Two TV Shows To Check Out

Let me recommend two TV shows that you may not have heard of or seen.

The first is actually two related series: Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. These are British comedies from the 1980's that provided very sharp political satire. The main character, Jim Hacker, is a minister in the British cabinet in the first series, and then Prime Minister in the second. Oscar nominee Nigel Hawthorne is his principal private secretary, i.e. primary civil servant aide, and main foil. A very funny show that you might be able to find on PBS, if they aren't running that totally unfunny Are You Being Served that for some reason clutters the airwaves on PBS everywhere I go. And the satire is so good I often think of events in the show when I watch real politics, and Andrew Sullivan has more than once recently quoted passages in relation to real events. Maggie Thatcher was apparently a big fan, so much so that she wrote a sketch, with her prinicpal private secretary, and participated in the performance of it when the show won some award in Britain.

The second show is Babylon 5, an American sci-fi show from the 90's. This was a show that was ahead of its time and was probably too ambitious. Unlike most shows, then and now, which go from episode to episode with little to connect it, the show was conceived as a 5 year story arc from the beginning. This is more in line with modern shows like 24 or Lost, but was well before those shows. The cast did not feature many big-names actors, though one, Mira Furlan, is now on Lost. But the acting was pretty good. In particular, Peter Jurasik and the late Andreas Katsulas (the one armed man from The Fugitive) were spectacular, especially as their characters--Londo and G'Kar--were developed. The story was a pretty strong one, with an obvious influence from Lord of the Rings, but the show ends up going in a very different direction.

The best part of the show was the writing. Nearly all the characters are well developed, rare for a TV show or movie. They all evolve over the course of the show. As one character says very early in the first season, no one is who they appear. Londo goes from being a joke to helping unleash the great terror on the galaxy, to paying for his mistakes for the rest of his life. G'Kar goes from being a hot-head, almost a terrorist, to being a religious and moral leader of his people. And so on. Watching the show again, knowing what's coming, one gains an ever greater appreciation of the little touches that no one noticed the first time, but which later are recognized to have significance.

Why do I say it was ahead of its time? As I noted above, the show came out before the idea of having a single story arc be the core of the show for a very extended period of time had become fashionable, at least outside of soaps. That makes the show a trailblazer, but it was not well-suited for that. The structure of the series was such that it had to grab its audience pretty much in the first season, maybe the second, and then hold them for the rest of the show. If you came in in seasons 3 or later, you would be totally confused because you've missed half the story. Nowadays, that's not a problem because a similar show would release all the episodes on DVD or the internet as soon as each season was complete. So if you came in in season 3 and were sufficiently intrigued, a trip to Blockbuster would fill in all the gaps. But this was the mid-90's. DVD's hadn't come out yet. The closest the B5 world had was the Lurker's Guide website which, while it provided a lot of information, was hardly the same as watching the show.

What about too ambitious? Well, a five year story arc is pretty ambitious, even if the DVDs are coming out every summer. You have to keep your audience glued to the show for that long. And as the show goes on, each episode becomes more important so missing just one can cause a lot of confusion.

More importantly, B5 came out at the height of the Star Trek renaissance. Next Generation was still going strong and Deep Space 9 came out at the same time as Babylon 5, and shared some superficial similarities. While those shows had a major franchise behind them, Babylon 5 had nothing. Instead of being on a network, it was on PTen, the precursor to the WB network. (Not that the WB was ever a real network.) Without the backing of a big-time brand like Star Trek or a network, the show was constantly in danger of being canceled and no one was sure the full story could be told.

That point led to the most disappointing aspect to the show: season 5. It looked like the show would be canceled after the fourth season. So JMS, the show's creator, accelerated the story during season 4 so that the end of the season could provide a clean ending to the show. They even filmed the series finale. But at the last minute, season 5 was given a green light. But now the story was pretty much told so the last season, rather than being a climax to the show, ends up a very slow and extended epilogue. There are still some very good episodes, and Londo's story certainly remains strong, but overall a real disappointment. Not enough of one to overshadow the first four, but disappointing all the same.

Being a Warner-produced show, AOL provides the pilot and some season 1 episodes online for Windows users. You can also watch Scarecrow and Mrs. King episodes to see a pre-Sheridan Bruce Boxleitner, though I can't say I recommend it. Very much 80's camp.