How the small screen got big

How the Small Screen Got Big

Technology and competition have transformed television, but not as much as a new breed of creators

By BRIDGET POTTER

'Must-see TV' means something different for everyone these days. My own current obsession is "Spiral," a French serial police procedural that is as complex, dark and novelistic as anything I've ever seen on any screen. I watch it at home subtitled and downloaded wirelessly from Netflix through Apple TV onto a nice big flat screen. No cable required—and no waiting until 10 p.m. on Sunday night. Friends of mine watch "Boardwalk Empire" and "Breaking Bad" on their iPads. I admire the extraordinarily high level of production work on those shows too much to squeeze them down onto a computer screen, a tablet or, heaven forbid, a smartphone. No Rembrandts on postage stamps for me, HBO GO notwithstanding. I also never binge on multiple episodes of my favorite shows. When Netflix released all 13 episodes of its original series, "House of Cards," simultaneously, many saw it all within hours. I paced myself, begging binge-addicted friends for no spoilers.

Not only has technology made us all our own programmers—free to watch what we want, when we want—but much of what we can program for ourselves these days is remarkably good. In his wonderfully reported and thoughtful exploration, "Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution," Brett Martin claims that cable television's open-ended serial dramas represent "the signature American art form of the first decade of the twenty-first century." And he makes a good case.

"Difficult Men" is more ambitious than the usual behind-the-scenes book. Part critic, part historian, Mr. Martin was a self-described "lay television viewer" when he was signed by HBO to write the official "Sopranos" companion book. Hanging around the set and the writers' room, he became entranced by his "access to rooms into which the rest of the world feverishly wanted to peer." This somewhat naive early enthusiasm has been tempered by his narration of the extraordinary difficulty with which iconic shows like "The Sopranos," "Six Feet Under," "Deadwood," "The Wire," "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad" were birthed.

Mr. Martin begins in prehistory—network television. Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore had formed MTM Productions to produce "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" for CBS. Mr. Tinker would become a legendary producer of quality television in the 1970s and early 1980s, making MTM a "place writers wanted to be—not necessarily because it was where they'd get the most money, but because they'd have the freedom to do good work." From MTM came Steven Bochco's "Hill Street Blues," which Mr. Martin cites as a blueprint for many shows we enjoy today. Mr. Bochco was always pushing the limits of network TV, in terms of both language and dramatic complexity. David Milch, who got his start on "Hill Street Blues" and went on to co-create "NYPD Blue" with Mr. Bochco, would later make "Deadwood." Tom Fontana, the mind behind "Oz," cut his teeth working on MTM's "St. Elsewhere."

But the place where Mr. Martin's TV revolution was truly fomented was HBO. Mr. Martin claims that "the most important premonition" of what HBO would become arrived in 1992, with the debut of the "cruelly dark" and modestly successful "Larry Sanders Show," a half-hour look at the making of a fictional late-night talk show starring Garry Shandling as the "neurotic, narcissistic host." I would mark the turning point even earlier, though: "Tanner '88," a collaboration between Garry Trudeau and Robert Altman, in the form of a half-hour series about a fictional Democratic candidate (played by Michael Murphy). His story mirrored that year's presidential campaign, with scenes often shot along the campaign trail and featuring real political figures.

In 1988, I was senior vice president of original programming at HBO. In search of improbable arenas for smart series, we put out the word that we wanted a political comedy. Mr. Trudeau, new to television and appropriately skeptical, came in. We talked. He approached Altman, and they returned with an impressive approach and equally impressive demands for autonomy. We jumped. "Tanner '88" was not a commercial success by any measure, but it attracted a new kind of critical attention to HBO. The so-called creative community began to believe that we really wanted to put our network's meager money where our grand ambition was. One thing Mr. Martin's book underscores is how HBO's eventual emphasis on quality came to be a touchstone for other cable networks as they fought for attention in an increasingly competitive TV landscape.

A major attraction of pay cable for writers and directors was a chance to produce material that would be at home in the frequently R-rated feature-film environment rather than be constrained by the proprieties of network television. Once, in the 1980s, we cut together a series of the most provocative clips from our original-programming roster and screened it for our new advertising agency. They were building a campaign around the sometimes grisly cult series "Tales From the Crypt"—for which the producer Joel Silver had joined with feature-film directors Richard Donner, Walter Hill and Robert Zemeckis. When the lights went up, there was an uncomfortable pause. Someone in the room said, "That's not TV." Someone else—I'd like to think it was me, but success has many parents—said, "No, it's HBO." "It's Not TV, It's HBO" became our slogan. Today, of course, "it" is not just HBO. It's Showtime, AMC, FX and now Netflix, Amazon and YouTube, and more.

Even at HBO, though, it took years to commit to one-hour drama. Mr. Martin rightly calls Tom Fontana's "Oz" a breakthrough. "Aggressively artsy, filled with shocking violence, homoerotic sex, and a charismatic main character who happened also to be a gay, neo-Nazi psychopath, it expanded the definition of HBO's brand in crucial ways," he writes. That was largely by design. When I left HBO as an executive, I worked as a producer on the development of "Oz." The network wanted a show set in a prison to have a certain dangerous authenticity, so we organized a road trip through the endless tomato fields of rural New Jersey to Fairton, a medium-security federal prison. The testosterone-charged atmosphere and the dark and dangerous stories suggested by observing life in that prison found their way into "Oz." The assistant warden, a woman, became one of the models for a prison guard played by Edie Falco in the show.

