Television: What I Loved (and Didn’t) in 2013

Yes, we’re still in television’s Golden Age (or its second, maybe third). And yes, there is now a healthy battle amongst the chattering classes over each medium’s preeminence: TV is better. No, Cinema is better.

This is a mug’s game if there ever was one, to my mind, akin to suggesting that novels are intrinsically better than poems, or short stories, or biographies. What is unarguable (if anything can be these days) is the artistry and sheer craft of the work that comes into our homes via television -- it optimizes the inherent intimacy and complexity of the serial story forms emergent in the last decade and compels us to become attached to a story world, a set of characters, a storytelling style, so much so that we come back, week after week, year after year.

Or we did until the emergence of binge watching, enabled first by TV on DVD, and especially since the advent of streaming. Now binge-watching is a thing of its own, almost a format thanks to Netflix’s release pattern. Made-to-binge series are almost like 13-hour movies, with very little repetitive exposition required, and less reliant upon the predictable beats and conventions of old-school TV formats.

Certainly cable adheres to a type of continuous story-stream formatting which is quite different from conventional network series, even the best of them. Longer story arcs, interesting character digressions, depth in texture and character. This is why TV is to be loved these days. And why picking just ten to be “best” is a mug’s game. And why there’s now a reason for this list – if you find a gem you haven’t seen and you trust me, just Google it. Chances are, it’s waiting for you to binge.

Breaking Bad was so great on so many levels, there’s really very little I can add. I was in the camp that liked it so-so in the beginning, went away in season 2, but came back to stay for the ride. This finale half-season seemed to do the impossible: sustain and intensify audience obsession for a long period of time and with a growing audience. Binge watching let laggards catch up so they could find out what all the fuss was about. What it was about was brilliant writing, acting and storytelling: a modern mythology with a flawed hero.

The Cast of DR's BORGEN.Borgen is the best political drama on television, delivering pleasure in greater measure because of the unfamiliar setting, e.g., contemporary Danish parliamentary politics. Untethered from parties and histories known to me, this great drama of ideas and personalities became vivid and suspenseful on its own merits. Denmark has managed to adapt the HBO-style of serial storytelling into its own world in a unique and superb way. Let’s just hope Netflix or HBO don’t ruin it with a lame adaptation that sucks its cultural frisson out along with the unfamiliar language.

Girls is criticized because its focus is privileged white girls in New York City, as if any milieu should be off limits no matter how great it is. And yes, Girls is great. Fearless, transgressive, confused and fucked-up, just like its ensemble of characters. These are people finding their way into adult life. Think back. It’s a messy time, not very graceful. I feel like Lena Dunham is a reporter from Mars, bringing back reports of the natives. I don’t live there, but I’m very curious.

Louie feels like a more grown-up version of Girls, only the dysfunctional anti-hero has lived decades longer, so it’s sadder still. While being funny. Because the lead character is a stand-up comedian, you could be lulled into thinking this is a form of reality TV. Not. It’s a carefully, courageously crafted deconstruction of comedy, with a lot of heart thrown in.

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACKOrange is the New Black is the new “it” show for me, dramatically better than “Weeds,” the previous series by Jenji Cohen. Both shows feature strong female leads in edgy situations, but “Orange” feels authentic, where I always felt “Weeds” to be contrived, however much I love Mary Louise Parker. “Orange” introduces an ensemble of largely unknown actresses portraying women like that you never get to meet. Funny, tragic, angry, outrageous, sexy, and full of heart, “Orange” is one for the books.

The Americans is another great FX drama, set in Reagan-era Washington, D.C. in what turned out to be the finale stages of the Cold War. Our protagonists are Russian spies passing for a suburban family, with Margot Martindale as their controller. It’s a believable espionage suspense yarn bolted onto a family drama, and it works.

Justified stayed strong with Season 4’s quest for long-gone cocaine kingpin Drew Thompson, a plot driver which intertwines nicely with Raylan’s own crazy family story (not to mention the Detroit and Dixie Mafia, a tent revival scammer) and features a great ‘hiding-in-plain-sight’ denouement. The characters are fixed in place somewhat predictably, but tonally it’s spot-on.

Behind the Candelabra is something of a ringer on this list – for Soderbergh’s motion picture was delivered by HBO only when every single studio passed on this demented love story between Liberace and much younger lad, Scott Thorsen. Frank, telling and over-the-top, the picture is dominated by its superstar leads, Michael Douglas and especially Matt Damon.

