What We Do in the Shadows proves TV is a better medium for comedy than movies

Paste Magazine

"As summer fades, the fall TV line-up looms with new series debuts and the return of beloved fixtures," says Olivia Cathcart. "One of the most anticipated returning shows is FX’s What We Do in the Shadows, whose third season premieres Sept. 2. Shadows stands out amongst the pack not only in quality as one of today’s best sitcoms, but also in origin as the series is a spinoff of Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s 2014 film of the same name. Like its predecessor, the TV version is a mockumentary style look into the modern lives of a few vampire roommates. The series has not only done its source material justice, but has arguably surpassed it. The fact that it’s probably now better known and loved than the film it’s based on is not terribly surprising, though. It has the significant advantage of being in a format better suited for comedy: TV. As a medium, TV is a better vessel for comedy than film, while the opposite is true for drama. Let’s put it this way: dramas are like RPGs. They’re fueled by having a defined story with a beginning, middle, and end, and a clear path for people to move through. Comedy, meanwhile, is more like an open-world game, with more freedom for its characters to explore the various possibilities open to them, and thus more opportunity to grow as a result. Dramas benefit from the short, finite runtime of a movie or even a mini-series. With TV, dramas often lose all the tension and suspense that makes them compelling. Nobody thinks even for a second that the main character might die in a car accident when there’s 15 episodes left in a season, and no mystery is so complex that it can sustain the audience’s attention (and patience) for six seasons. By season two, we’ve already read every fan theory on the internet to the point that the eventual conclusion is doomed to underwhelm."

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• In Season 3, What We Do in the Shadows just keeps opening doors to fascinating new personal voyages and inventive world-building
• With Season 3, What We Do in the Shadows is the best comedy on television
• Harvey Guillén began performing as a child as his family kept moving around: “I was like a vaudeville show,” he tells The New York Times. “I made friends by being the class clown.” In elementary school, during winter break, he saw a TV broadcast of Annie. “I want to be that,” he told his mother. “I want to be an orphan.” Those children weren’t orphans, his mother told him. They were actors. And acting was for rich kids. Undaunted, Guillén spent weeks collecting empty soda cans to pay for an improv class at the local community center. “I felt this crackle hearing people laugh,” he says of the experience.
• How Guillén discusses helping create Guillermo and mastering the “Jim Halpert stare": "Guillermo is the only human in the household," he tells Variety. "So, as much as the vampires know that there’s a documentary crew following them, they forget, because there’s no consequences to their actions. He was just connecting to another human being, which is the camera." How does it feel bringing a Hispanic character to life in a genre show? "It was a great honor to create the character from the floor up. Guillermo was 20 years older when I auditioned for him. He didn’t have a last name. And I gave him his last name De la Cruz by asking, 'Can I give him a last name? I feel like he’s not whole if he doesn’t have a last name.'"
• Kayvan Novak says the writers gave him everything he asked in Season 3: "All my Christmases came at once, I had so much fun stuff to do this season," he says. "We laugh a lot on set. It can be a cliche that a comedy ensemble goes on about how much fun they have on set — but we genuinely do.”