Boring Lives, Boring Television

So far this year, I’ve watched “The Knick,” “Mad Men,” “Game of Thrones,” “Outlander,” “Boardwalk Empire” and “Downton Abbey.” Oh, I complain about the various anachronisms – the clothes are too clean, the lives of the servants are far too easy and don’t even get me started on, um, almost everything in “The Knick.” But these are forgivable errors, occasionally almost lovable.

The thing I find harder to forgive is the shows’ inability to commit to that drama – to try to actually engage with what was actually dramatic and interesting in those eras. They can’t resist moralizing from the point of view of a 21st-century modern – and so they sap the conflicts they’re portraying of their meaning.