Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.
Helen Mirren trades a heroic husband played by Harrison Ford in “1923” for an antihero patriarch played by Pierce Brosnan in Paramount+’s “MobLand” (March 30), director Guy Ritchie’s story of a London organized crime family that also stars Tom Hardy (“Inception”).
“MobLand” is the latest antihero drama, a TV trend sparked by “The Sopranos” that carried on in “The Shield,” “Damages,” “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” “Ozark,” “Fleabag” and “Peaky Blinders,” among dozens of other acclaimed series of the past 25 years.
Despite the arrival of “MobLand,” could the antihero trend be on the wane?
Vince Gilligan, creator of two of the most creatively successful antihero shows of the past two decades, “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul,” recently said it’s time for the hero to rise again.
At the Writers Guild of America Awards on Feb. 15, where he received the WGA honorary Paddy Chayefsky Laurel for Television Writing Achievement award, Gilligan sounded a cautionary note to other TV writers in attendance.
“We are living in an era where bad guys, the real-life kind, are running the market,” Gilligan said, per Deadline.com. “Bad guys who make their own rules. Bad guys who, no matter what they tell you, are only out for themselves. Who am I talking about? Well, this is Hollywood, so guess. But here’s the weird irony in our profoundly divided country, everybody seems to agree on one thing: There are too many real-life bad guys. It’s just we’re living in different realities, so we’ve all got different lists.”
Gilligan proposed an effort that might ameliorate America’s division.
“I say we write more good guys,” Gilligan suggested. “For decades, we’ve made the villains too sexy. I really think that when we create characters as indelible as Michael Corleone, Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader or Tony Soprano, viewers everywhere, all over the world, they pay attention and say, ‘Those dudes are badass, I want to be that cool.’ When that happens, that’s when bad guys stop being the cautionary tales that they were intended to be. They (instead) become aspirational. So maybe what the world needs now are some good, old-fashioned, Greatest Generation types who give more than they take.”
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The creators of “Zero Day,” which jumped to the top of Netflix’s in-house, unaudited Top 10 English TV list in its second week of release last month, took that approach. A former U.S. president, played by Robert De Niro, is the limited series’ flawed but heroic lead character. He heads an investigation into a mysterious, catastrophic event that killed thousands of Americans when the electric grid briefly went down, resulting in plane and train crashes.
“Zero Day” co-creator Eric Newman said even though the series explores the issue of what one will do to maintain power, ultimately De Niro’s character makes a heroic choice in service of the truth.
“There is a right thing to do,” Newman said. “Ultimately, there is an optimism and a hope at the end of it.”
“Zero Day” co-creator Noah Oppenheim said human nature is pretty constant in ways both good and bad.
“The consistency of people who hold positions of power, abusing that power with some regularity, that’s been true always,” he said. “But so has been the fact that people have, at critical moments in history, made truly heroic, selfless decisions.
“Ultimately for the ride that the show takes you on, I hope that where it leaves you is with the sense that while institutions might be broken, governments might be broken, cultures might feel adrift, that all of those big things consist of individuals at the end of the day,” Oppenheim continued. “Every one of those individuals gets up in the morning and makes a series of choices about how to conduct themselves, and they can conduct themselves with integrity and kindness and generosity or not. The more people choose the path of light, that’s how those larger ships get turned.”
Viewers already see characters choosing a positive path in Pittsburgh-set ER drama “The Pitt,” a series filled with imperfect doctors who are, on balance, good people — the “helpers” in Mister Rogers’ “Look for the Helpers” admonition.
As “The Pitt” nears the end of its trauma-filled first season, which included triage following a mass shooting at the Pitt Fest musical festival, Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) gathers his team in the April 10 season finale, telling them, “This place will break your heart, but it is also full of miracles, and that is a testament to all of you coming together to do what we do best.”
It’s hard to get more hopeful than praising an ER staff for its heroism.
“Breaking Bad” creator Gilligan said his next TV series will reflect his own advice.
Gilligan’s “Better Call Saul” star, Rhea Seehorn, will lead an untitled Apple TV+ series the actress describes as “sci-fi but in a more psychological kind of sci-fi way.”
“She plays someone who’s trying very hard to be good,” Gilligan told Deadline. “She’s a bit of a damaged hero, but she’s a hero nonetheless.”
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