“Truth is stranger than fiction.” This saying seems untrue, bordering on impossible.
How could the fantasy worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin compare to the monotonous mumbles of a history professor? How could a dull textbook come close to the inventive fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and J.K. Rowling? The answer is simple, perhaps even obvious. These authors all used history as a source of inspiration. But the point is understood. Orcs and dragons, daemons and wizards — these fictitious elements can certainly add drama and intrigue to a story.
But bringing the past to life in the form of the historical drama, especially on television, has been an effective way to captivate and compel over this past decade.
The genre provides an all-you-can-eat buffet of different time periods and tones for the viewer, ranging from the ancient to the contemporary. If the WWII bloodshed of Band of Brothers is not for you, perhaps you would enjoy the subtlety of Downton Abbey‘s family squabbles. Is the womanizing of Don Draper in Mad Men boring you? Switch over to an action-packed episode of Vikings, set around the 9th century.
Bloodshed, family drama, politics and sex are some of the most compelling elements a story can include, and many historical dramas try to encompass them all.
While this genre is fictitious far more than factual, the premises of these stories are based in reality. Each show sets a metaphorical chess board with characters, same as a fantasy, sci-fi or any other TV drama.
Once the shows begin, the chess pieces are making the same moves: The protagonist has a love interest, a life-long friendship is ruined or a family member dies. The shows are on an equal playing field when it comes to human drama.
While the non-historic shows have an advantage because they aren’t tethered to reality, a show with its roots in history can draw in an audience that is trying to see the past come to life.
Sometimes small historic elements of the show can pull in viewers due to their contemporary appeal. The jazz music of Boardwalk Empire and the hairstyles and fashion of Peaky Blinders are both resurging in popular culture, making the shows seem modern despite their historic accuracy.
Another advantage of these shows is the ability to weave multimedia elements from the past into the show itself. The greatest example of this is Narcos, which uses everything from nightly news footage and Reagan’s speeches to videos of Pablo Escobar and photos of drug traffickers.
The word sonder is used on the internet to describe the realization that every person lives a life as vivid and complex as your own. Perhaps that is what viewers are seeking with historical dramas.
When someone becomes a name in a textbook, they seem larger than life. This genre humanizes historic figures and groups that had only been known in the abstract, allowing the audience to see the multi-faceted lives they led. The inherent humanity and experiences we share with these celebrated people allow us to understand how the person may have lived.
So, is truth stranger than fiction? Maybe not. But the historical drama’s strength is in its familiarity. We want to relate to these lionized figures of the past. We want to equate their stories to our own. We want to understand, scrutinize and analyze them to remind ourselves that they too were only human.
The historical drama genre continues to grow along with our fascination with it. The trend is undeniably valuable because the stories of the past deserve a more engaging medium than a PowerPoint slide in HIST200.
