When these five shows ended, I wondered if I would ever see such a group all in the same year again – a run of shows that began last summer with “Flight of the Conchords,” “John from Cincinnati” and “Mad Men,” continued in September with “The War,” and ended just last week with the conclusion of “Dexter.”
“Flight of the Conchords,” starring two comic folk singers from New Zealand, was an HBO show that came out of nowhere.
“John from Cincinnati,” the HBO series about a mysterious stranger, came from somewhere – the mind of David Milch – but went nowhere (but I loved it anyway).
“Mad Men” came out of nowhere and wound up on AMC, which was once nowhere but now is a big somewhere thanks to this series.
For weeks after the premiere of “Flight of the Conchords,” I could not shake the earnest love song, “The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room.”
The premiere episode of “John from Cincinnati” hooked me with the sudden ferocity of “Sun/rise/light/flies” by the English band Kasabian. The series got even better in Week Two when Joe Strummer’s “Johnny Appleseed” became its theme song.
Neither “Mad Men” nor “Dexter” were about the music, unless by “music” you mean the clatter of IBM Selectric typewriters and the shrill peal of real telephones – ambient sounds that helped “Mad Men” bring 1960 alive.
As for “Dexter,” this Showtime series possessed TV’s creepiest opening title sequence, with its high-definition closeups of cracking eggs and frying meat.
In his second season, Dexter walked a tightrope strung over a pit boiling with calamities, but somehow he emerged unscathed – a miracle of storytelling.
Overriding everything else was “The War,” Ken Burns’ 14-hour epic of World War II.
No other TV production in my entire career was as gut-wrenching as this, owing as much to its imagery as to its soundtrack, including Artie Shaw’s “Moonglow Aaron Copland’s “Concerto for Clarinet, Strings, Harp and Piano” (with Benny Goodman); and near the series’ end, “Waiting for the Train to Come In,” sung by Kitty Kallen accompanied by Harry James’ plaintive, brassy trumpet.
“The War” defined what it meant to be an American in the middle of the late, great 20th century. Now, if someone could make a series defining what it means to be an American today, then that’s a series I would love to see in 2008.