Yes, the obvious disparity between UK TV shows and US shows is an interesting one. I only half-watched last night's episode of "Doctor Who" so I can't really comment on the structure.

I think it's worth considering the shows that the UK does well. Some of my favourite UK TV shows are:

Comedy:
* Teachers
* Almost everything done by Chris Morris
* Knowing Me, Knowing You
* Don't watch that, watch this (a surreal hybrid between VJing and political satire - they cut up video of political events with some very amusing outcomes)
* Spaced
* This Life

Thriller:
* Silent Witness
* Prime Suspect
* Inspector Morse

Documentary:
* Anything done by the BBC's Natural History Unit

Hmm... I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from that list (except that I used to watch a lot more TV than I do now!). Before drawing up that list, I was going to try to argue that UK TV is at its best when it's going out on a limb and breaking the rules (like Chris Morris' stuff). But, if we're honest, shows like Silent Witness and even Morse take pretty tame formats but deliver excellent results.

But yes... discussing why the US seem to make better TV is definitely something that we need to discuss (and, hopefully, fix!). But perhaps it's just a numbers thing? By which I mean that the US has so many filmmakers and TV producers that they're simply bound to make a higher quantity of quality product than we are. Of course, they also make a lot of shit but we don't see that because it doesn't survive the transatlantic content filter.

I hate to jump on the bandwagon but I do think we need to be worried about the quantity of "reality-TV" the UK's producing. Sure, some of it is excellent TV (Faking it, Grand Designs, maybe even The Apprentice) but most of it is utter garbage. This is worrying for several reasons:

1) There's the "Chomsky" argument that we're politically incapacitating our nation by feeding them mindless bullshit (I'm not sure I completely agree with this but it's still worth considering)

2) It used to be the case that TV production was a breeding ground for film writers and directors. But I'd hate to see any feature film directed by someone "trained" on some crap celebrity fest.

3) "Reality-TV" needs fewer crew and many fewer actors than drama production. This produces a jobs shortage.

I watched Doctor Who. I didn't think it was very good in terms of plot structure either, although technically it was pretty alright. It seemed it was the hybrid result of mashing together two stories which independently weren't strong enuff to work as a primary plotline.

I agree quite a lot with Jack about reality shows. Especially the economic arguments about them. They do require fewer production crew(I remember seeing an ad for a reality gardening show that was looking for freelance directors who would be expected to be their own camera operator. Add a sound man and you've got enuff to produce useable footage). Which, in the end, is the bottom line.

Obviously in such an environment, producing television drama (which would require not only working with BECTU members, but shock horror! Equity members as well) is uncompetitive.

Reality television also cuts the heart out of true documentary film. Political documentary and current affairs shows require lawyers to work closely with programme-makers, something which isn't required for Chantelle's Tv Carcrash (or "Living the Dream", as I believe its called); ethnographic films (remember all those documentaries on naked tribespeople which used to be on tv when you were a kid?) require lots of insurance, often long shooting schedules (6 months or more) for a full film crew on union rates.

ITV cut these facets of reality television ("World in Action" and "Disappearing World") from its commissions years ago.

But let's remember to get with the programme, people. After all, no-one is a Reithian anymore, are they? The future is in sitting in a regional warehouse (to reduce rental costs) videotaping (using a locked-off shot) a naked girl lying on a bed who is responding to text messages for some digital channel with a lot of XXX's in its name.
Then some bright spark will realise the girl can do it all by herself.

(Short of stronger top-down guidelines, I can't see what will stop the race to the bottom.)

I had a thought about this "UK vs US drama" issue: there are some fundamental differences in the camera work.

US drama uses much more fluid camera movement than UK drama. I believe that almost all (if not all) the shots done on ER and West Wing are done on a SteadiCam™. But the camera work in a lot of UK TV drama is very "undynamic". Don't get me wrong - I don't think the camera should always be moving (films like The Conversation make excellent use of a static camera to tell the story)... but, when watching UK TV drama, I frequently think "what's going on with that jib shot? Did the director get to set and think 'oh, well - we've lugged that damn jib all this distance so we might as well use it. Set it up over there, lads.'".

Anyway, I'm struggling to make this point. The bottom line is that I think the camera work on UK TV drama frequently feels a bit "studenty" and unimaginative. The camera is either static when it shouldn't be or is moving when it really shouldn't be. SteadiCams™ seem to get very little use on UK TV dramas (which is probably a budget thing).

What do you guys think?

I remember reading that London's Burning had a steadicam and operator on permanent standby - don't seem to recall that they ever used it much.

UK drama is very static in the way it's shot. As you say, this can be fine, but when it's EVERY show it does make things look visually unimaginative. It also causes problems (as with Doctor Who) that when they DO move the camera, it stands out and looks odd.

I'd say there are few (if any) UK shows that actually have a visual style. Hustle seems to be having a go (Spooks did for a bit, but was undermined by 24 that came out at the same time!) I know people will say it's a "budget" thing, but you look at stuff like Battlestar Galactica where the "live" stuff is in a Documentary style (and the CG is faked to look the same), so you have moving cameras without expensive rigs, and you wonder why we can't do varied stuff like that.

Personally I think the real issue is approach. US TV evolved out of Cinema and so has a very visual approach to storytelling. UK TV evolved out of Radio and so tends to end up as a "talking heads" approach. Problem is, the American's seem to have found a good balance lately where, if anything, we seemed to have regressed in recent years.

I know from low-budget stuff I've shot that if you approach it the right way, you can create a good visual look (and look at how well we make ads in the UK!)

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Stephen
^{www.aefilms.co.uk
www.redcamera.net}

Yes, we do make good ads. And some excellent music videos (I don't think there's a filmmaker in the world who hasn't seen at least one Chris Cunningham video!).

I think a few of our shows do have interesting visual styles (although I agree that very few do). Or rather: it seems to me that none of our "mainstream TV drama" has an interesting visual style whilst lots of our "alternative" drama/comedy uses the camera in original ways.

I really like the way Peep Show deliberately goes against one of the oldest rules of shooting dialogue: never point the camera directly at the actor when doing shot/reverse-shot sequences (i.e. instead of shooting over-the-shoulder, Peep Show points the camera directly at the actors). I think Peep Show's "point-camera-directly-at-actors" shooting style works really well for the show by giving it a surreal quality and making it feel a little like you're living inside the characters' heads. They seem to have a lot of fun with the camera on Peep Show.

Green Wing tries very hard to do interesting things with the camera and editing. I think they're quite brave and I think it does work really nicely about 80% of the time. Sometimes it feels a bit like "yeah; OK - reversing the video really isn't that big or clever... let's just see the action". Spaced also did some amusing things with the camera.

And then there's the whole "documentary" style of shows like This Life, Cops and The Office (hmm... is it right to put those three shows in the same sentence? I know the first two were made by the same "team"... but, in a way, they do share quite a lot of similarities). I think all those three shows look great and work much better than the ugly "mount-camera-on-tripod-and-randomly-nudge-it-a-little" style of the US showNYPD Blue.