Books
The Spaces of TV Series
After a catchy tune, the screen fades to black and on comes a familiar scene: Carrie writing her column by the window, Michael sipping coffee at a desk full of trinkets, Homer on his couch watching TV… All series build make-believe worlds with recurring motifs to glue a carrousel of situations that can last seasons. It is thanks to the writing that we fall in love with characters of fragmented narratives, but no less to the sets. Extras now pushed to ‘front screen’ by Iñaki Aliste Lizarralde.
This Basque whiz of the boob tube has drawn sixty floorplans of thirty-five television series, classics of yesterday and today. Any fan artist could do it, but Aliste, for whom this was a private pastime til it took the social networks by storm, does not just depict the sets of his favorite programs as they show on screen. The clinchers are his experience in interior decor, his eye for measuring rooms on the basis of small details after hours of obsessive viewing, and his spatial intuition for resolving countless loose ends plausibly.
Spiced up with illustrations of main gags and with enjoyable texts by filmmaker Neal E. Fischer, the drawings tantalize with their pencil shadings. Where aficionados can relive unforgettable scenes, those less devoted to televised episodic fiction will at least see houses of the American way of life, as most are taken from US sitcoms. One wonders if living rooms can be like ballrooms, or if Dr. Crane, Prof. Geller, or architect Mosby could in truth afford them. But outside these spaces their lives would not have gotten us so hooked. Roll credits.
