Sad songs, if you know your FM radio history, say so much. Elton John was right when he sang about the cathartic powers that come from a Top-40 wallow in all degrees of hurt and heartbreak — the satisfaction of recognizing one’s own pain in mainstream pop.
But as much as we’re willing to cry along with ballads, I keep running into viewers who don’t want to be brought low by watching sad TV.
Long accustomed to shows that exist under the large, catchall description of “dark,” viewers are willing to stomach a lot of unfortunate events, violent outcomes and fatal plot twists that define most of TV’s most highly praised recent classics.
It’s much harder, I find, to get viewers interested in shows that feature a much more subtle form of darkness — the rain-cloud moods that are more about existential dread, universal loneliness and human grief.
There are several such shows premiering or returning this fall in which characters both living and dead find themselves trapped in low emotional ebbs and visually drab circumstances. It’s a surplus of sad TV, and not merely the two-Kleenex-per-episode kind practiced so skillfully by NBC’s Emmy-winning drama “This Is Us,” which returns for its third season on Sept. 25. ABC is trying its hand at emotionally similar terrain with “A Million Little Things” (premiering Sept. 26), in which three men try to cope with the suicide of their mutual friend.
Amazon’s new series “Forever” (premiering Sept. 21), stars comic actors Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph as a married couple stuck in a pleasant but boring loop of routines. The streaming service has done everything it can to protect the show’s big twist (revealed in the second episode) from being spoiled. You’ll hear about it soon enough; for now I would only point out that “Forever” skillfully opens up a philosophical can of worms: What if our most mundane days really are our best days? What if ennui is eternal?
“Forever” makes an interesting companion piece to NBC’s hit comedy “The Good Place,” which returns for a third season on Sept. 27. It depicts an afterlife that is both surreal and disappointing to its inhabitants, who’ve long since realized they didn’t go to the Good Place when they died.
Back in the land of the unhappily living, Facebook Watch’s “Sorry for Your Loss” (premiered Sept. 18) is a highly intimate portrait of a young advice columnist (Elizabeth Olsen) who is grieving the sudden death of her husband. As the title suggests, the series dwells in the zone where no amount of sympathy from others can do the trick; the hardest part of grief is the part that you go it alone.
Shows like “Sorry for Your Loss” feel like the worthy descendants of independent cinema of 20 or so years ago, which thrived on stories of personal sorrow and angst.
The aesthetic of such series prefers rigorously bland settings that feel antiseptic and/or claustrophobic, giving the viewer a sense that the characters are mired in their feelings. Netflix’s “Maniac” (premiering Sept. 21) stars Emma Stone and Jonah Hill as test subjects in a drug trial that seeks to cure mental illness. They live in a world that is futuristic yet depressingly retro (a place only hipsters could devise), and vaguely Orwellian. It almost goes without saying that their characters are both really down in the dumps.
Showtime’s “Kidding,” airing on Sunday nights, has Jim Carrey playing a man who is professionally obligated to cheer the world up (as the host of a beloved children’s show), yet he lives in a suspended state of grief over the loss of a teenage son. His suffering takes place amid happy puppets in make-believe worlds singing songs about feelings — an effective contrast to his personal meltdown.
