By Daniel Janssen
Staff Writer
With Netflix on the rise, the digital market seems to be pushing for a change of the channel in the way we watch audiovisual media. Your television is no longer limited to displaying the content exclusively produced for the medium, as new Video on Demand services allow you to watch almost any movie you want to watch. This shift in how we watch movies has not gone unseen in Hollywood, leading to considerable changes on the production end of films and series. Now that the way we access film is evolving, can we expect to see change in the content showed on our screens? If one were to ask Hollywood, the answer would be a resounding “yes”.
After the immense success of The Wire in 2002 and the more recent popularity of gangster show Boardwalk Empire, HBO seems to have brought yet another revolutionary crime series to television: Tr
ue Detective. In this detective anthology series, A-list actors Matthew McConaughey (Rust Cohle) and Woody Harrelson (Marty Hart) partner up to investigate a gruesome murder, which puts them on the path of a Louisiana serial killer.
After the release of the first season’s finale a short month later, audiences have yet to stop raving about the quality of the show – which scores a staggering 87 on critic consensus platform Metacritic. Fan feedback ranges from eulogies on the series’ stellar cinematography to elaborate discussions of the characters’ philosophies, but they all seem to have agreed upon one thing: the performances of McConaughey and Harrelson outclass any other show on television.
Whilst it is no longer a real surprise that these actors deliver performances that are deserving of awards, the caliber of the cast that the True Detective producers were able to bring to television, is rather remarkable. The line that separates the acting world of film from that of television seems to be slowly fading, as Harrelson and McConaughey are not the only Hollywood stars moving to television successfully.
Last year, two-time Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey started to explore the deceptive character of Congressman Francis Underwood in the immensely popular House of Cards on Netflix. Similarly, Golden Globe winner Kevin Bacon starred in crime TV series The Following, whilst the Danish cultural icon Mads Mikkelsen and The Matrix-star Laurence Fishburne signed on to star opposite of each other in NBC’s Hannibal.
The ostensible Hollywood migration has yielded great successes for most of the aforementioned men, but what is their motivation? What kind of new challenges can television offer these experienced actors? The words of True Detective director Cary Fukunaga reveal an interesting perspective: “This thing [True Detective] I saw as being an eight-hour movie, rather than just an episodic television show.” Television is evolving.
Many shows, like True Detective, choose to go for “a single-writer, single-director” model instead of the maintenance of a team of writers that is traditional for television. Not only does the latter increase the cohesiveness of a television series in terms of story and style, but essentially, it also attracts Hollywood figures that are looking for something new. The actors are now faced with scripts quadrupling in size, and thus, characters quadrupling in depth. On the other side of the spectrum, directors can now flesh out a story over an episodic season, rather than in sequels or trilogies. Consequently, creators feel inspired to design new and greater projects that can either be completely new to the audience, or a more elaborate re-imagining of a story they already know, such as the aforementioned Hannibal or the retelling of Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho in the series Bates Motel.
And so, Hollywood and the television industry are creating new ground both in the means of production, continuously being reinforced by the steps made in the sharing means of the medium. In effect, the fruits of Netflix mark the beginning of a new era in which the traditional “small” and “big” screen seamlessly merge – and with the fantastic reception amongst audiences, there seems to be no reason to stop it.
Daniel Janssen, class of 2015, is a Psychology and International Relations major from Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.
