I keep notes for TV show concepts. Because well I don’t know why because, but that’s not my point here. My point is that they often include really mundane robots?
FOR INSTANCE:
A show like The O.C. (or maybe Normal People for a heavier take, if you want) but it’s the kids of the Decepticons and the kids of the Autobots and they’re hanging out on the beach in LA and the most dramatic thing that happens is that somebody gets off with somebody else’s boyfriend at a party, and it doesn’t matter that there’s a colossal war between their parents a thousand miles away. Not only does it not matter but the general vibe is that their parents are kind of boomer losers and stuck in the past for even caring about whatever it is they care about.
Like the meta-narrative is about how the beefs of the old generation make no sense in the frame of reference of the new, but the propelling stories are all low stakes teen relationship drama.
SEPARATELY BUT SIMILARLY:
I think the world is ready for a gritty Lovejoy reboot. I’m thinking, also bring it into the Transformers cinematic universe and every antique is potentially a robot in disguise /cheeky wink to camera
For those who don’t know Lovejoy, it’s a Brit light entertainment drama from the 80s/90s. Ian McShane (before he became a Respected Actor) plays the eponymous Lovejoy, a loveable rogue antiques dealer, of all things, Han Solo of the home counties, and the episodes have zero existential jeopardy.
It was also the first I time I saw TV characters break the fourth wall; Lovejoy would turn to camera for a cheeky aside from time to time, before even the original UK House of Cards did it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Lovejoy has been secretly written by Tom Stoppard.
So I don’t what led to me imagining both of these in the Transformers universe.
Sure, growing up I was a big fan of The Transformers: The Movie (1986). Pop trivia: Orson Welles’ final movie performance was planet-eating robot Unicron.
But I never owned Transformers toys as a kid, they weren’t a big part of my life. I had a single knock-off Transformers toy and it was a robot that transformed into a campervan.
So I think the appeal is something more general: what happens when you take the extraordinary and un-sci-fi it?
Like, the most fascinating part of the original 1984 Transformers cartoon show (YouTube, that’s the whole first season) is that
And what I really want to see here is the government committee meetings and the PowerPoints, everything from the escalation of concern against general scepticism about this bizarre incursion into the regular reality of the world, to pragmatically and hurriedly launching a public information campaign and briefing an incredulous graphic designer.
This is 50% because I prefer stories that happen in a hidden layer of today’s world (c.f. James Bond got worse as it became fantasy) and 50% a kind of personal cultural anticipation for the world of robots that we’re stepping into.
Robots are just going to be really normal, you know?
btw there was a RoboCop TV show in 1994 that had weekly episodes and was written as a kind of everyday cyberpunk police procedural: It’s love at first “byte” when Lippencott enters Virtual Reality and falls for Diana Powers, while RoboCop is blackmailed by the kidnapper of his wife Nancy into stealing a top secret weapon that can literally break hearts.
Like WHAT? I need to see this.
ANOTHER:
A Knight Rider reboot where the guy straps an Alexa onto a stolen Waymo then goes about hitting on girls and solving whatever limited set of situations you can solve with a robot car you half-assed in your garage, making sure someone gets to an interview on time or collecting a late DoorDash and such.
Something that smacks different about my concepts for TV shows, going back and unearthing them from my notes, is that - before - half the reason they made me laugh is because they could never happen.
But today, give it a year, and I’ll be able to put the prompt into an AI and get 30 minutes of plot and video to watch on the train.
Which does make me wonder: in the face of narrative abundance, what is the appeal of media? Like, it will still be appealing, I know that, but I’d like to understand how precisely.
Not all my TV show concepts are about robots.
Game of Thrones has an unsatisfyingly sloppy ending but it opens up an intriguing grimdark GoT TNG.
So reboot Game of Thrones a thousand years in the future where Bryn has fully become this ancient immortal time-travelling god-tyrant - which is how the series ended, if you don’t remember - keeping the whole world of Westeros in cultural stasis, and some people working for him finally realise he’s evil actually and they discover a lost cache of dragon eggs and start building the resistance.
But they have to take precautions so Bryn doesn’t retcon them out of existence - he breaks the fourth wall by having control over reboots and the TV commissioning process - and occasionally that happens and reality just shifts beneath their feet.
