I beg to suggest that the recent TV Series ‘Furious’ is a milestone in female produced, female written and female starring drama. It is created by Elizabeth Meriwether and stars Emma Rossum and Lola Patticrew.
It joins ‘ The Queens Gambit’ with Anya Taylor Joy as a stand out show head and shoulders above others.
Furious: “FBI agent Alice Black is on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating female serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur”. IMDB.
In a lot of other crime related dramas the female element often misses the mark or slips into tropes, trends or traumas used for off-point excess distracting emotionalism. Furious hits the nail right on the head.
I even forgive them for what I call ‘the black haired girl confusion’ of half an episode where we are unsure which black haired girl is whom. Apart from that my opinion is they have almost achieved perfection of its type and nature and it’s a solid 9.0+ for me. I look forward to Series Two.
What do you consider to be recent drama landmarks and why?
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LIONESS female action hero with depth. Accepts the reality of the current state of affairs and still chooses job and country without thinking twice. A woman of color, in a country that has not been kind to either, doesn't factor. Played by Zoe Saladana, I forget it's a TV show.
Suzanne Bronson Zoe Saldana’s is a strong character and a joy to watch but I think the plot’s a thinner than could be. Highly watchable though.
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I must be missing something. I watched the first few episodes of the first season and walked away. There's no f***ing way Command would put women on the ground in such a vulnerable, forward position. As air support (helicopters), sure but, to me. the entire premise was wishful, woke thinking. Am I wrong? I'm willing to have my mind changed.
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Michael Alan Elliott i think you’re talking about lioness. In which case I get your point.
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David Taylor....yes, I was referencing to "Lioness". I'm a Taylor Sheridan fan and I was disappointed he would concoct such dramatic, anti-authentic gruel. It's beneath him. If I were manning a forward outpost, listening station, operations center (and I have in a previous life) and my back-ups were female, I'd conclude my superiors were willing to sacrifice us for some unspoken reason.
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She isn't backup. She is a spy. She is THE LIONNESS. The others are Joe's backup. We have females spies. I find this thread to be insulting. I applaud Taylor Sheridan for giving Zoe Saladana such a strong complex character and showing that woman can be action heros. It does not escape me that the only people complaining about the show are MEN. As if a strong capable complex female characters somehow lessens the men around them. The sexism here is gross. I'm out.
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Gee....sorry to have an opinion. To quote Groucho Marx....don't go away mad, just go away.
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David Taylor I share your appreciation for Furious. It’s rare to see a female-driven crime drama that avoids trauma-as-spectacle and keeps the moral tension clean and sharp.
Recent landmarks for me:
The Queen’s Gambit: pure character propulsion without excess plot machinery.
Succession: structural discipline and zero interest in making its characters likeable.
Shōgun: cultural specificity and trust in silence and subtext.
All three know exactly what story they’re telling and refuse to dilute it.
What do you think separates a very good drama from a true landmark?
Dorothy Betty thanks for the detailed views. I share succession - but it is masoginistic struggle but brilliance. Shogun amazing but the Richard Chaimberlain version was softer.
Excuse the spelling, my keyboard is malfunctioning and autocorrect is going nuts.
Drama: Fania Fenelone survived auwschwitz as a singer and musician. I love that woman and carried her book around for years. The play by Arthur Miller and the subsequent movie ‘Playing for Time’ starring Venessa Redgrave - to me were both appalling. I do not rate Miller and a ten foot tall woman does not reflect a five foot tall songbird equivalent of Edith Piav. They failed to capture the true femininity fortitude and resolve of Fania which made her horror story exponentially more appauling and hence dramatic. I blame men for that mistake in production in what should have been a movie more iconic than Schindlers list as a woman’s drama piece. Where is a Sophia Coppola when you need her - or a Jessica Chastain to direct it? The answer is, both were children or did not exist at the time.
Schindlers list was about men, made by men, for men. And for the whole world and became iconic - quite rightly.
If you have the phone numbers of Coppola and Chastain, call them up - Fania Fenelone is waiting for them. I would kill to write that screenplay. REAL WOMANS DRAMA. I used it in one of mine about a modern woman who travels back in time to meet her. It did not sell because it was not, at that time, good enough. I was actually told : “We love your script but after Schindler nobody will make a holicaust movie any more”.
PLAYING FOR TIME by Fania Fenelone (Out of print).
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Shoo. Loaded comment section.
Having a soldier for offspring, I'll just point out that women currently serve in combat roles in the U.S. military.
Whatever we think of the show's accuracy in a particular operation, the presence of women in dangerous forward positions isn't inherently implausible.
