I had not thought about it before, but I realized in looking up information on Benidorm that every episode but one has been written by Derren Litten. Likewise, every episode of TV Burp is attributed to Harry Hill, while also nearly every episode of Downton Abbey is written by Julian Fellowes. Thus, I thought about how we have been talking in my Film Theory course about auteur theory and how it applies to both film and television (Professor Becker gave us a guest lecture on Tuesday regarding television auteur theories – some of you are also in that class with me as well.)
As we well know, this is not a standard practice in American television, to have a single writer always attributed to each episode of a series. Of course some writers earn prestige as being the auteur on American television shows, like Joss Whedon for Buffy or Matthew Weiner on Mad Men. But still, no matter how the American pie is sliced, typically there are numerous writers in a given season as well as the writers’ room that helps to formulate the episodes and narratives. So I guess my point in regards to this is: can we apply the auteur theory more effectively to British television than to American television? Or does the theory remain too closely associated with films and directors?
If we accept that film auteurs are directors and television auteurs are writers, then British TV seems to make a stronger case for following an auteur approach – at least in these three shows that we watched. Harry Hill is credited towards writing 84 out of 115 episodes of TV Burp – that’s 73% of the episodes. But he has also appeared on 92 episodes, which is 80%. So I think it’s safe to say that he has a heavy influence on the show and could be credited as its auteur (his name is in the title). Additionally, as I previously mentioned, Benidorm has had every episode but one credited to Derren Litten, so that is 29 out of 30 episodes and the 30th one hasn’t even aired yet, it’s scheduled for March 2. Therefore, technically you could say Litten has written every episode of Benidorm to date. Downton Abbey is similar in fashion, with every episode written primarily by Julian Fellowes (some have co-authors).
Conversely I took a look at Modern Family, The Soup and Mad Men just to see how they compared in their writing credits. Modern Family follows the typical American sitcom model, being written by many writers in one season. There were 13 different writers for 24 episodes in the first season. The Soup has 7 different writers credited for 35 to 38 episodes out of the 300 total. Mad Men on the other hand has the bulk of its episodes credited to Matthew Weiner on IMDB (all of them I believe), however, each episode has multiple writers and as we discussed on Tuesday, Weiner doesn’t necessarily write every episode, but insists on receiving credit.
So I guess my point to all of this is the following: Can we say that auteurs are more prevalent in British TV than in American TV, therefore making the programming almost more respectable in a sense or more artistic and impressive? Could this just be a result of fewer episodes in British TV? (I think this definitely plays a large part). And finally, a question simply for my lack of knowledge, do British shows have a writers room or are they primarily written by one person? I praised Sherlock as quality tv in my last post, and the show certainly is, but across 6 episodes there have been 3 different writers (but each wrote one episode per season). So does that show not have a legitimate auteur despite being real quality?
No matter the answer, I enjoy the level of consistency amongst the writers in British television and wish we could see that in American shows to see if it really does make the auteur theory more legitimate in television.
I hadn’t thought about that element of British TV either, but now that you explain it I think I would agree that the writers of the three shows we watched this week could be labeled “auteurs.” I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say the presence of auteurs make the programs more respectable because I think shows like Mad Men and Modern Family are still quality programs even though they have multiple writers. I don’t think quality and auteurism have to go hand-in-hand. It can be another element that contributes to the high quality of a show, not a requirement. That being said, I do think it is probably easier for British shows to have an auteur simply because they aren’t spitting out 24 episodes a year and can take their time in infusing a certain individual style in each of the few episodes per season. I think the US would have a hard time replicating the writing style of the UK shows (mostly because of the time constraints in American programming), but it would be very interesting to see how it would affect some of our favorite TV shows here.
I definitely don’t think you can see British TV is more or less artistic because of its closer ties to traditional auteurism – auteur theory has changed a lot in the decades since its inception to deal with the kinds of major industrial shifts that we have seen. But what I think you definitely see in British television is a stronger cohesion between episodes and across the series as a whole in storytelling. In American TV, the tone of separate episodes can often be drastically different – for better or for worse – from each other.
I think for the short run series typical of British TV, this works great. It ensures that all 6-13 episodes feel the same and maintain a really tight story arc, which is absolutely necessary to make those handful of episodes as compelling as they need to be. However, we also talked about how Julian Fellowes seemed to struggle with the longer second series of “Downton Abbey” partly because he is generally a film writer, but perhaps also because that might just be too many episodes to place on the shoulders of one person. It might just be that the American model is much better for longer run series that push 13 or more episodes.
I suppose the ultimate effectiveness of one writer vs. a writers room varies from show to show, but it seems like each very much have a definite place with a certain kind of – and more importantly, a certain length of – storytelling.
I was thinking about this same idea along the lines of “Quality TV.” You mentioned Mad Man in your post, and we can all agree that it is definitely QTV. Does the fact that there are so many shows in the UK with a consistent writer/influence/showrunner mean that there are more QTV shows there? It almost seems that the auteur idea combined with the unique flair encouraged by mixed programming and missions of uniqueness for channels like Channel 4 almost encourages a televisual culture of QTV ideals.
I would like to start by saying that I think this idea is very intriguing in that there does exist structural differences in the ways that American and British shows are produced, which in turn has serious implications related to authorship. I believe that the American system is absolutely more susceptible to the production of “filler” episodes as it is nearly impossible to continuously air high quality installments for such long, extended seasons. Conversely the argument is that it is obviously easier to avoid such mediocrity in Britain due to the smaller seasons, which can allow for a single writer to create a seamless and fluid narrative that is not hampered by inconsistencies or different and conflicting perspectives.
However, one question I keep asking myself is whether, in making this comparison and deducing these conclusions, I am really comparing apples to apples. If there are more “quality” British shows, is that only because there are more programs overall? In other words, is there proportionally more quality in British TV than American TV? Also, quality programming is usually considered so because of many factors in addition to writing—acting, cinematography, etc. Thus, is it fair to limit the degree of authorship just to writing when discussing quality TV?
This is a very interesting topic Ronnie, and I’m glad you brought it up. I guess the question I’d like to add to this is why, in this golden age of premium cable dramas, aren’t we seeing more American television auteurs? Many programs on channels like HBO and Showtime only have nine or ten episodes per season, but some shows can’t seem to let go of the writers room mentality. For example, I was looking at the list of episodes for the HBO show Luck the other day and couldn’t help but notice that over the course of its first season (which is only nine episodes) there are going to be eight credited writers! This is the show that has been heavily promoted as a “David Milch” vehicle on the writing side of things. Even if he’s the guiding creative force behind the season, you’re telling me he couldn’t be bothered to come up with nine scripts? It just seems like we’re so stuck in this mentality (and I’m sure there are all sorts of Writer’s Guild rules contributing to this issue) that it will take a couple of show creators to really publicly pave the way and show other creators that a similar auteur system can and should work in the current world of cable.