DRAMA-TECH: HOW TV FINALLY CAPTURED THE DIGITAL ZEITGEIST

Making computers a central conceit in drama has been an issue in non-interactive entertainment for the last three decades now. Hollywood has long struggled with the problem: until David Fincher’s masterful The Social Network in 2010, the most praiseworthy films about information technology had been 1985’s War Games and 1991’s Sneakers and the best they could hope for these days is being put out to pasture on the backend of Netflix.

And yet two TV shows, Mr. Robot and Silicon Valley, have again shown Hollywood’s struggles are low-hanging fruit to a medium better suited to detail and long form narrative and have made computers one of the most compelling subjects on the small screen currently, though it did take a while to crack this particular nut.

The Rise of the Machines

   Television has always had a quirky, pulpy relationship with tech-driven fictional shows. Going back to the mid-70’s with the 6 Million Dollar Man, then moving through the 80’s now risible obsession with series having an advanced mode of transport as the protagonist (Knight Rider, Airwolf, Streethawk, etc.), and finally in this century with shows like Chuck, Arrow, The I.T. Crowd, and Persons of Interest television has often been able to turn out a hit with a tech concept but such shows have always been ushered away from the “must-see” VIP room reserved for TV’s finest.

Information technology, in particular, is a finicky subject for entertainment as it requires a tremendous amount of education on the part of the audience and until the last 10-15 years, a majority of people simply weren’t engaged with digital tech on a regular basis. Before the 21^st century, a hacker or computer expert may as well have been perceived as some kind of deviant sorcerer dabbling in the black magic of bending computers and digital systems to their will such was the ignorance of audiences on the matter. This provided a severe hurdle to writers who would have found it nearly impossible to balance narrative drive with the constant need for information regarding the capabilities of the technology in question.

But with the increase of PC’s and Macs in the home and the vast increase in broadband adoption in the early 2000’s, audiences were rapidly becoming more tech savvy and allowed writers to address digital tech as shorthand rather than the awkward exposition dumps they were previously. And with the rise of smartphones and social media transferring people’s lives, desires, conversations, and experiences into a digital world at an exponential rate, popular entertainment needed to find a way to reflect this dramatic change in audiences’ lifestyles, and it finally looks like we are witnessing two pioneers of tech-orientated television who have been welcomed into the top-tier of the medium.

“The first rule of Mr. Robot is: You don’t talk about Mr. Robot”

*Warning – This section contains spoilers for both seasons of Mr. Robot*

   Mr. Robot burst onto the television scene last year to rave reviews and was rewarded a Golden Globe for Best Television Drama series for its tech-infused dialogue and compelling narrative of a hacker, Elliot Alderson, attempts to bring down the vast fictional conglomerate, E Corp, by any digital means possible.

While Elliot maybe very much be an online MacGyver for the modern age, there can be little doubt as to its true spiritual parent. Not only is Mr. Robot’s anti-corporate stance and objectives (wipe out the credit record) completely in line with Chuck Palahniuk’s novel and David Fincher’s film, Fight Club, even the big revelation of the eponymous Mr. Robot’s real identity is taken wholesale from the same source (see also the use of a cover of The Pixies’ Where is My Mind? In the soundtrack towards the end of season 1).

It is this combination of a premillennial feel (the show also owes a considerable debt to Darren Aronofsky’s directorial debut Pi from 1998) and bleeding edge tech knowledge that has allowed the show to straddle both Gen-X’ers and Millennials in terms of appeal. Indeed, such is Mr. Robot’s rising star, it’s become the first show to debut on Amazon Prime to get over a million Likes on its official Facebook page.

Admittedly, after its applauded freshman season, the second season has struggled somewhat in its wake. As we near the end of the second season’s run, you can’t shake the feeling that its creator, Sam Esmail, wasn’t exactly counting on the story getting this far as it seems to be getting tangled in its narrative threads about the aftermath of the hacker-inflicted crash of E Corp. The fact that Elliot has essentially spent most of this season in limbo -something that was hidden for the first 8 episodes- was a clever trick but has so far reaped little in terms of narrative satisfaction and all the other hacker protagonists seem to lack an objective beyond evading a frustratingly inept FBI investigation. That said, this is a show that delights in springing traps on its audience that lays surreptitiously throughout its episodes, so who knows if can tie its loose threads into a nice neat knot in its remaining two episodes.

A slight tail off in narrative conciseness hasn’t stopped the show from becoming one of the most talked shows on TV at present, though and its legacy will be preserved by its firebrand first season as perhaps the very first tech drama on TV you could genuinely take seriously. But there is another considerably less serious show that is helping plough this increasingly fertile field…

Uncanny Valley

   If Mr. Robot is currently providing the hardware for the tech TV show upgrade, then it is surely Mike Judge’s Silicon Valley that is writing the software. The San Francisco set satire has consistently been the most praised comedy on the small screen over the last 3 years (98% on RT.com is certainly nothing to be sniffed at) but perhaps its best accolade is how much it is loved by the very people and companies it lampoons.

If you happened to see Mark Zuckerberg’s ice-bucket challenge last year you might have noticed the Pied Piper logo on his t-shirt, the fictional start-up that constitutes the motley crew of HBO’s hit comedy. If the world’s most famous app creator is wearing the branding of your show based around app creation, then you really are nailing it.

Like Mr. Robot, the show isn’t afraid to engage in pure tech-talk but it keeps the audience engaged by employing more general workplace dynamics which have proved so successful in sitcoms this century since The Office debuted in 2000 on the BBC. The ever-shifting fortunes of Pied Piper founder, Richard Hendricks, haven’t just provided unerringly perceptive laughs either, Silicon Valley is perhaps unique in TV sitcoms for having a narrative that could have just as easily prospered in a drama. The off-set dilemma towards the end of the second season as Richard battled in court to keep control of his own algorithm while his cohorts debated whether to delete the said equation once and for all was wracked with the kind of tension one would normally associate with a pure thriller, and it was something the show took gleeful delight in extrapolating for as long as possible.

With the success of these two vanguards for tech on TV ensuring that the digital age is authentically realised on the small screen, it’s safe to say we can expect to see many more of their ilk in the near future and if they are as compelling and on-trend as these break-through shows then audiences will have plenty of reasons to lift their heads from their phone screens to be entertained by television’s take on the digital renaissance.