I would watch the heck out of that for, well, the first two episodes probably and then read all the season summaries on Wikipedia, which is how I tend to watch shows, pound for pound it’s a way more efficient way to consume TV, I commend it to you.
I keep notes for TV show concepts. Because well I don’t know why because, but that’s not my point here. My point is that they often include really mundane robots?
FOR INSTANCE:
A show like The O.C. (or maybe Normal People for a heavier take, if you want) but it’s the kids of the Decepticons and the kids of the Autobots and they’re hanging out on the beach in LA and the most dramatic thing that happens is that somebody gets off with somebody else’s boyfriend at a party, and it doesn’t matter that there’s a colossal war between their parents a thousand miles away. Not only does it not matter but the general vibe is that their parents are kind of boomer losers and stuck in the past for even caring about whatever it is they care about.
Like the meta-narrative is about how the beefs of the old generation make no sense in the frame of reference of the new, but the propelling stories are all low stakes teen relationship drama.
SEPARATELY BUT SIMILARLY:
I think the world is ready for a gritty Lovejoy reboot. I’m thinking, also bring it into the Transformers cinematic universe and every antique is potentially a robot in disguise /cheeky wink to camera
For those who don’t know Lovejoy, it’s a Brit light entertainment drama from the 80s/90s. Ian McShane (before he became a Respected Actor) plays the eponymous Lovejoy, a loveable rogue antiques dealer, of all things, Han Solo of the home counties, and the episodes have zero existential jeopardy.
It was also the first I time I saw TV characters break the fourth wall; Lovejoy would turn to camera for a cheeky aside from time to time, before even the original UK House of Cards did it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Lovejoy has been secretly written by Tom Stoppard.
So I don’t what led to me imagining both of these in the Transformers universe.
Sure, growing up I was a big fan of The Transformers: The Movie (1986). Pop trivia: Orson Welles’ final movie performance was planet-eating robot Unicron.
But I never owned Transformers toys as a kid, they weren’t a big part of my life. I had a single knock-off Transformers toy and it was a robot that transformed into a campervan.
So I think the appeal is something more general: what happens when you take the extraordinary and un-sci-fi it?
Like, the most fascinating part of the original 1984 Transformers cartoon show (YouTube, that’s the whole first season) is that
And what I really want to see here is the government committee meetings and the PowerPoints, everything from the escalation of concern against general scepticism about this bizarre incursion into the regular reality of the world, to pragmatically and hurriedly launching a public information campaign and briefing an incredulous graphic designer.
This is 50% because I prefer stories that happen in a hidden layer of today’s world (c.f. James Bond got worse as it became fantasy) and 50% a kind of personal cultural anticipation for the world of robots that we’re stepping into.
Robots are just going to be really normal, you know?
btw there was a RoboCop TV show in 1994 that had weekly episodes and was written as a kind of everyday cyberpunk police procedural:
Like WHAT? I need to see this.
ANOTHER:
A Knight Rider reboot where the guy straps an Alexa onto a stolen Waymo then goes about hitting on girls and solving whatever limited set of situations you can solve with a robot car you half-assed in your garage, making sure someone gets to an interview on time or collecting a late DoorDash and such.
Something that smacks different about my concepts for TV shows, going back and unearthing them from my notes, is that - before - half the reason they made me laugh is because they could never happen.
But today, give it a year, and I’ll be able to put the prompt into an AI and get 30 minutes of plot and video to watch on the train.
Which does make me wonder: in the face of narrative abundance, what is the appeal of media? Like, it will still be appealing, I know that, but I’d like to understand how precisely.
Not all my TV show concepts are about robots.
Game of Thrones has an unsatisfyingly sloppy ending but it opens up an intriguing grimdark GoT TNG.
So reboot Game of Thrones a thousand years in the future where Bryn has fully become this ancient immortal time-travelling god-tyrant - which is how the series ended, if you don’t remember - keeping the whole world of Westeros in cultural stasis, and some people working for him finally realise he’s evil actually and they discover a lost cache of dragon eggs and start building the resistance.
But they have to take precautions so Bryn doesn’t retcon them out of existence - he breaks the fourth wall by having control over reboots and the TV commissioning process - and occasionally that happens and reality just shifts beneath their feet.
I would watch the heck out of that for, well, the first two episodes probably and then read all the season summaries on Wikipedia, which is how I tend to watch shows, pound for pound it’s a way more efficient way to consume TV, I commend it to you.