Television is marketed as something of a reboot: a stylish rendering of modern-day Hollywood that picks up where Joan Didion left off in Play it As it Lays. In many ways, Rothery’s debut is the perfect bridge between the classic and contemporary: her protagonists are erudite, Tiffany-twisted, and (mildly) TikTok-fluent. All of the boozing, drugging and dubiously ethical non-monogamy of Didion’s Los Angeles is present, but there’s a twist – this time, the characters have read the script.
The plot loosely revolves around A-list actor Verity’s decision to lottery off his last paycheque – $80 million – to a lucky member of the public. This scheme is inspired by Verity’s conversations with writer Helen, his sometimes-friend-sometimes-lover. As the lottery rattles the industry, Helen and Verity recollect their 20-year relationship and consider how they might move forward.
When Helen discovers Verity has gone off with a much younger woman, she’s less troubled by his betrayal than by its scenic value, warning him: “Do not consider me some kind of woman from a soap opera who is upset because the man didn’t call her.” Even descriptions of jacaranda blooms get prefaced (“Everybody thinks they’re Joan Didion when they write about the flowers…”). These moments capture Television‘s central preoccupation: not the line between chance and fate, but the problems of genre itself. Rothery’s characters can’t experience their own lives without looking for act breaks.
Rothery has a real talent for describing the textures of the writing life. Her characters drink coffee, tip guiltily, write, edit, and repeat (“Notes: A bit Shit. Reconsider career”). They’re incredibly attuned to the glamorous and grotesque: breath smells like diet coke or cigarettes; pools resemble “blue Jell-O in a baking dish”; women are “very beautiful and golden and American”.
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Television shares some flaws with its namesake medium. Characters sometimes speak entirely in aphorisms, their dialogue relentlessly trailer-ready; but when Rothery captures the raw materials of the moment, her prose rises off the page with Champagne-bubble-effervescence.
Rothery has written a novel about deeply cynical people living semi-charmed lives. Television is a tribute to creative maximalism, Los Angeles, and the profits and perils of connoisseurship. Its clearest conviction is that the most important parts of our lives happen off-screen.
Kristen Malone Poli is a PhD candidate in literary practice at Trinity College Dublin
