I read a great deal about how traditional broadcasters are in dire financial straits because their advertising-driven business model is broken.
I pondered this while watching the UK premiere of K-Ville on Five USA - a channel I think I vaguely knew existed, but which I have not watched before. It is buried deep in the Sky channel guide's Entertainment listings dead zone below such popular destinations as Hallmark and Zone Romantica.
The only reason I knew about K-Ville was that it was the day's highlight in the television section of the Sunday Times Culture supplement. The synopsis was instantly arresting: K-Ville follows the lives of the cops who patrol New Orleans post Katrina. Specifically it follows Marlin Boulet and Trevor Cobb.
Boulet is a resident of the Upper 9th ward - one of the worst hit areas of New Orleans. More than that he is an evangelist for the area, encouraging those who have remained to stay, those who have left to return and the authorities to rebuild the ravaged infrastructure. Cobb, by contrast, is apparently an outsider, drawn to New Orleans by the challenge.
The tension between them was key to the pliot. Boulet is wound like a coiled spring - driven by personal demons, public outrage and a need to help his people. He is edgy, volatile and unpredictable. Cobb, a former soldier with Afghan tours behind him is Boulet's foil: he is grounded and rational but no less determined to succeed.
K-Ville is not The Wire or The Sopranos. The production values are not as high, the writing not as crisp. But it was pacy, gritty and full of good potential. And it's a better be than most of the crap Five has on its struggling terrestrial channel. So why not give it a shot rather than burying it?
