…but it is often hilarious.

Seriously folks, we really shouldn’t be filled with so my angst and woe. Every pundit, politician and activist seems to be carrying around the same sign- sure it sells their books, gets them voted into office and makes them feel like they’re saving the world… but they are wrong.

We need to stop every once and a while and remind ourselves that never in human history has humanity had it better than we do now and despite the way over-hyped but news selling negatives, our succeeding generation has a strong probability of living in an even better world.

The world we wring our hands over today would seem pretty fantastic to time travellers from fifty years ago, amazing to those from a hundred years ago and an unimaginable utopia to visitors from 150 years ago… as long as they actually looked around rather than read all the doom and gloom.

Sure there are still great wrongs in need of righting and there are real dangers to be faced- but I truly wish that, every once in a while, folks would revel in the positive rather than wallow in the negative.

In pursuit of that, I’ve written a pilot on spec that is set in the current civilian space race where, instead of building the spine of the show around stopping a looming negative, I set them a magnificent positive goal and then let the villains get in the way.

It will be a tougher sell to the executive suite than one wrapped in the status quo narrative of setting them up as being on a desperate mission to save a dying earth.

BUT I also think that there is a massive, pent up need for a show like this. I look around at the slate of dramas and I see nothing but show after show that are constructed entirely around the negative. The goals are to stop something bad from happening… and that is it.

Stop the bomb from going off, stop the serial killer, stop the Hellmouth from opening, stop the disease from killing the patient, stop the aliens from taking over the earth, stop the terrorist from assassinating the president, stop the devil from bringing on Armageddon, stop the smoke monster from tricking someone into pulling the island’s butt plug – it seems that the only pro-active people out there are the villains.

I’m not saying that those shows are not great; how desolate would the dial have been without Jack, Buffy and the Winchester boys? I’m just saying that it would be nice for once to have the villains playing catch-up.

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