Coronavirus has exacerbated many of life’s little ironies, not least of which is the array of ‘first-world’ problems one may encounter in a developing nation. As a university-educated white South African, I have generally been insulated from the day-to-day struggles that this disease has wrought on our nation. As a sports-writer, however, I have experienced a minor existential funk that has gnawed away at my sense of purpose. I’m fully aware that sports are a secondary concern at present. But I can’t help but feel like a disgruntled forensic-pathologist in Spielberg’s Minority Report. I have an itchy scalpel finger that secretly covets a Tom Cruise workplace meltdown (perhaps a bring-Oprah-to-work-day). A few inconvenient murders would at least swing some work my way.
One saving grace during this period of introspection has been the capacity to binge television shows sans guilt: the binge without the cringe. Just as lockdown had taken effect, DSTV made the brilliant (and frankly, humanitarian) decision to launch an HBO pop-up channel, helping us adjust to our new hermetic existence. It has allowed me to reexperience some of the foundational texts of contemporary television. The relevance of these first-generation HBO behemoths remains undiminished (unlike some other millennial crazes I can think of). I’m looking at you, nu-metal; you think I can’t see you hiding there behind M Night Shyamalan? No twist endings here, just a reappraisal of HBO’s initial forays into the annals of not only great television, but great art.
I think it’s probably appropriate to start with some biographical context. My family hadn’t invested in the wonders of satellite television until I was well out of high school. Our television diet was confined to national broadcasters and one limited pay-for channel: M-Net. Outside of South Africa’s cultural touchstones – be it sports or flagrantly racist and exploitative comedians – there was very little television that one could define as ‘essential’. Disposable pleasures such as Law and Order and CSI fulfilled their purpose with the brutal efficiency of Mike Tyson. I craved the more cerebral pleasures of Muhammed Ali – to be transfixed by the narrative as well as the punches. 1998 saw the inception of South Africa’s first – and only – privately owned free-to-air channel: e-TV. In a country still emerging from the broadcasting constraints of the Apartheid regime, any form of new consumer content was treated with an indoctrinated sense of suspicion.
But it was much ado about nothing, as e-TV was largely the embodiment of trash television (Matilda’s parents would have been mad for it). Game-shows and soap-operas fought for prominence alongside Walker: Texas-Ranger. But then something amazing happened. At the turn of the millennium, e-TV (through some Faustian bargain) managed to attain the rights to screen HBO flagships such as The Sopranos, The Wire and Six Feet Under. These, alongside Twin Peaks – which deserves its own article, perhaps written in an alternative dimension – are the most important TV shows of my lifetime. And to have them all play back-to-back during this period has proved essential in navigating tumultuous times, both personal and global. (Spoiler Alert Ahead)
Starting at the end, Six Feet Under was the first series that I consumed during this lockdown. The brainchild of American Beauty scribe Alan Ball, Six Feet Under charted the idiosyncratic Fisher family as they negotiated life’s many contradictions and complexities. Their funeral home provided an apt environment for this dysfunctional family melodrama – one permanently mediated by the creeping spectre of death. I vividly remember watching this show in high school, being utterly shocked by the exploits of the Fisher family. The show was clearly informed by a liberal worldview, challenging the tenets of my cosseted Christian upbringing. Ostensibly a show about death, Six Feet Under is really a celebration of life (curious and fragile as it is). It was unafraid of interrogating then-taboo issues like queer identity and senior sexuality.
The show acquired an entirely new dimension for me during the lockdown. My father, as eternal and unchanging as all fathers seem to be, died quite suddenly on the 11th of May. Due to draconian lockdown protocols, my family was denied the chance to be with him as he passed. Communication was restricted to sporadic telephone calls refereed by detached nursing staff. This was a disruption of life’s oldest routine: death. We were deep into the famed final stretch of Six Feet Under when he passed. The show became a refuge when alcoholic oblivion was not an option. Many rightfully exult the series finale Everybody’s Waiting, with its bold declaration of a show’s ‘true death’ (a term I’m nicking from Ball’s future project: True Blood). But it was Episode 9, Ecotone, that really floored me. It documented the very waiting-room intrigues that my family were denied, capturing in miniaturist detail the ebb and flow of hospital hope. Nate’s death became a lockdown-compromised version of my father’s, with just as many unsaid words and unresolved conflicts.
