

It’s a tendency that hasn’t gone unnoticed by critics.
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TV may be enjoying a Golden Age, but it appears it may also be harboring some self-doubt. But there’s a difference between tackling bleak topics, and making a virtue, if not a fetish, of bleakness. Of course, its primary concerns-sexual violence, psychopathy, Irish sectarian tensions-don’t exactly lend themselves to lighthearted treatment. It’s the sole instance of slapstick in a show that’s otherwise unwaveringly grim. During the second season there’s precisely one moment that earns a laugh, and it’s when a member of the Belfast police department-engaged in what’s supposed to be a surreptitious search of a suspect’s house-puts his foot through the attic floor, causing the bedroom ceiling to collapse.

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To prove that such cheerlessness isn’t unique to American drama, there’s the BBC series The Fall. TV might be enjoying a Golden Age, but it appears it may also be harboring some self-doubt. In short, these shows are victims of their own pretensions.
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This new solemnity could be seen as a sign of status anxiety: a byproduct of both serial television’s desire to disassociate from its soapy origins, and genre programming’s striving for cultural legitimacy. In fact, it’s probably no coincidence that genre series are the most committed to this sort of sober and high-minded tone. This new strain of humorlessness comes across most palpably in programs that are also works of genre, from the police procedural (in the case of True Detective or The Killing), fantasy ( Game of Thrones), to horror ( The Walking Dead). Game of Thrones, for instance, killed off one of its most jovial characters, Robert Baratheon, in the seventh episode, and with him, seemingly any hope of ensuring the series’s main players-in the words of the murdered king-“don’t look so fucking grim all the time.” It’s as if these programs, intent on proving their “quality,” fall into the trap of protesting too much. Especially paradigmatic of this drift toward the ponderous is The Walking Dead, whose third season includes episodes entitled “Made to Suffer,” “The Suicide King,” and “This Sorrowful Life”-titles that could just as easily characterize the despondent state of affairs on any number of shows viewers and critics alike have been singling out for praise. From the bro-style bloviating (or, broviating) of True Detective’s first season, to the ominous proclaiming that punctuates the general whoring and slaying of Game of Thrones, to the unceasing climatological and psychological punishments meted out to the cast of The Killing, it seems as though some of the most celebrated recent examples of serial drama have elected self-seriousness as their default tone. Consider how many other current acclaimed shows cultivate a similarly somber mood.

The Truth About People Who Have No Personality Olga KhazanĪnd yet, such moodiness is far from an anomaly.
