Two shows prove unsexy computing world can make good TV.
We are all computers now. Well, near enough anyway. We're logging in at work, tapping away when we're out and about and swiping screens when we're at home. We don't go anywhere without first putting a mini computer in our pocket that's powerful enough to process intense computations but usedprimarily to take photos of our food.
Right now Google's making computer cars and Apple's making computer watches. Soon enough some tech-head is gonna think "bugger it", ditch the device and put the computer right inside of us. My only hope is that "bugger it" is not the chosen installation method ...
Computers have never been more popular. But they've never been sexy. The computer world is the realm of brainiacs and nerds and basically consists of very, very smart people designing and making machines and software for very, very dumb people. Like, for example, me.
This is a problem if you're making television. You can base a show around, say, a sexy doctor or sexy lawyer or sexy mad man. What you can't base it around is a sexy computer programmer. Because they don't exist.
So it's interesting to see how two recent shows about computers and the people who work on them have tackled this most unsexy of professions.
Halt and Catch Fire is a serious drama from AMC. This is the network behind Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and the superb Better Call Saul, so you know you're in for a slick viewing experience.
It's cinematic, glitzy, extremely well made and does a great job of transporting you back to the early 80s and the dawning of the computer age.
There is one critical difference between this and it's more popular siblings, however: the characters are clunky cliches. There's a slick, do-whatever-it-takes visionary, a nerdy programmer with marital problems and a punky, rebellious young genius all banding together to take on the might of IBM. They're painted with such broad and familiar strokes that it's difficult to take them seriously.
Being a drama, the computer lifestyle has also been jazzed up considerably. Within minutes of the first episode, two of the characters are bumping uglies after drunkenly hooking up.
Computer programming: it's the new rock 'n' roll!
That said, the show's still interesting enough to rope you in. The people at AMC clearly know what they're doing, and here they've created a decent enough period drama, but not one that has the chops to replace Mad Men, the network's lauded, but recently ended period drama.
For a far more believable and entertaining look at how the computer world actually works tune into Silicon Valley. This seriously funny comedy follows a young, ramshackle startup company as it attempts to bring its game-changing app technology to market.
Created by the brilliantly subversive Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-head, Office Space), the show has quickly become one of the best comedies on the box.
Again, classic nerd tropes are at play. But here Judge and his writers, which include Seinfeld alumni, have turned easily described stereotypes (boorish manager, twitchy genius, horny dweeb) into fully realised characters. And because these characters are smart, the humour's smart.
Silicon Valley doesn't dumb anything down. Instead, it forces you to keep up as it satirises and gently mocks the fast-paced, money-fuelled culture that routinely pumps millions of dollars into pie-in-the-sky tech ideas in the hope of discovering the next Facebook or Twitter.
Its jokes hit you at 100Mbps. Each episode is densely packed with verbal and sight gags that riff off of popular tech phenomena; like an app whose only function is sending the word "bro", or the complex mathematics involved in working out the "mean jerk time" of someone wanting to, er, "look after" an auditorium of 800 dudes.
It's regularly praised as the most accurate take yet on San Francisco's startup culture, but you don't have to be interested in computer technology to dig the show. It's funny enough to transcend its subject matter.
In fact you could say that Silicon Valley is the Apple of comedy. A show that's so smart, even dummies like me can get into it.
