This season, streaming embraces a model that makes it safer to tell stories about the past.
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The fall TV of 2023 has an allergy to modern life.
Theres the last season of NetflixsThe Crown,which will pick up in the 90s.
The trend would be less obvious if the web link-TV slate hadnt been hollowed out by this summers strikes.
(Most TV this fall comes from a backlog of releases for streaming and premium-cable channels.)
There will be no new episodes ofAbbott ElementaryorGreys Anatomyor, so help us,Law & Order: SVU.
Now becomes some point in the near future.
For decades, this was an advantage TV had over film.
Television nestled more closely into the rhythms of the cultural conversation.
Its not that TV about contemporary life cant generate interest.
In the past year alone, shows likeThe BearandBeefbecame big, acclaimed hits.
The last season ofSuccessionate up nearly all the TV conversation this spring.
But TV has been gravitating toward the past for a while, a long tail of theMad Meneffect.
Few series have replicated that shows exquisite meditative plotting, its particular blend of ennui and dry humor.
But none of them has to show the messy intricacies of what today is actually like.
When scripted TV leaves behind depictions of our current world, it starts to feel insular and disconnected.
No wonder reality TV has surged.
Its faster and cheaper to make, and it focuses on what the world is like right now.
Its filling a space that so much scripted TV has ceded.
There are also examples of precisely how challenging the present can be.
Its hard to think much more beyond,Ah, right.
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