Might-watch Tv
The Sunday Age
Sunday May 21, 2006
We're not so desperate to watch the housewives any more, and Lost is losing viewers faster then cast members. Melinda Houston analyses why hot shows grow tepid.
Twelve months ago, Desperate Housewives was hot-hot-hot. Almost 2.5 million people tuned in to Wisteria Lane's debut, and for most of the year it rated its pants off. But this year? From top of the pops, the housewives have slipped well down the 10 most-watched list and Seven's other ratings juggernaut, Lost, has vanished from the poll altogether. Of course, it's hardly unheard of for once- popular series to start losing viewers. At its most basic, a drama's fall from favour is simply about fatigue. It's just bloody hard work to produce fresh ideas and quality scripts, week in, week out. You either keep doing the same thing over and over again, a tactic with which viewers quickly become bored; you jump the shark in an effort to inject a bit of oomph into proceedings; or you slide off in some other direction altogether, as The Bill has with its who's-groping-whom storylines. Everything from MASH to Blue Heelers eventually reaches a natural end-point, where viewers (if not the producers of the show) realise there's just nothing left to say. (Famously, Seachange deliberately pulled the plug before it was forced to endure that slow slide into irrelevance, but very few shows choose to go out on a high.)The one exception to the "bored-now" rule, of course, is the long-running soap. But as melodramas, rather than "serious" dramas, soaps have a particular kind of contract with their audience. Viewers are prepared to suspend disbelief over a veritable Grand Canyon of implausibility: it's part of the game. As long as a certain internal coherence is preserved, audiences will endure an awful lot of silliness in exchange for one more chapter in the lives of their favourite characters.But serious drama sets itself up to do something else. To offer some moral complexity, three-dimensional characters, the appearance at least of naturalism, of realism. And as soon as you start trying to be "real", there are powerful limits on where you can go. Some dramatic set-ups have a certain longevity built-in. Crime drama falls into that category. For better or worse, humanity shows endless inventiveness when it comes to man's ability to shaft his fellow man. Ditto hospital dramas - any GP will tell you there are infinite ways in which to become dangerously unwell, and ER thrived for years on a potent mix of beauty, blood and brains. But even that venerable series is faltering.What has the Seven Network chewing its nails (and the other stations rubbing their hands with glee) is the suddenness with which its ratings giant killers have withered. Has Lost lost its way? Is Housewives filling the pool and revving the motorcycle? Well, yes and no. There's some evidence both productions are twitching (the increasing over-population of the island, Gabrielle's catfight with a nun). But the fall off in viewers is as much a function of the nature of the first seasons as it is about what's happening in the second.Both Housewives and Lost set themselves a particular challenge. The first series of Housewives was built around a specific concept: why did Mary Alice kill herself? Despite the "cliff-hanger" finale, many of us reached the end of the first series satisfied. Mystery solved. Lost not only had its central mystery - which had to be solved sooner rather than later or audiences were going to become seriously pissed off - it had the added difficulty of a very restricted environment and, theoretically at least, serious limits on its ability to refresh things by introducing new characters. And those unique set-ups have proved to be a double-edged sword. It was that freshness that drew vast numbers of viewers in the first place. And it's precisely the same thing that's driving viewers away. In book publishing, it's a truth universally acknowledged that there are two kinds of readers: those who like to read the same book over and over and over again, and those who like to try something new. The former will own the complete works of Marian Keyes or Peter Corris. The latter will read some chick lit, then a Cliff Hardy, then move on to something new. Long-running sitcoms and soaps clearly appeal to the former group. Viewers love to tune in precisely because they know, to some extent, what's going to happen. Characters are clearly defined, they may have their own vocab and catchphrases, they will end up in the same crazy situations week after week, year after year, to which they'll react in same kinds of ways, and - within reason - the more predictable it is, the more people keep coming back. Both Lost and Desperate Housewives promised us something new. And they delivered. But in season two, it's not new any more. If you do tune in, there's plenty to please. It's just that we saw it all last year, in a slightly different configuration. There are loads more series of 24 in the pipeline (Keifer Sutherland's just signed up for three more seasons), but it's never going to rate like it did first time round (no matter how many times Seven juggles the schedule, and no matter how many special double episodes are screened). Because no matter how dynamic it is, it's just not new. Contrary to the fantasies of television executives, you can't please all the people all the time. When a new show launches (providing it's actually any good) everyone will tune in. Once the "show me the next thing" cohort have had their fill, they'll tune out, leaving the "mmm, comfy" cohort glued on. Desperate Housewives may not be captivating the nation any more, but a million people, often more, still settle down to watch it every Monday night. Perhaps - just perhaps - these shows are not, in fact, failing. They are still good-quality television. They're still providing viewing pleasure to vast numbers of people every week. They're just settling in nicely for the long haul.
© 2006 The Sunday Age