The military has plenty of criteria for deciding who does what. Possession of ovaries versus dangly bits isn't, by itself, the disqualifier it once was. Nor should it be. Good is good whether you've got your ovaries snuggled in tight or bits dangling like Stallone in Cliffhanger.
Exceptional work speaks for itself.
Now, whether Lioness gets the actual operational details right is a much more interesting question. That's what I'd like to know.
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Michael Alan Elliott We - writers - all operate in the zone of ‘the suspension of disbelief’ - a prerequisite for most enjoyment or appreciation of drama and an important aspect for writers. Consider the audience. Superman cannot fly, Willy Wonka is a pedophilia story, Mary Poppins was probably a drug addict and some bastard shot Bambi’s mother. But we love these stories. Staying inside the suspension of disbelief is where it’s at - not for you - but for your audience.
Elle Bolan good question. It doesn’t get them right enough. It’s silly redneck stuff transfixed possibly from a trailer park who arrived to save your ass???? Don’t think so.
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David Taylor ....good point about the willing suspension of disbelief but my combat belief is tempered by my experiences in Vietnam plus shows like "Homeland" and the movie "Zero Dark Thirty" . In the movie, Jessica Chastain was totally believable as the CIA field operator. However, she didn't get on the helicopters with the Delta Force to kill Ben Ladin. There's a guy on here, last name I believe is Green, who writes from his combat experiences in Afghanistan. If he said "yeah" the premise of Lioness is believable then I bow to his experience. Otherwise, let me enjoy my misogyny and STFU.
Elle Bolan : I admit I'm 78 year old dinosaur from a different time and era. However, I do mingle with more recent vets at places like the American Legion. In fact, my insurance agent was a Marine captain and company commander during the 2nd Battle of Fallujah and when they were kicking in doors, hunting for the Taliban, I'll have to ask him if there were women leading the charge. I doubt it because he would have mentioned it during the many conversations we've had about war and its consequences.
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Michael, I understand. Things have changed quite a lot in just a few decades.
My son is a combat vet who exited active duty two years ago. So I'm not just talking out of my ass to hear my head rattle. His last tour was in the Middle East, and his commanding officer in Jordan was a woman during the Israel-Hamas war in 2023. A bit more recent than Fallujah in 2004. 20 years is quite a long time for things to change.
I know that those who have served in the military in previous decades may struggle to suspend that disbelief due to their personal experiences. That's natural and it's okay that it's a stretch for you. I get that. But honestly, things are different now.
DoD rescinded the direct-ground-combat exclusion policy in 2013, and in December 2015 Defense Secretary Ash Carter ordered all remaining military occupations and positions opened to qualified women, without exception, explicitly including leading infantry soldiers into combat, Rangers, Green Berets, Marine infantry, etc. Full implementation began in 2016.
There have been further shifts in even more recent years. The way the military did things in 2004 looks vastly different than the way it looks today.
A woman in leadership is entirely plausible.
The operations still being off, characterization being overly stereotypical .. those are story problems. Whether the lead is a woman or not.
I admit that I haven't watched the show. I've been considering it for a binge weekend watch.
Maybe I'll do that this weekend.
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Elle Bolan . Kudos to your son. Big difference between Vietnam and recent history was when I returned at the end of 1969, I hid who I was and where I had been. Guys like me were riveled. No "thank you for your service". I remember being at a local Legion hall near the end of Operation Desert Storm. An attractive woman bought me a drink. I was so surprised, I thanked her profusely. This surprised the young Army noncom next to me. "Didn't women buy your drinks when you returned?" My answer, "If they did, it was to throw it in my face." Yeah. It's different now.
Hey, @ashleyreneesmith, maybe you can tell me why someone would get their account suspended for expressing their feelings about Stage 32's pitch sessions?
Annabel Leigh welcome to Stage 32! I'm glad to answer this, though I want to ask that we take it out of this thread afterward.
To be clear: no member is ever removed for sharing an opinion. We welcome thoughts, opinions, and concerns about anything we do, including our services, as long as they're shared professionally, respectfully, and in the right space. Disagreement isn't a problem here. It never has been.
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I won't discuss the details of any individual member's account publicly, and I'd extend that same courtesy to you. But I can tell you plainly that removal never follows from someone simply sharing how they feel.
If you have further questions, please bring them to me directly at Community@Stage32.com. My inbox is genuinely always open to members of this community.
On placement: this thread is about female-led drama and this question is off topic, so any further discussion of it here will be removed. Not to shut you down, but because the member who started this conversation deserves to have it be about what they asked.