Lou Grant was a comedy, most cop shows are dramas. You can set a comedy in almost any location (including a police precinct like Brooklyn 99). Dramas need a dramatic setting, such as a police station, hospital, fire department, etc. I think a drama set in a newsroom could be interesting, but in this case, Lou Grant was specifically supposed to be comedic, not dramatic.
I don't think I've seen Lou Grant, honestly. St. James argues it was an important predecessor for Hill Street Blues, and that it was a mix of genres, fwiw...
I would disagree that LOU GRANT was a comedy—it was a newsroom drama with some comedic elements, which faded over time as people responded to the "Let's look at all sides of this story" approach to drama. Yes, Lou was sometimes comically out of place as the City Editor of a high-class broadsheet published by Nancy Marchand's Mrs. Margaret Pynchon, but the show took the subjects it tackled very seriously, and very fair-mindedly, especially for the late 1970s-early 1980s.
You are correct. I believe I remembered it as more comedic than I described it in my original comment. Perhaps my memory of the show it was based upon colored my remembrance.
May I ask what is the definition of a comedy? Can a comedy exist without drama? Unhumorous drama is possible but the pathos of comedy is (or can be) much more dramatic. Lou Grant may have had many elements of humor but it often left one in tears.
While reading this, it struck me as odd that you fail to mention Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom. It only had three seasons due to a writer's strike but it was timely and exciting because it showed the challenges faced by a newsroom in covering events with fact based information. The show still has an avid following ( on Max).
I think THE NEWSROOM tried to be LOU GRANT, but Aaron Sorkin's Kennedy-era liberalism meant that there ended up only being one side to the story—Sorkin's side, with the kind of "liberal thinking" full of "Wimmen, amirite?" so-called humor, hyperarticulate characters...saying the same things his hyperarticulate characters said in his earlier shows SPORTS NIGHT and THE WEST WING, a worship of Gilbert & Sullivan that makes me question my own affection for their operettas, and a view of the political and societal scene that died when Newt Gingrich showed Republicans they could win by being slogan-spouting, loudmouthed bullies with a lust for power, and no ideas of and less interest in governance. His "Ripped from yesterday's headlines!" approach to stories, far from seeming to "show 24-hour media" how they SHOULD be reporting the issues, played like an inept mentalist predicting a future that had already occurred.
Honestly, a more realistic take on the state of journalism these days was SUPERMAN AND LOIS, where Lois Lane Kent tried to revive the weekly Smallville newspaper and make it into the kind of hard-hitting outlet a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist would want to write for.
Also worth mentioning that detective stories have been a staple of genre fiction predating television. I don't have a good sense what the ratio of TV shows about individual detectives (Rockford Files) vs ones that celebrate a department.
It is interesting that TV has adapted the Sherlock Holmes template to a medical show (House) but not a journalism show.
And yet, an awful lot of mystery novels and movies of the 1920s-1940s were set at newspapers or in the world of journalism, with reporters as the detective-heroes—Glenda Farrell played a bunch of tough, wisecracking women reporters, most especially Torchy Blane (and yes, any resemblance to the later-monickered "Lois Lane" is strictly intentional!); Michael Whalen starring in THE ROVING REPORTERS series; the CAMERA DAREDEVILS (about newsreel cameramen traveling the globe for stories); and features like AFTER OFFICE HOURS, FIVE STAR FINAL, BACK IN CIRCULATION, BEHIND THE HEADLINES, THE FAMOUS FERGUSON CASE, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, TOO HOT TO HANDLE, CHICAGO DEADLINE, HEADLINE!, MISSION IN TANGIER, THE MURDER MAN, THE ROAR OF THE PRESS....
::In the US, superheroes dominated comics in the 40s, and they just never really stopped dominating them.::
To be fair, Noah, superhero comics pretty much faded from view in the postwar 1940s-1956 when DC restarted their superhero comics with their reboot of The Flash (Barry Allen instead of Jay Garrick), and were replaced by Western comics, Romance comics, non-superhero Adventure Comics, and Crime comics. That was when comics were read more by women than by men (55% to 45%!), and when female artists, writers, and even editors and publishers (both Orbit Comics and Continental Magazines were co-run by Ruth Rae Hermann under her "Ray Herman" pseudonym, and her co-publishers in both cases were women—Marjorie May for Orbit and Esther Temerson for Continental).
