Post by domenicaflor on Mar 22, 2004 9:48:52 GMT -5
From the St. Petersburg Times Online:
Where have you gone, Barnaby Jones?
Unlike old-school shows that invited us to play along, new dramas such as CSI and Law & Order often are too complicated to be solved by viewers.
By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV/Media Critic
Published March 22, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------
For me, the revelation came while watching a permutation of one of my favorite shows, Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Even if you missed this particular episode (titled "F.P.S.," or frames per second), if you're a L&O fan, you know the drill: at the show's end, hero Detective Robert Goren (Vincent D'Onofrio) faces the suspects and gets a confession. This time, it was two video game makers suspected of killing a woman who played their game online.
Like a new school Sherlock Holmes, Goren laid out how one partner killed the girl and used his programming skills to set up a gang of electronic thieves (by giving them a spyware program to skim money from ATMs) and another software designer.
As his impossibly complex explanation unwound, it hit me: There is no way any viewer could have figured this out beforehand. (I had to use my digital video recorder to watch the scene twice to understand it myself.)
That wasn't always the case. Back in the days of Matlock, Murder She Wrote, Columbo and Barnaby Jones, TV mysteries were play-along affairs: The whole point was to figure out the murder case before the hero did.
But today's TV mystery is different. First, they rarely admit their status as TV mysteries - despite the fact that both CSI series, all three Law & Order shows, Cold Case, Without a Trace and Monk often boil down to classic whodunit themes (shows such as NYPD Blue, which focus more on the process police use to solve crimes, are called "procedural dramas.")
Often, today's whodunits are simply too complicated to be solved by the viewer with the evidence they have at hand, violating a primary principle of mystery writers.
"The idea of trying to match wits with the detective is gone," said Lee Goldberg, former executive producer of Diagnosis Murder (and author of several novels based on the series), who has written for USA Network's Monk and Lifetime's 1-800-Missing, among others.
"You're either following along, with no hope of solving (the mystery) . . . or, like CSI, it is a classic whodunit, but there's no way in hell you can possibly solve the crime," Goldberg said. "CSI is in many ways an old-time murder mystery - but it's so slick, people don't realize they're watching something that has been done before."
Believe it or don't, there are rules about how mystery stories should unfold.
One of the earliest examples was set down by the legendary Detection Club, an exclusive group of crime and mystery writers formed in 1928 whose ranks included Agatha Christie and Father Brown mysteries author G.K. Chesterton.
The club rules included: heroes must solve crime by their wits (not psychic revelations or something similar); vital clues cannot be kept from the reader; contrivances such as supercriminals will be kept to a minimum and all poisons must be known to science (no making up something that's undetectable and kills in three weeks, for example).
Of course, such rules are usually made to be broken. But Lynette Carpenter, a professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan University, said such strictures do create an expectation among mystery fans about how stories should unfold that writers violate at their peril.
"I get really annoyed when I read a story that ignores . . . that to a large extent, you have expectations in place when the book starts," said Carpenter, a published mystery writer who admitted she rarely watches the new-school mystery TV shows. "It gives a little flutter of the heart when you write something like that. You're very conscious there are some rules you're breaking, and does the end justify that means?"
So why are today's TV mysteries - among the highest-rated series on television - so reticent to admit their heritage?
Goldberg has a simple answer: ageism.
Old-school mystery shows draw older fans. And in today's competitive, youth-crazed TV universe, the only thing worse than a show that doesn't draw any viewers may be a show that draws only older viewers.
"If you say "mysteries' to most network executives, they think Geritol, Depends and denture glue," said Goldberg, noting that executives now call such shows "crime dramas" or "police dramas." "And they're right. Whodunits skew so old, that half the audience is dead by the time the show is over."
In many ways, this is the best and worst of times for mystery TV writers, who have a range of shows to ply their trade as long as they are willing to accept the new rules.
"It's not clear-cut bad guys and the heroes don't always win," said Goldberg, now developing a CSI-meets-Monk style show called The Cleaner, about an ex-cop who runs a crime-scene cleaning service and, of course, solves crimes.
