I’m Just So Into You — Why We Love Certain TV Shows
The secret sauce that keeps many of us watching ‘Last of Us’ and (maybe) ‘Carême’
In order to save his father, a sexy French chef is caught up in an espionage scheme to undermine Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. That’s one way to describe the opening episodes of the new Apple TV+ show Carême.
Will that be enough to keep me coming back through the entire series? I’m not entirely sure. The seductive scenes and the finely detailed world of 19th century Paris are very alluring. But that may not hold me.
One of the deciding factors for me and lots of other people can be summed up by the question: “Do I really care about the characters?”
It’s something that’s drilled into the heads of many a novice screenwriter. If the writers are really serious about their craft, they pay a lot of attention to that. The compelling nature of primary characters has to keep large audiences coming back over multiple seasons on major networks and streaming platforms.
The characters don’t have to be heroic. They can be a thief, for example, with just a very faint glimmer of an angel riding on one of their shoulders. In those instances, you might subconsciously decide to keep watching to see if they’ll redeem themselves — like the Edie Falco character in the old Showtime Networks series, Nurse Jackie.
Or maybe a character responds to a personal crisis by making really questionable decisions. Carême may fall into that category, eventually. But John Hamm’s leading role in the Apple TV+ show Your Friends & Neighbors definitely does, in my opinion. He plays Andrew Cooper, a fairly likable guy in some respects. Cooper responds to a massive personal crisis by stealing from his extremely wealthy friends.
WHY WE LOVE ‘LAST’ & ‘ADOLESCENCE’
For me, the British limited series Adolescence and The Last of Us are two other examples of shows that make their characters super sticky.
In all probability you know the basic concept of Netflix’s Adolescence and how it parallels real-life tragedies. On countless occasions, we hear about a young male opening fire in a school. And one common reaction is to wonder if the parents are to blame. Or maybe there are other possible motivations to consider. Adolescence parallels that glaring social wound. Along the way, it touches on themes related to the danger of online content on children and toxic masculinity. The cinematic style is also riveting.
Setting aside those aspects, the acting in Adolescence is immensely compelling. There are finely nuanced perspectives from several “interested parties,” including the accused boy himself, the police officers investigating the case, a social worker, and the boy’s parents. (The father is played by the show’s creator, Stephen Graham).
It’s not surprising that Adolescence zoomed to the top of the Nielsen ranking for streamed shows during its first full week, beginning March 17.
As for Max’s Last of Us: If I had played the original video-game version, I probably wouldn’t have been so devastated by a certain death near the start of the second season, which is now in progress. Killing off a well-loved, carefully nuanced character is no small feat on the part of any show’s creators. (The whole art of killing important characters is something I’ve studied and written about in the past.)
Moving forward, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the person who died in flashbacks (a common device). Regardless, the tragedy is sending reverberations through other primary characters. And that has given the series a whole new dimension.
MYSTERY OF CREATIVE ALCHEMY
Needless to say, what lures one person to the characters in a series doesn’t necessarily attract others. I want to bet that every artist, no matter how well known, has been flummoxed by the good, bad, and ugly nature of how their work is perceived.
For example, I certainly wasn’t feeling all that moved by Netflix’s The Residence, despite its popularity. The miniseries was exec produced by TV superstar Shonda Rhimes and is a whodunnit mystery set in the White House. Glamorous attendees of a state dinner are held captive overnight as a tight-jawed, bird-obsessed detective played by Uzo Aduba tries to figure out who murdered the chief usher (Giancarlo Esposito).
Call me crazy, but I just didn’t care about any of those people, even though I’ll watch Esposito no matter what show he’s in. I don’t care if he’s impersonating a piece of cardboard. Not to imply that’s what he was doing in Residence.
Characters with the kind of chemistry that keeps a wide number of people coming back for more is fun to analyze, regardless of how they hit us. Time will tell if that seductive French chef in Carême is just too much whipped cream for me to take — or if he’s as memorable as a very fine bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
