The Jodie Comer Best Actress award at last weekend's Olivier Awards honored one of the decade's greatest theatrical performances. Comer won for Prima Facie, in which she played a criminal defense lawyer who is sexually assaulted and wakes up to disturbing cracks in the legal system afterward. Surprisingly, this was Comer's stage debut, but equally importantly, she learned her craft in front of the cameras in a television drama.
Twenty years ago such a transition would have been unthinkable. Theater actors in Britain would pinch their noses and move to the small screen to augment their meager incomes, but a TV star would never be welcome in the sophisticated world of theater. Part of it was due to a different type of training: on television, you had to keep your performance to a minimum, and the ability to project your voice and control the audience was almost a hindrance. But it was not without snobbery: TV was a minor art form, too populist to be taken seriously.
On the other hand, it has always been democratic, and before streaming or digitization, served as a platform for other artistic disciplines. Classical concerts and operas were shown regularly, and with only three or four channels, they could attract a decent audience. TV drama was often like theater: indeed, performances often made their way into our living rooms. All this made it possible to democratize what many still consider «high» art. However, despite the fact that television is a container of culture, it has never had a big impact on other forms of art.
How times have changed. I think the advances in TV drama in the last 25 years have a lot to do with that. When I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, TV dramas were either stilted and theatrical or lowbrow; prestige items such as the «Pearl in the Crown» were quite rare. Come to think of it, most of the stuff I looked at looked like it cost around £8.40. But taking a cue from HBO series like The Sopranos, the drama here soon upped its game, and today the result often borders on the cinematic and sometimes—albeit not enough—demonstrates the intellectual ambition of such dramas. like I May Destroy You, whatever Hugo Bleek and most of Jack Thorne's work.
As television began to compete as an art form, budgets rose. The investment from streaming companies like Netflix has had a huge impact, with shows like The Crown now rumored to be around $6.5m (around £5.3m). The average cost of a British film in 2020 was £1.97 million. I happened to hear of well-stocked TV studios opening up their shops with a fleet of trailers and posh gear, next to a skeletal crew remembering that they can only afford to shoot for a couple of hours. There have been some extraordinarily good low-budget British films released over the last few years — St. Maud, The Rocks, His House — but few of them have received the support of a powerful distributor and thus have not had a significant impact on the culture. Television, on the other hand, sets the agenda and you can see the ripple effect of hits like Line of Duty and Fleabag.
Crossover: Hollywood star Harrison Ford recently appeared on the Apple TV series Shrink. Authors: Beth Dubber
A similar snobbery once surrounded television in America: the actors never mixed a popular show from one of the major networks with Hollywood. Now, by contrast, we have Nicole Kidman, Harrison Ford (star of both Apple TV's Shrink and Paramount's 1923) and Robert De Niro, all of whom have realized that opportunities outside of the big movie studios can be just as rewarding. I can only think of a handful of real celebrities — Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Scarlett Johansson — who have yet to make that real and psychological leap. The cinema industry is also slowly beginning to realize the extraordinary possibilities of television in terms of maintaining a brand. Television versions of Dangerous Liaisons, Fatal Attraction, and even The Complete Monty have either just come out or are coming soon.
However, the all-conquering nature of television is also a source of concern. This sometimes works in symbiosis with other creative industries, and the result is quite impressive: Andor's clever use of superlative theater actors such as Denise Gough and Zubin Varla in a popular TV show is the result of, I believe, visionary casting directors. But in most cases, television can do more to help other sectors, like theater, that are struggling with the effects of the pandemic. Sam Mendes even suggested that Netflix use some of its «Covid-19 windfall» to support other art forms, for which the streaming giant donated an initial £500,000. Mendes' involvement here is critical: The possibility of a talent drain as designers and costume designers move into the higher-paying television industry is dangerously real.
Television could also cover the arts more. Sky Arts is great at promoting dance, opera and classical music, but I feel like other broadcasters could do more. Visibility is essential to the survival of these forms, even if in an era where everyone is looking at something different, this seems almost impossible — such is the power of a collective artistic experience. The TV industry needs to learn not to be greedy, to act differently than the upstart cousin. It has proven its artistic value; now he must be generous to those who once despised him.
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