Coen brothers will make first TV show as praise for small screen quality work continues
Joel and Ethan Coen are reportedly working on a Western miniseries, 'The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.' It's just the latest indication that television is a destination for creatively impressive storytelling.
Directors Ethan Coen (l.) and Joel Coen (r.) appear during a photo call for the film 'Inside Llewyn Davis' at the 66th international film festival in Cannes, France on May 19, 2013.
Joel Ryan/Invision/AP
Acclaimed directors the Coen brothers are turning to TV as the previously maligned medium continues to be praised for today's quality storytelling.
Joel and Ethan Coen, the Academy Award-winning writers and directors behind such films as 鈥淗ail, Caesar!,鈥� 鈥淭rue Grit,鈥� and 鈥淣o Country for Old Men,鈥� will reportedly write and direct a Western miniseries titled 鈥淭he Ballad of Buster Scruggs.鈥� , the story of the miniseries could also extend into film in some way.聽
The brothers' decision to develop a TV project is just the latest indication that television is now the spot for some of the most creatively impressive work in entertainment, with some critics and stars even believing TV is now surpassing film in that regard.聽
鈥淭elevision is experiencing a renaissance,鈥� actress Viola Davis, who won a Golden Globe this week for her work in the movie 鈥淔ences鈥� and currently stars on the ABC TV show 鈥淗ow to Get Away With Murder,鈥� last year. 鈥淵ou have so many different channels on television now. There鈥檚 so many different narratives and so many writers willing to write for actors and actresses who otherwise would be relegated to those five days of work on a movie. And now they鈥檙e leading the charge on television. Who鈥檚 writing like that for Robin Wright, or Glenn Close, or Julianna Margulies in movies? But in television, they get wonderful narratives.鈥澛�
Some argue that TV has actually been producing higher-quality work than movies for some time, as TV shows like 鈥淭he Sopranos,鈥� 鈥淢ad Men,鈥� and 鈥淏reaking Bad鈥� have been hailed as some of the best programs ever made.聽
鈥淐reatively, though, television still enjoys a few advantages over movies,鈥� wrote in 2015. 鈥淟ong-form narratives offer more nuanced storytelling 鈥� With people like Matt Weiner, Jenji Kohan, Vince Gilligan, and Jill Soloway steering the TV industry, showrunners are the real stars, not directors, which means that unlike the film industry, strong writing is just as important as the spectacle of how things look on screen.鈥�
But strong television writing might also be making a bigger splash off-screen, she added.聽
鈥淢ost important, movies just aren鈥檛 provoking the same level of passionate discourse that TV shows do every single night of the week on social media, where conversations start with niggling disagreements over plot points and grow into epic discussions about morality and diversity and other big questions that deal less with entertainment than with life itself.鈥