Terra Nova cancelled? I can't say I'm surprised

So Steven Spielberg’s expensive sci-fi drama Terra Nova has been cancelled after just one disappointing season. Just minutes into the first episode, I knew the series could not last. I was amazed that anyone connected with Lost could have had any creative input in this show. To describe Terra Nova as “white bread” would be doing a disservice to baked goods. The casting on the series was completely uninspired and unimaginative. Jason O’Mara seems to be Spielberg’s go-to guy, I’m not exactly sure why. As a supporting actor, O’Mara is fine. But as a leading man, I have no interest in him whatsoever.

Terra Nova presented an opportunity to go in a different direction. What a shame that Spielberg and his team didn’t take it. I mean, would it really have been such a stretch to have a woman paying the role of Commander Nathaniel Taylor, the camp boss? Would it? Actresses such as Juliet Stevenson, the Oscar-nominated Janet McNeer or Josette Simon would have all been far more compelling to watch than Stephen Lang. And what a trip it would have been to have an actress of Marion Cottilard’s caliber playing the lead!

I have not seen such a bland group of characters in a TV show for longer than I care to remember. There was not a single character you cared about - a fatal flaw in any new series. And I took real exception to the female characters. For me, watching Terra Nova was like going through a time warp back to 1954. Even the women in Mad Men are more progressive than this lot.

I can’t understand that a man with Spielberg’s experience doesn’t seem to understand that we’re tired of seeing such cookie-cutter characters - the lantern-jawed hero, the pin-up teen. The series felt like a cynical ploy to appeal to the lucrative “family quadrant” - tweens, teens, mums and dads. It really wouldn’t surprise me if the idea had been floated before a focus group before a script was written.

I just can’t understand that with such huge resources, a man like Spielberg could have got a series so very, very wrong. And I find it interesting that after some forty years in the business, Diablo Cody is the only female writer Spielberg has collaborated with (on The United States of Tara). I don’t think the two are entirely unconnected.

Awake: NBC's new show and another male fantasy

I watched the pilot episode of NBC’s new drama, Awake, created by Lone Star writer Kyle Killen. In the show, Jason Isaacs plays Michael Britten, a police detective who is in a serious car accident and then wakes up to two different realities - one in which his wife dies, and another where his son is killed. Now, Isaacs is a fine actor, but I am sorry to say I will not be watching that show again and here’s why.

The first time we see Laura Allen, who plays Isaacs’s wife, Hannah, she is wielding a paintbrush. Is she an artist? No, she’s doing a spot of home decorating. Later, we see her wearing a suit but we have no idea what work she does. When Hannah turns up for a dinner date wearing a red dress, I got it. “Okay, so we’re living in fantasy world here,” I thought.

Killen has created a world in which a white man gets to maintain a relationship with two attractive women, while very much playing the hero. Talk about having your cake and eating it. And it’s a world in which people of colour are relegated safely to the sidelines. I didn’t really see the point of either Steve Harris’ or Wilmer Valderrama characters - except to make the lead look good.

And I’d like to ask Killen a question: is he aware that there are a number of women on the police force throughout the US?

What’s interesting - and more than a little disconcerting - to notice is that just as women and people of colour make greater strides in the workplace and other spheres, there seems to be a growing backlash. Thus we have Rush Limbaugh calling a Georgetown student a “slut” and a “prostitute” for daring to request that health insurance cover birth control - and not backing down until advertisers pulled their sponsorship. Then there are the Obama critics who repeatedly describe him as “Kenyan”.

That Hollywood is the preserve of white, middle-class males has been the industry’s dirty little secret for decades. But here’s the thing: the world is changing. Television and film are now global concerns. When you consider that 98 per cent of the world’s population is not white and the TV audiences are predominantly female, for industry bosses to continue to offer up such a white, phallocentric world view simply doesn’t make any sense.

No wonder audience numbers are down.