Kings, Part I
Although summer TV does seem to be dominated by bad, trashy, poorly written or reality-contest based programming, it also has an important role for the networks. Summer programming is the place for television misfits. It can be the moment to test quirky outsiders like last summer’s The Middleman, which never found an audience and died tragically under-appreciated, or it can be a dumping ground for shows that no one knows what to do with. The classic case-in-point this summer was Pushing Daisies, which was built as a big fall season show two years ago, got all messed up by the writer’s strike, and then returned only to quickly die. Except, when ABC stopped airing Pushing Daisies this year, there were still three episodes that hadn’t been shown. What to do with three lonely, orphaned episodes? Just play ‘em randomly in the middle of the summer!
The other major example of this phenomenon has been NBC’s original drama Kings. It launched last season with a tepid publicity push, and then NBC realized they had absolutely no idea what to do with it. The show was tabled until the summer season, when the few remaining episodes aired every Saturday at 8pm. I’m pretty sure even CSI would eventually die if new episodes played on Saturday nights in July. Needless to say, Kings has not been renewed, and when the last new episode aired this weekend, it was with the sense of watching a ghostly apparition walking around waiting for someone to put it to rest. Another one bites the dust, this is a dead parrot, kick the bucket, dead on arrival, poor Judd is dead, Death in Venice, ashes to ashes, Death Valley, death be not proud, Deathly Hallows, deader than a doornail.
Except! Except. Kings was actually a pretty great show. It had its weaknesses, and some episodes were predictable, and some of the acting was amateurish. But at its best, Kings was an astonishingly original television show with an amazing lead actor, a beautiful visual and verbal style, a fertile, high-concept premise, and some awesome ideas. For the millions who haven’t heard of it much less seen it –
Ian McShane as King Silas; David stands up to a modern Goliath
Kings uses a retelling of the biblical story of David to imagine what a religiously driven monarchy would be like in the twenty-first century. That last part is interesting enough in and of itself. What does it look like when a modern, wealthy, technologically advanced country is run solely from the whims of one guy? It’s a fascinating thought, particularly when that guy is King Silas, charismatic and powerful and intelligent and dark, and played by Ian McShane. Watching a king decree his absolute power over a country that looks so uncannily like our own gives Kings a healthy dollop of political innuendo, but God is really the most fascinating presence on the show.
In many ways, Kings is most clearly related to a vastly different show: Battlestar Galactica. For both shows, the larger premise drives the main action and shapes each episode, but the presence of an unknowable supernatural influence motivates characters and defines the tone. While most of the plot revolves around defeating the Cylons or eliminating political enemies, God and faith lie at the core of every dramatic turning point and every emotional climax. Both shows were ambitious, striving to depict universes with characters both human and divine.
David as God's chosen one
Why, then, did Kings fail so dramatically when Battlestar Galactica has been a huge success? The easiest, and probably accurate answer has a lot to do with where they came from. While Battlestar Galactica had a hyped up, curious audience and a narrowly-defined cable channel to nurture its growth, Kings was thrown into a network schedule seeking to reach the most people with the least effort. In addition, what was then the clearly named SciFi channel knew how to sell their product. From the beginning, Battlestar Galactica was a space opera, with the bonus of some intense, socially relevant religious commentary. NBC never knew what Kings was, much less who might conceivably want to watch it.
I’m going to talk in more detail about Kings tomorrow, but it’s important to consider what happened to this show as a potential morality tale for what’s happening on network television. The King is dead. Long live the…?