What makes a good drama

Since breaking my wrist, I have been watching a lot of escapist stuff on the TV. Apart from DVDs, I have been dipping into the BT Vision drama section, looking for something exciting, funny and gripping. BT Vision has a lot of American programmes stored up that we wouldn’t normally see, either because we don’t watch commercial TV or because the English don’t buy them, deciding they’re rubbish.

Searching through and occasionally watching a pilot or two, I started to wonder what made a programme successful from my point of view. What is it that makes me watch an entire series rather than stopping ten minutes into the first episode?

For instance, this week I started watching something called Human Target and it has managed to hook me into watching the first three episodes so far and I can’t see me stopping any time soon. But, I ask myself, why? The premise is pretty ridiculous and the plots impossible so clearly it’s not because it’s particularly clever. And then I realised it contains the four things I like in a good drama: excitement, likeable characters, sexual tension and humour.

I applied this short criteria to other drama programmes I have either liked or dismissed and it tends to hold true. I clearly have no problem suspending my disbelief! I really don’t care if it’s possible or not…it is fiction after all.

So, here’s a list of programmes I didn’t get hooked by and why:

The Good Wife
Nice legal type drama with a (sort of) interesting back story and arc. Plenty of sexual tension between two of the leading characters. The courtroom scenes provide the excitement. The trouble with it is the complete lack of humour. The central character, the wife of the title, never smiles let alone wisecracks. That wouldn’t be so bad except no-one else does either. This lack of humour just makes it a dreary, miserable effort and I wonder why I should bother.

The Vampire Diaries
I have absolutely no idea why this is popular. The characters are stereotypes, the excitement created by music and mood rather than script or performance driven, the plots so simple they’d appeal to the youngest audience possible…ah, I think I’ve worked it out. Like the popularity of Harry Potter, it’s simplicity that sells it. In fact, if you look closely, Vampire Diaries is One Tree Hill with the undead being vampires rather than school kids. I can’t help but compare it to Buffy which has to be one of the best TV drama series ever made. Clearly it just doesn’t rate. The worst thing is, there is no humour. Is that what kids want? Teenage angst and no laughs? How sadly simple.

Huge
This is clearly a half hour comedy about American kids attending a Fat Camp, given an hour slot in order to provide the show with a bit of drama. The humour (though on the whole pretty obvious) is there but there’s no excitement and very little sexual tension (except in a growing up and not being fancied sort of way). The drama is created pretty much from nothing. Back story is very obvious and not interesting. In fact, the whole programme seems to hammer home the message that fat kids need love as much as skinny kids. It’s sad that this isn’t obvious. However, the worst thing about Huge is that none of the characters are very likeable. I found this one simply boring.

Undercovers
Here is a programme that should be successful. A couple of brilliant ex-CIA agents have married and set up a restaurant. Of course, they are needed week after week to sort out some black op or other and they manage to do it with lots of excitement and high tech wizardry. The two leads are very sexy, the wisecracks are funny and frequent. The programme looks like it’s had a lot of money spent on it which gives it a fine glossy appearance. I only watched the first two episodes. The reason why is because there is no sexual tension between the two main characters. They are clearly in a loving, long lasting relationship. It has a lovely Mission Impossible feel but I just find myself not really caring about the happily married couple driving it.

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On the one-handed challenge front, today I discovered it is very difficult to wash cutlery with only one hand (without a dishwasher at least) and stuffing pillows into clean pillowcases is not so much impossible as time consuming.

Thank you, Audrey, for your wishes.

And, Mum, it would have been a waste of time because the doctor would have sent me to the specialist anyway, meaning two trips rather than one. When I was at the hospital on Saturday I was seen by someone from the Fractures Clinic who said she’d refer me and I guess she did!