But then it's hard to imagine the current boom in procedural crime dramas without the cellphone.
Both works are painterly, but more than that, they are dramas without texts.
He'd had numerous appearances in credible dramas without landing that killer part.
CBS is setting up another tough choice by scheduling one of its strongest new dramas, "Without a Trace," against "E.R".
These shows overflow with torture of a sadistic intensity that seems to have leached in from dark cable dramas, without any of those shows' comparative moral seriousness.
Daniel Barnz, the director and a writer of "Won't Back Down," said he had wanted to recreate the thrill of past action-inspiring social dramas without being snared in partisan debate.
While both "The Capables" and "Good Television" use their invasive TV crews as an entry point to infiltrate dysfunctional families that could easily have supported their own dramas without the cameras, "Nobody Loves You" takes a more lighthearted approach.
"I beg now that his poetry can illuminate, with the agony and uncertainty of every poem, this Brazil of ours, where the political stage produces such vulgar dramas without any embarrassment," Mr. DaMatta wrote in a subsequent column.
