Famous Playwrights And TV Counterparts: If Oscar Wilde Wrote 'Mad Men,' And Other Pairings (SLIDESHOW)

You know it's real when people keep writing eulogies for it: we're in a golden age of TV, everyone. Today's scripted shows are stylish, smart and occasionally revolutionary, a runoff effect from structural and aesthetic game-changers like "Louie," "Mad Men," and yes, "The Sopranos." We at HuffPost Culture can't shake the thought that the medium has become a lot like what theater has historically been -- a destination for a range of people looking to be entertained without fail.

Then there's playwright David Adjmi's "3C," in which "Three's Company" is re-imagined as if Anton Chekhov wrote it. Taken with the oddness of Adjmi's couple, we realized how many of today's shows actually hit heights that a Russian literary genius might not mind substitute navigating for a bit. A show like "The Wire," for instance, might not yield as rich a thought experiment as Adjmi's "3C," but it has playwright takeover written all over it. Inspired by the possibilities, we put together our own list of shows we'd love to see scripted by a specific great. Let us know what you think of our pairings in the comments, and don't hesitate to tell us your own.

• Oscar Wilde/Mad Men

  The glamour, the banter, the covert homosexuality -- there's a lot in common between AMC's prettiest show and the works of Oscar Wilde, a playwright who liked pretty things. Wilde was famously an advocate of aestheticism, inscribing his seminal novel "The Portrait Of Dorian Grey" with the statement: "All art is quite useless," <a href="http://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-1/duggan/" target="_hplink">a dramatic way of saying</a> that what's compelling to look at needn't serve any useful purpose. If that isn't a defense of the advertising industry, we don't know what is. Then there's the overt link: Don Draper fled his hometown of Bunbury for a new life, a <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/feb/24/mad-men-account/?pagination=false" target="_hplink">nod to the code word</a> Wilde's male leads coin in "The Important Of Being Earnest" to reference their duplicity.

• Wendy Wasserstein/Girls

  Read the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/theater/31wasserstein.html?_r=2" target="_hplink"><em>New York Times</em> obituary for Wendy Wasserstein</a> -- a playwright born to wealthy parents in Brooklyn -- and just try not to think of that other child of privilege from the Big Apple, Lena Dunham. From the article's headline ("Her Plays Spoke To A Generation") to the description of Wasserstein's heroines ("intelligent and successful but also riddled with self-doubt"), it all sounds like one of those <a href="http://nymag.com/arts/tv/features/girls-lena-dunham-2012-4/" target="_hplink">early bright-eyed "Girls" paeans</a>. Ok, Dunham's "Girls" persona isn't exactly successful yet, but considering how <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/05/07/152183865/lena-dunham-addresses-criticism-aimed-at-girls" target="_hplink">close to home the show's sourcing starts</a> we're pretty sure it'll happen for Hannah soon.

• Mary Chase/Wilfred

  Mary Chase wrote "Harvey," a Pultizer-winning play (turned 1950 Jimmy Stewart film) about an eccentric man whose best friend is a six foot tall imaginary bunny. In FX's "Wilfred," Elijah Wood plays a depressive who can't shake the vision that his neighbor's dog is an Australian dude in a dog suit. This playwright/TV connection may be only fur-deep, but you can't deny it.

• Tom Stoppard/Arrested Development

  A self-described "<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/stoppard_transcript.shtml" target="_hplink">language nerd</a>," Czech-born British playwright Tom Stoppard is known for his dense and clever thought experiments, exemplified in his career-making recast of two minor "Hamlet" characters as leads in "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." We'd have no trouble imagining him penning the fast-paced wordplay of "Arrested Development," a show that revels in knotty, knotty plots (absurdist Charlize Theron era strikes us as just right).

• Shakespeare/Modern Family

  We know it's inviting criticism to pair Shakespeare with any modern creation, except maybe the only show people get really poetic about, "The Wire." But hear us out: Shakespeare was one of the most popular entertainers of his time. "Modern Family" sets the bar for widely appealing fare these days, and while it's got nothing on a Shakespearean tragedy, its multi-predicament-into-happy-ending formula makes it ABC's half-hour weekly update of "A Comedy Of Errors."

• Tennessee Williams/Six Feet Under

  Tennessee Williams loved his dysfunctional families -- take the household in "The Glass Menagerie," where the places of honor are reserved for an absentee father and a collection of glass figurines. Meanwhile, HBO's long-running series "Six Feet Under" is nothing if not proof that family dysfunction makes for great TV. We have no doubt Williams' Southern gothic tastes would gel with the show's funeral home backdrop, except maybe he'd move the Fishers down a few states.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/29/famous-playwrights-tv-shows_n_1636830.html

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