It’s not as thought any of them are actively obscuring their origins. The trailer for Free Agents at YouTube, uploaded by NBC, explains below that it’s based off the “cult UK series,” for instance. But none of the three shows’ webpages advertise the fact, nor do any of the trailers themselves. The Brits, in other words, are good enough to copy from, but clearly FOX and NBC don’t feel it’s wise to build the success of the British originals into the promotions for the American shows.

Part of this weird act of hide-and-seek might seem to be motivated by a desire to make their shows look newer and fresher than they are. They may simply not want to look like copies, in other words.

But it also offers messages about Hollywood’s odd relationship with UK TV, and about its perception of its audience’s odd relationship with UK TV. Perhaps there isn’t the faith that enough people would know the originals, granted, but one might think that an audience would be reassured by the shows’ success in their British iterations. They are proven entities that aren’t being sold as such. Is the concern, therefore, that American audiences will see success in England (or anywhere else) as a bad thing? If so, why?

These questions only multiply for me with Prime Suspect, since of the three, it seems the least like its original. Word is that it’s a procedural, not a serial. And with Maria Bello, and with the overplay of her stupid hat in endless promos, NBC’s clearly trying to make Jane Tennison slightly younger and significantly hipper. (The hat does look a bit like a female cop’s hat in the UK, but in the US it reads as a wannabe-hip hat). There’s also that annoying line in the ads, “Cop. An Attitude” that puts the attitude before the performance, rather than letting it come from within the performance, as with Helen Mirren. All that we seem to have remaining from the British show, therefore, is the notion of a woman called Jane trying to get by in “a man’s job.” Did that really require licensing, though?? One would think that the American adaptation would either stick closely to its Brit original since that original did well, or tout the fact that they’re adapting the cult British hit for an American audience and thereby still cash in on the power of the intertext, or not bother and just make a different show about a woman surrounded by men, one that doesn’t require licensing fees. I’m confused by NBC’s fourth option, to buy the rights, keep the name “Jane” and do little else. Mind you, I learned in the Leno years not to seek sense in some of NBC’s decisions.

Clearly, I need to understand what Hollywood thinks of the Brits better, so I’m off to read my colleague Michele Hilmes’ great new book, Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting. Perhaps there’s a chapter on Maria Bello’s hat.

In my last post, I noted that the only truly interesting and innovative website for the new network shows this Fall belongs to Terra Nova. Why?

Well, first, let me offer a quick qualifier to the previous statement. Grimm’s website, while largely uneventful and de rigeur, includes what could become a neat little Production Blog, in which various production staff are offered a small amount of space to explain what they do in general and how that works on Grimm. It could provide yet another example of how paratexts teach production literacy, and are invested in a process of multiplying the number of supposed authorial geniuses working on any show … but they have three posts in one month, so perhaps they ran out of geniuses already? Anyways, go see it here.

Back to Terra Nova, though, while not wholly stepping (yet?) into the realm of being an alternate reality game, it does do a good job of setting up the alternate reality in which the show will be set. Almost buried away on the official webpage is a link to become part of the Eleventh Pilgrimage, and by clicking through, one is situated in the futuristic society from which our Terra Novans will depart. The show follows a “pilgrimage” of people from the future who are escaping that hostile future to try and reestablish the past and make better decisions in order to refashion the future (imagine if Wall-E won over the Terminator and the two started hatching ideas).

As the embedded widget above shows (btw, kudos to them for creating an embeddable widget, not just single videos – they’re clearly keen to design the frame, not just the core, and this blogger appreciates those who realize the importance of frames), the production team clearly have a schedule for the slow yet constant and continuing release of posters and videos. These combine to give us the sense of a world in which population is controlled through rigidly enforced laws about how many children families can have, and in which the environment as a whole seems to be collapsing. Elsewhere on the page, one can find weather reports for various American cities, only to see a mix of what we would see as uncharacteristically cold weather (36 degrees in Helena in early September?), and volatile weather. Amusingly, too, they’ve created new icons for weather, giving the idea of wholly new types of weather that changes daily.

