On Fri, 21 Jan 2011 19:53:54 -0800 (PST), "John W. Kennedy"
 wrote:
>On Jan 21, 3:12 pm, Steve Silverwood 
>wrote:
>> B5 really pioneered lots of things.  It proved that a serial show --
>> not just episodes but a real story arc -- was a viable programming
>> model.
>
>No, "Wiseguy" and "Hill Street Blues" had already
established that.
>Heck, even "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp" had played with the
>idea. B5's innovation was making the long-term story arcs themselves
>coherent storytelling, not just the episodes and the short-term arcs.
>The closest thing since may have been the first two years of "Alias".
I thought the context here was Science Fiction, but I concede the
point.
>> >Lost in Space is fun and campy but was it really any more important than
>> >Fireball XL-5, The Starlost or UFOs?
>>
>> Not hardly.  LIS shouldn't have even been included in the list.
>
>It's not a question of artistic value, but one of historic importance.
>There are plenty of parallels. The American musical, for example, was
>strongly influenced by "The Black Crook" (1866, I think) and the 1902
>"Wizard of Oz", but neither one is tolerable today. No one ever does
>"The Black Crook", and the single amateur performance of
"Wizard of
>Oz" last summer was the first full-dress production since the 1920s.
>Similarly, "Lost in Space" is a landmark, even though most of it is
>bloody awful. "Fireball XL-5" was a kiddy show, "The
Starlost" was
>repudiated by its creator even before it went on the air, and "UFO"
>was an adult production of a kiddy-show concept. (And "Fireball XL-5"
>and "UFO" were British, anyway, which puts them out of
"Pioneers"'
>purview.)
What's wrong with British programming?
-- //Steve//
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