"(Viewers) aren't being asked to solve (the crime). They aren't asking you to actually think," he said. "It's like an "E' ticket ride at Disney. . . . It's not as taxing."
But Gerry Conway, the Criminal Intent writer who crafted "F.P.S.," said his series has not tried to pretend it is anything other than a 21st century mystery, reinventing the form for a younger TV audience that likely doesn't know Peter Falk or Angela Lansbury.
"(On Criminal Intent) the mysteries are treated in what we believe is a more realistic fashion," said Conway, a former comic book writer (he created The Punisher in 1972) who once wrote for traditional whodunits such as The Father Dowling Mysteries. "We are not like the kinds of (unrealistic) shows Lee is referring to, stuff like Diagnosis Murder, where there is no earthly reason, week in and week out, for a doctor to be investigating murder."
Ann Donahue, executive producer of CSI: Miami, agreed.
"We have called (the show) a "forensic procedural,' which I think is pretty highfalutin words for a mystery," Donahue said. "When we say "forensics,' that's just a big word for a clue. Used to be, if Columbo did a scene, the blood type would be OB negative - now we can tell you much more. I was reading Raymond Chandler, and the novel's preface said, "Only a hack tries to break the mold. . . . A true pro tries to go as big as you can within the fold.' "
Conway pinpointed the exact pop culture moment when the old-school TV mystery passed into obsolescence: When Friends' Phoebe Buffet concluded a buddy had no social life because she knew the plot of the last Matlock episode.
"When a form is so easily referenced by a joke, you know it's over," said the writer, who was working on Matlock when the Friends crack aired and took it as a sign that he'd better find a new job. "When a show like Matlock becomes the butt of a joke, you're saying to (viewers), "You don't have a life if you're watching this show.' "
Conway calls series such as Criminal Intent and CSI "open mysteries," in which viewers often learn who the criminal is early in the show, and the drama comes from anticipating how the detective will prove his case.
And, unlike Agatha Christie-style stories in which viewers are given all the clues to solve the crime, Conway said Law & Order series are built on a series of smaller mysteries sprinkled throughout a show. First, the heroes might figure out who was killed, then they find a motive, and later, a suspect is discovered.
Often on Law & Order, the traditional mystery element - who killed someone and why - is solved by the middle of the show. So writers find new mysteries to throw at the audience in the second half, at times involving the killer's trial.
Instead of concluding that viewers of new-school TV mysteries are seeking spoon-fed drama, Conway suggested that these new forms propel fans through stories to keep an increasingly sophisticated audience guessing.
"For my mother, (traditional mysteries) were like comfort food for the mind - she was able to sit down with characters she enjoyed, like Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher," he said. "Now we're dealing with an audience that expects a sense of novelty from moment to moment. It's the difference between sitting down to dinner and getting on a roller coaster."
Donahue made similar observations, noting that a traditional show like Murder She Wrote might not show a death until well into the episode.
"In our show, you have to have a warm body by the (first commercial)," she said. "The modern mystery can't be linear - "We think Sheila did and then we think Dave did it' - it has to build with twists within twists. Everything gets pushed up, because the audience is too smart."
There's another benefit from keeping it fast-paced: viewers often catch things on a second and third viewing they didn't see the first time around. This may explain why Law & Order reruns have become such a potent force (the show didn't emerge as a hit until A&E began airing its reruns four times daily years ago).
Of course these series have some flaws, like the use of recognizable guest stars who give away their culpability ("They go to talk to a witness and its Andrew McCarthy; of course he's the murderer!" quipped Goldberg). And CSI's success has led shows such as Law & Order to beef up their own medical examiner and forensic science scenes.
But regardless of what's on TV now, industry veterans agree the old-school TV mystery probably won't be gone forever.
"It won't happen this year or for five years, but a show like Matlock will happen again," said Conway. "Before Matlock, it had been 20 years since they tried a show with the attorney solving crimes, in Perry Mason. And it will come around again, because it always does."
- Eric Deggans can be reached at 727 893-8521, deggans@sptimes.com or through the St. Petersburg Times Web site at www.sptimes.com
© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved
Where have you gone, Barnaby Jones?