Moving on from that emotional trauma wasn’t easy. I was frustrated with the arbitrary and irrational application of lockdown regulations in our country. This sense of institutional fatigue has been intensified by the racial gaslighting and science shaming of Donald Trump. So, what show (by some divine providence) should replace Six Feet Under? David Simon’s The Wire. The Wire proved the perfect tonic to my festering disenchantment. It is the archetypal examination of institutional corruption. Simon regards gangland Baltimore with both elegiac affection and righteous condemnation. Subverting the conventions of the ‘cops and robbers’ genre, The Wire documents the sprawl of drug warfare with ethnographic rigour. Its critique of structural malfeasance is (depressingly) more pertinent than ever. The recent controversy in Mpumalanga (surrounding statistical anomalies in Covid reporting) evokes the bureaucratic skulduggery of Burrell and Rawls, desperately juking statistics to save face at the expense of transparency.
The ANC’s brazen post-Apartheid corruption is mirrored in The Wire’s representation of Baltimore bureaucracy. In both instances you have a previously disenfranchised black community struggling to operate the levers of recently inherited power. The show highlights how civic responsibility is largely subsumed by egocentric impulses and greed. Clay Davis is a more loquacious Jacob Zuma, appealing to nativist sympathies when his fundamental corruption is uncovered. I suppose both cases ask the question: what did one expect? Grace? Those oppressed by centuries of humiliation and degradation were always likely to react selfishly to the acquisition of power.
The Wire had the grim survival instincts of John McClane, maintaining premium quality despite poor ratings and the perpetual threat of cancellation. The labyrinthine plotting may have dissuaded some, but it was the predominately African-American cast that deterred most viewers. If there ever was a piece of neglected entertainment that epitomized the Black Lives Matter movement, this is it. It never received one acting nomination at the Emmys during its entire run. There’s a clean stat that remains utterly shameful.
And what should replace The Wire? Only the Granddaddy of them all, David Chase’s Mafioso opera: The Sopranos. David Chase’s masterpiece heralded television’s ascent to artistic pre-eminence. As Easy Rider was to American independent cinema, The Sopranos was to television. A withering critique on power, masculinity and Italian-American identity, The Sopranos captivated viewers with his novelistic depth and complexity. Of all the shows I have discussed, this is the one that has changed the most in my re-evaluation. Watching as a teenager, I was enthralled by the violence of these men (a fact no doubt mediated by the faux prison-yard politics that define an all-boys high-school). Upon re-watching, I found myself routinely disgusted by these simian creatures, whose barely concealed self-loathing is ultimately projected onto their most dangerous enemy: women.
Considering the exponential growth of gender-based-violence during our current lockdown, The Sopranos is a timely denunciation of the underlying weakness that fuels hyper-macho social contexts. Sure, there are different levels of evil chauvinism. Overt sadists like Ralphie and Richie are fairly easy to distinguish from the more banal misogyny of, say, Tony Soprano. But it’s Tony’s casual, day-to-day brutalization that tacitly nurtures these monsters. The Bada Bing dancers are shuffled around like Gameboy consoles, though many of them are roughly the same age as Tony’s daughter, Meadow. The normalization of ‘goomahs’ (extra-marital lovers), facilitates a literal Madonna-Whore network of femininity. But it’s perhaps Carmela who best embodies the prosaic character of misogyny. None of these systems would work if there was no buy-in. Carmela (the Soprano matriarch) has deeply internalized the dual role of wife and mother, turning a blind eye to Tony’s ceaseless womanizing. She has the self-awareness to challenge Tony, but ultimately cannot escape the blanket of security that comes with being Mrs Soprano. And one more thing I simply have to say (fade to black).
To this day, HBO continues to pioneer ground-breaking television. Longer-format heavyweights like Game of Thrones and Westworld have struggled to sustain their creative impetus. But limited-series such as Sharp Objects and Chernobyl bear testament to the storytelling prowess of this televisual institution. Watchmen proved jaw-droppingly prescient, anticipating Trump’s Tulsa ignorance in an ingenious reconfiguration of Alan Moore’s concepts. But I would urge anyone who hasn’t experienced these gems to do so immediately. And to anyone who caught them back in the day: look again. They’ve changed. That’s the magic of these living novels. They reveal more of themselves with time, adapting to whatever zeitgeist they inhabit. And for that I’m eternally grateful.