Mad Men – I’m obsessed and cannot imagine a list of my favorite shows without MM, even if Season Six was all over the place. Nowhere on prime time do we get the sheer surrealism of Don Draper’s journey. We need to know where it ends. We must take this ride... along with so many great secondary characters. Roger had a particularly good year.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey – Mark Cousins is a better film historian and writer than he is narrator (for sure) and director, but I got used to his quirks, mainly because the information and THE CLIPS are remarkable. I learned so much, especially about national cinema of foreign countries. Even countries I’ve spent time viewing like France, Japan, and Italy, he uncovers some gems. And his work on the cinema of emerging nations is truly groundbreaking. That said, he’s difficult to binge watch, which I did in several batches. He’s so talky, he has to clutter the visuals with what look like travelogue footage. Everything he describes requires a superlative. And, for somebody who claims that real innovation never comes from Hollywood, he sure spends a lot of time telling us about Hollywood movies. But you will not find a film survey class this good anywhere. 

The Fall is a BBC police procedural set in Northern Ireland starring Gillian Anderson, whose tough-as-nails Scotland Yard investigator picks up where Helen Mirren’s Jane Tennison stops. Mess with her at your peril, men.

The Following is the only network show I really couldn’t get enough of, which may say more about me than the networks, give that the protagonists are a Edgar Allan Poe cult leader and the FBI cop who pursues him. I liked the weird dramatic plot twists caused by the cult leader’s followers, and of course, James Purfoy, who does evil very seductively.

Masters of Sex tells the story of pioneering medical researchers Masters and Johnson, who were the first to study human sexual response back in the 60's. The setting shares some of the appeal of Mad Men, but with a lot more skin. (Why exactly is Showtime still squeamish about full male nudity, I wonder?) What keeps you coming back are the actors – I especially liked Lizzie Caplan – who create characters whose personal and professional lives get very, very messy amidst the space shots and political incidents. 

Dancing on the Edge is a BBC mini-series shown in the US on Starz featuring Oscar contender Chiwetel Ejiofor as the leader of an all-black jazz band in 1930’s London. Told in flashback, the story shows how the band was able to overcome the limits of race through clever alliances with the upper class. As you might guess, it doesn’t end well.

Rectify is the first original series by Sundance, created by Ray McKinnon who played a subsidiary role in FX’s Sons of Anarchy. Aden Young is an ex-con, released from prison into small-town Georgia, after being exonerated for the murder of his girlfriend because of DNA evidence. Young captures the volatile mix of social fragility and bottled-up fury as he navigates the complexities of the life he had stolen from him. Plus, there’s a mystery at the heart of the set-up: if he didn’t do it, who did?

Among the other series I quite enjoyed this year were: Top of the Lake, Sons of Anarchy, Bates Motel, The Newsroom, The Bridge, Veep, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, Treme, Boardwalk Empire, Ray Donovan, Hit & Miss, Silk, The Paradise, Orphan Black, Luther, Broadchurch, Arrested Development and Modern Family.

I watched, but was disappointed in: Homeland (preposterous), Sherlock (pandering), House of Cards (a Democrat from South Carolina in a political drama?), Spies of Warsaw (some things aren’t meant to be adapted), Banshee (great premise, hot cast, gratuitous sex and violence), Defiance (yikes), Low Winter Sun (yawn), Nurse Jackie (faded), Enlightened (annoying), American Horror Story: Coven (craven).

The rest: well, I didn’t watch, did I?

One Year in Now Media

Each year my colleague Simon Staffans from Helsinki provides a great service to the transmedia field with the publication of "One Year in Now Media" -- a compendium of his own great blog posts as well as interviews with people in the field, myself included.

Here are Simon's interview questions:

o   How was 2013 for you? You launched Theatrics – how’s it done? Why did you decide to launch that venture? And what projects – other than Theatrics ones J - have you been the most impressed by?

o   Back in the days, along the times of the first wrap-up I did, you said that there had been no transmedia projects to move you to tears yet. Has that happened yet? If not, why not? And do you see signs that it might come to happen? In what direction do you feel the multiplatform / transmedia world is moving?

o   What are your hopes and fears for 2014? What possibilities and challenges do you see on the horizon?

And my replies:

2013 was a great year for me. My focus has been work with start-ups in the digital media/technology ecosystem. Some examples:

I am Senior Advisor to ideaBOOST, a new accelerator for start-ups in the media/tech field, created and launched by the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto. We completed and launched two cohorts -- more than a dozen companies including game platforms, transmedia properties, mobile apps, story-based e-commerce, and much more. We launched cohort #3 in late November, as well as a unique Production Lab in conjunction with wearable computing pioneer, Mind Pirate, a company that I advise. This Lab will incubate as many as five new products that run on Google Glass, as well as iOS and Android in 1st quarter of 2014. I’ve just gotten my own Google Glass device, and I’m very jazzed about this new form factor for experience delivery.

