Ever Decreasing Circles (Christmas special)
The loudest laugh you’ll ever hear in a BBC sitcom turns up in this, when Richard Briers wakes up on Boxing Day to discover lying next to him in bed is … Well, you can guess. It’s a hysterical, touching, slightly surreal and avowedly inspiring episode that avoids all cloying sentimentality and goes instead for clumsy, authentic emotion.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (“The Blue Carbuncle”)
A shameless bit of Granada period festive finery, but what’s not to like? Holmes and Watson spend the best part of an hour schlepping round London on Christmas Eve on the trail of an elusive goose, encountering shysters, tinkers, vagabonds, washerwomen and rozzers aplenty. Everywhere and everyone is decked out in seasonal splendour and suffused with yuletide spirits, even, yes even, Holmes himself. The moment when they discover the location of the titular gem is simply fantastic.

Yes, Minister (“Party Games”)
“Mrs Hacker left these for you to sign: your personal Christmas cards. But it won’t take long. Only eleven hundred and seventy-two.” The story of a shady lady from Argentina, drunken pratfalls, a Prime Ministerial resignation, butter mountains, wine lakes and the Emulsified High-Fat Offal Tube. And, ultimately, the sight of Paul Eddington getting to become Prime Minister: the perfect Christmas present you could wish for in any year.

Curb Your Enthusiasm (“Mary, Joseph and Larry”)
This is an especially great episode because Larry starts off by going out of his way to do good – putting up with his in-laws, distributing generous tips at the golf club – and yet can’t help but contrive to be his own worst enemy, accidentally eating a batch of cookies depicting the nativity because he thought Jesus “looked like a monkey”. Hiring a local performance troupe to hastily restage a crib scene in his driveway, more trouble ensues when he tries to get the bloke playing Joseph to agree that “the woman playing Mary is hot”. Still, at least the ensuing tussle dislodges the pubic hair stuck in Larry’s throat.

The West Wing (“In Excelsis Deo”)
I’m going to say this is the best of the lot. The 48 hours before Christmas Day are filled, variously, with the President popping out to a second-hand bookshop, his secretary revealing it’s the anniversary of her sons’ deaths in Vietnam, his press secretary flirtatiously jousting with a reporter, two of his senior staff laying their careers on the line for his chief of staff, and his communications director taking it upon himself to arrange a full military funeral for a homeless Korean War veteran. It sounds a jumbled, disjointed mess, but it’s the complete opposite, embracing every cliche and convention of “the Christmas episode” then turning them all on their head. There’s rarely been a more shiningly sincere example of festive television.

Appropriately enough, that’s thanks to the power of the internet, and a certain file-sharing site, which has currently got the first two episodes available for download.

I’m not a whole-hearted Sorkin convert, although I will get round to watching series four of The West Wing sometime between now and Christmas 2007, I promise. And yet I have become quite enthused by Studio 60. Granted, a lot about it feels familar. Episode two kicks off with the newly-appointed, straight-talkin’ network boss fire-fighting criticism at a press conference, while her colleagues watch on muttering, “She’s good”. Later, himoff Friends leads a brain-storming session as the gang try to come up with a suitably spectacular opening sketch for his debut show (er, I’m going to assume you know what Studio 60 is, Matthew Perry’s role, who Josh is playing and – well – everything. If not, look at this) and, gradually, ideas coalesce and form together, triumphantly proving how clever everyone is. It’s just that Martin Sheen’s not there to amble in at the end and say so.

In this instance, the bravura moment is instead a musical number, parodying The Major General’s Song from The Pirates of Penzance, from which that “intellectual reach-around” comes from.

But, I like it. The show does enough to get you onside and warming to the characters so you’re rooting for them to succeed – to be funny – despite the fact it’s Sorkin’s own script that declares if they are or not (with critics, penned by the writer, penning criticism of the fictional Studio 60 revue show … penned by the writer). As such, it’s less of a reach-around, and something more masturbatory.

Oh. How did I end up saying that?

“Don’t worry, you’re good. This is a good blog entry.”

Great. 

So, you see how that works? 

Anyway, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is good. It’s funny. It’s complicated, it’s warm and – best of all – it’s all about making a TV show. And I love show’s about shows.

It’s always tempting, when a long-running TV show that’s not as good as it once was, lumbers into the finishing straight amidst a flurry of eulogies and reminiscences, to stop fighting and just give in. To overlook the faults and the flaws. To selflessly forgive and hastily forget. To submerge yourself in a warm reverential bath of: remember this? Remember that? And what on earth – ho ho – was that all about? Then switch off as the final credits roll and sigh to yourself: well, it was never really that bad.

