We All Have Our Troubles

DOMINIC WEST, the swoon-inducing star of HBO's late THE WIRE, was promoting the premiere of that show in the UK, and caused a bit of a fooferal yesterday when he complained about the state of UK TV drama:

"If you turn on American TV, there's a huge choice of nothing you want to see and, unfortunately, I think that's the case here now as well. I love costume drama, no one does it like the BBC – no one has the money to do it, first of all and, secondly, Americans don't have the history do it," West said.

"I thought Cranford was incredible but we don't seem to be able to do contemporary stuff. So we do it brilliantly but if you talk to any BBC producers, they abhor the fact ... they're dying to do The Wire and hate doing Cranford."

To Canadian Creatives caught between their American-envy and feeling of inferiority (except for the ones wanting to be "better" than the Americans and taking the first train to Pretentiousville to get there) it's liable to be bracing reading that, you know, things are tough all over.

From Kathryn Flett at the Guardian:

We're good on contemporary comedy, obviously – Green Wing, The Thick of It, The Office, Moving Wallpaper and Free Agents, to name just a few, have been entirely of their time. And it's easy enough to shout out a list of rule-proving exceptions in drama – I came up with my own 21st century shortlist in moments, encompassing State of Play, Shameless, Red Riding, Life on Mars, The Street, Criminal Justice, and Skins.

But a closer inspection of these undeniably fine works reveals two quasi-costume dramas (Life on Mars and Red Riding) and a couple of upscale semi-soaps (Shameless and The Street), which, given that Criminal Justice was entrenched in the insularity of its prison environment, leaves only Skins and State of Play to be definitively contemporary and zeitgeistful pretty much all by themselves, which is a bit of a burden.

Every country, every industry has its challenges. And how you're perceived elsewhere doesn't help to quell or defeat the zeitgeist or dominant feelings on your home turf.

But fuck me, wouldn't an ounce of honesty now and then be a good start?