Yes, for real. Unfortunately, according to HBO, it's also the final season, but this is still excellent news. For more, see my colleague Alan Sepinwall's blog What's Alan Watching?
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
HBO orders a fifth season of The Wire
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See also: Broadcasting and Cable. and TV Week.
HUZZAH! So, the death of Deadwood wasn't entirely in vain.
Simon always envisaged it as a five-season arc, so this is great news
This is the best possible news to wake up to. What a rare display of corporate integrity in the face of potential lost profits. I have no idea how they pulled this off, but I like to think all the rapturous praise the show's received from critics (with an assist from sites like this) turned the tide. Now let's everyone go back to work on campaigning for more "Deadwood."
(Still on the HBO path, but not THE WIRE...)
I've recently been viewing S2 of CARNIVALE, which I skipped upon broadcast, due mainly to S1 not being as great as I'd hoped. S2 is a vast improvement and more along the lines of what I was looking for the first time.
According to Wiki: Daniel Knauf envisoned a 6-year arc for the series, broken down into three smaller "books", with two seasons per book, spanning several years. (Thus the first book was completed.) Book II (seasons 3 and 4) would have taken place between 1939 and 1940, and Book III between 1944 and 1945 (leading up to the end of WWII and the explosion at the Trinity test site).
He supposedly refused to do a wrap-up movie (which makes sense given the above info). I wonder if he'll ever get a chance to finish the story - if not on HBO, maybe elsewhere? Anybody besides me care?
Well, The Wire renewal is great news. Though getting fucked on this wouldn't have surprised me, this doesn't as well. The Wire is, for HBO at least, cheap to make, plus they do have alternate revenue possibilities like product placement, etc. It's the expensive historical dramas that are gone.
Re: Ross, I was/am a fan of Carnivale as well, that was the first one that hurt in HBO's becoming just TV (I'ts not TV? Cancel great shit, that sounds like TV to me) for me. I liked Season 1 perhaps more than Season 2, its slow burn pace was fascinating to me, and I wasn't the biggest fan of Season 2's "trip of the week" format for the first half. The second half of the season was great once the groundwork laid by Season 1 actually started coming together.
Anywho, moreso than other shows, I got the feeling that Knauf dropped the ball while trying to keep it going. The Three books, two seasons a book format was a revision from an original claim of Three seasons ending in 1945. Carnivale, perhaps moreso than even The Wire, was a televised novel (maybe a graphic novel), and the attempts at injecting serialized television elements into the story hurt it, perhaps moreso than those elements did in Deadwood.
Rambling aside, Knauf also was in the middle of a pitch for Showtime when Carnivale didn't get renewed. So, two lessons for television creators working with HBO: 1. Know how many seasons you want, and stick with it (Simon has been saying 5 seasons would be nice for a while now, and also actively seems to be working for it moreso than other creators). 2. Don't try to start up another show. (I'm going to consider The Hall as something that supports this theorem rather than contradicts it. Feel free to disagree.).
One side note I've thought before. There have been discussions on here before that TV now has some great Howard Hawkes working, but no Welles. I.e. as great as TV is these days, and as cinematic, it's still driven by writing. I would propose Carnivale as the one series that might break that. It tells its story visually perhaps moreso than through writing. Some of the Rodrigo García directed episodes, along with the Babylon episode are really pure cinema in their use of widescreen compositions (16:9 if not scope), color, editing, sound, and music. Cheers
Great news on The Wire. Almost makes up for Carcetti miniseries that wasn't to be.
It looks like the strategy of pre-screening the entire season for critics to build buzz worked (if not in a ratings bump). Does anyone know of a precedent for sending critics screeners of an entire season before a single episode even airs?
jre: Whole seasons' worth of screeners are actually sent out more often than you might think. Whether this tactic results in favorable buzz depends on the program. HBO's decision to send out all the new Wire episodes worked like a charm, because the material was so strong. However, Showtime's Brotherhood, a complete set of which was made available to most critics, met with a more mixed response.
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