Admittedly most shows make it easy. Whatever dross and nonsense has gone before, more often than not things somehow tend to come together for a last, definitive hurrah; one that rustles up wisps and traces of everything that was damn great about a show, as if to reassure you: look, we’ve still got it! We never completely lost it! Such a theory holds good for everything from One Foot in the Grave to Frasier to Upstairs, Downstairs to Press Gang, while for others a snap resolution of an epic, unwinding back story musters enough closure by force alone – see any number of “Didn’t you know, the war’s over?!” endeavours from Colditz and M*A*S*H to ‘Allo, ‘Allo.

But there are some shows that wilfully, frustratingly, despairingly, seem to go out of their way to remind you, even in their last dying moments, that yes, it really was that bad. In fact, it was dreadful. And as for all the stuff that was so utterly joyously thrilling about when the show first started? No, we won’t be bothering with any of that. Well OK, we’ll get a much-loved character from those halcyon early days to make a brief cameo, but then give him only one line of any note, and make it a really crap throwaway one at that.

“Home sweet home,” murmured Rob Lowe, stepping over the threshold of the White House for the first time in four years. No it wasn’t. This was a totally different home to the one from which his character, Sam Seaborn, once fled in haste and precognitive panic. Everything was different. The mood, the chatter, the personalities, even the once-famous, once-ubiquitous camera tracking shots: all long gone. And didn’t this final episode of The West Wing go out of its way to remind you as much.

For this, sadly, was no heroes’ send off, more a kind of poorly-attended garden party-cum-church fete. Nothing shocking or dramatic happened. Not even everyone bothered to show up. And a jaded air of simply going through the motions ran right from the opening moments (President Bartlet being counselled by his wife that he had, indeed, done a good job) through the endless sequences of people exchanging mawkish goodbyes, all the way to the closing moments with the President gazing out of an aeroplane window and being asked by his wife what he was thinking about. His baked-bean-of-an-ending reply: “Tomorrow”.

If The West Wing were still the show it used to be, Bartlet would have muttered something incorrigibly enigmatic (“I’m thinking of what they’ll be thinking of me”), or pithy (“I’m thinking of how much time I’m now gonna have for thinking”), or acutely confessional (“I’m thinking … I could have done more”). Instead his epilogue was as hollow and contrived as, funnily enough, much of the entire last series turned out to be. Even at its moment of demise The West Wing couldn’t help but be tiresomely predictable.

For a show that had once not merely conceived of but made a thrilling virtue out of the idea of treating a suite of offices as a de facto racetrack, both dialogue and visuals careering round corridors, up and down staircases, even – for a time – in and out of boiler cupboards, it was depressingly astonishing to realise how little of such genius invention survived through to the final episode.

In fact, this might well have been the most boring installment of The West Wing ever. For much of the time the experience was akin to watching a politely-staged, everso-earnest documentary on the procedures behind the appointment of a new US President, such was the absence of, well, anything much in the way of pace, imagination, and even a decent plot.

It might have been a use of dramatic cliché to see Bartlet’s last day in office derailed by some last minute revelation or startling denouement, but that’s surely missing the point. Decent drama should, by definition and duty, amplify the ordinary into the extraordinary, decorate the mundane with the magisterial, and enhance our appreciation of the everyday through carefully stylised touches of the preposterous.

And this was what The West Wing used to do, and do with unashamed aplomb, when it first began. Yet all such methodology evaporated, as already catalogued on OTT, somewhere into the fifth year of the series, when creator Aaron Sorkin was fired and ER‘s John Wells turned proceedings into his own personal exhibition hall of recycled emotional hokum.

Wells penned this last episode himself, and it showed. Here was all his trademark clunking dialogue, the inane expressions of belief dressed up to pass off as historic soundbites, the ponderous heavy-handed attempts at character nuance, the terrible feeling of the whole thing being obsessed with itself and its own supposed brilliance. Wells also deserves special mention for, over time, so mercilessly stripping bare all layers of credibility in which the cast were once cloaked that, as they stepped out of the White House for good, it was almost impossible not to care about a single one of them.

Once, it was all so different. Once The West Wing crackled with a unique energy and compassion. Once it was a place you couldn’t wait to return to, week after week. Once it was peopled with exhaustively-shaped, plausibly-flawed characters you couldn’t wait to learn more about. Once it was something that pulled off the magic formula of being able to both educate and entertain simultaneously, with neither subtracting integrity from the other.

