Television: production values and writing

[mtbc]

A few weeks ago I mentioned watching Game of Thrones (2011). Other recently watched shows include American Gods (2017), Good Omens (2019) and Chernobyl (2019). I am struck by the high production values of many of these dramas; they look very good and that must have cost a lot to achieve together with all the sets, extras and effects.

It also strikes me that some shows have good production values but poor scripts. I'd put a fair bit of recent Doctor Who (2005) in that category, including the latest episode Resolution which was painfully daft. I often hear of shows being let down by the writing, the latest example being the pilot of Swamp Thing (2019) which appears now to have been canceled anyway. Also, it doesn't take such an expensive production to make a show that I enjoy, at least considering anything from In Treatment (2008) to The Booth at the End (2011). Indeed, I am also fine with rewatching older shows that clearly had small production budgets.

I wonder how difficult and expensive it is to get a good screenplay written. Abstractly one might imagine it to be a relatively cheap process requiring but a few people's time over some months. However, judging from, say, the second season of Daredevil (2015), it's clearly difficult to achieve. It was painful to see the alien invaders in V (2009) explain their secret plan to each other in full view of the world's press. Are there very few people who are capable of writing well or is it hard for showrunners or whoever to distinguish good from bad? I won't be going into Dark Phoenix (2019) with high hopes either. Whatever the problem, I suspect that I would be happier overall to see some rebalancing that improves scripts at some cost to how great the show looks.

Comments

[writchcodex]

I've been wondering about this too, because it seems to be a widespread problem that fans of these shows point out again and again, but somehow, the show's producers aren't interested in listening. With how vocal fandom is on social media these days, it's not like fans of poorly-written shows CAN'T be heard. I'm almost inclined to believe that producers and script-writers are stuffing their fingers in their ears and humming loudly so they don't have to listen to criticism. Childish, yes, but it WOULD explain why a lot of these shows keep making the same awful plotting and character mistakes over and over across several genres and styles.

[wpadmirer]

It's not a matter of cost. I have friends in the industry (tv writers and film writers), and there are SO many factors that go into the script. 1) Writing by committee, where the writer(s) go in and the producers each have different demands because none of them is envisioning the same movie; 2) Directors have more control than the writers, where no matter what is in the script, the director has a vision and wants everything to change to meet that, and 3) Multiple writers on the same script, where the first writer probably had a coherent idea but the producers, or directors, or sometimes even the stars (if they have that kind of pull written into their contract) keep wanting something different and so the script goes through sometimes five, six or more scriptwriters - each trying to please someone else and the script gets further and further way from what the original writer wrote (and which was purchased for production).

[mindstalk]

Yeah, a lot of Doctor Who is crap if you think about it. Probably true of the old series, too.

Game of Thrones took a dip too; season 7 was "this is getting dumb but fun" and season 8 was "this is just dumb" for a lot of fans. There it's suspect the producers wanted to get it over with so they could go tell stories about the Confederacy instead.

Reviews suggests your low hopes for Dark Phoenix are justified.

[mtbc]

GoT definitely fell off the rails when they ran out of book to follow, it felt less real and engaging even if we had more fan service.

If I come across an old Doctor Who, even back from the 1960s, I'm often (not always) pleasantly surprised by that the drama is decently written and that the resolution feels earned, even if the low budget is glaring; I find that I keep watching. There are certainly poor stories, they're just less frequent.