The revolution was actually televised and it only started 25 years ago.
On January 10, 1999, the American channel HBO launched “The Sopranos”. The series contributed significantly to the adult literature cable channel's reputation, which has since been considered the best in the world in this niche. The production features a small New Jersey mafia led by Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), who was undergoing therapy with a psychologist. David Chase's daring creation maintained a breathtaking pace for six seasons and 86 episodes, until the very last scene of the 2007 finale.
Other masterpieces of the eighth art followed: “The Wire,” “Game of Thrones,” and most recently “Succession,” still on HBO; “Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul” and “Mad Men” on AMC, a network that was also at the beginning of the shift toward excellence hyped by the best writers, producers, screenwriters, directors and actors. Apple TV+ will launch “Masters of the Air” in a few days, building on the distant success of “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” produced 20 years ago by actor Tom Hanks and director Steven Spielberg. This novelty required a fortune, about a third of a billion Canadian dollars.
“Quality series often focus on a certain type of hero who embodies the revenge of an average character,” points out Professor Pierre Barrette, a rare Quebec academic who specializes in television studies. “Basically, The Sopranos is about the dead moments between Francis Ford Coppola's three Godfather films, where the mobster is truly himself, tormented, full of doubt, fragile, like the rest of us. »
The professor quotes the title of an essay by the Frenchman François Jost about “the new villains” who have become such through social constraints. The anti-hero of Breaking Bad, a chemistry teacher who turns into a super meth cooker, embodies this tragic development.
A golden globalization
The American push to the top with people from below then stimulated quality worldwide. Including Great Britain, Northern Europe and Israel. Of course here too with productions like Les invincibles, 19-2, Minuit, le soir, La vie, la vie or Plan B (Radio-Canada), M'et-tu Hear? (Télé-Québec) or Les beaux malaises (TVA). The series Noire, which aired from 2014 to 2016, even took the audacity so far as to make a drama about the mediocrity of television.
Louise Lantagne has been supporting this major change for decades, at Radio-Canada as drama director (2002-2007) and general manager of television (2008-2014), then at producer Attractions Images and since 2018 as presenter. CEO of the Cultural Enterprise Development Corporation (SODEC), which supports audiovisual production in Quebec. Ms. Lantagne also joined the public broadcaster in 1999, the year “The Sopranos” was released.
“I sat in the front row,” she says. As a theater director, I witnessed the transition from soap operas produced by television networks, both Radio-Canada and TVA, to the birth and then rapid development of independent productions funded, among other things, by tax credits and then the Fund of Canadian Media . When I arrived, we were still filming four soap operas on set in the basement of the Radio Canada tower. When you shoot a TV series in prefabricated settings, you quickly reach your limits. The independent production had more opportunities to live up to its boldness by drawing on talent from cinema, literature and theater. »
She herself comes from literature (at McGill) and cinema, having developed film projects at SODEC in the 1990s. She recalls a conversation with directors who criticized her for her time on television, claiming that nothing good came out of the medium. She replied that you just have to invest in it to transform it, something you desired and then achieved, from Jean-Marc Vallée to Xavier Dolan.
“Les Bougon” was filmed on 35mm to expose the ingenuity of those crippled by the system, who in turn are “new villains”. Louise Lantagne remembers the astonishment experienced by specialist columnists at the press launch in January 2004, just 20 years ago. “The room didn’t say a word. Complete silence. Journalists, like everyone else, were confronted with something original and destabilizing. Never seen it. »
Sin and ruin through excess?
Very good thank you. However, a strong impression has been growing for some time – if not of the end of this world, then at least of a new major transformation. A magical cycle seems to close and pre-apocalyptic signs appear.
You will never hear me say that we overproduce. I will never say this: it is too dangerous. Otherwise, if we produce less, who will we produce, the established creators? A realignment will occur naturally.
Streaming services now compete with cable channels and the good old grandpa TV channels. The content offering is exploding while the audience is not being renewed. The quality there seems to be getting worse and worse. And in any case, the overabundance of productions ultimately drowns out the best of them.
“Something seems to be coming to an end,” said Professor Pierre Barrette, forced to play dumb. In order for us to speak of a golden age, there must of course be quality, but also a certain rarity. HBO produced one, two, even three quality series per season and was pretty much alone with AMC in the beginning. It was easy to know what to see. We could say that it still is. Excellent series like “The Bear” and “Succession” are still being produced. The problem lies in the quantity. It has become impossible for even very heavy consumers to keep up – and I don't think I'm right about that. »
It was necessary to dedicate the equivalent of a month of working days to see how the 2023 series finalists for the Emmy Awards will be distributed to the best American productions on Monday. American networks aired 210 original series in 2009, but 600 in 2022. Two-thirds of Quebecers now subscribe to foreign broadcast platforms. And every year around fifty serial fictions are added in Quebec itself.
The inclination of the characters
Louise Lantagne refuses to criticize this excess for aesthetic and cultural reasons. “You’ll never hear me say we overproduce,” she said. I will never say this: it is too dangerous. Otherwise, if we produce less, who will we produce, the established creators? A realignment will occur naturally. »
As evidence, she provides a figure obtained in December at Content London, a global meeting for the audiovisual market. By 2024, the number of series produced in the USA is expected to fall to around 400.
Having said this and repeating it without ever talking about the end of the golden age, CEO Louise Lantagne acknowledges that, despite bedside series like “This Is How I Love You,” the Quebec system is also showing worrying signs of extreme fatigue.
“When I was doing drama at Radio-Canada 20 years ago, series budgets were higher than they are today. We still had shows for $900,000 or a million an hour. Now it's much less, especially if you take inflation into account. That's right, independent production is in serious financial trouble. The television stations are in great financial difficulties, that's true. I don't want to be dramatic, but I have to say that what we have put in place is running out of steam. »
There are also signs from the companies themselves that they are running out of steam. Amazon announced this week that it was laying off hundreds of employees at its Prime Video and MGM Studios stores. Netflix has laid off almost 500 employees in 2022. AMC slashed its production budgets by 20% a year ago, and the network that produced “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” (thus contributing to the golden age of television) is now preparing a half-dozen film-off productions from The Walking Dead. Save everyone who can, and everyone in a shelter…
Professor Barrette notes that the drop in levels is even more noticeable on Netflix. “If my account wasn't being paid for by my job, I would quickly log out. “To be honest, I don't find any satisfaction in it, and especially the content search function is bad…” he admits.