Hope Lies on Television #5 - If It Looks Like A Film, And Sounds Like A Film...

After a month away, thanks largely to a sojourn to Florida to visit my parents (during which I could have written an article or two but you try writing anything when you're somewhere as sunny as Florida; I don't know how Carl Hiassen manages it), I returned to Hope Lies on Television with an article that I've been meaning to write for a while, but which I had to keep pushing back because of other commitments that kept me from actually watching Mildred Pierce, the HBO miniseries which forms the backbone of the piece. I'd become fascinated by the movement towards miniseries that were, in essence, long films, rather than short TV series. I wanted to also talk about something like Generation Kill, which, even though it was directed by multiple people, unlike Mildred Pierce, has the clear stamp of David Simon on it and so feels like the work of a single creative mind, but I thought that a sharper focus would be best. Plus, I'm planning on writing about Simon in a future column, and wouldn't want to repeat myself so soon.