But that was long ago. It was another country, and they did things different there. Less than 24 hours after airing the finale, More4 broadcast The West Wing pilot. The gulf between both episodes in vitality, exhilaration, wit and fun was as wide as the Atlantic. Still, as with the ocean itself, there are and always will be a choice of two sides upon which to fix your flag. And for as long as those early, exemplary, breathtaking episodes of The West Wing are in existence, the choice, fortunately, should be obvious.

It happened in the pre-credits sequence, when the camera slowly pulled back to reveal that the back of the head we’d seen in shot was actually that of none other than Rob Lowe, not seen in the series for almost four years. He turned round, muttered one line, then bang: into the titles. Wow.

Of course Lowe has only returned to The West Wing because the show is about to end for good, and was shamelessly coaxed back to give the thing something resembling a bit of dignity in its desperate dying moments. Yet even though he was only in a few scenes, it worked. Suddenly the whole programme felt far more substantial, robust, earthy. The West Wing had credibility again. It didn’t have a load of people acting out of character, alternately shouting at and sleeping with each other. Well, it did, but they weren’t the only ones in it.

Three episodes remain. Will the show exploit the goodwill of its former star and serve up a trio of memorably above average escapades? It’s rare to be in at end of a long-running American drama series, even more of a thrill when you were also in at the start. Even so, The West Wing‘s departure is worth watching whether or not you ever followed the show in depth. Once it’s gone, Radio Times for one will have to find another series to continually print spoilers about.

Firstly, anyone who has already bailed out on this series: shame on you. OK, so it’s no longer as sharp and nuanced as when Aaron Sorkin was penning every episode but, for all the changes and influx of new characters, The West Wing remains compulsively top notch.

We’re in season seven now. Who thought we’d all live so long? The annoying Mandy is a distant memory. CJ is now chief of staff. Leo is running for the VP’s job. Toby is facing jail for blabbing on matters of national security. Josh is a presidential campaign manager. Charlie has grown a beard.

If all this seems preposterous, consider the pace of change in politics itself. For instance, one minute you’re deputy prime minister with a huge department and salary, the next you’re deputy prime minister with a huge salary.

Season seven, to be the last, follows the campaign to replace President Bartlet, still played with great wit and humanity by Martin Sheen, though his appearances are all too infrequent.

The sides are clearly defined. For the Democrats, Matthew Santos, portrayed with Clintonesque zeal by Jimmy Smits; for the Republicans, Arnie Vinnick, as played by the always impressive Alan Alda. The show’s producers took the idea of a rivalry so seriously they staged a live debate between the two characters, not their best idea, it has to be said.

The West Wing has always been a left-leaning liberal utopian wet dream of what politics and public service would be like if the good guys and gals were in charge. Thus, the Democrats are who we are invited to cheer for. Even so, the often venal nature of political campaigning is laid bare: the stunts, the spin, the endless polling.

This week’s episode was poignant as its main story focused on Leo McGarry, the former White House chief of staff, struggling in prep for the VP debate. Leo, an ever present since the pilot, was played by John Spencer, who died last year.

He was a fine actor and a key component on the show’s success, portraying a character with fierce talent, strong belief and deep flaws, evidenced through addictions to alcohol and pills.

The other side of season seven is the last days of the Bartlet administration. There can never be enough CJ Cregg on screen, but there is less in this run than the previous six. Instead, the dreary, smug Will Bailey’s romance with the foxy national security advisor is allowed to take up too much time.

This is why many have turned their backs on The West Wing. If the show’s executive producer were a football manager they could be accused of playing their team out of position. The dignified, loyal Toby is revealed to be a snitch, albeit one who leaked for high moral reasons. Donna, the delightfully kooky assistant to Josh seems colder now, more political and less likeable as a result. Leo, who commanded total respect and had complete control when he was chief of staff, is at times out of his depth as running mate to Santos.

And yet, and yet … this is season seven. That means that by the end of the run there will have been 155 episodes. How many other drama series have lasted so long without having to evolve and adapt?

When Sorkin left, the quality dipped. Season five was the low point, but the race for the Democratic nomination in six re-energised the show and the presidential campaign is a logical way to end the Bartlet years.

This was a series that captured political life with humour, style and honesty. It debated the big issues and examined the tough choices those in power are faced with. It was a world away from the likes of Commander-in-Chief, the latest Washington drama to hit our shores (if abc1 counts).

