MovieChat Forums > The Booth at the End (2011) Discussion > This show is the future of television

This show is the future of television


* low budget(I'm sure the prominent actors took little money for this)
* commissioned directly for digital distribution
* high-concept

shows like this are going to change television forever.

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Don't you think it's a shame that this has to be online? I mean it was on FX but I don't feel it reached a great audience, and I feel in order to do that they would probably need to shoe-horn in (is that a legitimate term?) a love interest and 8x more explosions.Me and my friends are into the same shows (breaking bad, six feet under etc) and in my opinion this ranks up there with them, and yeah, one of my favourite shows ever! I hope it finds a bigger audience as it deserves. Its all set in a diner, mostly talking, yet has me at the edge of my seat. That is some achievement

Perfect from now on

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Originally posted by curb_your_enthusiasmx5:

Don't you think it's a shame that this has to be online? I mean it was on FX but I don't feel it reached a great audience, and I feel in order to do that they would probably need to shoe-horn in (is that a legitimate term?) a love interest and 8x more explosions.

I don't think this is the kind of show that would do very well if it aired exclusively on television. The formula is something many people wouldn't find engaging enough without the changes you mentioned, but that would be changing the entire show. The point is that the action all takes place off-screen; adding in explosions or anything else to make it more exciting would defeat the purpose. This show being aired online means that they don't have to worry about ratings or timeslots, which gives them the freedom to make the show exactly the way they want to make it, while at the same time giving fans exactly what they want.

I have no enemies, but am intensely disliked by my friends.

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I think it would be a disaster to take it outside of the diner. We don't need explosions or any love interest, we need it to stay as it is. Actually I have no idea why a big network won't pick it up, this show must be very cheap to make and I think it would get decent ratings.

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It would be tough to attract the masses without some type of action and sex appeal. Plus it would have to do more episodes which wouldn't be easy for the writers to be consistently brilliant with a show that is mainly all dialogue. This show worked so well, because it was 22 minutes each and only 5 episodes.

I mean, I'm all for having more shows like this, but there's a reason why this is only online. If a network like NBC had anything to do with this show, they'd tell them before hand to add scenes of what happens to those people instead of them just talking about it at the diner. Which would ruin the whole concept of the show. That's hollywood.

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Essentially it's a radio drama like the old television plays from the 1950s to early 1960s.

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So this is the future of radio!



... Sanity and Happiness are an impossible combination ...

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Good point. And maybe as a seriolized podcast?

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HBO: In Treatment.

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Sadly, stuff like this is not the future of television. Just look at the current listings and you’ll see the actual trend in television: so-called “reality” shows that are anything but, competition/contest shows, and a steady move to mainstream pornography. Basically, television is just becoming the Colosseum.

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I agree. I think the other posters underestimate the general population.

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Hey, It's working for Seinfeld also.

I don't mind it either way...it's still a camera and actors none-the-less.





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If you were to say this is the future of serial entertainment I would agree whole-heartedly. It is not; however, the future of television. It is in fact the opposite of television since it's an online exclusive.

I expect to see more and more serialized online entertainment. I expect it will happen as people are given the ability to choose what shows they really want to watch from a larger selection of outlets.

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I could see it as a show on Bravo. There is a nitch market for this type of entertainment, but it is prety small, and shows like this are watched by far more people after they have aired than in real time. To me, this would have made a stunning 1h:45m movie. Even a show like The Wire had about a dozen viewers (I'm kidding) in the first season while it aired. Most fans came to the dance long after the band had left. Even shows like Breaking Bad are still picking up steam. I sort of wonder if the decision to split s05 was done so more people could get caught up for the realtime event. Another contempory is the new Sherlock series, which is really spreading by word of mouth. Cumberbach (sp) and Freeman have really had their cred raised by their performances.

The good thing about these unknown shows is there aren't studio execs paying attention to them, and studio execs always ruin it by trying to make it better. One of the Pythons said that their first season was the best because no one paid attention to them, but gradually they fell under more oversight.

I lSome of these sleeper shows are my favorites. Testees and The League of Gentlemen are two others which are so far off normal that they were destined to fail, but the material is brilliant.

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I love that everything is about the dialogue. No exotic locations or fancy sets, minimal spending on wardrobe, etc.

I think the problem is much of what's on tv now is intellectually lazy, in terms of writing. Reality tv is junk food where people eat mindlessly, while shows like this are more like a nice, hearty home-cooked meal where people talk about their food.



You don't choose the soy sauce, the soy sauce chooses you.

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Reality tv is junk food where people eat mindlessly, while shows like this are more like a nice, hearty home-cooked meal where people talk about their food.


Well put. Exactly my reaction after seeing it.

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