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Commentary

'The drama of it: Television comedy's new aesthetic' by James McNamara

by •
June-July 2018, no. 402
Commentary

'The drama of it: Television comedy's new aesthetic' by James McNamara

by •
June-July 2018, no. 402

Listen to this essay read by the author.

Since I wrote about the golden age of television for ABR’s first film and television issue in 2015, the medium has evolved. Streaming has roared to prominence, with online services like Netflix disrupting television’s form and market as dramatically as cable did to broadcast television in the early 2000s. But where the stars of the cable era were dramas – great, brooding epics of American anti-heroes – the foul-mouthed stars of the streaming era are increasingly its comedies, which are delivering some of the most poignant stories on screen.

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James McNamara

James McNamara is an Australian television writer based in Los Angeles. His television work includes comedy and drama writers rooms for the Academy Award-winning See-Saw Films, Matchbox Pictures/NBC Universal, Foxtel, ABC, Porchlight Films, and Endemol Shine, and developing shows for Goalpost Pictures and Playmaker Media/Sony Pictures. McNamara received ABR’s third Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship for his long-form essay, ‘The Golden Age of Television?’ (ABR, April 2015), praised by Clive James as ‘a global contribution to cultural analysis’. McNamara’s essays and criticism have also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, and The Spectator.

Born in Western Australia in 1982, McNamara received degrees in English and Law from the University of Western Australia, graduated in screenwriting from AFTRS, and holds a doctorate in English from Oxford, where he was a Clarendon Scholar. Before becoming a writer, McNamara was a litigator specialising in international disputes at a top-tier US law firm. He was recently named a BAFTA LA Newcomer. 

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Comment (1)

  • Phoebe name-name is the talent behind Killing Eve, with the most compelling psychopathic character since Hannibal Lector; love that she is a woman. Her antagonist Eve is clever and tenacious. The narrative arc you speak of is a rainbow of genres. Police procedural tips into horror meandering through straight and LGBTQ romance and elsewhere; finally into Tarantinoesque comedy, always with psychological probing of both women. I saw the writing as a progression from who did it? to what genre is next? Looking forward to series 2.
    Posted by Cathryn Duffy
    08 June 2018

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