writhaus

It was a little longer than a year ago, as I recall, when I stood at the assignment desk at CN8′s New Castle, Del., studio waiting for my first assignment of the day when, while flipping through the various daily newspapers on the counter, I read that This American Life was being developed for television.

I discovered the radio show while working in Raleigh, N.C. The radio stations in the Triangle didn’t play any music I wanted to listen to, so I gravitated to NPR. One Sunday while working, I listened to this program and laughed when the interstitial music was a children’s song about where the dinosaurs went. I was hooked from that very moment. It didn’t hurt that it had some of the most compelling journalism I had heard before or since.

Given that the show comes from radio, you might expect me to fear its transition to video. While I wondered how they would pull it off, I was hopeful from the start. The show is always so smartly put together that I had complete faith in Ira Glass. My worst fear was that video would distract from the narrative presentation. Even with that, I still felt pretty confident that it would work.

I just finished the first episode. I am happy to report that the transition is mostly problem-free. For those familiar with the NPR show, the formatting is the same. For the uninitiated, the show features a variety of stories on a set topic. This episode featured stories about people getting reality checks. The initial episode features two acts during the course of a half hour. I’d hope for more, but with the NPR-to-TV transition, I can understand timidity on the part of Showtime. The stories cover the Fisher family of La Grange, Texas, and their bull, Chance, getting a second chance at life and a New York-based improv group that attempts to give a Vermont-based band the concert of their lives.

Ira Glass has just as good a television presence as he does a radio presence. Best of all, I think he must be recording his track in his normal studio, so his voice is every bit as rich as it is on the radio. Both stories are presented by him, which is fine, although I hope some of the regular contributors make appearances as the series progresses.

These positives do not mean the show is without flaws, though. This American Life has its own almost jazz-like rhythm, which might be off-putting to regular television viewers. The production values appear sound, but I wonder about some of the camera and editing decisions made, not the least of which is why it looks as if it was produced fully with Final Cut Pro. I’m hopeful time will solve these issues as people get into their grooves. This criticism is limited to the first act, as the second is mostly footage shot by the improv group. The quality of that video is only OK, but that’s completely understandable.

In the end, though, the show is a success. Mr. Glass definitely brought his “A” game, delivering two stories that you won’t see on any normal news outlets. If this show is as successful as it deserves, who knows what will happen next? Will Car Talk be brought over? What about Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me? If nothing else, maybe this will help funnel money into the public radio stations that back these shows. It brought a smile to my face to see the WBEZ placard at the end of the show after the credits had run.

Notes: For more on the cloning of Chance, you can read this BBC article from 1999.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 3:06 am and is filed under Reviews - Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.