We Few, We Happy Few

Bargain Bin No. 12 - A Canon for Television's Prestige Era

I want to talk about tv for a minute. Specifically, I want to talk about really, really good tv, and the good tv that hasn’t yet calcified in its status as ‘canonical’ work.

For most of it’s history television has been considered an ‘inferior’ medium to traditional filmmaking. There’s a lot of recent writing about how the medium became a more respected form of art, an opinion which has only very recently taken hold in popular culture. Perhaps it has something to do with the more explicitly commercial nature of television, through the presence of advertising, which prevents the patina of respectability from building up. Or simply a result of technical limitations which led filmmakers to prioritise cinema as a medium which required less sacrifices in fidelity. Regardless, for whatever reason, or whatever set of reasons, it took decades – despite the universal popularity of television – for television to come to be considered on equal footing with other contemporary art forms. For many decades after the appearance of tv, the argument had to be made that it even had the capacity to be a medium for art, rather than a pale simulacrum of cinema.

Eventually, however, during the ‘prestige’ TV era, which lasted for roughly the two previous decades, a series of shows ‘elevated’ the standard of production quality, writing and acting to a level that made television as viable a destination as film for even the most self-serious and high-minded actors, writers and directors, with ambitions of status amongst their peers.

But now that that era of high budget prestige projects has largely given way to a new period of ‘content’ or as the cartoonishly inept CEO of WB/Discovery David Zaslav put it ‘lean back’ television, and the argument regarding television’s status has been all but settled, can we say which shows were the ones that truly broke through that glass ceiling? Which shows really planted the flag for tv-series? If TV is now ‘high’ culture, what is its canon? What series make up the lexicon from which directors and showrunners will draw?

At the forefront of this grand vindication of the form was arguably one company in particular, HBO. Over the course of roughly 20 years, HBO produced a series of shows which became so culturally ubiquitous as to turn into ‘required’ viewing, if only to not feel left out in casual conversation. From the Sopranos to Game of Thrones, these series were far from the first TV shows to achieve popular acclaim, nowhere near it, but they were crucially both immensely popular and carried a certain gravitas that demanded that they be taken seriously as works of art rather than ‘just’ TV. But I’d argue that a slightly less ubiquitous HBO show was quietly one of their best, and was an early example of the type of television the network would come to emphasise in the 2000’s and 2010’s, namely Band of Brothers.

I think there’s a case to be made that this show, (which came out at a time during which its themes of military intervention and the possibility of heroism through conquest were keenly relevant to the American people, about to launch an invasion of Afghanistan) is a constituent of what we might call a canon of prestige TV. Certainly, it approached TV storytelling with a heavy helping of earnestness and importantly, cash, and in so doing paved the way for many of the prestige projects that followed.

Taking its name from one of Shakespeare’s most famous monologues (Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii), Band of Brothers is a classicly reverent tale of WWII exploits, and the bravery of an American company in the Europan theatre of war following the invasions on D-Day. In the same venerable tone as Saving Private Ryan, or other contemporary WWII classics, it’s a classically patriotic presentation of the greatest generation, fighting as close to a morally just war as war can ever be. Yes, it’s an incredibly sincere show that never bothers to pretend to do anything other than lionize the heroes of the war, but it presents its moral stance with such consideration that it’s hard to accuse it of being blithely ‘patriotic’. If the show’s stance is very earnestly, that the American military was a great institution for good, and its members by and large heroes, then it also shows its work, and teases out the potential counterpoints deftly over the course of the show’s run in such a way that when it reaches its conclusion, thematic and moral, it has a sound footing.

I’m not going to use this essay to make any of my own moral judgements about one of history’s most complex events, one separated from my birth by over a half century, but as for the show, it is impeccable in its making of its argument whatever you think of its conclusions.

Much of the noted similarities to Saving Private Ryan, which predates Band of Brothers by three years, can be attributed to the fact that Band of Brothers was produced by Spielberg, who directed the film, and by Tom Hanks, who starred in it. And it shares with that movie, a conviction that if the machine of war and its assosciated bureaucracy may be corrupt, or at least flawed, then those who carry out its orders are, regardless, unambiguously virtuous.

The show never hides the fact that the men that carried out these feats were, by and large young men, thrown into incredible peril and forced to endure intense physical and psychological experiences by political forces they couldn’t possibly affect. The ‘visceral’ nature of the action is something that the show was widely praised for, and it’s used to show the immediate sense of danger present at nearly all times. Characters freeze up, fuck up, experience shell shock in the process of executing their orders. Main characters are frequently killed off, and the kinetic force of the near constant fire of bullets or mortar reverberates throughout even the moments of downtime.

In one notable scene, a German PoW recognises one of the members of Easy Company from High-School back in america, as the two share a cigarette they matter of factly comment on how they’ve ended up on opposite sides of one of history’s bloodiest wars. There’s no moral argument to be had here, they each simply recognise a sense of national duty that doesn’t need to be questioned, it seems so natural to them as to be a fundamental force of nature.

But despite these elements that present the war as the horrifying period of violence that it was, the principal characters are redeemed not only by the judgement of history, which, the show seems to argue, justifies the sacrifice of American and allied troops whether voluntary or not in the face of the brutality of fascism, but also by their intense devotion to one another. In order to preserve the human in these characters even in the face of the overwhelming destruction they’re surrounded by, their willingness to fight for one another, becomes a stand in for the broader bonds of kinship they’re fighting for.

The show presages so much of what would come to define the later prestige era of television. On the production side of things, it had a vast budget and was early on the choice to limit the series to 10 longer episodes. Likewise its willingness to use the increased downtime allowed by the serial format to emphasise gradual character growth.

In these ways, and of course, in its tremendous success (the premiere drew almost 10 million viewers on a premium cable network) Band of Brothers is perhaps one of the first canonical examples of ‘prestige television’. And given that fact, it’s surprising that its role in the history of the format isn’t more widely discussed. But of course, given the increased legitimacy of television as a medium worthy of critical attention, more and more work will be done to dress it up proper nice and adorn it with all the bells and whistles of a ‘high art-form’ and part of that involves having a canon. Perhaps this will be what finally causes the show to emerge from a spot of relative obscurity, and take its place as a milestone in the history of the format.