The revolution was indeed televised, and it began just 25 years ago.
On January 10, 1999, the American network HBO launched The Sopranos. The series greatly contributed to the reputation of the adult fiction cable channel, since considered the best in the world in this niche. The production features a small mafia from New Jersey led by Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), who was undergoing therapy with a psychologist. David Chase’s daring creation kept a breathtaking pace for six seasons and 86 episodes, until the very last scene of the 2007 finale.
Other masterpieces of the eighth art followed: The Wire, Game Of Thrones and, very recently, Successionstill on HBO; breaking Bad, Better Call Saul And Mad Men on AMC, a channel which was also at the beginning of the shift towards excellence overstimulated by the best authors, producers, screenwriters, directors and actors. Apple TV+ will launch in a few days Masters of the Air by banking on the distant success of Band of Brothers and of The Pacific, produced by actor Tom Hanks and director Steven Spielberg 20 years ago. This novelty required a fortune, approximately a third of a billion Canadian dollars.
“Quality series often focused around a certain type of hero embodying the revenge of the average character,” points out Professor Pierre Barrette, a rare Quebec academic specializing in television studies. “Basically, The Sopranos deals with the dead moments between the three films of the Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola, when the mafioso is really himself, anxious, full of doubts, fragile, like us all. »
The professor cites the title of an essay by Frenchman François Jost on “the new villains “, become such by the force of social constraints. The antihero of breaking Badchemistry teacher transformed into a super cookermethembodies this tragic trajectory.
A golden globalization
The American push to the very top with people from below then stimulated quality globally. In Britain, Northern Europe and Israel, among others. Here too, of course, with productions like The invincibles, 19-2, Midnight, evening, Life, life Or Plan B (Radio-Canada), Can you hear me ? (Télé-Québec) or The beautiful discomforts (VAT). Black sequencebroadcast from 2014 to 2016, even pushed the audacity to the point of making a mise en abîme around television mediocrity.
Louise Lantagne has been supporting this great change for decades, at Radio-Canada as director of drama (2002-2007) and general director of television (2008-2014), then at the producer Attractions Images and, since 2018, as p.- CEO of the Cultural Enterprise Development Corporation (SODEC), which supports audiovisual production in Quebec. Mme Lantagne also joined the public broadcaster in 1999, the year of the appearance of Tea Sopranos.
“I had a front row seat,” she says. As director of drama, I saw the transition from soap operas produced by television broadcasters, both Radio-Canada and TVA, to the birth and then the dazzling development of independent production, financed among other things by the tax credit then by the Fund of Canadian media. When I arrived, we were still filming four soap operas on sets in the basement of the Radio-Canada tower. When you do a TV series in prefabricated settings, you quickly reach the limits. Independent production had more means to assume its audacity by drawing on talents from cinema, literature and theater. »
She herself comes from literature (at McGill) and cinema, since she developed film projects at SODEC during the 1990s. She remembers a conversation with directors who had criticized her for her time on TV. claiming that this media did not produce anything good. She replied that they only had to invest in it to transform it, something desired and then achieved, from Jean-Marc Vallée to Xavier Dolan.
The Bougons was filmed in 35 mm to expose the resourcefulness of the system’s cripples, once again “new villains”. Louise Lantagne remembers the effect of astonishment on specialist columnists at the time of the press viewing in January 2004, just 20 years ago. “The room didn’t say a word. Total silence. Journalists, like everyone else, were faced with something original and destabilizing. Never seen. »
Sin and perish by excess?
Very well thank you. However, a strong impression — if not of the end of this world, at least of a new great transformation — has been growing for some time. A magical cycle seems to be closing, and pre-apocalyptic signs appear.
You will never hear me say that we produce too much. I will never say this: it is too dangerous. Otherwise, if we produce less, who will we produce, the established creators? A rebalancing will happen naturally.
Streaming services now compete with cable channels and good old grandpa TV networks. The content offering is exploding while audiences are not being renewed. The quality seems less and less there. And, in any case, the overabundance of productions ends up drowning out the best of them.
“Something seems to be coming to an end,” said Professor Pierre Barrette, forced to play dumb. For us to speak of a golden age, there must be quality, of course, but there must also be a certain rarity. HBO produced one, two, even three high-quality series per season, and was pretty much alone, with AMC, at the start. It was easy to know what to watch. We could say that it’s still like that. There are still excellent series produced, like The Bear Or Succession. The problem lies in quantity. It has become impossible to keep up, even for very heavy consumers — and I don’t consider myself in that. »
It was necessary to devote the equivalent of a month of work days just to see the 2023 series finalists for the Emmy awards distributed on Monday to the best American productions. American networks broadcast 210 original series in 2009, but 600 in 2022. Two-thirds of Quebecers now subscribe to foreign broadcast platforms. And year after year, Quebec itself adds around fifty serial fictions.
The inclination of the signs
Louise Lantagne refuses to criticize this overabundance of supply, out of aesthetic and cultural principles. “You will never hear me say that we produce too much,” she said. I will never say this: it is too dangerous. Otherwise, if we produce less, who will we produce, the established creators? A rebalancing will happen naturally. »
She provides as proof a figure gleaned in December at Content London, a global meeting for the audiovisual market. By 2024, the number of series in production in the United States is expected to drop to around 400.
That said and repeated, without ever talking about the end of the golden age, CEO Louise Lantagne recognizes that the Quebec system is also showing worrying signs of extreme fatigue, despite series of such bedside This is how I love you.
“When I was in drama at Radio-Canada 20 years ago, the series budgets were higher than they are today. We still had series at $900,000 or a million an hour. It’s a lot less now, especially when factoring in inflation. Independent production is in great financial difficulty, it’s true. Television broadcasters are in great financial difficulty, that’s just as true. I don’t want to be dramatic, but I have to say that what we have put on track is running out of steam. »
Signs of running out of steam also come from the companies themselves. Amazon announced this week the dismissal of hundreds of employees within its Prime Video and MGM Studios branches. Netflix has laid off nearly 500 people in 2022. AMC reduced its production envelopes by 20% a year ago, and the channel which produced Mad Men And breaking Bad (thus contributing greatly to the golden age of television) is now preparing half a dozen productions derived from The Walking Dead. Save whoever can and all to shelter…
Professor Barrette notes that the drop in level is even more evident on Netflix. “If my account wasn’t paid by my job, I would unsubscribe quickly. I honestly don’t find any satisfaction in it, and the content search tool is particularly bad…” he admits.