Yes, a few of DC's Big Names like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman survived the late Forties Superhero Purge (as did Fawcett's Captain Marvel...until DC sued him and his family out of existence for two decades in 1952!), but most of Timely Comics' characters like Captain America, Namor, and The Human Torch faded into obscurity until being revived by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the early 1960s.
Drama exists every time we get in our autos, but we ignore the drama until it occurs.
But the drama of the police is due (I think) to our own complex relationship with the police. They are Savior and Demon; Protectors of Liberty and Abusers of Self; they can be Hero and they can be anti-Hero, and frequently need to be both to be either.
So the appeal of the police drama, or crime drama going back to early film heroes like Cagney and Robinson; or even the Fonzi character in Happy Days to some extent, comes, perhaps, from our own feelings of attraction for the hero and repulsion of the hero.
Save-Me-From the Other;Keep-Away-From-Me-As-Self. The need for protection and the hatred of being sublimated because of our need. We love the hero and we love the villain who uproots the hero.
We desire to be the hero,but need villains to save us from the heroes and want to be the villains who discover the Achilles' heel of the hero. This creates the drama of cheering on the hero destroying the villain and cheering on the villain when he successfully defeats the hero.
The cavalry to the rescue and boy didn't those Indians put it to Custer. But in the movie, as in the event, we generally take a "side",here I root for the hero, there for the villain. And sometimes the side changes midstream. Man hits wife, husband-villain; wife calls for cop-hero; they try to arrest husband, husband becomes abused by villainous police.
That creates drama before the cameras roll and is the drama of modern life, wanting/not wanting police to save/not abuse. Placed in such a position; the reality of the police person begins to view himself as as much of a caricature of a person as he has been characterized; he becomes dramatic to himself and sees himself always in danger even when he is not; and disrespected even when we grovel for his presence.
So we view the policeman with dramatically heightened perspectives that results in his own dramatization of his life.
So no matter the reality of the drama in police lives; both we and the policeman himself, ascribes to his environment a heightened drama.
Lou Grant was a comedy, most cop shows are dramas. You can set a comedy in almost any location (including a police precinct like Brooklyn 99). Dramas need a dramatic setting, such as a police station, hospital, fire department, etc. I think a drama set in a newsroom could be interesting, but in this case, Lou Grant was specifically supposed to be comedic, not dramatic.
I don't think I've seen Lou Grant, honestly. St. James argues it was an important predecessor for Hill Street Blues, and that it was a mix of genres, fwiw...
I would disagree that LOU GRANT was a comedy—it was a newsroom drama with some comedic elements, which faded over time as people responded to the "Let's look at all sides of this story" approach to drama. Yes, Lou was sometimes comically out of place as the City Editor of a high-class broadsheet published by Nancy Marchand's Mrs. Margaret Pynchon, but the show took the subjects it tackled very seriously, and very fair-mindedly, especially for the late 1970s-early 1980s.
You are correct. I believe I remembered it as more comedic than I described it in my original comment. Perhaps my memory of the show it was based upon colored my remembrance.
May I ask what is the definition of a comedy? Can a comedy exist without drama? Unhumorous drama is possible but the pathos of comedy is (or can be) much more dramatic. Lou Grant may have had many elements of humor but it often left one in tears.
You're right. Most shows are dramas with touches of comedy, or comedies with touches of drama.
You connect dots I see no one else connecting. Here for it!!
While reading this, it struck me as odd that you fail to mention Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom. It only had three seasons due to a writer's strike but it was timely and exciting because it showed the challenges faced by a newsroom in covering events with fact based information. The show still has an avid following ( on Max).
check out St. James' piece; she mentions it!
I think THE NEWSROOM tried to be LOU GRANT, but Aaron Sorkin's Kennedy-era liberalism meant that there ended up only being one side to the story—Sorkin's side, with the kind of "liberal thinking" full of "Wimmen, amirite?" so-called humor, hyperarticulate characters...saying the same things his hyperarticulate characters said in his earlier shows SPORTS NIGHT and THE WEST WING, a worship of Gilbert & Sullivan that makes me question my own affection for their operettas, and a view of the political and societal scene that died when Newt Gingrich showed Republicans they could win by being slogan-spouting, loudmouthed bullies with a lust for power, and no ideas of and less interest in governance. His "Ripped from yesterday's headlines!" approach to stories, far from seeming to "show 24-hour media" how they SHOULD be reporting the issues, played like an inept mentalist predicting a future that had already occurred.
