Most shows broadcast their first eight episodes and then take a break. A successful show will at this point often recalibrate itself, responding rapidly to satisfy audience expectations or, these days, to confound them. When The OC returned for its ninth episode after its first hiatus, it had wittily incorporated all the jokes that fans were already making about the show: Benjamin McKenzie’s resemblance to a puppy-dog Russell Crowe was duly noted, and jokes about Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows were 10 a penny. South Park proved itself even more fleet of foot, killing off Isaac Hayes’s character Chef less than a week after Hayes himself quit in protest at the show’s treatment of Scientology (they tore him limb from limb and did everything short of boiling his bones). Try doing that with a movie.
On TV, writing by committee is a blessing, the secret of US TV’s present greatness, whereas at the movies one groans inwardly when a movie has six or more writing credits. Movie writers work at home with a script originated by someone they’ve never met. A director may then take a shot at rewriting, and the star will bring on even more scribes to tailor the material to his or her on-screen persona. The result, often, is a dog’s dinner of a script, and a dog of a movie, because there is no single governing intelligence to hold everything together. TV writers, perhaps 10 or more on some shows, work together with a supreme guiding force - usually the show’s creator - working up story arcs, character profiles and so on, before handing individual episodes to one or two writers. Their work is then tweaked in committee. Somehow, it works.
And the person who benefits is the viewer. As CBS-Paramount TV president David Stapf said recently, “TV is as good as it gets because the form forces the writers to be better. You don’t have time to meander. So writers hone their craft on 22 little movies a year.”
Tan largo este artículo sobre por qué las series de televisión estadounidenses son infinitamente mejores y más interesantes que el cine contemporáneo de los EE.UU. que apenas lo he leído en diagonal. Pero, la verdad, cuánta gente inteligente, culta, élite de la “ciudad letrada” en suma, está enganchada a The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Lost, etc. Nunca visto. E imposible de lograr estar al día, cinco temporadas de Six Feet para este verano. Todo se acumula y uno siente esa vergüenza familiar ante las propias lagunas literarias. Mientras tanto, no he ido al cine a ver una peli nueva desde seguramente hace más de un año. Y si me las he bajado de eMule no las he visto, esa urgencia falta.
Las 
