Oh, schnikies...This past week YesButNoButYes.com pointed out to me that This American Life is all set to become a television show in the spring.
This should be big news around my household, especially since the girl is very much into This American Life on NPR. I've got my iTunes - 'bout five thousand songs, probably five hundred of which I play in pretty high rotation whenever the computer's on and YouTube isn't up. She, though, heads over to The American Life's website just about any chance she gets and works through their archives listening to the weirdest, most akward stories of normal people doing only slightly normal things that she can dredge up.
My first listens to the show left me feeling weirdly detached, throroughly enthralled by the stories being told but not having even the slightest idea why I had been sucked in so quickly and deeply. Rarely does This American Life present anyone truly outstanding or remarkable. Instead, host Ira Glass's deadpan, dry as Death Valley delivery simply frames thoroughly average folks telling their entirely abnormal - not fantastic, rather just oddly compelling - tales of their lives.
A typical show consists of three stories, each roughly twenty minutes long and connected by a thematic thread that never quite develops in any way that I could have imagined or guessed but that, by the end of the show, have me (and the girl, of course) thoroughly mesmerized.
And I have no idea how those quirky stories are going to translate to the small screen. Often such stories on television end up showing their subjects more as pathetic figures, something that the radio series has always steered well clear of doing. In all honesty, I doubt that I'll ever have to worry about how the televsion show turns out (the whole no cable thing, doncha know), but as long as the radio series doesn't suffer, the folks can do just about anything they want, I guess.
If you happen to have cable, make sure to tune in to This American Life over on Showtime coming within the next month. In the meantime, check the trailers:
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