The Best Show You're Not Watching Today: Battleground

Tuesday is a largely vacant spot in my week night tv watching.  Almost every other night has at least one show, if not 4, I could tell you that I’d be watching if at home on my couch.  The problem with Tuesday is that there aren’t any quality scripted shows to really watch on tv.  New Girl isn’t bad, but it’s hardly must watch; no one is going to ask you at work if you saw New Girl last night, Zooey Deschannel is just that sort of person, memorably forgettable.  To be fair, Tuesday also has extremely popular shows like Dancing With the Stars and American Idol, but I will not watch those unless forcibly tied down.  The great thing about this dearth of quality programming, until 11pm that is, because The Daily Show is always quality, is that I’ve discovered the best show that doesn’t air on tv, but does become available on Tuesdays.

Battleground, a tv show about a political campaign in Wisconsin of all places, is the best show that you probably haven’t seen.  As a result of the key advertising demographic of 18-49 year olds not being troglodytes, a ton of television is being watched on the internet now, or simply some other time than when it airs due to the popularity of DVRs.  This has given rise to successful streaming sites like Netflix Watch Instantly (which I own and recommend) and Hulu+ (which I don’t own and am indifferent towards).  Both sites have now made forays into original programming, Netflix has a tv series about a mafia informant (I think) living in Lillehammer and has also purchased the rights to the new season Arrested Development, and Hulu has created Battleground.

Battleground is both derivative and exceptional. Following on the successes of The Office and Modern Family, Battleground is a mockumentary that follows the key members of a campaign staff whose candidate is running for a Senate seat in Wisconsin.  Like The Office, the show revolves around the characters at work in their office and on the campaign trail, and intersperses interviews with characters among the documentary footage.  It is the small changes that Battleground has made to the format, however, that makes it special.

The show isn’t simply a comedy or a drama, it’s a story about backroom dealings, scheming, and gambits.  It does have a stereotypical buffoon, and some puppy love, but fortunately doesn’t waste too much time with either.  The characters have real problems, like divorce, job offers, and other worries, and these are as important to the overall arc of the story as the jokes are.  The other great change is that the interview footage is all reflective, just like an actual documentary would have.  

On Modern Family, the interviews are asides that explain a characters inner thoughts at a given moment or deliver a punch line set up in the prior scene, but in Battleground the interviews reflect on the situation as if it is something concretely finished; it isn’t “I don’t know what’s going on,” it’s “I didn’t know.” As a result, the characters being interviewed are clearly in the future from the overall story and that allows for you to guess where the story is going, but without giving away how or why the characters got to where they are.  The main character has never been in interview footage, is he dead? Two characters are always interviewed together, clearly they’re married or dating. One character, who by now this season has left the campaign entirely, is clearly being interviewed from prison, why?  It’s questions like those that make me wonder where the season is headed, and if there can even possibly be more than one.

Matt Brickell is a senior writer and may be biased as he loves comedy and politics.