Reme­di­al mas­ter­pieces for a griev­ing TV nation

The social media rev­o­lu­tion has giv­en a new breed of activists var­i­ous plat­forms from which to stand up to sex­ism, racism and oth­er forms of social and polit­i­cal injus­tice by unashamed­ly tack­ling top­ics pre­vi­ous­ly deemed pub­lic taboos. Issues like abor­tion and inequal­i­ty may no longer elic­it the same type of cru­ci­fy­ing judge­ment as before, but they are still reserved for des­ig­nat­ed lis­ten­ers and crit­i­cised by pugna­cious purists – online as well as offline.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the com­fort of online anonymi­ty has spawned a sense of pub­lic sol­i­dar­i­ty and empow­er­ment. Peo­ple are dis­card­ing the gags put in place by law mak­ers and ques­tion­able hive men­tal­i­ties, and are chal­leng­ing impor­tant social issues no mat­ter how uncom­fort­able or shock­ing they may seem. The shame we have been made to feel when dis­cussing abor­tion, rape, white priv­i­lege, female sex­u­al­i­ty and even death is slow­ly evap­o­rat­ing and mor­ph­ing into some­thing dif­fer­ent alto­geth­er: outrage.

While the insti­tu­tions direct­ly respon­si­ble for this oppres­sion have yet to prove they are will­ing to change the dom­i­nant social dia­logue, the TV indus­try seems to have – at least par­tial­ly – accept­ed this as its own respon­si­bil­i­ty. It is still biased and flawed – espe­cial­ly in terms of diver­si­ty and real­ism – but TV has estab­lished itself as a mul­ti­fac­eted medi­um that is becom­ing increas­ing­ly more direct, fac­tu­al and unabashed in its reflec­tion of our cur­rent social climate.

Accord­ing to tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er Lau­ren Zalaznick, TV has always had a con­science. ​“It direct­ly reflects the moral, polit­i­cal, social and emo­tion­al need states of our nation – the tele­vi­sion is how we actu­al­ly dis­sem­i­nate our entire val­ue sys­tem. So all these things are unique­ly human, and they all add up to our idea of a con­science.” In her TED Talk ​‘The Con­science of Tele­vi­sion’, she goes on to iden­ti­fy key tele­vi­sion shows over the course of five decades, and how they high­light the gen­er­al sen­ti­ments of their respec­tive eras.

The ​’60s were wrought with ​“inspi­ra­tional” feel-good shows such as The Dick van Dyke Show, which focused on the proud­ly ​“inde­pen­dent” haus­frau, Lau­ra Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore), and her cre­ative work­ing-class hus­band, Rob (Dick van Dyke). While it paved the way for future sit­coms to take on real­is­tic sit­u­a­tions and issues, The Dick van Dyke Show was still firm­ly root­ed in a misog­y­nis­tic fairy tale spec­trum that shied away from uncom­fort­able top­ics, thus per­fect­ly cap­tur­ing the men­tal­i­ty of an era of seem­ing­ly bliss­ful conformity.

But as a coun­ter­cul­ture began to form and grow rest­less, sud­den­ly the TV nation found itself relat­ing more to the likes of Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) as opposed to the Lau­ra Petries of the world. The Flower Pow­er gen­er­a­tion longed for social com­men­tary and gen­uine depic­tions of peo­ple nav­i­gat­ing their way through times of polit­i­cal unrest, and the TV shows of this par­tic­u­lar time address what Zalaznick calls this feel­ing of ​“moral ambiguity”.

So if it is true that TV does in fact have a con­science, what do the most pop­u­lar shows of the 2000s tell us about our col­lec­tive dis­po­si­tion? The most cel­e­brat­ed TV series of the decade include The Sopra­nos, Six Feet Under, Lost, Nip/​Tuck and Dex­ter, and if there’s one thing these shows have in com­mon it’s a mor­bid under­tone that aims to pro­voke its view­ers into ques­tion­ing some of the more dif­fi­cult aspects of life and rela­tion­ships, par­tic­u­lar­ly death and moral­i­ty. Pri­or to the release of Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under, no oth­er show had explored the many stages of grief as deeply as the Fish­er family.

Not only did it put us face to face with our dark­est fears sur­round­ing our own mor­tal­i­ty and short­com­ings as indi­vid­u­als, it was also one of the first shows to steer roman­tic sto­ry arcs into self-sab­o­tag­ing and crass direc­tions, the kind we were famil­iar with in our own lives but had not yet wit­nessed on the small screen. When the sec­ond sea­son of Six Feet Under aired a year after the ⁹⁄₁₁, it attract­ed an aver­age of 6.24 mil­lion view­ers in the US alone, mir­ror­ing the mourn­ing of a nation and the need to find nor­mal­cy in the wake of tragedy.

Death – like so many oth­er uncom­fort­able top­ics – was pre­vi­ous­ly only ever touched up on in a super­fi­cial man­ner. Writ­ers and direc­tors seemed too afraid to show the day-to-day devel­op­ment of loss pre­sum­ably for fear of los­ing view­ers to such pro­found real­ism and sad­ness. Recent­ly, though, it has become clear that hon­est por­tray­als of grief are more in demand than ever. TV is not just a form of escapism but a visu­al, audi­ble con­for­ma­tion of our desires and, espe­cial­ly, our fears. With the influx of shows like The Left­overs, Fleabag and This Is Us – all of which exam­ine dif­fer­ent aspects of grief – audi­ences are seek­ing cop­ing mech­a­nisms which they can apply to all areas of life.

While Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag and even Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life delve into the inti­mate realms of mourn­ing on a per­son­al, every­day lev­el – often play­ing with spa­cious­ness, pac­ing and flash­backs to accen­tu­ate a sense of loss and the lone­ly void left by loved ones – The Left­overs and This Is Us take a more glob­al approach to loss and the vary­ing stages of mourn­ing that goes beyond the con­se­quences of death. They present char­ac­ters griev­ing their for­mer selves, the loss of a unit­ed com­mu­ni­ty and the dreams they har­bour that will nev­er come true. These shows cap­ture the essence of an ever search­ing, infi­nite­ly dis­sat­is­fied soci­ety reach­ing for the near­est, the quick­est fix for bro­ken hearts and spir­its – even if its leads to fur­ther disillusionment.

Shows like Fleabag and The Left­overs allow us to own up to feel­ings that are dif­fi­cult­ly word­ed, rarely dis­cussed and gen­er­al­ly over­looked, and spark a kind of self-aware­ness that is no longer sub­ject to silence, judge­ment or even ridicule. As we enter a new era of desen­si­ti­sa­tion at the hands of an increas­ing­ly politi­cised media, we finds our­selves grasp­ing at relat­able art forms which we can use to recon­nect with per­son­al and glob­al truths in a com­fort­ing, if not try­ing, man­ner. Tele­vi­sion is the cre­ative medi­um that merges the heal­ing ben­e­fits of music, visu­als and sto­ry­telling into reme­di­al mas­ter­pieces, and it will con­tin­ue to act as a per­son­al grief coun­sel­lor to a world in mourning.