Today, "dangerous authenticity" remains an essential, even critical, difference between the sensibilities of cable drama and those of broadcasting. As Mr. Martin explains, "The Sopranos" was initially discussed with CBS, then written for the Fox network, which eventually passed. As did everyone else. The show's creator, David Chase—who had spent decades in TV working on everything from "The Rockford Files" to "Northern Exposure" and chafing at the limits and shortsightedness of the networks—was used to executives rejecting his ideas for shows. "They always raved about the writing," Chase says, "but 'It's too dark.' 'Oh, it's too complicated.' " Dark and complicated was just up HBO's alley. And so, at last, "The Sopranos" came to be.

The success of "The Sopranos" opened up new possibilities for other series. Just how much is evident in Mr. Martin's anecdotes about the notes various showrunners received from their bosses. Mr. Chase was said to have received only two: a request to change the name from the operatic-sounding "The Sopranos" (he refused) and to tone down a first-season episode in which Tony Soprano strangles a snitch. A couple of years later, Alan Ball, hot off his film "American Beauty," developed an idea that HBO executive Carolyn Strauss seeded: a series centered on a family funeral home. "Ball supposedly received only one comment on his pilot," Mr. Martin writes of "Six Feet Under." "'We love the characters. We love the story. But the whole thing feels a little safe. Can it be more f—ed up?'"

"Difficult Men" is grand entertainment, and will be fascinating for anyone curious about the perplexing miracles of how great television comes to be. Mr. Martin pays particularly close attention to the genesis of David Simon's "The Wire"—a bleak, brilliant series about the underbelly of American urban life. To Mr. Simon and his co-creator, Ed Burns, "The Wire" was explicitly a piece of social activism. It was also hell to produce. "In the isolated hothouse of Baltimore, immersed in the world of the streets, the cast of 'The Wire' showed a bizarre tendency to mirror its on-screen characters in ways that took a toll on its members' outside lives." Andre Royo, who played Bubbles, the sharp-eyed junkie, says that by the third season, "I was drinking. I was depressed." Mr. Royo and Michael K. Williams, who played Omar Little, the complex, deeply moralistic and gay stickup man—he only robbed drug dealers—weren't the only veterans of "The Wire" who "sought help for substance abuse once the experience was over."

For writers, as well as actors and production staff, the pace can be grueling. Vince Gilligan, the creator of "Breaking Bad," is a gracious man who runs his writers' room with an almost gentlemanly generosity. This is rare. Other writers' rooms are, according to Mr. Martin, viciously competitive, as teams of television's finest writers struggle to subjugate their talents to the greater vision of the shows' sometimes autocratic creators.

One of the most intense writers' rooms in Mr. Martin's book is run by Matthew Weiner for "Mad Men," the meticulously observed show centered on a New York ad agency from the early 1960s through the ensuing decade. Mr. Weiner knows what it's like to be on the receiving end of a showrunner's cutting comments, having written for David Chase in the later seasons of "The Sopranos." But Mr. Chase recognized Mr. Weiner's talent. Not so HBO, who, Mr. Martin reminds us, "blew off the pilot script" for "Mad Men"; the network, by Mr. Weiner's account, "never even bothered to call him with a no." Serendipity for AMC.

The "Difficult Men" of Mr. Martin's title are, most obviously, the middle-aged male lead characters of the series he discusses at length: Tony Soprano, "Mad Men's" philandering ad man Don Draper and "Breaking Bad's" meek high-school teacher turned callously murderous meth dealer Walter White. But behind them lie these other difficult men—the passionate, neurotic, brilliant and toweringly talented writer-producers who created these shows. Mr. Martin acknowledges that he is not dealing with women in this book, in front of or behind the camera—which is not to say that there were none.

Among the decision makers who helped make Mr. Martin's revolution in television happen are several influential women, among them Carolyn Strauss of HBO—now a producer on HBO's epic fantasy series "Game of Thrones"—and Susie Fitzgerald, who worked with Garry Shandling and with David Chase on "The Sopranos," and is now in charge of original programming at AMC. On-screen, "Sex and the City"—frank, sexy and shallow—predated "The Sopranos" as a hit on HBO. (HBO's most provocative current show is about women and by women—Lena Dunham's "Girls.") Showtime's "Weeds," in which Mary-Louise Parker plays a divorcée reduced to pot-dealing to support her family, was a conceptual godmother to "Breaking Bad." Women still tend to hold down leads for half-hour shows, for whatever reason, but Glenn Close's role as the ruthlessly corrupt lawyer in FX's "Damages" was a breakthrough, Mr. Martin notes.

And women are, at last, emerging behind the scenes. "Nurse Jackie," starring Edie Falco, was created by Liz Brixius and Linda Wallem. The creator of "Weeds," Jenji Kohan, is behind Netflix's "Orange Is the New Black," a comedy set in a women's prison. And AMC's bleakly compelling police procedural serial, "The Killing," starring Mireille Enos as the flawed investigator, was adapted from a Danish original by showrunner Veena Sud. Finally, Ann Biderman is the creator and executive producer of Showtime's "Ray Donovan," in which Liev Schreiber plays a character reputedly based on real-life Hollywood fixer Anthony Pellicano, sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2005 for wiretapping on behalf of various Hollywood players. Violent and complex, "Ray Donovan" is the latest entry in the "difficult men" sweepstakes, a hallmark of this golden age of television. There will be more, it seems certain, and we'll keep watching them compulsively, on unforeseen new devices, wherever and whenever we want.

—Ms. Potter, who worked at HBO
from 1982 to 1996, is writing a memoir about New York and television in the 1960s.

A version of this article appeared July 5, 2013, on page C5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: How the Small Screen Got Big

The book is Difficult Men by Brett Martin