And so The West Wing recedes into television history. We’ve been through it all with them on the roller coaster ride through the corridors of power; the shooting, the MS revelations, Zoe’s kidnapping, the removal and reinstatement of the president, Donna getting blown up, Sam leaving, Mrs Landingham’s death and CJ doing the Jackal.

We’ll miss them when they’ve gone.

What’s next?

The penultimate series had blown the whole format apart, ditching what was left of the original structure of carefully plotted self-contained episodes exploring weighty matters of state for an increasingly preposterous sequence of melodramas involving, among other things, yet another Middle East war, someone bringing a blob of plutonium into the White House, Martin Sheen lying on the bathroom floor unable to move his legs, and an asteroid threatening to collide with the Earth.

The thing jumped the shark so many times it got boring reserving a space on the beach. Nobody behaved how they should. Long-established character profiles were ripped to shreds. People who’d spent five series being the closest of friends now had bare-knuckle fights with each other. The press secretary, someone whose career prior to politics had been plugging Hollywood movies, was made Chief of Staff. Alan Alda turned up as a Republican candidate to pontificate like he used to do every week in M*A*S*H. And right at the very very end, Leo McGarry, who’d had two heart attacks in the woods a dozen episodes earlier, was suddenly announced as a candidate for Vice-President.

So what did the new series have to top this? As if pressing on with the main themes of last year wasn’t bad enough (everyone hates everyone else and the President is a lame duck, literally) so far we’ve had one episode begin with – shudder – a dream sequence and another with – ditto – a musical montage. Once the show’s writers would have raced a good few country miles before resorting to either of those kinds of winsome cliches. But not now. All the schlock and schmaltz that was once carefully kept in check is now allowed to run amok.

Yet despite it being the last series, the budget appears to be enormous: fighter planes, conference halls, thousands of extras … The producers are seemingly throwing everything at The West Wing in the hope something sticks in the memory. Unfortunately what does stick is the impression of a once great TV ship of state slipping all-too slowly into quicksand.

There are 100 days of this fictional Presidential campaign left to run. Someone will end up the winner. And it won’t be us.

The last time OTT looked, The West Wing seemed to have become impossibly remote from the real world, sharing no more in common with the actual White House than that of its cast with a bunch of sympathetic, likeable public servants ruling the world’s only superpower. Yet it’s a mark of how preposterous a trajectory the show has pursued these last few years that its ever increasing scattergun approach to storytelling left it, for a time, resembling something perilously close to real life.

What this reviewer has already charted as being the programme’s tortuous development from a devilishly plotted micro-universe of intrigue to a lazily-sketched ever-changing ensemble of bedlam ended up, at the close of the last series, something far too near the actual state of the Union. Albeit a dozen times less compelling. It’s a rare distinction indeed to be outgunned by George W Bush in terms of both charisma and articulacy, but The West Wing managed it, and with the lamest of series climaxes to boot. Oh look, the President’s going out to throw the first ball in a baseball match. Will he aim it correctly, or will he drop it and look a little bit embarrassed?

After such a monstrous baked bean ending it was sorely tempting to be done with the show for good. Up against the most elementary benchmarks of television, The West Wing neither informed, educated or entertained. Conveniently enough, the series buggered off for a fair few months. It was surprisingly easy to not care about its whereabouts.

Until the arrival of More4, that is, replete with a schedule that placed The West Wing as close to true primetime as it has ever been on British screens. This was taking a chance – or maybe the channel knew something we didn’t. Perhaps things had improved. It was a long time since that ball game business. Time spent in the show’s absence began to melt the edges of icy disregard. Maybe the last series was a transitory one, a temporary blip? Out of everybody involved, from all those dozens of names on the credits at least one must have piped up with a few words of wisdom? Isn’t that why they employ batteries of foot soldiers on these long-running shows – to refine, refresh and resurrect?

Some kind of residual affection found at least one viewer tuning in to the premiere of the new series with more than just morose curiosity. Besides, after having such a long relationship with the programme, it seemed a shame to break things off after one concentrated bout of disquiet.

Ah well. The thought was there. So too, sadly, was everything else: the lame grandstanding, the yelled insults, the clumsy exposition (“He was under for a long time – it’s a miracle he has brain function”), the cloying observations (“We’re in the middle of an intersection without a traffic cop”) – all of it, right from the off, the same jarring brew as before, yet somehow so more unpalatable for being so familiar.