Another link advertises the Rebreather 6000, thereby suggesting that citizens of the future now need extra help just to breathe. And one of the Top Stories on the website further suggests the dismal future, as it notes that “Experts predict that the Sun and Moon are visible in Terra Nova,” implying that they are no longer visible in the future. I’m especially amused by this process of showing without showing – we’re told a lot about the world, yet rarely shown it. Undoubtedly, the small budget of the web designers is largely responsible, but they work with it, to help create a world that the imagination must co-create, and which sounds quite horrible. I imagine that anything a TV (ie: LOW) budget CGI team could design, moreover, would be worse that what I can imagine.

Ostensibly, though, much of the website apparatus directed one to “enter the lottery” to join the Eleventh Pilgrimage to Terra Nova (I use the past tense, since they just changed it, and I find it hard to find this link now. Points off for that). And thus we’re invited to think of ourselves as voyaging to this new land alongside the other newbies. A series of quizzes promise to be released, of which only one was up when I checked the site last. There, its questions are mostly drawn from the Aptitude Test or Psychological Evaluation Test variety, not much like the quizzes discussed in my previous post. They don’t tell us much about the world of Terra Nova at all, nor even about the tone of the show (as does the Secret Circle quiz, by contrast, for instance). But they look a lot like the sorts of questions that Lost’s Dharma Initiative online quiz asked when that ARG was up and running, and hence they posit the futuristic government of Terra Nova as similarly mysterious, ominous, and controlling.

So here’s what intrigues me the most about this: it all sets up rich territory for extratexts, since presumably the series itself (at least, if the previews are to be believed) will be set largely in the past … yet knowing more about the future will help contextualize and explain what’s going on, and that might be largely the province of the extratexts. This strikes me as a wonderful way to create a product that will invite and encourage extratextual engagement, since it gives the showrunners one world to play with, and the website designers and others their own world to create and mould. Thus, I’ll be interested to see whether the division between web (with future) and TV show (with past) holds, and if so, whether this provides an innovative way forward for alternate reality and transmedia storytelling that lets the extratexts “count” without “messing” with the story in the show.

I really need to blog more often. What better excuse than the imminent start of a new television season, complete with lots of yummy paratexts to analyze and criticize?

So, without further ado, let me start by discussing the websites for the new network shows.

Overall, they’re a pretty boring lot. You have the standard elements – cast information, character profiles, “sneak peaks” and “exclusive” video that actually seems to be everywhere online, and encouragements to “Friend us now on Facebook!” (when, sorry, Last Man Standing, I don’t want to be your friend) or to follow some or other cast member on Twitter. Most of the sites look like they were put together at speed, too, with little interest in doing anything other than saying, “Hi, look, there’s a show. Wanna watch?” So, overall there’s not too much to discuss.

Terra Nova proves the only true exception, and I’ll get to that in a future post. But in the meantime, I’ve been fascinated by the quizzes and polls that a few lone sites have (The Secret Circle, Playboy Club, Whitney, Prime Suspect, and Up All Night) in addition to the other elements. The quizzes and polls interest me, since they’re subtle ways of suggesting what the show is all about, disciplining our understanding and (since they’re quizzes) “knowledge” about the shows before they hit the air. What do they say?

Sub-dividing, Secret Circle has a “Which Type of Witch Are You?” quiz, in which your answers determine which character you’re most like; Playboy Club and Up All Night have quizzes with actual correct or incorrect answers; and Whitney and Prime Suspect have polls on favorite past shows and characters. Let’s take each in turn.

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What Kind of Witch Are “You”? Secret Circle

Secret Circle’s quiz makes it absolutely clear what kinds of issues the show will cover, and who should or should not be watching. It makes it clear, first, that the intended audience is female and straight, or at least someone adopting that viewing position. While some of the questions use gender neutral language (asking about your “significant other” and “their” issues), all of a sudden, you’re then hit with “Your friend’s boyfriend has a crush on you, what do you do?” with the first possible answer being to “Tell your friend and convince her to dump him” (emphasis added). The once gender-neutral responder is now assumed to be female and straight.

