Not usually in the business of advertising for my friends on this blog, but “Battleground” is both a pretty good show (the bit with the volunteer speaking in the King’s English in the pilot is priceless) and politically themed, so I figure I can get away with it. Full disclosure: a former college roommate of mine (Jordan T. Maxwell, the “senior adviser”) is a member of the main cast. He’s considerably less obnoxious in real life.
Anyway, the show follows the (fictitious) Senate Democratic primary campaign in Wisconsin of a distant 3rd place candidate attempting to upset a dottering incumbent. As a former campaigner, it’s pretty spot on about the feel of a campaign: characters, locations, relationships. And the look of campaign offices. All campaign offices have a similar feel: borrowed, third-hand desks, a couple dozen phones, cheap cubicle barriers if you’re lucky, industrial “eggshell” walls, mismatched carpet, strip-mall location, etc. They got the sets down. Sorry, not to harp on the sets, they just made me a little nostalgic.
The story and the characters are good too. I’ve only seen the pilot and 2nd episode (there have only been two so far), but the jokes are pretty good (seriously, the King’s English bit is funny, although the “pseduo-documentary” style is a little overdone, but that’s just nitpicking), and the characters are all the right age (i.e. extremely young). I’m eager to see where they go with this, past the primary and the campaign I mean. It’s nice to have shows set in the world of politics, particularly when they come at least somewhere close to the mark. Now, we just need a show focused around political science professors (or grad students, but that’s probably stretching it).