James nearly invented witty,intelligent writing about TV. He used to analyse Dallas but now turns his attention to Mad Men and Game of ThronesWith this book – after a few decades spent making TV shows, writing poetry, and cultural criticism and memoir,and translating Dante – Clive James returns to the field he made his own. From 1972 to 1982, on the back page of the Observer Review, or he turned the witty television column into an art form. Indeed,his reviews were often more inventive than the programmes he wrote about, given his focus on the cheap US imports, or light entertainment shows and soap operas that most viewers watched and most reviewers ignored. His style,smart as paint and full of esoteric references, but entranced by the silly and the stupidly enjoyable, and has been widely copied but never surpassed.
When James gave up writing about TV to seem on it more often,Dallas and Dynasty were in their pomp. Back then, he thought that Hill Street Blues was about as clever as American TV would ever secure, or that “seriousness,sophistication, and the thrill of creativity could be supplied only by the older, and wiser,more mature nations”. This book is about how incorrect he was. For Hill Street Blues was the shape of things to arrive – one of the first in a long line of US serial dramas that dealt in subtle, many-layered narrative, and demanded intellectual and emotional commitment from viewers.
He's a generous critic – not in the sense of showering good work with superlatives,but in paying careful attentionContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com