As the above question suggests, moreover, many of the questions concern themselves with one’s dating life and with managing friendships. Indeed, there’s an interesting irony that a quiz about what kind of witch you are includes only one question that might seem witch-ish (“My favorite insect is …” alludes, to me at least, to possible familiars), as instead it redefines a witch’s life, and witch types as being determined by how one responds to a partner’s infidelity (where turning him into a newt isn’t offered as a possibility), deals with the new girl in town, gets home from a party when one’s ride has disappeared (no, broomsticking it isn’t an option), and interacts with one’s friends.

On one hand, this prepares the audience for the show. If you thought Secret Circle would really be about cauldrons and such, you’re given a quick wake up call that at its heart it will be about dating, being a good friend, and whether you’re being totally rude to your peers. On the other hand, though, the questions therefore subtly start the process of redefining what a witch is. After all, the quiz doesn’t ask what kind of witch you would be – it asks what kind of witch you are. When juxtaposed to the poster campaign’s tag line of “What’s your power?”, powers are redefined as social, and relationship-based, not about changing the weather or so forth. “You” (as the young straight female or presumed young straight female wannabe) are already presumed to be a witch – both a statement about your own powers as young woman, and a welcoming in to the secret circle of playing witch on which the show is about to embark.

And one more thing about you – apparently, “you” are white. All of the witches who you might be are white. Me, I’m a white woman called Diana. I have a strong moral compass. Glad we got that sorted out.

Finally, I have to note with amusement that one of the questions seems there wholly for audience research purposes:

Now that we’ve all agreed it’s D, let’s move on …

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“No, Honey, I Watch it for the History. Honestly”: Playboy Club

Both Playboy Club and Up All Night, by comparison, offer quizzes at their sites with actual correct and incorrect answers. About 15 questions are fired your way, with extra points awarded for speedy answers, and since you’re also not told the correct answer, you’re left needing to take the quiz over and over again if you want to know the answers.

Playboy Club’s quiz is all about the history of Playboy, asking questions such as what Hugh Hefner wanted to call his personal jet (The Big Bunny, for those of you playing at home), when the magazine started (1953), where the first Playboy Club outside of America was (The Philippines), and what animal Hef had wanted to use as mascot at first (a stag).

Its purpose seems to be to frame Playboy Club as Historical (yes, there is a capital H there), while also building up the mythology of Playboy as corporation. I imagine that anyone playing this quiz will have never written a quiz on Playboy before, but that’s sort of the point – there’s something of an act of defiance against Playboy’s detractors here, to turn Playboy into a legitimate, interesting entity worthy of questions, and about which one should know some trivia. This would seem to be one of the hurdles the show faces as a whole – Playboy on network TV? Tsk, tsk, tsk. But the quiz plays its part – small and probably quite inconsequential though it might be – to render Playboy an object of interest. Judgment is neither passed on the company nor called for by the quiz, which instead models a position of curious engagement. If generations of men have excused their interest in the magazine by insisting that it has “great interviews,” the quiz here tries to give a little veneer of intellectual, historical interest to a show that is otherwise selling itself with bunny tails and curvy blondes.

Meanwhile, since all the questions are about history, and none about the seemingly fictional world in which the show is set, we’re encouraged to elide the two, and to see the show as entirely historical, and as interested in documenting a part of American history and culture. It stakes a firm claim of realism.

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“Starring the Straight Star of Arrested Development”: Up All Night

Up All Night uses the same question engine and style (versus the next two NBC shows, which both use another engine), but here to test the player’s knowledge about three of the central cast members, Will Arnett, Christina Applegate, and Maya Rudolph. Up All Night goes all-in on making its cast its selling point. Questions test our knowledge of their comedy chops. Tellingly, Arrested Development features in two questions, while the soon-cancelled Running Wilde is conspicuously absent. We’re also invited to see Rudolph as multi-talented, with questions about her famous musician mother, and her own musical abilities. These are three pretty special people, the quiz tells us.

Interestingly, too, the quiz asks us if we know Arnett’s famous spouse (Amy Poehler) and how many children they have together (2). Presumably, these questions are designed to help set up his authenticity as father of a newborn in the show. I do find myself wondering, though, if they’re also there in part to counter a more recent role of his (which is not asked about), as the gay executive Devon Banks in (NBC’s own!) 30 Rock, and in general to counter his rather camp style as a comedian, to give him straight credentials in time for a role as father.

