Can some kind TV channel in the UK please show K Street? It’s an HBO production (come on guys – I thought we bought anything by HBO these days?), set in the Washington world of political consultants and spin doctors. I’d love to see this – particularly as it apes in part the Gary Trudeau series Tanner ’88 which I loved to bits – it’s one of the few reasons why I still have laserdiscs, as I have the whole series in this format.
A few weeks ago, Mediaguardian reported that several new HBO series were being fought over by various British TV stations. However, none of those shows mentioned K Street. To be fair, even the HBO site doesn’t mention it much, but I read about this some time ago, so it’s not like people didn’t know.
Actually, to head off on something of a tangent here, exactly what the hell are Sky One up to? You read that above report and you read that Dawn Airey’s “very determined” to get as many HBO dramas as possible to “attract a more upmarket audience to Sky One.”
That’s fine, we could probably do with something like that in the UK. But then we read about Sky One’s classy new commissions for the autumn: “Laid Bare, The Big Fantasy, When Sex Goes Wrong, Vivid XXX and Six Degrees of Penetration.”
Now undoubtedly HBO’s always had it’s share of this porn nonsense, but not in quantities that Sky One is seemingly piling it on. Alongside The Villa, the various Uncovereds, and Kirsty’s Home Videos, the fit just isn’t there. Science Fiction and US action shows, with a large dose of Simpsons and other sitcoms is one thing, but Sky One is trying to be too hard to be all things to all people.
The same problem is true of E4 which is addicted to a ridiculous degree to Big Brother (err, does anyone at all honestly care about US Big Brother? I don’t think that even they do). Then they chuck in four quality shows – Sex & the City, The Sopranos, West Wing, and Six Feet Under. They sit so far removed from the rest of the schedule that you can’t imagine why they share a channel. OK so there’s Friends and ER as well, but many of these series are coming to their ends (Friends and Sex & the City), and the end is in site for more of them – The Sopranos has two series to run.
My point is that these channels are trying too hard in too limited arenas disenfranchising all around them.
Personally, I hope that someone like BBC Four gets K Street. I can’t see the Channel 4 that showed Tanner ’88 on Monday’s at 9.00pm doing so with this.