- During the Vietnam War era, it was the news divisions
of the big three US television networks that, controversially and unprecedentedly,
brought the war into living rooms.
-
- It says something about our own era that the most visceral
rendering of the conflict in Iraq now being delivered to American households
is in the form of entertainment, a scripted drama by Steven Bochco, the
impresario previously responsible for such hits as Hill Street Blues and
LA Law.
-
- The first episode of Mr Bochco's hard-punching frontline
drama Over There, the first US television series to depict a war still
in progress, has just aired on cable television. Thanks in part to a blaze
of advance publicity, it attracted a more than respectable 4.1 million
viewers on Wednesday and has become the cultural talking point of the moment.
-
- In an age in which news stations appear more preoccupied
with celebrity trials or the disappearance of a young woman in the Caribbean
than with the stark realities of the US military presence in Iraq, the
show has succeeded in generating more media coverage about life on the
Mesopotamian front than almost anything since the fall of Baghdad.
-
- It is also attracting its share of criticism, from puritan
critics worried about its graphic violence and no-holds-barred language,
from veterans who worry that the realities of combat are being sacrificed
to the exigencies of entertainment, and from opponents of the war who say
the show ends up condoning the conflict in its very refusal to engage with
the question of why it started in the first place.
-
- The critical notices, however, have been largely positive.
The Washington Post conceded there were moments that were "manipulative,
belaboured and cliché-ridden" but added: "The flaws are
consistently overshadowed by grueling virtues: suspense, tension and a
palpable sense of deep distress."
-
- Over There follows the fortunes of a crew of new recruits
as they deal with the ever-present danger of firefights, checkpoint duty
and bomb attacks by insurgents. It also tracks life on the home front :
the infidelities, financial difficulties and stresses of single parenthood.
-
- Mr Bochco is an accomplished entertainer, and the series
certainly does not lack for slick delivery, eye-catching visuals and workmanlike
acting from a young cast of unknowns. While the characters talk about their
personal emotions, however, they emphatically do not stray into discussions
of what they are doing in Iraq in the first place. Mr Bochco says this
is the result of his decision to make the show "completely apolitical".
-
- But this refusal to engage with the controversies of
the war has the side-effect of reducing the Iraqis to shadowy villains
we learn to fear but never get to know. It also carries the implication
that there is a fundamental dignity and honour in serving one's country,
whatever the cause. As a number of critics have pointed out, that is in
itself a distinct political position.
-
- The Boston Globe wrote that ducking the controversies
surrounding the war was a missed opportunity. "Our presence in Iraq
has divided this country, but you'd never know that watching Over There."
-
- Writing in The New Yorker, Nancy Franklin expressed the
same regret, but suggested Mr Bochco did not have a choice. "At the
moment, to risk telling the truth - beyond the truth that soldiers die
in war and things are tough on the home front, too -is to be condemned
as unpatriotic."
-
- During the Vietnam War era, it was the news divisions
of the big three US television networks that, controversially and unprecedentedly,
brought the war into living rooms.
-
- It says something about our own era that the most visceral
rendering of the conflict in Iraq now being delivered to American households
is in the form of entertainment, a scripted drama by Steven Bochco, the
impresario previously responsible for such hits as Hill Street Blues and
LA Law.
-
- The first episode of Mr Bochco's hard-punching frontline
drama Over There, the first US television series to depict a war still
in progress, has just aired on cable television. Thanks in part to a blaze
of advance publicity, it attracted a more than respectable 4.1 million
viewers on Wednesday and has become the cultural talking point of the moment.
-
- In an age in which news stations appear more preoccupied
with celebrity trials or the disappearance of a young woman in the Caribbean
than with the stark realities of the US military presence in Iraq, the
show has succeeded in generating more media coverage about life on the
Mesopotamian front than almost anything since the fall of Baghdad.
-
- It is also attracting its share of criticism, from puritan
critics worried about its graphic violence and no-holds-barred language,
from veterans who worry that the realities of combat are being sacrificed
to the exigencies of entertainment, and from opponents of the war who say
the show ends up condoning the conflict in its very refusal to engage with
the question of why it started in the first place.
-
- The critical notices, however, have been largely positive.
The Washington Post conceded there were moments that were "manipulative,
belaboured and cliché-ridden" but added: "The flaws are
consistently overshadowed by grueling virtues: suspense, tension and a
palpable sense of deep distress."
-
- Over There follows the fortunes of a crew of new recruits
as they deal with the ever-present danger of firefights, checkpoint duty
and bomb attacks by insurgents. It also tracks life on the home front :
the infidelities, financial difficulties and stresses of single parenthood.
-
- Mr Bochco is an accomplished entertainer, and the series
certainly does not lack for slick delivery, eye-catching visuals and workmanlike
acting from a young cast of unknowns. While the characters talk about their
personal emotions, however, they emphatically do not stray into discussions
of what they are doing in Iraq in the first place. Mr Bochco says this
is the result of his decision to make the show "completely apolitical".
-
- But this refusal to engage with the controversies of
the war has the side-effect of reducing the Iraqis to shadowy villains
we learn to fear but never get to know. It also carries the implication
that there is a fundamental dignity and honour in serving one's country,
whatever the cause. As a number of critics have pointed out, that is in
itself a distinct political position.
-
- The Boston Globe wrote that ducking the controversies
surrounding the war was a missed opportunity. "Our presence in Iraq
has divided this country, but you'd never know that watching Over There."
-
- Writing in The New Yorker, Nancy Franklin expressed the
same regret, but suggested Mr Bochco did not have a choice. "At the
moment, to risk telling the truth - beyond the truth that soldiers die
in war and things are tough on the home front, too -is to be condemned
as unpatriotic."
-
- © 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
-
- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article302489.ece
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