How TV series get lost trying to keep up with the web

Convergence culture:The web has had a huge impact on TV drama, with series such as 24breaking with tradition to stay relevant to young viewers, writes Haydn Shaughnessy

I loved the first run of 24, the fast paced American espionage serial starring Kiefer Sutherland. The central conceit of 24is that every minute of TV time is also a minute in the lives of the characters. Drama in real time, sort of. By series 2 I felt I'd already got it. 24and me haven't connected since.

Similarly with Desperate Housewives, the tale of a handful of American women in fictional Wisteria Lane. Having seen the first two episodes of series 3, the only reason to keep watching is a mistaken belief that my wife craves my company. With Lost, the other recent TV blockbuster, even a short-lived addiction feels like too much hard work.

I live in a small minority. All three have top ratings around the world. All three are also playing in significant ways with dramatic form. That's okay for an up-and-coming playwright. Small cast, back-street stage. Not much to risk. But Desperate Housewives, 24and Lostare big-budget network series costing tens of millions. What kind of experiment are they? They are each responses to the power of the World Wide Web. All three are shooting for the immediacy experienced in web communications and the discovery angst of the Google generation. All three are free from tradition.

That's not to say they work only because of the web. To explain: Over the past two years the web has been flooded by what people in the business call user-generated content (UGC). That's content - video, text, voice recordings, music - made by the people who also view, read and listen to the websites they are contributing to. YouTube is the primary example of a UGC site. Plenty of people assumed UGC is a phenomenon of the web. It is not. Readers and viewers have been creating "content" around their favourite TV programmes for decades. The web has allowed them to transmit it to each other for free. The best known example of this "fandom" content is Star Trek. The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has 20 "pages" explaining Star Trekfandom communities and services, such as the Star Trek Welcommittee, a nationwide American organisation set up in 1972 to help new Star Trekfans to network. Among the successes of fandom groups was persuading the Hollywood studios to make Star Trekmovies and to initiate new TV series. They also produced copious fan fictions based on Star Trekcharacters.

The fusion of fan creativity and the web has produced a new phenomenon, though. A knowing, networked audience communicating in real time.

American TV drama is gradually being redesigned around those audiences, migrating, in the case of Lost, away from the central universal truths that drama historically tried to reveal, to constructing narratives out of a series of enigmas, the seed corn for on-the-web comments and interaction. Lostpresents fake puzzles, makes irrelevant illusions and powers on.

Desperate Housewiveshas abandoned drama and revived parable. Each programme begins with an orientating homily from a narrator along the lines of "People don't often mean what they say, but only a fool refuses to listen." Each character then dutifully acts out a part of the parable's central truth. The action is not even melodrama. It provides affirmations of a moral code that are written millions of times a day in web logs around the world. Desperate Housewivesis the most curious construction to come out of a creative organisation. Corny, badly acted, badly written and hugely successful.

24, meantime, goes from strength to strength, pitting agent Jack Bauer against America's enemies in a 24-hour race to save the country from destruction. 24is the most obvious response to the angst we live with now that so much information is available so easily. This is the espionage series with no final mystery to resolve. Jack wins. But the action progresses at the speed of a Google search. It's right because it's now, and instantly.

What's common to all three is they each illustrate a troubling aspect of web life. The universal truths and techniques of real drama appear to have no role. Narrative techniques that were used previously to elevate important aspects of life, making them memorable, are being used in the era of mass computer memory to elevate banality. We know so much but we're engaged by Susan's air-headed way with men, Bree's analism, Jack's Magnum. We should work out why they succeed so brilliantly.

Haydn Shaughnessy edits the online magazine wripe.net. Next: The development of live performance on the web.

Words in your ear

User Generated Content (UGC) - Content shown on websites or TV programmes that is made by the viewers.

Web logs - personal diaries kept on the web.

Fandom - a generic shorthand term for a self-organising community of fans

Wikipedia - www.wikipedia.org, a free online encyclopaedia written by the public

You Tube - www.youtube.com, a website made up of millions of short video clips, many created by the public