, the response from creators has been a far more subdued display of philosophical and psychological pondering: What happens when we die? Is eternity all it’s cracked up to be? Is sanity preferable to madness?
Amazon’s new series Forever (premiering on Friday), stars comic actors Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph as a married couple stuck in a pleasant but boring loop of routines. Forever skilfully opens a philosophical can of worms: What if our most mundane days are our best days? What if ennui is eternal? Facebook Watch’s Sorry for Your Loss (premiering today) is an intimate portrait of an advice columnist (Elizabeth Olsen) who is grieving the death of her husband.
The streaming networks (Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, et al) tend to take bigger chances on gloomier and more cynical material – fatal car crashes, suicides… The aesthetic prefers bland settings that feel antiseptic and/or claustrophobic, giving the viewer a sense that the characters are mired in their feelings. Netflix’s Maniac (premiering on Friday) stars Emma Stone and Jonah Hill as test subjects in a drug trial that seeks to cure mental illness. Their characters are down in the dumps.
It’s true that one can only stand so much of this sullen material. Yet it’s important to not shut out the shows because they don’t cheer you up or help you escape. TV will always have plenty of frivolous shows that can do that.
When it comes to describing the era we’re living in, people talk about outrage and anger and violence. Underneath all that, I agree with the creators of the shows: A profound sadness is in the air. We have unresolved worry and fear about loss, death and grief. It’s hard to watch but I find it more depressing to think of viewers changing the channel just because they don’t want to feel it. – Washington Post