I'm also mentoring companies in another accelerator called Dogfish, based in New York City, with a focus on content creation startups. This accelerator from within the independent film community, and like ideaBOOST, believes that the principles of the "lean startup movement" can and should be used by content creators in order to develop sustainable business models for the digital era. One of the companies I advised is building a live-action game engine/platform, for example. Very interesting.

I also continued my work with Theatrics.com, a collaborative media platform based in Houston. The company grew out of a unique interactive sci-fi soap opera called "Beckinfield" in which users created and performed as characters in the story. I loved that idea and felt that I could help the company introduce this form of deep fan engagement to the television industry. To that end, Theatrics helped power The Social Sector, a digital native story-driven "mystery" that invited fans into the story world of the characters from USA's hit series PSYCH, which ran for 8 weeks in Q1, and is still live.

In April we expanded the idea by offering the beta version of the Theatrics platform aimed at independent transmedia producers who want to offer fan-based content in a story container. Our first example was "Welcome to Sanditon," the sequel to the Emmy-winning "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries," which modernized Jane Austen. In Sanditon, fans could impact the story through their own character engagements uploaded as video, text or images. Other outstanding examples included The Ghost Club and Aurelia: Edge of Darkness. The latter, a steampunk adventure, struck a chord with Live-Action Role-players (LARPers). The beta test continues -- anyone can create their own interactive show by using the wizard on Theatrics.com. The company is also building other applications in conjunction a range of online publishers and enterprises. 

Theatrics is but one example of the rise of what I'm calling "Fan Powered Media." I gave several talks focusing on the idea of audience as engagement engine with content, including this presentation at the Broadband TV conference that used "The Walking Dead" as an example. Henry Jenkins and others have shown the way in recognizing that deep fan engagement, including content creation by users, is happening in both authorized and unauthorized ways. So a piece of commercial content is no longer just the linear artifact that attracts the fans -- it's really a vast ecosystem of fan engagement as well.

In terms of transmedia work this year, I focus on the independent projects, which are what interest me. I'm sure that companion apps for the latest Hollywood superhero movie were awesome, but this is not my terrain, except when forced to watch by friends or a long and boring plane ride.  

Rather, I applaud the talents and especially the perseverance of my colleagues who have managed to devise and launch ambitious independent projects that hold the greatest chance of moving me like novels, films and great TV.

I was very moved and quite impressed with The Hollow, an interactive documentary about an impoverished county in Appalachia. The creators used the power of documentary storytelling, but layered the navigation of the experience with very beautiful graphics and a killer UI. I don't know any more what is "transmedia" and what isn't. I just know that intensity of feeling is the goal, and this work brought me there more than most. Elaine McMillion and her team found support from Tribeca, Kickstarter and elsewhere to support a long-term media commitment to a specific place where information can make a difference. What makes her effort distinctive is the authenticity of the content and the delight one has in navigating the site.

A similarly beautiful user-experience was achieved in National Geographic Channel's "Killing Kennedy" TV movie's companion website (Kennedy and Oswald) http://www.kennedyandoswald.com/#!/premiere-screen. Our web technologies allow such a rich mix of media types in a user-controlled environment. In this case, the emotions were less intense than a dramatic narrative, nostalgic and bittersweet, sort of like reading an old LIFE Magazine.

I saw a screening of the theatrical component of the much-awaited transmedia production “The Cosmonaut” which also included webisodes and other digital elements. At the time I reviewed it, the non-film components were just being released, and so I concentrated on the film itself, much of which I liked, though not entirely. I did very much like the premise of taking a historical milieu, in this case the world of Soviet-era cosmonauts, and creating a fictionalized world that unfurls in different media. There was a delicate, haunting quality to this work that was quite fine. 

 “The Institute,” is a 2013 film by Spencer McCall that documents the story of an alternate reality game held in San Francisco a few years ago in which some 10,000 people participated -- a hoax-based story world revolving around a kind of EST-like cult, the mystery of a missing girl, and a lot of real-world activities on the streets. While McCall can't replicate the experiences of those involved, we get a sense of the experience through interviews with many of those involved, including the creators, the participants (including a few who are mentally ill), and occasionally capturing scenes as they unfold. By the end, some viewers might themselves wonder what is “real” and what was manufactured for either the game or the film. I liked this because it reminded me that we don't really have any way to archive these time-limited experiments. Even those that are entirely digital may suddenly vanish with the fortunes of the companies housing the data.

