Over the last year or two, newspaper columnists, festival speechmakers and bus-stop sages have concurred in a damning judgment. To the point of tedium and beyond, they've insisted that television has displaced filmas the home of involving drama and grownup comedy. Nowadays, supposedly, it's the small screen that provides convincing characters, credible plots and incisive wit; the senior medium offers only crude stories, infantile rudery and mindless spectacle. What's more, cinema's failings reflect not mere passing weakness but intrinsic deficiencies that will leave it forever eclipsed by its impudent offspring.
Now, things look a little different. Breaking Bad has at last departed, with no comparable successor in sight. The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos and The Office are fading into memory. In their place, the small screen has been trying to tempt us with the likes of plodding Downton Abbey, dreary Homeland, ludicrous Atlantis, melodramatic Peaky Blinders and not much in the way of piquant comedy. Meanwhile, cinema has suddenly been shaping up.
