(2 of 3)
For instance, when we think of TV history, we usually think of sitcoms, sci-fi series and Dragnet-style cop shows, largely because shows that don't have involved, ongoing plots have traditionally done better in syndication and thus became "classics." But series with complex, ongoing story lines that let characters evolve over the years have provided much of the best TV since at least Hill Street Blues. Only recently, thanks to the growth of niche cable channels, has there been room for shows like thirtysomething (Bravo), the talky, baby boom-relationship drama, or Roc (TV Land), the gritty comedy about urban African Americans. A&E and Bravo offer a virtual graduate seminar in quirky drama, from Twin Peaks to L.A. Law to Northern Exposure.
And unlike yesterday's local stations running Mayberry RFD, cable networks offer not just content but context. TV Land offers trivia nuggets and behind-the-scenes stories as well as "retromercials," the vintage commercials it airs every hour. A few days after Lemmon died, Game Show Network aired a marathon of his little-seen 1950s appearances on What's My Line? Amid the garish capitalist thunderdomes of today's prime-time game shows, seeing an urbane Lemmon and publisher Bennett Cerf trade quips in tuxes was a mini-lesson in changed American mores. "There was a real New York sophistication and wit in game shows then," says GSN president Rich Cronin. Likewise, watching the network's reruns of the post-sexual revolution yet pre-feminist Newlywed Game--the Stepfordized housewives talking about mixing their husbands' after-work cocktails, the jokes about "making whoopee"--is like watching a new version of The Ice Storm every afternoon.
At the same time, just as the VCR turned moviegoers into home cineasts, video and DVD releases of old TV shows promise to create a generation of videasts. And it's not just a handful of hits that benefit. Rhino Home Video, for instance, offers cult classics ranging from Chris Elliott's slacker sitcom Get a Life to the trippy '60s kids' show H.R. Pufnstuf (the DVD versions offer videophile gimmicks like being able to turn off Life's laugh track). This is a material world: if you convert an evanescent work into something tangible, shelvable, revisitable and Christmas-giftable, we respect it better. Says Robert Thompson, professor and head of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University (and curator of a collection of MTM Enterprises videos): "The video and DVD revolution is making it finally possible to take [TV] seriously, because the texts are out there."