A final thought on this one: why doesn’t Nick Cannon rank as worthy of even a single question in the quiz? Insert your own answer here.

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“Wow: All the Best Shows Ever Are from NBC and the US!”: Prime Suspect and Whitney

The final type of quiz is actually a poll. Prime Suspect has one of these, asking viewers about their favorite “Leading Ladies of the Law,” while Whitney offers two, one that posits the comeback of the sitcom, then asking readers about their favorite sitcom, the other that asks about favorite television couples.

All three polls attempt a not so subtle move of muscling in on the category in question. After all, why would Whitney ask what your favorite television couple is if it honestly believed you’d show no interest in the couple that stars in this show? In this respect, they’re all pretty forward in pretending that Whitney is already “a classic sitcom” with a fantastic small screen couple, and that Prime Suspect has already provided us with one of television’s “leading ladies of the law.”

On that last note, I’m personally ired by the choices on offer, and those not on offer. Because, you know, I’m actually quite keen to agree with the poll that Prime Suspect has indeed offered us one of the very best female detectives (can I not use the lingo of “ladies of the law,” please?). That is, the British version did. Amusingly, though, Jane Tennyson is nowhere to be seen in the list of possible picks! Is it any wonder that some of our students just don’t get how and when to cite things when cases like this work as their models?

That leads to a larger issue, though, of what selections are offered. First, let’s switch over to the Whitney polls, where the desire to fly the network flag is obvious. All of the options for both questions are NBC shows, leading to what to many television fans would seem the blasphemy of listing, for instance, Just Shoot Me! and Third Rock from the Sun as possible classic sitcoms, while leaving The Simpsons, Roseanne, All in the Family, and I Love Lucy off the list. And yet the preamble for this particular poll – “The sitcom is making a comeback!” – tells us what’s going on here: namely, that NBC is insisting that it is the top location for truly fantastic, “classic” sitcoms, and that it’s “back” with another one.

There’s an amusing tension between the two Whitney polls, at the same time, however. See, many of the suggested favorite couples are from recent or contemporary NBC shows, including The Office, Chuck, Community, 30 Rock (more on that later), Friday Night Lights, Parks and Recreation, and Parenthood. Yet its slate of current sitcoms is wholly absent from the suggested list of “classics.” Especially when the sitcom poll announces that the sitcom is making a comeback, this poses the question of where NBC posits its current shows. Do they not rank highly enough? Perhaps Whitney is a different style of sitcom (“classic”), to be distinguished from 30 Rock and co., and hence we’re being warned of the fact … yet then why are those other shows invoked so readily in the other poll? A little bit of muddiness in the marketing message here, methinks.

Trying to gauge intended audience by the picks on offer works slightly differently with the Prime Suspect poll, which offers Cagney and Lacey, Kono Kalakaua (from Hawaii Five-O), Shakima Greegs (The Wire), Julie Barnes (The Mod Squad), Stacy Sheridan (TJ Hooker), Tina Russo (Hill Street Blues), Olivia Benson (Law and Order: SVU), Anita Van Buren (Law and Order), and Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson (Police Woman). First, I’d note that NBC is willing to acknowledge non-NBC greats here (all hail Kima Greggs!). But it’s also quite an interesting group, mixed in time period and (to a small degree) ethnicity in a way that contrasts quite loudly with Whitney’s all-white, mostly contemporary favorite TV couples. The assumed viewer here seems to be a fair bit older than Whitney’s (s/he knows Police Woman and The Mod Squad, not just Saved by the Bell and Facts of Life), and there’s an explicit pitch to the “quality drama” viewer through references to The Wire and Hill Street Blues. As with Secret Circle, then, the quiz works overtime to summon a specific audience.

To get back to my earlier ire, though, note that all three polls restrict the choices to American shows. Jane Tennyson may be missing, but so is any other acknowledgment of a TV world outside the US, even when an appeal to high cultural quality drama viewers is being made, and even when some options have traveled the Atlantic anyways (if Jim and Pam from the US Office make the cut, why don’t Tim and Dawn from the UK original? How about Basil and Sybil Fawlty?). This is yet more evidence of the American television industry just simply not getting what it means to be international or to address anything but an American audience (or to imagine its American audience as anything but painfully unaware of the rest of the world).

