An interesting if rather rough tough article on beer and TV in the paper today:
"It was maybe too scripted and wasn't a beer show," said Lew Bryson, a beer writer and blogger from Pennsylvania whose own television show "American Beer Blogger" recently was broadcast on the Bethlehem/Lehigh Valley PBS affiliate. "It was 'The Amazing Race' for beer. I think people were tuning in and looking for more of a beer show. We're going to fumble at it for a while." The "Brew Masters" failure will make it more difficult for television executives to greenlight another beer-focused program because networks keep an eye on each other and copy successful formulas, industry insiders said. That's why there are multiple shows about pastries, tattoo parlors and storage lockers. It's not that people aren't trying to get a beer show on television. There's no shortage of pitches, including one that pits brewers against each other a la "Iron Chef."
Nice to see a lack of the usual hedging of the truth when it comes to things beery. I wouldn't have suggested it was "The Amazing Race" so much, however, as maybe "Cake Boss" or some other such upper channel cable glorified infomercial. But the point is a good one. It was a mess. But was it as much the problem with beer as the program? The only great representation of beer on TV I have seen so far was the bits of Oz and James Drink to Britain.
What I want in a TV show is a version of the old Jancis Robinson 10 part series on wine from BBC2. It was structured as a course for consumers as opposed to a brag up for a brewer or, worse, the hooray for everything approach that is so uncritical that it fails to engage. And I sure don't need "Iron Brewer" as, be honest, beer making looks really dull. Not cooking and baking. That's fast. Zippy. You see the creation made before your eyes in minutes. Yeast - even during secondary fermentation - have nothings on the "oohs" and "aahs" of someone testing the sauce or icing. Compare that to "look! grotty scum floating on a rocky yeast head floating above future ex-wort." Ain't happening.
But find a spokesperson for the movement, a great voice that speaks objectively and intelligently about the movement without having any skin in the game? Now that is what we really need. Who could that be?
Comments
Alan - March 28, 2012 10:19 PM
On the other hand, beer is waaaay better photographed than food is.
Laurel Dempsey - March 28, 2012 10:22 PM
maybe Jordan?
Although I am of course not objective
Simon Tucker - March 29, 2012 3:57 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jb0gnnDJnM
The Beer Nut - March 29, 2012 5:36 AM
I thought BBC 4's recent Timeshift: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019c85h"The Rules of Drinking</a> was very close in style and tone to what I'd want in a good beer show. And I thought Pete Brown played a blinder in it.
The Beer Nut - March 29, 2012 5:37 AM
I thought BBC 4's recent Timeshift: The Rules of Drinking was very close in style and tone to what I'd want in a good beer show. And I thought Pete Brown played a blinder in it.
Gah. It's too early for proper HTML.
Alan - March 29, 2012 8:14 AM
Simon, that's the sounds track that follows me around all day, too. If you compare where Jackson and beer was then with Oz and James, you can see the contrast between them. Jackson is not yet hooray but he has to be so basic. Handy that I have grocery store French from being Canadian and worked in Holland, too. Thanks for the link.
Pivní Filosof - March 29, 2012 9:44 AM
I had a rather long cameo in a pilot for a TV show about Czech breweries that got nowhere really. The idea, in my opinion, was flawed. The plan was 13 episodes, each of them presenting a brewery, from regional to multinationally owned. Nothing wrong with that, but it was sponsored by PIlsner Urquell (or so these people told me), and I think there is a lot more to tell about beer than just "this is the mash tun", "this is where the beer ferments", "these are the lagering tanks". "Here, have some". There was no plan to visit maltings, hop growers, brewpubs or pubs.
That's what I would like to see, a show that not only shows me a few breweries and their owners, but also the other links in the chain...
dave - March 29, 2012 11:20 AM
The "iron brewer" show (or at least, an "iron brewer" type of show) taped the pilot (or part of the pilot) at Boston's Harpoon brewery. They sent out an email, a long while back, for people to be in the audience. It really didn't sound like a pleasurable experience in the least ("Has their water hit the proper temperature?!?!? What type of hop pellet are they using, b/c they all kind of look the same?!?!?").
I'd go back to the previously discussed "Top Beer" as a show I would watch.
Oz and James Drink to Britain certainly was an enjoyable watch (though James got a little bit whiny at times).
For a movie American Beer was pretty good. Though probably to "rah-rah" for your liking.
Craig - March 29, 2012 12:02 PM
I agree that a format like Drink to Britain might work better. As entertaining as Lew is, I think you need an "under educated in the world of beer" star to pull it all together. What made the James May/Oz Clarke show enjoyable was the Felix and Oscar slant the producers took. It was the dynamic of the two men, not necessarily the topic that was successful.
Jeff Alworth - March 29, 2012 3:43 PM
At the risk of losing one of my great ideas by injecting it into cyberspace (but also at the risk of gaining it, since all my ideas die eventually) I offer a brainstorm I had a few years back.
Find four to six start-up breweries that each have radically different plans. One's a brewpub, one's a production brewery. One's focused on small-batch artisanal beer, one is focused on making a business of mainstream craft beer. Find someone who comes out of a brewing background and someone knew to the business. Nano? I'm sure you could find some high concept stuff, too, which would be fun (like Ommegang before it was Ommegang). I interviewed a not-yet brewery in North Dakota that planned to sell only Belgian ale. Make sure you have regional variation and breweries located in places with friendly and unfriendly laws, easy and hard distribution, and so on.
Find these entities at a very early stage in their lives and film them for a couple years. Some will make it, some won't. All will struggle. Along the way, the art and business of beer will be unspooled to the audience, whose interest is piqued by the travails of the entrepreneurs as they make their way through the minefield of starting a business. In the end: triumph, loss, and a much edified audience.
Sean Liquorish - March 30, 2012 5:53 AM
I wondered about this the other week myself and concluded a short run series is possible, but would like to see it in the fashion of "food and drink" from the 90's with mix of studio and OB's. I've posted it here http://www.seanliquorish.co.uk/blog/?p=784
Alan - March 30, 2012 8:06 AM
Maybe called "Two Fat Gentlemen"?
Bailey - March 30, 2012 9:20 AM
Jeff's idea is a good one. We've had no end of shows here about guys opening bakeries, starting farms, restaurants, etc.. -- the business angle and the fact that something is at stake provides narrative drive.
This from a couple of years ago was interesting.
Ron Pattinson - March 31, 2012 5:38 AM
I thought the Oz Clark and James May programme was dreadful. Two ignorant twats more interested in making man-bonding jokes than the supposed subject of the programme. Highlight being Oz's "facts" about Porter which were total bollocks.
I'd like to go around filming interviews with retired brewers. Not to make a programme, just as an historical record.