Unlike old-school shows that invited us to play along, new dramas such as CSI and Law & Order often are too complicated to be solved by viewers.
By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV/Media Critic
Published March 22, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------
For me, the revelation came while watching a permutation of one of my favorite shows, Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Even if you missed this particular episode (titled "F.P.S.," or frames per second), if you're a L&O fan, you know the drill: at the show's end, hero Detective Robert Goren (Vincent D'Onofrio) faces the suspects and gets a confession. This time, it was two video game makers suspected of killing a woman who played their game online.
Like a new school Sherlock Holmes, Goren laid out how one partner killed the girl and used his programming skills to set up a gang of electronic thieves (by giving them a spyware program to skim money from ATMs) and another software designer.
As his impossibly complex explanation unwound, it hit me: There is no way any viewer could have figured this out beforehand. (I had to use my digital video recorder to watch the scene twice to understand it myself.)
That wasn't always the case. Back in the days of Matlock, Murder She Wrote, Columbo and Barnaby Jones, TV mysteries were play-along affairs: The whole point was to figure out the murder case before the hero did.
But today's TV mystery is different. First, they rarely admit their status as TV mysteries - despite the fact that both CSI series, all three Law & Order shows, Cold Case, Without a Trace and Monk often boil down to classic whodunit themes (shows such as NYPD Blue, which focus more on the process police use to solve crimes, are called "procedural dramas.")
Often, today's whodunits are simply too complicated to be solved by the viewer with the evidence they have at hand, violating a primary principle of mystery writers.
"The idea of trying to match wits with the detective is gone," said Lee Goldberg, former executive producer of Diagnosis Murder (and author of several novels based on the series), who has written for USA Network's Monk and Lifetime's 1-800-Missing, among others.
"You're either following along, with no hope of solving (the mystery) . . . or, like CSI, it is a classic whodunit, but there's no way in hell you can possibly solve the crime," Goldberg said. "CSI is in many ways an old-time murder mystery - but it's so slick, people don't realize they're watching something that has been done before."
Believe it or don't, there are rules about how mystery stories should unfold.
One of the earliest examples was set down by the legendary Detection Club, an exclusive group of crime and mystery writers formed in 1928 whose ranks included Agatha Christie and Father Brown mysteries author G.K. Chesterton.
The club rules included: heroes must solve crime by their wits (not psychic revelations or something similar); vital clues cannot be kept from the reader; contrivances such as supercriminals will be kept to a minimum and all poisons must be known to science (no making up something that's undetectable and kills in three weeks, for example).
Of course, such rules are usually made to be broken. But Lynette Carpenter, a professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan University, said such strictures do create an expectation among mystery fans about how stories should unfold that writers violate at their peril.
"I get really annoyed when I read a story that ignores . . . that to a large extent, you have expectations in place when the book starts," said Carpenter, a published mystery writer who admitted she rarely watches the new-school mystery TV shows. "It gives a little flutter of the heart when you write something like that. You're very conscious there are some rules you're breaking, and does the end justify that means?"
So why are today's TV mysteries - among the highest-rated series on television - so reticent to admit their heritage?
Goldberg has a simple answer: ageism.
Old-school mystery shows draw older fans. And in today's competitive, youth-crazed TV universe, the only thing worse than a show that doesn't draw any viewers may be a show that draws only older viewers.
"If you say "mysteries' to most network executives, they think Geritol, Depends and denture glue," said Goldberg, noting that executives now call such shows "crime dramas" or "police dramas." "And they're right. Whodunits skew so old, that half the audience is dead by the time the show is over."
In many ways, this is the best and worst of times for mystery TV writers, who have a range of shows to ply their trade as long as they are willing to accept the new rules.
"It's not clear-cut bad guys and the heroes don't always win," said Goldberg, now developing a CSI-meets-Monk style show called The Cleaner, about an ex-cop who runs a crime-scene cleaning service and, of course, solves crimes.