The West Wing used to serve up an authentically imaginative parallel Presidency to the last years of Bill Clinton. Then it became an authentically convenient alternative Presidency to the first term of George W Bush. But now it’s just a load of people shouting, quarrelling about jobs and being checked in and out of hospitals. Its internal obsessions have overwhelmed its external touchstones. There’s no space for anything that quantifies The West Wing as being in or of the real world. All the characters have had their personalities changed so much you can’t even begin to explain or rationalize their behaviour. They and their world just kind of, well, exists.

If all this were deliberate, if it had all been conceived by design as some sort of statement on the shallow, transitory nature of contemporary politics, the show might have got away with it. Capitalizing on that same dwindling amount of leftover goodwill, and with a fair wind behind it, The West Wing could have become one of the sharpest critiques of present day government around. Instead it’s an ill-wind that buffets and rattles the show from tragicomic pillar to post every single episode. If it’s week one it must be another declaration of war. Week two? A resignation. Week three? Get those life-support monitors out of mothballs, we’re back in the hospital with someone else teetering on the edge of death.

None of it means anything, though, because that same ill-wind gathers up the viewer and deposits them in each of these sequential crises without any sense of purpose. Such dramatic incidents don’t happen thanks to aspects of plot or character. They just happen because it’s a new episode. Hence the war declared in episode one was never mentioned again, and the resignation in the second episode was trumped by not one but two heart attacks (and not very realistic ones either, the victim clutching at some trees in a forest with all the sincerity of Michael Jackson in the video for Earth Song). We all know politics is forever a victim of unpredictable events, but it’s a vocation that survives intact thanks to people behaving in predictable ways. Nobody in The West Wing behaves in a manner conducive to a credible government administration. And no matter what you think of George W Bush, at least he’s consistent in the kind of image he projects and the attitudes he perpetrates.

Then again, since we’re not treated with much reverence by the show, why should we extend the same courtesy in return? Every week we’re told there’s no point expending emotion; why expend time as well? So it’s best not to dwell any further upon the extent to which The West Wing keeps falling further from its once splendid perch. For one thing there’s precious chance of getting any return on such an investment. For another it’s only possible to pick yourself up from a fall so many times.

President Bartlet’s White House used to be a place you’d have longed to be able to work in. Now it’s more likely somewhere you’d happily run a mile from. The West Wing‘s sincere, coherent, meticulously mapped-out storylines and characters, executed and sustained with audacious, sometimes neurotic, precision, have been almost completely junked. Taking their place have come abrupt excursions into somebody’s hitherto irrelevant and deeply boring private life, or poorly-delivered smug one-liners. Simultaneously the number of combustible set-piece crises have been stepped up, increasingly taking the guise of an unsubtle cliffhanger clumsily tacked on the end of an otherwise staid and uneventful episode. Virtually all the show’s long-term trademark themes and obsessions have also been ditched: the President’s all pervasive and once-worsening MS never mentioned, a recent illegal assassination of a Middle Eastern potentate and subsequent US military occupation seemingly ancient history, the Vice-President’s resignation from a sex scandal forgotten forever.

Instead, we’re now faced with a world where people act in totally contrary ways from one week to the next, contradict themselves through their words and actions in the space of one episode, and look as if they all hate each other and the very place they fought their political lives to occupy. From this, a terrible sense of insignificance has come to infect the bones of the show. After all, if even The West Wing‘s cast and crew don’t seem able to take things seriously anymore, the programme’s not worth sticking with even – as proposed on OTT this time last year – out of routine, let alone respect.

It probably makes for a jumbled mess to the casual viewer, a thorough rubbishing of everything for the long-term fan, and no small nonsense all round. But if the present series of The West Wing, the fifth in its history, is vying for the title of worst to date, sizing up whether it’s happened by chance, or conspiracy, is even more depressing. Because there’s a strong case for laying blame not with the programme’s numerous battery of script associates, consultants and staff writers, but the executive hierarchy of Warner Brothers, specifically the ones who engineered the resignation, or sacking, of key personnel Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme.

Sorkin had created The West Wing, penned the bulk of its scripts, and was executive producer along with Schlamme (who also directed the majority of its episodes) and John Wells. For reasons best known to themselves, Warner endorsed the departure of the pair, and at a vital moment in proceedings: the end of the fourth series, one that had seen The West Wing struggle through superfluous plot strands and character overload to climax in an ambitious storyline involving the kidnapping of the President’s daughter. As ever, the exact circumstances surrounding the exit of Sorkin and Schlamme were and still are a mystery (Sorkin’s brush with the law over cocaine abuse supposedly a factor), but the removal of two of the three people who played the most part in setting and sustaining the programme’s agenda and tone was always going to portend change. And doing it in a manner suggestive of panic, and at a point when you’d have thought the show’s big guns were needed more than ever, was always going to portend trouble.

