Women were story of a busy TV season
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In 2018, characters on television killed. They healed. They conjured things out of midair. They traveled through time and space and practiced the dark arts. They sang and danced. They loved and lusted. And many just happened to be women.
We are in the midst of a 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. That 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 centered on women. And in 2018, that started to feel natural rather than extraordinary.
That’s not to say women haven’t been on television before. Great shows about women span everything 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 wives, girlfriends, flirtatious co-workers. They died a lot. They were judged and hated. If they were more than a stereotype, they were slapped with the reductive label “strong female character.”
This year, not just a few but many shows were led by females protagonists. These 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 America’s “Doctor Who,” a show in which actresses once were literally confined to the role of the “companion.” But that changed when Jodie Whittaker arrived.
In October, she became the first female 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 general upheaval in the show’s creative strategy that was hugely successful, in ratings and in critical acclaim. In a TV series as old as “Who,” mixing things up keeps things fresh.
Moving female characters to the center 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” 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 “Black-ish” 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 shows do.
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, and 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, in “Sharp Objects.” HBO also lured Meryl Streep for a forthcoming second season of “Lies.”
New and better roles are giving overlooked actresses more opportunities. Sandra Oh, who labored in “best friend” and supporting roles, most famously on “Grey’s Anatomy,” stepped into the spotlight in “Killing Eve” and garnered the first Emmy nomination for a woman of Asian descent as the lead drama actress. As Eve, Oh was messy and unkempt, rulebreaking 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).
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-colored fairy tale of female empowerment, made a triumphant sweep at the Emmys in September before launching a strong second season on Amazon this month.
Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” continues its slow conquest of the cultural and political zeitgeist, with red and white costumes popping up at Halloween parties and political protests. FX’s “Pose” found a prime spot on television for trans women of color. Lifetime’s “You,” which jumps to Netflix in 2019 for Season 2, directly confronted TV creators’ habit of putting bad men front and center, 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 such films as “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” landed on Netflix before “Panther” hit theaters. 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 as “Panther” was. Normalizing across networks, genres and dozens of very different TV shows is likely the way forward for more impactful representation 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.
TV is still no utopia of inclusion, and series can be prone to tokenism. But in a year that was as tumultuous as it was seemingly endless, it’s nice to find something genuinely good to hang your hat on. Or, if you’re a time-traveling alien in a police box, something to hang your sonic screwdriver on.