11.1.12

This Blog Contains Profanities

Sherlock

FUCK YES!

Have you seen this series? And I don't mean "series" in the British English sense of "season" but rather "series" in the proper 'merican engrish sense of "the whole damn awesome fucking show!"

But seriously, it is amazing. Mr. Holmes is a complete asshole, and Dr. Watson is a badass mutherfucker, I'm pretty sure he is played by Samuel Jackson with CGI and a voiceover.

Now I could delve into a review of the actual actors, or the amazing pacing and presentation, music, and honestly I should. Unfortunately I am not a connoisseur of the genre and can't really describe it against it's contemporaries. Instead, I am going to talk about it's running time!

You heard me right, the running time. I won't be silly, I'll talk about running time in general first... obviously.

Usually shows are slotted for a 30 minute or 60 minute time slot, and need to make room for about 27% of that to be advertisements. I am sure they do this for a variety of reasons, to pay their bills of course, and because with their budgets they can only make shows so good, and because those shows are only so good people will really only be interested for so long... Also tradition, that happens all the time, fucking tradition. In recent (ok maybe like a quarter century) years I have seen shows get larger and larger budgets and become more and more amazing. I remember the first time I saw CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and was amazed with the production value.

As budgets grow and grow eventually someone remembers to pay the writers more money, they get good directors, and better in general. Eventually cinima quality footage is being aired live for free on TV (an archaic video viewing device, like a one way skype call). People stay more interested, and eventually they stop caring about all that time commitment shit and worry more about conveying a story.

An example of this is the HBO show "Game of Thrones." Which, although it does still release in hour long (addles) blocks, is amazing in it's quality and possibly the best transition from book to film I have ever seen.

HBO (as far as I know) gets their funding from the people who buy HBO cable, a medium which is dying. I don't get cable, I have the internet, and for some reason HBO GO is only available to people who buy the HBO cable package. Netflix on the other hand, despite their previous fission-debacle, has decided to enter into programming, releasing content on it's own. I am sure at some point Hulu will do the same, and thousands already release their own content on Youtube.

But without the structure of braodcast television, how will this new entertainment landscape look? Will shows become smaller? Will they swell to hours in length?

Personally I would like to see miniseries become the norm. Years from now I would like to subscribe to "Sci-Fi Entertainment" website, paying them a small fee that is pooled with other's contributions and formed into amazing miniseries for my viewing pleasure. Delivering Hour and a half chucks, just like Sherlock, that fucking awesome show...

Oh, by the way...

This blog contains profanities.

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