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Florence Nightingale and the Inverted Envelope
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I recently attended a New York screening of Florence Nightingale, an excellent biopic chronicling the early years of the so-called "Lady with the Lamp" who, during the Crimean War in the 19th century, fought for better medical care for British soldiers and ultimately revolutionized the practice of nursing and medicine itself.
The film, which stars the well-known Scottish actress Laura Fraser in the title role, is a co-production of the BBC in England and Odyssey Networks in the U.S.
While not exactly epic (we don't see any battle scenes) the production is nonetheless lavish in its production values. Equally important, the acting and writing are first rate. And, refreshingly, the movie portrayed its heroin's Christian faith as a source of strength and conviction.
The telefilm was watched by nearly five-million viewers when it premiered on BBC 1 last year and received some excellent reviews. Unfortunately, no American TV network has as yet picked up the film.
Interestingly, Florence Nightingale's story was also dramatized for television in 1985 for an NBC movie starring Jaclyn Smith (yes, one of Charlie's Angels). It was a different TV universe then -- when there were three broadcast networks and inspirational and family-friendly programming was actually sought out by the webs (which they were known as in the pre-internet years).
It was the era of The Cosby Show and Highway to Heaven. It was a time when so-called edgy programming was relegated to relative newcomer on the block HBO. In fact, HBO positioned itself as the go-to network for edgy fare the network's wouldn't air.
Sure CBS had Dallas and ABC aired Dynasty but the characters on those shows were considered about as sleazy as network TV generally got.
The situation is essentially reversed now -- with the broadcast networks looking to emulate the edginess of shows like Showtime's Dexter (with a serial killer as its hero, take that J.R. Ewing!), Cable or broadcast, edgy is in and inspirational is considered trite.
The envelope has been pushed so far and so regularly that it's now inverted. Today, while no sexual topic seems out of bounds, it's considered pushing the TV envelope to openly discuss issues such as faith and idealism.
Seinfeld, as funny as it often was, brought us a generation of programming about nothing -- where any moral point is deemed "preachy" no matter how naturally it flows from the story.
So, idealistic heroes such as Florence Nightingale are increasingly hard to come by. Yet I believe the public longs for them. If you don't believe me, look up one of those old shows on YouTube and checkout the user comments. People want programming that taps into our common humanity.
Snark, in my view, has jumped the shark. It may, in fact, be time for an HBO for believers in traditional values.
Till then, I hope a TV network (broadcast or cable) has the class, guts and smarts to pick up this gem of a film and promote the hell out of it.
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