Very intrigued by DROPS OF GOD! But I wanted to comment on your great piece on ELSBETH, which I've just recently started watching. You're spot on, but I'd extend it to say that the series is built upon another TV trope: what if the "wacky neighbor character" were put in the narrative center? Aside from BETTER CALL SAUL (which is truly exceptional in all possible ways), comic relief side characters can never work as the focal point of a series - and that's where the Kings start their playful dismantling of the procedural!
Oh BCS is such an interesting comparison, less as a parallel than as a similar flipping of the narrative universe. The commonality seems to be that the Kings and Gilligan/Gould both share that sense of playfulness with form and genre but also a deep, mechanical knowledge of it. They're both very high-degree-of-difficulty maneuvers.
Very intrigued by DROPS OF GOD! But I wanted to comment on your great piece on ELSBETH, which I've just recently started watching. You're spot on, but I'd extend it to say that the series is built upon another TV trope: what if the "wacky neighbor character" were put in the narrative center? Aside from BETTER CALL SAUL (which is truly exceptional in all possible ways), comic relief side characters can never work as the focal point of a series - and that's where the Kings start their playful dismantling of the procedural!
Oh BCS is such an interesting comparison, less as a parallel than as a similar flipping of the narrative universe. The commonality seems to be that the Kings and Gilligan/Gould both share that sense of playfulness with form and genre but also a deep, mechanical knowledge of it. They're both very high-degree-of-difficulty maneuvers.