2001:
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A couple of weeks ago, I watched a really fantastic documentary called Exporting Raymond. It was written by, directed by, and starred Phil Rosenthal, whose name you might not recognize but whose work you almost certainly do. Rosenthal was the creator, executive producer, and head writer of the much-loved sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. Raymond -- which, as you probably know, was a show about a guy living with his family, with the in-laws living right across the street -- ran for nine years. During its run it won 13 Emmys, and from Season 4 onward it remained in the top ten of most-watched shows in the U.S. Critics attributed its success -- almost certainly correctly -- to its honest and hilarious portrayal of family life. (Nearly all the episodes, including the one with the fly lady, were based on true stories from the lives of the writers.)
Exporting Raymond details the experience Rosenthal had when he was sent by Sony Pictures International to Russia, to assist a Russian production team in getting their own version of Rosenthal's show up and running. It was a somewhat unusual situation (though not unheard of), as many production companies will go in their own direction while remaking a show -- but in this case, they wanted Rosenthal's input. So off Rosenthal went to Russia, ready to help assist the production team in the making of their pilot episode for Everybody Loves Kostya.
The documentary is at once a great look at culture clash (with Rosenthal's fish-out-of-water experiences in Russia) and being lost in translation (Russian culture has a different sense of humor than American culture, the Russian production team asserts -- and the American humor of Raymond won't work here). But it's also a look at what makes stories and storytelling any good -- and whether or not the answer differs from culture to culture. (And, perhaps, from decade to decade.)
You'll have to watch the documentary yourself to see what conclusions Rothenthal draws to these particular issues. But between this documentary and last night's Emmy awards, I found myself thinking about the shift in television-watching that we've seen over the past decade.
Everybody Loves Raymond is notable for being one of the last "classic" sitcoms to become a phenomenon. By "classic," I mean any sitcom in the multiple-camera, live-studio-audience, broad-laughs vein -- one of the oldest forms of the television series (going back to series like The Honeymooners, which Rosenthal has cited as one source of inspiration for Raymond.)
The classic sit-com is not completely extinct -- Jim Parsons's second Emmy win Sunday night for his starring role in The Big Bang Theory is proof of that, and before his publicized collapse Charlie Sheen was the highest-paid actor on television for his work on Two and a Half Men. These classically-shot sitcoms are becoming the exception rather than the norm, however, as single-camera, audience-less sitcoms have taken over. Newer sit-coms like Modern Family, which won 5 Emmy awards on Sunday -- or the long-running American version of The Office (which, much like Everybody Loves Kostya, is a show which started in another country).
Reality shows and cable TV have also changed the face of television, the former providing uber-popular shows at a fraction of the cost of traditionally-scripted programming, the latter allowing for niche entertainment that the broadcast networks couldn't afford to support. When it comes to cable, well -- whether you were a fan of USA Network's Monk or FX's Rescue Me, shows on cable television can be considered big hits despite pulling in a fraction of the audience size of network television. And HBO shows like The Sopranos have allowed for further cable hits like True Blood, Dexter, and Game of Thrones -- shows which have ratings to sometimes rival network offerings.
And then there's the final new twist on the television-watching experience: watching television without a television. Hulu, Netflix, and TV channels' own websites all offer episodes of TV shows available for streaming online onto your computer (with limited or no commercial interruption). And DVD sets of complete television series -- which you can check out, ahem, from your local library -- are available in a way that simply did not exist ten years ago. (Anybody remember taping episodes of their favorite TV show on VHS cassette tapes so that they could rewatch them later? Now we all just wait for the DVDs to come out.) Nowadays, people watch TV shows on their laptops the day after the show had aired on television -- or pop in DVDs of shows that haven't been on the air in twenty years.
Thinking about the way American television has changed just in the past decade makes some of the facts in Exporting Raymond seem all the odder. Before Everybody Loves Kostya, Russia's top-rated sitcoms were remakes of three other American shows: Married ... With Children, Who's the Boss? and The Nanny. (In particular, the Russian version of Nanny was such a runaway success that after the Russian production staff ran out of American episodes to adapt, Sony brought back the original American writing team for the show to come up with 25 more original stories for the Russian version.)
Nowadays, Americans seem to have traded The Nanny for SuperNanny and Nanny 911. Reality shows, cable, and the internet have given us television in a way unheard of a decade ago. With critics proclaiming the death of the sitcom and shrinking TV ratings due in part to digital viewing, television -- like all technology -- is changing fast. And, some would argue, not necessarily for the better.
Of course, if Exporting Raymond is about anything, it's about universal storytelling truly being universal -- even in television. Despite the changes, good storytelling will always endure, no matter its methods in being told.
Or, so Rosenthal hopes to prove. Check out the documentary for more.
Click here to find out more about the history of television.
-- Post by Ms. B