"(Viewers) aren't being asked to solve (the crime). They aren't asking you to actually think," he said. "It's like an "E' ticket ride at Disney. . . . It's not as taxing."
But Gerry Conway, the Criminal Intent writer who crafted "F.P.S.," said his series has not tried to pretend it is anything other than a 21st century mystery, reinventing the form for a younger TV audience that likely doesn't know Peter Falk or Angela Lansbury.
"(On Criminal Intent) the mysteries are treated in what we believe is a more realistic fashion," said Conway, a former comic book writer (he created The Punisher in 1972) who once wrote for traditional whodunits such as The Father Dowling Mysteries. "We are not like the kinds of (unrealistic) shows Lee is referring to, stuff like Diagnosis Murder, where there is no earthly reason, week in and week out, for a doctor to be investigating murder."
Ann Donahue, executive producer of CSI: Miami, agreed.
"We have called (the show) a "forensic procedural,' which I think is pretty highfalutin words for a mystery," Donahue said. "When we say "forensics,' that's just a big word for a clue. Used to be, if Columbo did a scene, the blood type would be OB negative - now we can tell you much more. I was reading Raymond Chandler, and the novel's preface said, "Only a hack tries to break the mold. . . . A true pro tries to go as big as you can within the fold.' "
Conway pinpointed the exact pop culture moment when the old-school TV mystery passed into obsolescence: When Friends' Phoebe Buffet concluded a buddy had no social life because she knew the plot of the last Matlock episode.
"When a form is so easily referenced by a joke, you know it's over," said the writer, who was working on Matlock when the Friends crack aired and took it as a sign that he'd better find a new job. "When a show like Matlock becomes the butt of a joke, you're saying to (viewers), "You don't have a life if you're watching this show.' "
Conway calls series such as Criminal Intent and CSI "open mysteries," in which viewers often learn who the criminal is early in the show, and the drama comes from anticipating how the detective will prove his case.
And, unlike Agatha Christie-style stories in which viewers are given all the clues to solve the crime, Conway said Law & Order series are built on a series of smaller mysteries sprinkled throughout a show. First, the heroes might figure out who was killed, then they find a motive, and later, a suspect is discovered.
Often on Law & Order, the traditional mystery element - who killed someone and why - is solved by the middle of the show. So writers find new mysteries to throw at the audience in the second half, at times involving the killer's trial.
Instead of concluding that viewers of new-school TV mysteries are seeking spoon-fed drama, Conway suggested that these new forms propel fans through stories to keep an increasingly sophisticated audience guessing.
"For my mother, (traditional mysteries) were like comfort food for the mind - she was able to sit down with characters she enjoyed, like Angela Lansbury's Jessica Fletcher," he said. "Now we're dealing with an audience that expects a sense of novelty from moment to moment. It's the difference between sitting down to dinner and getting on a roller coaster."
Donahue made similar observations, noting that a traditional show like Murder She Wrote might not show a death until well into the episode.
"In our show, you have to have a warm body by the (first commercial)," she said. "The modern mystery can't be linear - "We think Sheila did and then we think Dave did it' - it has to build with twists within twists. Everything gets pushed up, because the audience is too smart."
There's another benefit from keeping it fast-paced: viewers often catch things on a second and third viewing they didn't see the first time around. This may explain why Law & Order reruns have become such a potent force (the show didn't emerge as a hit until A&E began airing its reruns four times daily years ago).
Of course these series have some flaws, like the use of recognizable guest stars who give away their culpability ("They go to talk to a witness and its Andrew McCarthy; of course he's the murderer!" quipped Goldberg). And CSI's success has led shows such as Law & Order to beef up their own medical examiner and forensic science scenes.
But regardless of what's on TV now, industry veterans agree the old-school TV mystery probably won't be gone forever.
"It won't happen this year or for five years, but a show like Matlock will happen again," said Conway. "Before Matlock, it had been 20 years since they tried a show with the attorney solving crimes, in Perry Mason. And it will come around again, because it always does."
- Eric Deggans can be reached at 727 893-8521, deggans@sptimes.com or through the St. Petersburg Times Web site at www.sptimes.com
© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved
