A non-musical
January 04, 2009
Sports Night is fast, intelligent and it only takes 30 minutes, which must pretty much nail it for the male viewing demographic. It's a show within a show about an ESPN-like cable sports network at the bottom of the ratings where everyone is smart and confident and very, very tense. It has recently co-starred William H Macy. It makes jokes about rifles and boxing. How cool is that?
Oh, and in real life it was at the bottom of the ratings and really did get cancelled. While critic's darlings like ER limp into their Vegas years Sports Night burned out in a blaze of not enough people watching it.
In retrospect, this was appropriate. Glory and acclaim wouldn't suit the series. It runs on smarts and fine shades of meaning. The characters are oblique and complex, chanting the same lines of dialogue over and over to each other like mantras. They even change a little week to week, not unlike the Sopranos. Junior staffers walk through the door, say something cool, leave and are never heard from again. The chopped-up tone is like watching the play highlights from a larger drama, as if something bigger is happening but everyone's too busy to acknowledge it.
It's a mystery, for instance, how Casey and Dana came to first get involved. What happened to Dan's alluring psychologist girlfriend - did they split up or did he just, you know, never go back? It's like a kinder, gentler David Mamet, or maybe Harold Pinter, if you go back that far.
Sports Night's creator Aaron Sorkin almost goes back that far. Although he's now best known for creating The West Wing Sorkin began writing for theater, winning an award for his play 'A Few Good Men' before it was subsequently adapted as a movie starring Tom Cruise and Demi Moore.
More (or less) prosaically Sorkin is also a sports fan and an admirer of half-hour sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and, in particular, Larry Gelbart's work on the television series of MASH.
When Sorkin approached ABC with his idea for Sports Night it was just that: an idea, with no character "bible" or over-arching storyline. He made it up as he went along, writing all the first season's 23 episodes and battling with network executives who couldn't decide if it was a drama or a comedy.
He had never written for television before. In the theater tradition of classifying plays as musicals and non-musicals, he described Sports Night as a non-musical. When executives imposed a laugh track, Sorkin turned it down a little each week until it faded to titters and then eventually disappeared.
The series ran for two years, overlapping with the first season of The West Wing, an hour-long non-musical that is so far up itself you need a torch to find Martin Sheen. Sports Night, however, is still with us and running like the clappers. I'd call it a late-night gem except it screens at 8pm.
Oh, and in real life it was at the bottom of the ratings and really did get cancelled. While critic's darlings like ER limp into their Vegas years Sports Night burned out in a blaze of not enough people watching it.
In retrospect, this was appropriate. Glory and acclaim wouldn't suit the series. It runs on smarts and fine shades of meaning. The characters are oblique and complex, chanting the same lines of dialogue over and over to each other like mantras. They even change a little week to week, not unlike the Sopranos. Junior staffers walk through the door, say something cool, leave and are never heard from again. The chopped-up tone is like watching the play highlights from a larger drama, as if something bigger is happening but everyone's too busy to acknowledge it.
It's a mystery, for instance, how Casey and Dana came to first get involved. What happened to Dan's alluring psychologist girlfriend - did they split up or did he just, you know, never go back? It's like a kinder, gentler David Mamet, or maybe Harold Pinter, if you go back that far.
Sports Night's creator Aaron Sorkin almost goes back that far. Although he's now best known for creating The West Wing Sorkin began writing for theater, winning an award for his play 'A Few Good Men' before it was subsequently adapted as a movie starring Tom Cruise and Demi Moore.
More (or less) prosaically Sorkin is also a sports fan and an admirer of half-hour sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and, in particular, Larry Gelbart's work on the television series of MASH.
When Sorkin approached ABC with his idea for Sports Night it was just that: an idea, with no character "bible" or over-arching storyline. He made it up as he went along, writing all the first season's 23 episodes and battling with network executives who couldn't decide if it was a drama or a comedy.
He had never written for television before. In the theater tradition of classifying plays as musicals and non-musicals, he described Sports Night as a non-musical. When executives imposed a laugh track, Sorkin turned it down a little each week until it faded to titters and then eventually disappeared.
The series ran for two years, overlapping with the first season of The West Wing, an hour-long non-musical that is so far up itself you need a torch to find Martin Sheen. Sports Night, however, is still with us and running like the clappers. I'd call it a late-night gem except it screens at 8pm.
(2005)