Going from the golden age of television to the platinum stage isn’t exactly easy. With movie theaters on life support and binge watching still as popular as it was during the heights of the pandemic (everyone glued to Tiger King). This is the revolutionary form. And instead of possibly fading away like some art forms do, we can continue this revolution for a very long time.
This means creating awesome and for a lack of a better term “ground-breaking” TV shows. But unlike movies, this isn’t one and done (unless you’re Star Wars or Marvel and you’re 30 something and growing).
In order to set up for success, you have to have a great pilot. Sure, there’s exceptions—Seinfeld and Buffy are notorious for having bad pilots–but most of the time, everything is make or break in the beginning.
And since Cideshow wants to be a landscape for many of these great shows with great pilots, I’m doing a series investigating exactly what ingredients takes a pilot to this level. In each addition, I’ll focus on a different ingredient.
But for this first one, we’ll hit upon one that all others rely on: the world of the TV show.
The term “world-building” is usually reserved for worlds that aren’t exactly ares, but in reality, the show doesn’t have to be creating Westeros or the Lost island in order to set up a world. In fact, all TV shows have their own world, whether that world is Baltimore, or a bar, or Springfield, or a paper company.
Setting up this world is world-building, and it’s crucial because your audience will be returning to this world for the entirety of the series. You need for it to be a world that they constantly want to come back to or else they won’t. This is environment, but it’s also tone, mood, and flow.
Mad Men is technically in New York, but it’s a very specific New York. It’s New York in the 1950’s. But even more than that, it’s New York in the 1950’s that’s being changed into the 1960’s. But even more than that, it’s the glamorous 1950’s New York (depicted within the ad world) being overtaken by a more honest and progressive 1960’s. And even more than that, it’s style is artistic, insightful, honest, with some dashes of hope.
This is all contained within the first scene of the show. It’s a 1950’s bar, conveying all the things the 1950’s were: glamorous and classy but also filled with vice and prejudice. Don epitomizes all of this, being a classy gent of the 50’s talking about cigarettes, but also talking about the idea of change to a black server who’s clearly being treated poorly at work. The entire episode alludes to this, taking the time to show the the glamor and the bigotry, a leg firmly rooted in the 50’s with an arm (in the character Peggy and even Don and Pete to an extent) reaching towards a new time.
Contrast this with another series taking place in New York: Seinfeld. As mentioned, the pilot is honestly probably the weakest episode of the entire series; however, it does hint at the world we’re going to get. It’s a world lifted right from Jerry Seinfeld’s stand-up, where the smallest, most innocuous things are treated with the utmost importance and there’s a cold detachment from a bunch of hilarious adults who still act like children.
These worlds have to be firm within the pilot. Whether this is a contemplative yet violent world, like the Wire, a satirical larger than life world, like South Park, or a sweet yet slightly melloncollic world like This is Us.
Beef, one of the biggest TV achievements of the past few years, does this perfectly. Yes, it’s just set in San Fernando Valley, but it tells exactly what it is within the first episode. The way the characters treat each other, the mix of comedy and serious levels of bad behaviors, the dialogue and music, all give the show the calling card of exactly what it is.
And that’s one of the most important aspects of this world-building: it’s the signature of the show. It’s exactly what the show is. As different as The Munsters and Dahmer are, despite both being about monsters of sorts, the show establishes exactly what it is, what kind of things are going to be possible in this world and what kind of ride we’re going to be on within the pilot.
This doesn’t mean the show won’t surprise its audience–all of the best shows do in some capacity or another, but it sets the expectation of this journey so these expectations actually can be broken.
This means you’ll need to treat the world the same way you treat the character and take the time to develop it. Make sure it shows the setting that you plan to show. Make sure it conveys tone through dialogue. Make sure it sets its own identity, even if this identity is something that’s never been done before.
I often equate writers as gods of the show. You say “let there be Urkel” and Urkel will appear. And you create this entire world, not in seven days, but in one episode. Let this be a great world for the audience to live in, and you will not only make something great for the audience, but you will make a world much easier for anything else to happen.
Thanks for reading!
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