Critic’s Notebook: Web TV is just waiting to click

Online television has yet to catch on like the traditional format, but it’s just barely getting started and hubs like Hulu, Crackle and Koldcast point to a wide-open future.

By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
June 26, 2011

Kiefer Sutherland, the star of “24,” and John Hurt, the eminent British thespian, recently joined forces, playing opposite each other in “The Confession,” a sort of short feature about a hit man and a priest. I say “sort of” because “The Confession” was created specifically to go online, in installments — there are 10 of them, averaging about seven minutes each; they ran from the end of March to the beginning of May on the video-streaming website Hulu. So it is a sort of television series as well, though one whose entire season lasts in the aggregate not much more than an hour…

Nevertheless, as improving varieties of streaming media become an increasingly popular way to watch what once could be seen only on an actual television set or in a theater, distribution points such as Hulu have begun to act as networks or studios. (Hulu, which has just been up for sale, is actually owned in common by several of them.) Sony Pictures’ Crackle has some of the Web’s flashier offerings, including “The Bannen Way,” with its wiseguy con-man hero, stylish split screens and hot-girl assassins; “Angel of Death,” penned by comic-book writer Ed Brubaker, with Zoe Bell (“Tarantino’s #1 stunt woman”) as a hired killer who acquires the compulsion to kill her old masters; and the sci-fi “Trenches,” picked up from Disney’s now-defunct Stage 9 Digital, which sports impressive “Battlestar Galactica” special effects. All have completed their single seasons but remain available for download in the timelessness of the Web.

Will ‘LoveMakers’ be the First 30-Minute Web Series Hit?

A half hour web show. It’s a simple premise. It makes sense. You don’t want to sit down after a long day at work and watch four minutes of something. You want to relax and engage in a passive entertainment experience that at most requires your active participation in scrolling to the next episode and hitting play once every 22 minutes.

And the reason I say a 30-minute web show makes sense isn’t simply intuition supported by hypothetical, anecdotal evidence. Hard facts show online video consumers seem to be ready for a half hour web show, too.

Lunch time used to be web TV primetime, but in the past two years peak online video viewing hours have shifted from Noon – 3PM to 8PM – 11PM. Viral videos and uber-short-form web series haven’t gone out of vogue, it’s more that a combination of technology, content quality, and exposure to the medium has made consumers more comfortable watching web TV at home than during their lunch breaks or when they should be working on TPS reports.

But even if the market’s ready for it, executing a half hour web show is the tough part. You need a premise with long enough legs that it can sustain a full season of 30-minute episodes, a killer cast, a web savvy production company, and a talented crew that can create something that looks at least as good as what you can find on Hulu, but for a fraction of the cost.

LoveMakers just might be able to pull it off.

Suite 7 – Review

Good in Bed – directed by MARK GANTT written by SUSAN MILLER starring EDDIE MCCLINTOCK & JAIME MURRAY

You might not expect a Web series produced as a promotional tool for the Better Sleep Council to be very interesting, but “Suite 7” at MyLifetime.com is worth checking out. The free-standing episodes — the sixth of seven goes up on Friday — all revolve around the same bed, situated in the hotel suite of the title.

What the council’s money has bought is the participation of recognizable performers like Milo Ventimiglia (“Heroes”) as a skeptical best man and Illeana Douglas as an actress on location debating whether to have sex with her co-star. (Mr. Ventimiglia also directed his episode, while Ms. Douglas wrote hers.) Best, so far, is the more sober, 11-minute “Good in Bed,” starring Jaime Murray (“Dexter”) and Eddie McClintock (“Warehouse 13”) as a divorcing couple brought together, for a moment at least, by that magical bed. (YES… THIS IS ONE OF THE EPISODES I DIRECTED!)