On a slightly different note, I've been very impressed with the curatorial excellence of Google's Creative Sandbox. While much of the work is from agencies and brands, it's very nice to have a neutral location that enhances discovery with a different spin from the always useful FWA site (Favorite Website Awards). And in the transmedia/ARG area, I find Michael Anderson's ARGNet indispensable. 

Year’s end affords an opportunity to reflect on where we are as a community. We saw the demise of the Story World conference and the launch of the Transvergence Summit, two conferences with some overlap and similar challenges -- an attempt to bring under one big tent a hydra-headed monster of a community which can't even seem to settle on a definition of what it does, and probably with good reason.

The nomenclature flame wars, to wit Brian Clark's recent Facebook post and the comments that followed, are tiresome. The essential issue being raised by many early transmedia practitioners has come and gone -- namely, that stories can unfold in many ways across a number of different platforms. Got it. Now what

We've seen multi-platform story experiments large and small from mainstream television and motion picture producers without much evidence that there is sustained interest there, other than to find inventive ways to promote and market the mother ship. Sometimes this stuff is great fun, especially with properties that already have fans.

A new artform? Not so much. Just take the meteoric rise and fall of so-called "second screen" apps, especially for TV, as an example. Marketers have done a lot of different implementations for many, many shows on a slew of emerging platforms, and I suspect will continue to do so, but the real winners at the end of the day are the all-purpose platforms Facebook and Twitter, which are easy for agencies to understand, and have massive scale. And can be measured, sort of. And therefore monetized.

So, I would expect experiments with the form to remain the province of independents who have different measures of success, though some financial return would be much appreciated, I'm sure. These folks want to invent something new, and perhaps along the way deliver a deeper experience to a smaller, but more intensely committed group of fans. Many of these folks will emerge from the transformed film and journalism programs at major universities, which, if you haven't noticed, are bursting at the seams (go figure!). We have a new generation of transmediologists coming up. I look forward to seeing their work. 

Helping the Dogfish Fly

The ‘classic’ business accelerator model is an investor-backed bootcamp-style program that offers tech entrepreneurs money, training, advice, and access in exchange for a share of the company (think: Y Combinator and TechStars). 

Can the model work for indie film?

That question drove NYC-based producer James Belfer to expand the boundaries of his indie film company Dogfish Pictures by launching the Dogfish Accelerator to help filmmakers think like start-ups. Inspired by a summer at Tech Crunch, Belfer joined with his colleague Michelle Soffen to co-found an indie film accelerator, which held its demo day last Friday.

James Belfer (via #googleglass)

I was there as a minor mentor in the program, having spent an intense day of speed-dating with six of the eight companies in the program and some Skype calls along the way. I'd originally reached out to Dogfish for a panel for accelerators in the media business -- there are still only a handful (Media Camp, Matter Ventures, and ideaBOOST, which I advise).

I wanted to see how far these young companies could come in three months, and to learn how the Dogfish model has progressed its first time out. It’s one thing to generate press buzz, and quite another to execute.

Did it work?

The teams I met in September delivered much better pitches last Friday. Their business goals were more clearly articulated, and somebody made sure they were funny and engaging and warm. Even though they couldn’t explicitly raise money at the event, they all laid out their financial needs and how they’d use the money.

Me w/ Zach Lieberman, shot by Ryan Koo via #googleglass (their company, Exit Strategy is building a live-action game engine).Listening to the pitches, you could see the influence of the tech start-up spirit, even among those companies that were essentially offering single films or a slate of films (which was the majority). All of these companies had deeply absorbed the new paradigm for successful indie content – which is to know, find and connect with audiences long before the release date. All were exceedingly tech and social media savvy, and much more grounded in the entire business ecosystem they hoped to conquer.

But they’re running a marathon, not a sprint – it’s too soon to know whether Dogfish’s companies will succeed at raising funds and building sustainable businesses.  

To help, Belfer announced that Dogfish will work with the eight companies on an ongoing basis as they raise funds and launch their businesses, and that “by next year, I hope to be telling you details about a Dogfish Studio.” The 2014 program will kick off in September. Aspirants can register early on the website prior to the official application process.

I can’t wait to see what happens. 

Allie Esslinger of Section II, the first VOD platform for premium content for lesbians.Jessalyn Abbott gives me and my #googleglass an infectious smile (Aptly, her company is Go Infect Films.)

Impresarios of Interactivity

If you’re near New York City next Wednesday (12/11/13), you should check out the one-day version of the TV of Tomorrow Show. And if you do that, don’t miss my panel at 4:55, charmingly dubbed “The Impresarios of Interactivity” by Tracy Swedlow, herself quite an impresario and the hardest working woman in show business. Seriously.