Honestly, a more realistic take on the state of journalism these days was SUPERMAN AND LOIS, where Lois Lane Kent tried to revive the weekly Smallville newspaper and make it into the kind of hard-hitting outlet a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist would want to write for.
Also worth mentioning that detective stories have been a staple of genre fiction predating television. I don't have a good sense what the ratio of TV shows about individual detectives (Rockford Files) vs ones that celebrate a department.
It is interesting that TV has adapted the Sherlock Holmes template to a medical show (House) but not a journalism show.
And yet, an awful lot of mystery novels and movies of the 1920s-1940s were set at newspapers or in the world of journalism, with reporters as the detective-heroes—Glenda Farrell played a bunch of tough, wisecracking women reporters, most especially Torchy Blane (and yes, any resemblance to the later-monickered "Lois Lane" is strictly intentional!); Michael Whalen starring in THE ROVING REPORTERS series; the CAMERA DAREDEVILS (about newsreel cameramen traveling the globe for stories); and features like AFTER OFFICE HOURS, FIVE STAR FINAL, BACK IN CIRCULATION, BEHIND THE HEADLINES, THE FAMOUS FERGUSON CASE, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, TOO HOT TO HANDLE, CHICAGO DEADLINE, HEADLINE!, MISSION IN TANGIER, THE MURDER MAN, THE ROAR OF THE PRESS....
That's a great point. I wonder how much that draws on the memory/image of the "Girl Stunt Reports" -- https://niemanstoryboard.org/2022/02/24/nellie-boy-muckraking-female-reportersthe-pioneering-and-prescient-work-of-girl-stunt-reporters/
American mythology. Rugged, individual, good guy with gun kills bad guys.
::In the US, superheroes dominated comics in the 40s, and they just never really stopped dominating them.::
To be fair, Noah, superhero comics pretty much faded from view in the postwar 1940s-1956 when DC restarted their superhero comics with their reboot of The Flash (Barry Allen instead of Jay Garrick), and were replaced by Western comics, Romance comics, non-superhero Adventure Comics, and Crime comics. That was when comics were read more by women than by men (55% to 45%!), and when female artists, writers, and even editors and publishers (both Orbit Comics and Continental Magazines were co-run by Ruth Rae Hermann under her "Ray Herman" pseudonym, and her co-publishers in both cases were women—Marjorie May for Orbit and Esther Temerson for Continental).
Yes, a few of DC's Big Names like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman survived the late Forties Superhero Purge (as did Fawcett's Captain Marvel...until DC sued him and his family out of existence for two decades in 1952!), but most of Timely Comics' characters like Captain America, Namor, and The Human Torch faded into obscurity until being revived by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the early 1960s.
Drama exists every time we get in our autos, but we ignore the drama until it occurs.
But the drama of the police is due (I think) to our own complex relationship with the police. They are Savior and Demon; Protectors of Liberty and Abusers of Self; they can be Hero and they can be anti-Hero, and frequently need to be both to be either.
So the appeal of the police drama, or crime drama going back to early film heroes like Cagney and Robinson; or even the Fonzi character in Happy Days to some extent, comes, perhaps, from our own feelings of attraction for the hero and repulsion of the hero.
Save-Me-From the Other;Keep-Away-From-Me-As-Self. The need for protection and the hatred of being sublimated because of our need. We love the hero and we love the villain who uproots the hero.
We desire to be the hero,but need villains to save us from the heroes and want to be the villains who discover the Achilles' heel of the hero. This creates the drama of cheering on the hero destroying the villain and cheering on the villain when he successfully defeats the hero.
The cavalry to the rescue and boy didn't those Indians put it to Custer. But in the movie, as in the event, we generally take a "side",here I root for the hero, there for the villain. And sometimes the side changes midstream. Man hits wife, husband-villain; wife calls for cop-hero; they try to arrest husband, husband becomes abused by villainous police.
That creates drama before the cameras roll and is the drama of modern life, wanting/not wanting police to save/not abuse. Placed in such a position; the reality of the police person begins to view himself as as much of a caricature of a person as he has been characterized; he becomes dramatic to himself and sees himself always in danger even when he is not; and disrespected even when we grovel for his presence.
So we view the policeman with dramatically heightened perspectives that results in his own dramatization of his life.
So no matter the reality of the drama in police lives; both we and the policeman himself, ascribes to his environment a heightened drama.