And if our analysis of the Secret Circle quizzes began by noting the gendering and heteronormativity there, it’s still here and going strong. Leading “ladies”? Really? And how telling that all of the “favorite couples” are opposite-gender pairings. Will from Will and Grace makes the list … yet not with any of his gay partners, as he’s disciplined into being straight for the purposes of the list (though, to be fair, that’s kind of the vibe the show went for). And the only slightly non-straight couple on the list – Jenna and her cross-dressing boyfriend Paul from 30 Rock – are tucked away neatly in the very last available spot.

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Conclusion

The great thing with writing a blog entry instead of an essay is that it doesn’t need a stirring, brilliant conclusion. So I don’t have one here. But I hope to have shown how these most banal of extras — quizzes and polls — do quite a lot of work to hail a specific audience, and to assign preferable race, gender, and sexuality to them.

2. YouTube has signed a deal with Sony, Lionsgate, and others to make films and television available. How they plan to do so, and with what costs to YouTube and its community, we’ll wait to see.

3. Several journalistic outlets have reported on this US Dept of Justic memo from within the Bush Administration that allowed certain forms of torture, including “walling,” “facial hold,” “cramped confinement,” sleep deprivation, and others. Mind you, the Obama Administration should be roundly condemned for its own lax policy on torture, moving Gitmo to Loews and AMCs around the nation, and by allowing exposure to the equally heinous The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and The Hanna Montana Movie. May God save their souls.

4. I’ve been remiss in announcing that the Internet Movie Poster Awards site of which I’m a fan has its 2008 award winners up. Best Poster went to this one from The Dark Knight, which also won the Best Poster to Display in a Bus Shelter award:

Bringing up the rear, with Worst Movie Poster was Bangkok Dangerous, about which IMPAwards had this to say:

Now, the only thing that could possibly make sense with this poster is if he just suffered some kind of seizure (causing his right hand to cramp up) and is reaching for his medication (which he unfortunately dropped down his sleeve) with his other hand. In the meantime, he is being shot at and slowly melting in a pit of lava.

I start with NBC’s Southland

While the clip above is an extended promo, many of the smaller ones underlined similar points, pushing three key points:

1. It stars Ryan Atwood, of The OC fame
2. It’s an edgy, gritty, warts and all depiction of the tough job of policing LA’s streets that promises to tell us what it’s “really” like for the city’s cops. Think Training Day meets Colors for television
3. It comes to us from the folks behind ER

More after the fold …

Selling Atwood seemed an obvious and wise move. He was widely liked when on The OC, and as the poor kid in the land of rich and out-of-control teens, his character’s were often the eyes through which viewers were invited to see the events. In other words, he has an intertextual history of being a viewer surrogate, which promise a set of eyes through which we can now view this edgy, gritty world. Quite simply, too, it’s important to shoe-horn your audience into any new show, and when the rest of the promo time is spent showing a city on fire, unhappy people, and lots of angst, the promos use Atwood and his character’s silent surprise, horror, disgust, and anger to ease us into the pool and assure us there’s a rail at the side, rather than throw us in the deep end without water wings.

Giving so much prominence to Michael Cudlitz’s trite words of wisdom was regrettable, though. Cudlitz is okay, though very much a poor man’s Denzel Washington or Sean Penn if this is supposed to be something like Training Day or Colors, and the script is at its crappiest during his speeches (“You’re a cop because you don’t know how not to be” is dialogue worthy of Horatio Caine … and that’s not a compliment). Perhaps we’re meant to think of them as trite, and identify with the young Atwood, who is trying to see “behind the badge” to the real truth, but the promo editors have taken some of the cheesiest words in the premiere and made them the show’s rallying cry, never a smart move if you’re trying to sell yourself as smart, fresh, realistic, and edgy.

