52 Time June 17, 2019
TimeOff Opener
TELEVISION
As mediums merge,
Meryl graces TV
By Judy Berman
Y
ou hear her before you see her. Less
than three minutes into the second season of
Big Little Lies, as images crescendo into violence,
a familiar, mellifluous female voice whispers the
first line of the premiere: “Celeste.” As Nicole Kidman’s
Celeste awakens, screaming, from her nightmare, cool gray
eyes peer down at her through wire-rimmed glasses, radi-
ating calm, concern and a hint of menace; the small mouth
puckers determinedly. And in TV’s most anticipated char-
acter debut of 2019, Meryl Streep arrives in Monterey.
It’s not as if Big Little Lies was suffering from a lack of
star power. The female-driven HBO miniseries, whose
popularity and awards appeal catalyzed an absorbing sec-
ond season that premieres on June 9, was a product of the
friendship between two of its executive producers and
stars, Kidman and Reese Witherspoon. It came stacked
with an A-list cast even beyond those two, co- starring
Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, Zoe Kravitz, Alexander
Skarsgard and Adam Scott. Behind the scenes, Emmy-
winning creator David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, The Prac-
tice) and Oscar- nominated director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dal-
las Buyers Club, Wild) upped its cultural cachet. (British
filmmaker Andrea Arnold, best known for her 2009 indie
masterpiece Fish Tank, directs Season 2.) The addition of
Streep only confirms that TV is now capable of drawing
ensembles that could rival those of any Ocean’s movie.
In the 21st century, tectonic shifts in the entertainment
industry have undermined the decades-old assumption
that cinema can be art but—PBS aside— television rots
your brain. Yet since Big Little Lies’ 2017 debut, the
hierarchy of film over TV acting has ceased to exist.
This year’s Oscar- winning lead actors, Rami Malek
and Olivia Colman, ascended directly from the small
screen. Meanwhile, Julia Roberts made Homecoming,
Mahershala Ali revived True Detective, and Amy Adams
gave a stunning performance in Sharp Objects. Fosse/
Verdon turned on the interplay between Sam Rockwell and
Michelle Williams. When George Clooney’s Catch-22 hit
Hulu in May, hardly anyone seemed to notice.
This isn’t just a sign that TV is catching up to film as an
art form. As streaming changes the way we consume epi-
sodic entertainment, blockbuster franchises are increas-
ingly reliant upon serialized storytelling, while monoliths
like Disney, Apple, Amazon and Netflix keep finding new
ways to disrupt both industries. As a result, the mediums
are actually converging. Despite the fuming of traditional-
ists like Steven Spielberg—who recently dismissed Netflix
releases such as Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning Roma as
made-for-TV movies—and the terrifying power of mega-
corps in the new entertainment landscape, this confluence
has the potential to revitalize what we watch.
The division between film and TV
has always felt somewhat artificial; they
are not two distinct art forms but rather
subsets of the same, just as novels and
short stories are both types of literature.
For decades, these commonalities have
been reflected in the substantial over-
lap between the two mediums’ funders,
distributors, facilities and technical per-
sonnel. The biggest change, in recent
years, is in the attitudes of audiovisual
media’s most visible creative workers:
directors, screenwriters, actors. Once a
stepping- stone to big-screen fame and
freedom, TV has become less of a grind
thanks to the increased budgets, flexible
time commitments, audience specific-
ity and sheer demand for diverse, origi-
nal programming ushered in by cable
and streaming. For those at the top of
the food chain, it serves as a refuge from
super heroes, CGI and scripts flattened
for international appeal—and a place to
experiment with long-form storytelling.
This has made it a godsend for some
of cinema’s greatest behind-the- camera
talents. In defiance of the cliché that
television is a writer’s medium while
a movie belongs to its director, the△
The Monterey Five—
Jane (Woodley), Bonnie
(Kravitz), Madeline
(Witherspoon), Celeste
(Kidman) and Renata
(Dern)—return