Legion and Westworld prove extreme creative freedom is worth the risk The season two premiere of Legion, which returned to UK screens this week, boasts such wonders as an enigmatic leader […]

The season two premiere of Legion, which returned to UK screens this week, boasts such wonders as an enigmatic leader who wears a basket on their head, a slick dance-off in a psychic nightclub, and a nightmare game of Pictionary in which the main character attempts to decipher mysteriously drawn clues in an inky void.

In the hands of Noah Hawley – the man who also gave us random UFO appearances in Fargo – what could have been just-another-superhero-show has evolved its own unique, dazzling and deliberately baffling style.

Watching Legion, you’re forced to remind yourself that this refreshing and invigorating box of madness is based on an X-Men property, and produced by a major US cable network. But this is not an isolated case.

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Westworld is also back this week with an audacious, wildly unrestrained second season that expands its initial premise with gleeful, sometimes ludicrous aplomb.

Even several years ago, it would be hard to imagine HBO – who cut down Rome and Deadwood in their prime – letting creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy get away with this kind of budget-shattering, indulgent hi-jinks.

But they are. And there’s no indication this kind of creative freedom is going away anytime soon.

Twin Peaks: The Return – and ‘high-grade Lynch’

The likes of Breaking Bad’s Vince Gilligan is proof that allowing talented creatives to forge their own distinctive brand of drama can result in both critical acclaim and commercial success.

Because of this, networks and studios have become far more likely to put confidence in the ability of showrunners who have a solid track record, with fewer and fewer constraints.

It is amid this liberating climate that surrealist auteur David Lynch felt comfortable enough to return to the realm of television – long after he had been burned the first time around.

The result was last year’s extraordinary third season of Twin Peaks, which gave us arguably the most astonishingly weird episode of mainstream TV ever made in ‘Gotta Light?’.

As i reviewer Nick Mitchell noted at the time: “We now seem to be in the kind of uncharted territory that Showtime CEO David Nevins referred to as ‘the pure heroin version of David Lynch’ in his description of The Return.

“If ‘Lynchian’ has become journalistic shorthand for the juxtaposition of the macabre and the mundane, with a dose of surrealism mainlined in, then this was certainly high-grade Lynch.”

Not the end of the (F-ing) world

Some British shows have also been given licence to indulge in unrestrained creative endeavour.

Tom Hardy’s BBC/FX co-production Taboo, created in collaboration with his father Chips and Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight, combined voodoo visions, wince-inducingly brutal violence, ominous grunting and Mark Gatiss in a grotesque fat suit last year.

Recent sleeper hit The End Of The F-ing World, which debuted on Channel 4 before becoming a huge pop culture sensation overseas via Netflix, concerned two unhappy teenagers embarking on an increasingly erratic and violent road trip, against the backdrop of a Britain strangely soaked in Americana (from its Hollywood diners to the copious film references).

Thanks to its offbeat tone and Graham Coxon’s original music (not to mention the eclectic alternative songs on the soundtrack) it had a distinctive feel and atmosphere akin to another Channel 4 cult oddity, Utopia.

That show was sadly cancelled back in 2014. You doubt the same would happen now.

The rise of arthouse TV

Audiences have become somewhat bored of the same old crime shows and thrillers-by-numbers.

Many viewers now want something surprising. Something shocking. Something different.

Shows like Legion are not for everybody. And there are plenty who would flee from the merest hint of Twin Peaks.

But more and more high-profile dramas, on mainstream TV channels with primetime broadcasts, are indulging in thoroughly unconventional and ‘out-there’ aspects. And being permitted to do so by network bosses.

We live in an age where Lynch can produce some of his most mind-boggling but rewarding work yet for the small screen, and popular shows are introducing outlandish ‘arthouse’ elements.

Major TV shows have never been more ambitious. More creative. More gleefully weird.

The fact that a show like Legion has the confidence to do its own demented thing, and not worry about risk-averse executives breathing down its neck, is cause for celebration.

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