Nigh Journal

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Creating TV Drama Series: Something Borrowed, Something NYPD Blue

Something different…but the same. Trying to shoehorn my way into TV writing, I’ve spent years trying to concoct never-been-done before ideas for drama series. And yet what are my favourite shows on TV at the moment? A show about Cops and a show about Doctors. (This doesn’t include Lost, obviously – but Lost is the exception to every rule including this one so it will get its own blog posts at numerous later dates )

For anyone who hasn’t seen either Bones or House then I’ll summarise: In Bones they solve a murder every week and in every episode of House they try and work out what’s wrong with sick people. Genius, innit. 

Well, actually yes. Why do I actually watch and love either of these shows? Not because of the above, that’s for certain. But each provides a clear and renewable ‘story-engine’ to provide a launch-pad for the plot of many, many episodes. I was lucky enough to recently attend a really useful seminar in Manchester with BBC’s Controller of Drama Production John Yorke where he clearly described some of the must-haves for a returning series:

Naturally, I agree. For Bones, the big softy in me loves the family aspect of the show. The more the series progresses, the more we see how damaged each of the brilliant people in it are and you like them even more for being able to function whilst being that broken. In House, I’m watching to the see the chinks in House’s bastard façade that defines his morality. And, while I’m waiting, I can enjoy just House being a bastard. But a clever bastard. And that’s what the creators of these shows are too, dagnammit!

As the series have progressed, I’d also say that both the murder and medical mysteries have actually slipped down the importance scale in an average episode. But they’re always there as the spine in Bones and the foundation in House. Without them, there’s no need for the characters to even be together. It’s telling that the fourth season of each show featured Brennan and Booth and House and Cuddy facing murder or disease on a plane bound for Asia – deprived of their usual facilities and facing the ticking clock of landing. But both were very different – apart from the fact that they were both brilliant.  

Even if both will-they/won’t-they pairings got married, there had better be dead/dying body in their Honeymoon suite! But it’s the fact that the writers have made me want there NOT to be a mystery to solve that makes these shows so successful.

It seems the series creators ensure we want to see their characters happy…then do everything they can to ensure that they’re not!