Is television beginning to eat itself? This is the question that, just lately, has begun to preoccupy me. I’m struck more and more by the miserable paradox that while we book-loving types often fret over the number of stories we’ve yet to read, a notional pile that grows incrementally with every week that passes, in TV-land people seem increasingly to be hell-bent on gnawing on the same old bones.
I’m not only talking about adaptations of Jane Austen. Make an English version of that beloved French series! Revisit the crazy canoe guy! Work on your long-form documentary about that famous murder even as your rival films his! Truly, they’re all at it, and I’m damned if I know why.
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