It is thrilling to see all these great directors make the switch from movies to TV. Legendary filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, David Fincher, Woody Allen, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, Todd Haynes, Joel Coen and Ridley Scott are all giving us their own serialized statements on the small-screen, hell, even this past year Steve McQueen made the jump to streaming with his powerful “Small Axe” anthology.
However, McQueen has been very adamant in noting that “Small Axe” is not television and that it is in fact five separate movies. McQueen has been very critical of television and the serial mindset, tellling IndieWire, “Writing is one thing, [but] I don’t think TV does what cinema can do. I just don’t think that that’s possible,” he said. “This is not to sort of say one is better than the other, but I know what I prefer. I prefer cinema. Silence is a very, very big factor. Scope is another factor, which is more familiar to me, as far as being a human being is concerned. We don’t talk all the time. We think a lot as well.”
He then went on to criticize the most popular show in all of streaming the Jason Bateman-Laura Linney crime drama "Ozark." “[It must be] like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to watch this?'” he said. “When you get ‘Breaking Bad,’ it’s amazing, but then you get ‘Ozark,’ which is a rip-off of that. […] It’s unfortunate, right now, there’s so much money, and so little ideas. The problem is when you have no money, you’ve got to think.”
“Ozark” is in fact a rip-off of “Breaking Bad,” I’ve been saying this ever since I laid my eyes on season one of the series, I discontinued watching the Netflix show by the second season. the crime drama starring Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, created by Bill Dubuque ("The Accountant," "The Judge"), has Bateman as Marty Byrde, a financial planner who relocates his family from Chicago to a summer resort community in the Ozarks after a money-laundering scheme goes wrong, forcing him to pay off a substantial debt to a Mexican drug lord in order to keep his family safe.
Going back to McQueen’s take on TV having hit its peak in the early 2000s. That’s an interesting point. Between 1998 and 2013, or so, some of the greatest shows of all-time were all airing on Cable television at the same time; “The Sopranos,” “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” and ”The Wire.” Nothing since then has managed to achieve the kind of complexities and cinematic stylings of these shows. Now, most streaming platforms are interested in content. Sure, there have been hints of potential all-time greats here and there, I’m specifically thinking of two HBO shows heading into their third seasons in 2021 (“Succession and “Barry”), but those shows are still well into their infancies. Time will tell.