The session showcases folks who see interactivity as the key to advancing TV and video and proving it by attracting investors, partners, customers and audience for the vision. If you too believe that the future of TV and video should be interactive, social and personalized, please don’t miss this panel, which includes:

• Yoni Bloch, CEO, Interlude
• Jake Katz, VP of Audience Insights and Strategy, Revolt TV
• Mark Piesanen, Co-founder, Touchcast  
• Yael Givon, CEO, Stevie.com
• Mike Monello, Chief Creative Officer, Campfire
• Adam Lowy, GM, Interactive and Advanced TV, Dish Network 

Dawn of the Next Big Thing: I Get Glass

While other Americans were trampling each other for retail bargains on Black Friday, I was driving through the rain to Google’s Venice Beach facility for an appointment with a Google Guide named Sam, whose job was to introduce me to my new Google Glass wearable technology device.

We traversed a predictably whimsical courtyard (giant chess board, etc.) and a gourmet lunchroom (Sushi Specials!!) bereft of the 600 Google employees housed in the former Chiat-Day binoculars building because of the Thanksgiving holiday. The joint was empty except for Google Guards, Google Guides, and Google Explorers, the latter group being the one that includes me.

My first pic with Glass.The Explorer program launched back in the Spring with a #ifihadglass contest. Some 8,000 folks were offered the chance to buy their own Glass (at $1,500) and, as Google put it, “Being part of the Glass Explorer program is pretty insane (good insane): let's face it, using cutting edge technology that changes every month requires a certain sense of adventure.”

I did not enter the contest, though I must say, I was tempted. A friend and colleague Shawn Hardin had told me privately that his next company, Mind Pirate, was developing a full-scale game and app platform for Glass and other wearable computing devices, premised on the conviction that this market will be huge.

Shawn is incredibly convincing. His research suggests that the wearable tech market, which includes smart glasses, watches and clothing, will grow to $18 billion by 2018, up from $1.4 billion this year, with more than 64 million units worldwide. He told me that 10 million smart glasses will ship by 2016, and not just from Google – many companies are jumping into this.

In the intervening months, I’ve joined the Mind Pirate Board of Advisors and helped formulate a new production lab program between the company and the Canadian Film Centre’s ideaBOOST media tech accelerator, which I advise. We launched that program November 21^st in Toronto with five participants (SmokeBomb Entertainment, Imaginary Computers’ Sean McCracken, Normative, and Little Guy Games and the CFC Media Lab). It was an extraordinarily creative and energized experience, diving deep into the technology of developing for Glass, learning about Mind Pirate’s Calisto platform, and jamming with some insanely smart folks. It’s called Flow.

So, of course, I had to apply to the Glass Explorers program and I had to accept when my invitation arrived a few days after my return from Toronto. I plunked down my own dough at a decidedly non-Black-Friday price, even though I know that other, cooler wearable gear is likely to make this thing on my head seem quaint in a matter of a business cycle or two. I’ve got to hurry up and be cool.

Rainbow outside the Google office, taken with Glass.So here I am again at the dawn of the Next Big Thing:  a new and very disruptive generation of devices, applications, and services, to rival previous revolutionary platforms such as the PC, Internet, broadband, social media and mobile.

I’ve been in the land of tomorrow in the past. Somewhere in the closet I have, for example, Apple’s QuickTake camera (boo), a Newton (ugh) and several Palm Treos (yea). None of those turkeys lasted. In general, being on the bleeding edge is messy and time-consuming, since pioneering devices are never as useful as their progeny. Which is why it’s better to get them for free.

Still, I do like the idea of being first, seeing the technolust in the eyes of my fellows, though so far, most people have ignored me. As my friend Carol said, “I thought it was going to be Goggles.” No, Carol, Googles, not Goggles.

So far, I’m just learning the interface, which is kind of tricky. I’ve set up my account, learned how to take a picture and record a video, set up WiFi and navigate pointless Twitter posts on my eyelids. When I sent an email to my college roommate, I couldn’t figure out his reply, which was “Wow, Alice, is it really you?” until I read what I had actually sent:

hi Michael this is my first email response on Google glass

Followed by:

Sent Through the Looking Glass

Seriously, the Glass default signature is THAT?

Then there’s social etiquette of using the device – the Internet was alive with the story of an Explorer who got kicked out of a Seattle restaurant.

I’m more afraid that I’ll look like I’ve got Tourette’s or epilepsy as I twitch, tap and shout to my little friend in the screen inside my head. 

I will be in Silicon Valley and New York City in the next week, which should give me plenty of experience to report here, and on the Explorers website. I figure I’d better hurry up and act like an early adopter before everybody gets these things, rumored to be in a matter of months.