Friday, November 28, 2008

Neighbourhood park all covered with cheese

Never fails to amaze me how few people have seen Sports Night. If you're scratching your head, trying to recall if you know the name, chances are you're one of the many who hasn't seen this US TV series. Sports Night was a sitcom devised and written by Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing [TWW hereafter]. It launched in '98 and ran for two seasons, the second overlapping with TWW's first year on TV. Sports Night got canned, despite rising ratings.

The simply reason why most UK viewers don't know Sports Night is it never got screened on a British terrestrial channel [though you can find repeats on digital channels if you hunt around]. To the best of my knowledge, it's never been released on DVD in the UK [though you can import the new 10th anniversary edition from the US if your DVD player can cope with multi-region discs]. As a result, Sports Night remains an undiscovered gem for many.

In short, the show is set behind the scenes at a sports news show on a major cable network. But Sports Night is about people, not sports. A lot of American sports jargon does fly around, but it's the characters and the comedy that make it worth watching. Sorkin can write a funny behind the scenes at a TV show show, although some might not have thought so after his second attempt at this specialised sub-genre, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, tanked.

Why's Sports Night worth seeking out? There is a crackerjack cast, for starters. Peter [Six Feet Under, Dirty Sexy Money] Krause, Felicity [Desperate Housewives, Transamerica] Huffman, Joshua [The West Wing] Malina and Robert [Soap, Benson] Guillaume are among the main series regulars. The guest cast is just as impressive, including William H Macy, Janel Maloney, Lisa Edelstein, Ray Wise and others who've gone on to notable success since.

Sports Night is the place where Sorkin learned how to write for TV, and tried out many of the tricks and tropes that served him so well on TWW. It was also where Sorkin forged his creative partnership with director Thomas Schlamme. On Sports Night they developed the walk-and-talk visual style that make exposition so energised on TWW. They built a storytelling shorthand that would lead to many, many plaudits and influence many other shows.

Watching Sports Night with the benefit of hindsight, you can see Sorkin trialling storylines and characterisations he would repeat and refine on TWW. Dan Rydell is the forerunner for Josh Lyman in TWW. Whole plots get recycled from Sports Night into TWW, such as Sam discovering his father's been having an affair for 27 years [in Sports Night, that happens to Joshua Malina's character]. This series is John the Baptist to TWW's more messianic success.

Most of all, Sports Night is fun to watch. The first few are a bit clunky and preachy, as the writer finds his TV legs, but things improve rapidly. And there's a laugh track that irks like hell, but it quickly fades into the background. [Literally - the programme makers kept turning down the volume switch on the laugh track.] Best of all, there's 45 episodes of Sorkin goodness you may never have seen before, just waiting for you to discover. Enjoy!

8 comments:

Jason Arnopp said...

I'm another fella who's never heard of Sports Night, sir. But you and William Gallagher should definitely talk.

laurence timms said...

Thanks to Lord William of Gallagher, I saw a clip of Sports Night for the very first time just a couple of days ago. Interesting blog comment discussion ensued.

It's fab. I shall have to purchase it with money.

First post
Follow-up post

laurence timms said...

Oh. Great minds ect ect

William Gallagher said...

Sports Night is one of a couple of shows I banged on and on about in a column for BBC News Online and latterly a podcast thing. And it's amazingly gratifying how many people, over so many years, have emailed me to say they tried it because of me and loved it as much as we do.

Even more gratifying because you're right, you have to import it. So they were paying out a lot of cash on my word. And then several have said they watched all 45 over the first weekend they had the set.

That may be going too far, but this is Sports Night, it's special!

And plainly the Arnopp doesn't read my blog or he wouldn't have thought I was talking about Grandstand or something.

Harrumph. Teach me to admit to him I think his Red Planet script is so good.

William Gallagher said...

Oh, I can't resist. If you can have the neighbourhood park all covered with cheese, I want to quote:

JEREMY: If not me, then who? If not now, then when?
CASEY: Later, and somebody else.

William

DAVID BISHOP said...

'First we turn up. Then we see what happens.'

'Chuck?''Casey!''Cutman!'

And many, many more.

Imported my first set of Sports Night about four or five years ago, and have watched the whole series at least once a year ever since.

Got the 10th anniversary edition a few weeks back and am wallowing in the grandeur once more. Plus gag reels, commentary tracks and other special features. Lush.

It's not a show to everyone's taste, but if you heart Sorkin, it's well worth a try.

Oh, and one more quote sequence:

Dan - 'Eleven years ago Orlando Rojas pitched a perfect game.'
Rebecca - 'And a perfect game is good?'
Dan - 'Look, I know there's a lot of jargon but some of these really are self-explanatory.'

Cliff Robinson said...

For an earlier tale of the lives and loves of those who work behind the scenes of a U.S. TV programme, I wholeheartedly recommend the excellent James L. Brooks feature film 'Broadcast News' (1987).
Hope that Sports Night surfaces here on dvd soon. Krause is an excellent actor.

Matthew Cochrane said...

I will buy it the next chance I get, but I recently imported Wonderfalls (and some Christmas gifts that I won't name for fear of recipients seeing them here) and was seriously stung by Customs.

Always seems to happen more with DVDs that CDs.