Framing the show as from the folks behind ER (or John Wells more specifically) also seems rather pointless and hollow a move to me. Once upon a time, ER was synonymous with quality television, and while I’m not a hater, and while I think some of its later season cast were far more talented than its early season cast (give me Parminder Nagra over Eriq La Salle any day), of late it just hasn’t carried that banner. As Alisa Perren’s blog post about the finale notes, it’s a show that sadly just sort of petered out, and so I question the utility of using it to sell something as high quality. I also question its utility to brand a show that otherwise is trying to pass itself off as edgy and Shield-like. Undoubtedly, NBC wanted to hold onto ER’s approximately 9.5 million viewers, especially since Southland was taking its timeslot, but unless these viewers were diehard John Wells fans (and Wells doesn’t exactly command the groupies that Whedon, Abrams, or Schwartz does, for instance), the promo offered little else to confirm that Southland was in any way ER-esque.

Indeed, here I could point to what I think was a major misstep in the promotional campaign. NBC were annoying me with their promos for this show, especially a week before it started. Why? Many ad breaks would have not one but two promos for it, and even more misguidedly, they would often run back to back. Why not do one longer promo rather than two short ones? And, for that matter, I’m not all that keen on the above-embedded clip, if it seems like this would be my ideal longer promo. After watching the premiere, I “got” the ER heritage much more – it has a large-ish cast, it’s paced quite slowly, and it’s seemingly far more concerned with the cast and with broader social and interpersonal issues than with the specifics of a case or with a whodunit. The best way to show this, especially when I’d suspect that our default mode of thinking about cop shows is to imagine a loose whodunit style (I’ve found it hard to convince some people to watch The Wire, for instance, since they can’t get behind what they think will be a season-long whodunit), would be to take advantage of the longer promo, and let at least one scene play out, rather than whizzing through scenes. I can’t say I was won over by Southland after watching it, but its pace was somewhat refreshing, and NBC should have telegraphed this better, especially when the show’s star risked turning off slightly older viewers who feel like reaching for the slop bucket when they think of The OC.

The web presence is a little uninspiring. Its NBC site opens to an image that suggests Atwood and Cudlitz are at Make Out Point, and that gives way too much prominence to web ads (here, stupidly, the ads are for two other NBC shows, and thus they’re interrupting themselves with themselves, whereas when I first logged in, the ad was for a car, which proved somewhat tasteless when the first two screen shots are clearly of a drive-by!). I guess what I’m seeing as Make Out Point is intended to signify the light shining out on the city as a whole, perhaps even building off Atwood’s intertextual history to suggest that we’re now coming down from the hills and off the coast to explore the city at large.

Further down the page is currently the stupidest poll I’ve seen on a show’s website in a long time. Will the show’s lead character, upon whom this cop show seemingly relies, and who therefore is required to make it as a cop, make it as a cop? Gee, let me think about that one. It’s insulting, and thus suggests a stupid show, or at least one that doesn’t think it’s audience is intelligent.

Of slightly more interest are the Take a Cop Quiz and the City of Nightmares video. The first alludes to the specialty vocabulary that flies left, right, and center in many cop and doctor shows, and it seemingly invites the audience to learn the lingo, alongside the rookie cop played by Atwood no less, and be an insider.

The second leads to the following dialogue:

From its founding almost 230 years ago, Los Angeles has been a city of dreams and dreamers. Unfortunately for some, those dreams turn out to be nightmares. A police force of fewer than 10,000 tries to keep the peace among four million residents spread across 500 square miles—a Herculean task. Here are some of the scenes and stories of city life gone bad.

We then are treated to a dark voyage through LA’s past, focusing on such charmers as Charles Manson and the Night Stalker. Again, there’s an aspect of offering insider knowledge to the audience, but it also aims to establish a connection between the show and its storylines, and the city’s sordid crime history. When cop shows like The Wire have become famous for offering an urban ethnography of sorts, the website here aims to give viewers a richer, situated history, and it thereby suggests that the show itself will continue in this pseudo-documentary style, “capturing” the city for us and allowing us to vicariously teleport into it on a weekly basis.

Overall, the promotional material made me somewhat interested in watching the show, but then again I’m interested in seeing an episode of almost any new show. As for its extratextual role, the on air promos did a fairly poor job of accurately telling me what to expect, and of creating the text, while the official website lets web ads kill its visual style (especially when the ads weren’t dark as is the Heroes one here), offers a poll that seems to be addressing a six year-old, and thus overall does pretty poorly, though its quiz and history functions deserve kudos.