Word: drama
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Before M*A*S*H, the line between TV comedy and TV drama was as well demarcated as the DMZ between the two Koreas. This military-doctor comedy daringly combined zany humor--equal parts Marx Brothers slapstick and high-class wordplay--with dark drama, as when the war claimed the life of the base's first chief, Lieut. Colonel Henry Blake. (The show banned canned laughter in its operating-room scenes, presaging today's single-camera, laugh-track-free comedies.) Like many great shows, M*A*S*H stayed on the air a few years too long. But it proved...
...Prisoner told serial stories before Hill Street, and The Fugitive hung a years-long chase on its otherwise self-contained episodes. But Steven Bochco's cop drama popularized serialized story arcs by proving that audiences would have the patience to stick with a story longer than 60 minutes. Hill Street demonstrated that a TV show could make a virtue of messiness with plots that didn't resolve neatly (or sometimes at all) and heroes who crossed ethical lines. Through conflicted Captain Furillo, abrasive Buntz and biting-prone Belker, Hill Street showed us imperfect cops delivering imperfect justice in an imperfect...
...These frustrations are at the heart of the drama in Redacted. The Iraqis are not guys in different uniforms, or women one might woo; they are walking frag bombs, more animal or mineral than human. And when the members of one squad stationed in at a checkpoint in Samarra see their sergeant blown up while sweeping a dump site (his severed arm lands in front of Salazar's camera), they gradually go a little nuts...
...Jane Forrest and Brian Andrews, is a gem, a triumph for adherence to two axioms of football: keep it simple and get the little things right. Its backdrop is league in early-1980s Sydney, but after a burst of action in the first 10 minutes, it shines as a drama exploring the limits of loyalty and what it means...
PERSEPOLIS In their '90s heyday, Iranian films often refracted social drama through the prism of a young girl's viewpoint. Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical cartoon is the tale of her life in Tehran under two despots, the Shah and the Ayatollah. Harrowing yet buoyant, Persepolis earned the Jury Prize at Cannes and the official scorn of the Iranian clerics...