ABSTRACT
In its fall 2003 season, HBO ran a 10-part series, K Street, on the world of Washington lobbying and political consultancy. It attracted relatively small audience figures, and plans for a further series were shelved.1 The program’s supporters claimed that K Street was: “as close to the truth of politics as anyone gets” (Taubin, 2003: n.p.); “the most stylistically innovative series to air on American TV since HBO’s ‘The Larry Sanders Show’ or maybe ABC’s ‘Twin Peaks’ . . . It represents an evolutionary advance in TV drama” (Seitz, 2003: n.p.); and “a shrewd, experimental, mind-bending TV drama” (Rosenthal, 2003: 39). For its critics, though, K Street represented an interesting experiment, but: “does not make for especially good TV” (Genauer, 2003a: 21); “the fact-and-faux style can be problematic as well as innovative” (Abramson, 2003: 8); and “while K Street may not constitute anything that Peter Jennings would call ‘news’, it does share one key quality with it: sometimes-especially when real politicians are in it-it’s boring” (Hagan, 2003: 1).
