HOLLYWOOD — That Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, the team behind “thirtysomething,” “My So-Called Life” and “Once and Again,” have turned their attention to the emerging world of Web-based TV is, on the whole, good news.
It would be better news if their new “quarterlife” — which began streaming Sunday over and Monday on the team’s own new social-networking platform, at — resembled things you have seen before on ordinary television a little less, or if it were close to the level of their earlier work.
Even so, in terms of production, acting and subtlety of intention, it’s miles beyond any drama yet mounted on the Internet.
That is, of course, a small field. The Web is still a medium largely defined by its temporal limitations — download time, the fact that its content is in many cases watched by people stealing a few minutes from work, and consumed by a generation whose attention span has already been attenuated by media glut.
But drama is different. It takes time to establish character, and what has so far passed for that online has tended toward genre: bite- sized adventure soaps such as Michael Eisner’s “Prom Queen” and “Blair Witch”-style stunts such as “lonelygirl 15.” “quarterlife” seems to be after something bigger: a Web series with feeling.
The show is named for a recently defined phenomenon: the quarter- life crisis, in which 20-somethings struggle with feelings of disappointment, longing, confusion, the sense that life is passing them by and that they will never get to do or have what they want.
The series continues the Herskovitz-Zwick strategy of making drama from generational malaise, but in a world in which “What About Brian” has already come and gone, and “October Road” has gone and is coming back, it’s hardly cutting- edge.
And with its cast of three boys and three girls living in close quarters, it may also seem like another remake of “Friends.”
The idea behind “My So-Called Life” was to capture the tone of a teenager’s diary; “quarterlife” brings that into the 21st century by giving one of the characters, Dylan, a blog — posted to a website also called “quarterlife.” “Why do we blog?” Dylan asks herself. “We blog to exist, therefore we — are idiots.”
She speaks the truth: She puts embarrassing videos of and information about her friends and roommates online. And although I know that kids nowadays have an interesting notion of privacy, and that Dylan is probably supposed to be a bit of a loose cannon, this seems improbably improvident. At the same time, she’s the best realized of the bunch: The creators have lavished all their love on her. She is not quite Angela Chase grown up, but she has some of her intelligence and energy, and Tulloch, who plays her, seems destined to be better known.
obviously would not exist except for the series, but that does not mean it might not have a life apart from it. It depends on who shows up and how well it works.
