Is there anything important on television?

I recently watched these people prattle on about how good The Wire is. They seem to quite like it. And they're right. It's very good. But they go as far as to suggest that it's so significant it's actually your cultural and civic duty to watch it. You have to. No choice. Without it you would be a lesser human. Now I wonder what television dramas, if any, are actually required viewing. If any have become such an essential part of culture that you have to watch them. In the case of The Wire, it definitely does things differently. It's a novelistic picture of a city, with a sprawling cast of characters and no intention to rest in a comfort zone. The second season shifted from the first and introduced a different world within the city, with a whole new set of characters. There's still all the familiar faces, but now they've moved around the city and care about different things. With each season new characters are piled on until all of Baltimore has come into focus. Here the number of main characters is approaching thirty, where most shows only have about ten. It wants to show you something. But do I feel different because I've seen it? Apart from it's structure, it comes full of messages about the state of the American inner city. David Simon describes it as a 'treatise on the end of the American empire, and who we are as a people and what we've come to'. See, important.

But is it required that you watch it? I definitely feel like I know a lot more about Baltimore now, so at the very least it's taught me things. David Simon also says that 'we've treated television as if it's not a mass medium, and we've been rewarded in kind'. I think this means that we now don't expect television to show us anything worthwhile, or teach us anything at all. So what shows hold up to this sort of thinking? That aren't just entertaining, but actually demand your attention. Everyone loves The West Wing, but does it change the way you look at American politics? I think it does, but I'm biased. Does The Sopranos count for anything? Does Doctor Who matter? I'm not saying everything has to be this significant. Entertainment is entertaining, there's no need for everything to be about the real world. But there has to be some. Maybe most of them just haven't been made. Outside of all the hyperbole, which pieces of television are actually that important? Like with most things, I don't know.

Everything you already know about Dexter

About a year behind, Dexter has finally appeared back on British telly. You probably know all about it. In fact, you've probably seen a lot more of it than I have. So this post will only serve as a reminder. Alternatively, start watching it right now. Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter expert with the Miami police, kills people in his spare time. But as Arnold Schwarzenegger once said in some film or other - 'Yes, but they were all bad'. Dexter tracks down criminals that have escaped the law and kills them in a routine that involves a lot of plastic sheets and knives. It makes him feel better. The real triumph of the show is how it balances this dark subject with humour. Dexter's calm, organised world is disturbed by people. Troublesome, annoying people who crowd around him with their problems, expecting him to care because he's their 'brother' or 'husband'. But he doesn't understand what they're talking about and just nods along. He's a strangely likable psychopath, who seems perfectly nice apart from all the killing. His inner monologue is delivered in dry monotone, and every fake piece of emotion comes with a wink at the audience. And as he expertly keeps his two worlds separate, one will always infringe on the other. In the fourth season his murder-ritual is disrupted by sleepless nights with a new baby - he falls asleep and drops carefully chopped limbs all over the floor.

Even though the first season didn't really grab me, Dexter has been compelling television ever since. Under less skilled cast and crew, this would be a horrible and nasty examination of a serial killer. Instead it's equal parts funny and disturbing, ironic and a bit scary. It's holding all these elements as it walks a tightrope, always ready to fall off but never losing its footing. It's quite good. But like I said, you already know this.

Does shiny and famous still make money?

It seemed that not enough people wanted to watch Knight and Day in the US, despite it 'starring' Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. Or maybe because it has Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in it. Perhaps the idea of seeing famous people on screen has become less exciting than a big 3D-fest, franchise, or simply good films.The advertising for Knight and Day is just saying 'Look, shiny famous faces. We don't care if they're insane and/or boring'. So it's a good thing that it failed to make a billion dollars? It's definitely a slap in the (not so shiny) face for some suited studio people, but under all this is a film that's not bad. The absence of a negative. You won't remember it the next day, but never mind. Tom Cruise is a US agent gone mad and on the run from everyone. He's funny too, casually and amiably shooting everything while trying to keep Cameron Diaz calm. The expensive car chases and helicopter fights are no bother at all. He's definitely the best thing here, even if everyone seems to forget about the comedy halfway through. It starts to become a standard action film and everyone puts on their serious faces. Still ridiculous, just not funny. A shame, but it's still done well.

In some ways it's flimsy. Every now and then Cameron Diaz's character is drugged or knocked out, making the screen go black and fade into a new exotic location. A series of set-pieces with no link, like levels in a game. A lot of action films travel rapidly travel around locations, but not usually so shamelessly. Doesn't really matter though, in much the same way as you ignore Diaz's habit of talking out loud when she's deducing things. It'll do.

Rugby can solve everyone's problems

A film about rugby must be a pretty hard sell, because most of the film-watching world don't care about it. But if a sport is surrounded by a story - that's when films get made. In Invictus, President Mandela sees that the Springboks (the South African rugby team) still represent apartheid and white culture, and chooses the team to try and unite the country. In a film about South African race relations, the focus on the 1995 Rugby World Cup centres the problem up to a point without any mess or fuss. There's the microcosm of Mandela's mixed race bodyguards arguing about the importance of the sport, right up to stadium crowds who are finally supporting the same team. As the Springboks progress in the championship, everyone starts to get on a bit better. It might be a simplification, but it's a trajectory that works. Everything fits into place under Clint Eastwood's sturdy direction, so it's difficult to find any complaints. Sports films all come down to the same thing - a team or a player gets beaten, improves, then wins - the difference here being that it actually seems to matter. I don't know whether a rugby game really did unite a country, but in Film Land it did, and it's only Film Land that matters around here. Morgan Freeman does the same wise old man performance but with a South African accent. That works. Matt Damon manages to play rugby without looking ridiculous. That works too. It's predictable in an acceptable way.

Also, I think this was the first time I've ever seen rugby 'faked' for the camera. This sort of thing is done regularly for American Football films and, you know, golf, but this might actually hurt. In the middle of one of the most chaotic and brutal sports in the world, somebody wandered in with a very expensive camera and told them all to do it again. It looks real too. Good job.

We were going to make a whole world like this

It's interesting that they chose to film Where the Wild Things Are with people instead of pixels. It would have worked fine as an animated film, but instead they chose to dress people up in huge costumes and make them bound around in the woods. It creates an immediately distinctive style. There's a real physicality to it, and a reality that makes it seem even more fantastical. The creatures look out of proportion and dangerous, a bit cuddly and a bit scary. There's a lot of them and they usually feel too big for the screen, making most scenes crowded and loud. It's wild and confusing and sometimes disorientating. In the middle of such a beautifully shot countryside these big shaggy monsters smash everything up and steal all the focus. It's a different, much more striking effect, to the now-conventional computer animation. And if these brilliant creations rest uneasily on the screen, their general attitude doesn't help. Max, a slightly annoying little boy, runs away from home and meets the 'wild things' in some fantasy land of his own making. But they don't really have exciting adventures. They all seem a bit depressed. As representations of Max's own life, they argue and bicker and have violent mood swings. Occasionally they cheer up, but within minutes they're back to their glum pondering. They want Max to 'keep out all the sadness', which turns out to be quite difficult. This mood, along with the strange visual style, sets the whole thing off balance in an endearing way.

The main issue with it, as a film, is that the plot is difficult to grab on to. There's no strong driving force behind any of it. They just play and argue. It moves along without much of a purpose, it just shows you a world. This is exactly the thing that will attract some people to it. It's unconventional. It can wash over you without needing to make sense, or it can be analysed and poked until everything falls into place. But without repeated viewings, or really thinking hard about it, Where the Wild Things Are is alien.