Give up TV to find good and satisfying stories…
[Note from Steve: You can consider this article a follow-up to my 4/22 post. Like my novels, the two articles can be read independently!]
Thank God for books! Even before Covid, I was watching less and less TV. Frankly, it sucks now! Except for PBS and few news programs on CNN (OK, ABC News offers some entertainment value as I count how many times David Muir says “of course”), there’s not much network TV has to offer. Cable is worse and has more ads than the traditional networks, and ads are soon coming to streaming video (Netflix saw its stock plummet after announcing that, and Disney+ soon will too if De Santis doesn’t kill the company first—how’s that lawsuit against that Florida fascist coming along?).
I’ve stopped watching sitcoms completely except for Bob [Hearts] Abishola. At least that one’s funny sometimes; all the others are forgettable drivel or just old. (You can still watch reruns of Mash, All in the Family, and Two and a Half Men. Those episodes are still funny, but really? How many times can you repeat them?)
Sitcoms are still better than game shows or contests. Although classics like Jeopardy and Wheel might have some medical benefit by keeping contestants and elderly people’s minds sharp, none of the first’s aging viewers could ever have the reflexes needed; in fact, most normal people don’t spend their lives remembering trivia that the show’s production team dredges up. (As an author, I often do have to dredge up some historical trivia for my stories, but Google is my friend…sometimes.) And the elderly would be better off doing crossword puzzles instead of watching Wheel. Other game shows are just gimmicky and stupid. Contests have also become drivel, with The Masked Singer probably the worst I’ve ever seen, recently stooping so low to have Giuliani as a contestant. I also would have walked off the stage in disgust along with Dr. Ken but that’s Fox for you, the channel I’ve always boycotted ever since they cancelled that show about time travel and dinosaurs!
In general, dramas have been the most damaged by ads and new and incompetent screenwriters, though, maybe more so than Fox. I’ll admit that an hour of a dramatic episode isn’t enough to develop a good plot, especially when you consider that time’s reduced to forty minutes or less when you account for tine spent on those inane ads. And a series might start out OK—for example, FBI looked promising—but then the new crop of screenwriters quickly run out of ideas and become formulaic (like Big Five authors!)—the plots become unoriginal, trivial, cliched, and irrelevant; and the characters become two-dimensional caricatures of real human beings, just icons and avatars of banality. The directors (do they deserve that name?) often try to solve this problem with “crossover episodes” (three FBI episodes in a row is a bit too much torture, though), a “solution” that turns a drama into a soap opera.
Of course (David Muir, are you smiling?), this is all just a trickle-down effect from Hollywood movies to TV. They’re all embracing the incompetent screenwriting from “blockbuster movies” (that usually means they’re bombs, like Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story) to rom-coms (“rom” all too often translates to unrealistic erotica or even porn, and “com” becomes bawdy behavior and bodily humor which appeals to no one who’s even half sane).
I’ll admit that Hollywood directors and producers, their screenwriters, and their actors are probably just trying to meet public demand, which summarizes a lot of negative things about the viewing public and the flaws of modern society. Huxley was wrong about soma in Brave New World: The public’s drug is TV. (Modern viewers probably don’t even know who Huxley was or why his book is important.) Of course (get out of here, David Muir), they might be watching TV drunk and stoned out of their minds, so it probably doesn’t matter much what they watch as long as it keeps them awake enough for the next drink or the hit.
Read a good book lately? Congratulations! I have too. Lots in fact. (That damned Amazon keeps count on my Kindle…maybe revenge for boycotting them when publishing my books?) Keep reading, my friends. It’s a lot better than what you’ll find on TV!
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Have I convinced you? Are you ready for some binge-reading? People often binge-watch an entire season of sit-coms or dramas. Ugh! It’s much more entertaining to binge-read the entire “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series of novels. Follow Esther’s many dangerous adventures, often driven by her desire to find justice for innocent victims and the exploited, obsessions often putting herself and her Dutchman, Bastiann van Coevorden, in peril. The two are twenty-first century versions of Christie’s Marple and Poirot, with Esther a bit more active and agile than the former and Bastiann just as cerebral but less pretentious than the latter. In Rembrandt’s Angel, Esther pursues a painting stolen by the Nazis in World War II; in Son of Thunder, she’s in a race to find the tomb of St. John the Divine; in Death on the Danube, she helps Bastiann run a murder investigation on their honeymoon cruise; in Palettes, Patriots, and Pillocks, she defends an American artist; in Leonardo and the Quantum Code, she struggles to protect an old friend whose code for quantum computers is pursued by three major powers; Defanging the Red Dragon is about China’s desire to steal software and hardware upgrades for nuclear subs; Intolerance begins a fight against right-wing terrorists whose mission is to purge migrants and refugees from Britain; and The Klimt Connection continues that battle against extremists after the couple’s flat is bombed. To binge-read this exciting series, you’ll have to do a bit of sleuthing of your own: The ebook versions are available wherever quality ebooks are solid (the above link takes you to them on B&N), but Dragon and Intolerance are only available in PDF format as free downloads on this website. The first three novels have print versions (seen in the illustration) brought to you by Penmore Press and Carrick Publishing. Numbers four, five, and eight are published by Draft2Digital and not available on Amazon. Enjoy!
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
