Steve McQueen slams the current state of TV: "There’s more of it, but less quality"

Indiewire

 “I’m not so keen on TV.” says the director of the Best Picture Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, who is releasing his new film Widows, an adaptation of a 1980s British TV series, next month. Shortly after his Oscar victory in 2014, McQueen dabbled in TV, filming an HBO pilot for Codes of Conduct, a limited series that was ultimately scrapped. “I think basically I got into bed with (HBO) just at that turning point — just before the turning point because I was with them, and then things started to shift,” he said. “When I was with HBO, Netflix wasn’t Netflix then.” Now, he says, TV has become an arms race to create more content. “TV had its moment," McQueen tells Indiewire "It’s fodder now, isn’t it? It’s fodder. There was a moment in the ’90s or early 2000s when it was amazing. And now it’s just, ‘Get stuff done. We need stuff.’ I don’t know what’s happening now, but obviously the quality has gone down a little bit. There’s more of it, but less quality.” As an example, he pointed to Breaking Bad, which he found amazing, but he says it has led to the "rip-off" Ozark. "It’s unfortunate, right now, there’s so much money, and so little ideas," he says. "The problem is when you have no money, you’ve got to think.” McQueen adds: "Writing is one thing, (but) I don’t think TV does what cinema can do. I just don’t think that that’s possible. This is not to sort of say one is better than the other, but I know what I prefer. I prefer cinema."