So John Wells has been in sole charge of this series, and it’s sorely tempting to accuse him of letting his preference for emotion-led, visual stunt-based drama, patented in his other job as executive producer of ER, run amok. Certainly a sense of things playing out in real time, and of revelations having real consequences which made themselves felt in a deeply resonant way through a neatly-constructed subplot or a slow-burning quirk in a character’s personality, has all but disappeared. The kidnapping, which had prompted a constitutional showdown leading to John Goodman taking temporary charge of the White House, was laughably wrapped up in five minutes and has been barely spoken about again. Ironically Goodman’s tenure in the Oval Office, advance news of which had carried an air of desperation, was quite good fun, not least because he displayed the kind of bravado and intensity Martin Sheen used to bring to the role of the President but is now all too scarce.

Yet it’s this question of character portrayal that also exonerates John Wells of complete responsibility for The West Wing‘s prevailing poor form. Virtually all the seasoned cast have been turning in appallingly lazy, will-this-do performances this series. Perhaps it’s disillusionment with exchanges like “You think James Madison ran this Presidency off a message calendar?” “Yes.” It’s unlikely anybody could bring a sense of excitement to lines like “The First Lady’s got some last minute budget requests.” Even still, there used to be a conviction to the way the central characters carried themselves on camera, one that made all those signature fast-paced conversations buzz and crackle, and in the process rendered even the lamest of dialogue forgivable. That’s gone now, replaced with a bunch of people behaving as if they’re tired with their roles, lapsing into cliché at the first opportunity and, most irritating of all, content to wander in and out of context with each passing scene.

Ultimately we’re left with a group of decidedly mean-spirited, jaded-looking caricatures who it’s impossible to like, engaged in a free-for-all exchange of abuse and outlandish plot twists. Everyone was nasty in this week’s episode – a dramatic strategy not in itself a crime by any means, but one made to look hollow and pointless due to it happening for no reason, completely without precedent, and representing an ill-explained inversion of the characters’ entire history and motivation. “She has to be here to want things – and you don’t have to be here at all,” the President snapped at his wife’s assistant. “Are we surprised our polls are down?” wailed CJ. “How many months are we going to spend making calendars?” moaned Toby’s deputy. Grouchiest of them all was the usually sage-like Chief of Staff Leo McGarry. “We are here to serve the country,” pleaded CJ, to which Leo hissed, “We are the country.” A TV programme like this, with no heroes, not even anti-heroes, is simply not worth bothering with.

Once this show illuminated and celebrated politics and the business of democracy. So far this year it’s ridiculed, abused and generally disowned those pursuits, in the process mocking much of its own past and serving notice on its own future. Next week we’re promised the sight of Josh yelling hysterically at the imposing façade of Capitol Building, “Do you want a piece of me?” It could once be claimed that, to paraphrase, if The West Wing looked like changing anything – either to do with politics or television – someone would abolish it. Now it’s perfectly happy to see through that particular task by itself.

The West Wing is in a trough. At the moment it reels wildly between any one of a dozen or so concerns, which themselves no longer take the form of thought-provoking expositions or craftily paced arguments but instead resemble almost lazy and half-defined efforts at point-scoring or shooting at open goals. What used to be an ever-present atmosphere of rigorously plotted tension and menace has ended up dispersed amidst great blundering plot revelations and, perhaps most unlikely of all, sickly emotional outpourings. It’s all a very long way from what this programme was doing just a couple of years ago, when it made merry with clichés and conventions in an audaciously blatant fashion and rustled up some of the most unpredictable TV drama around.

The decline has not been sudden. For some time now the show has dared viewers to accept it has the right to take itself off on tangents of its own choosing, even if that means virtually ignoring all the foundational work put in to date to create a palette of challenging, exciting people and ideas. The key moment was the climax to the second series, shown in this country on Channel 4 just 12 months ago. This took the form of an almost operatic mix of grand locations and tortured self-expression, and ended up such a devastating sensory ride you sort of wanted it to go on for ever – a spiral of enticing implications and speculations that needed no resolution. Everything was funnelled towards a final dénouement, where the President was scheduled to announce if, in the light of confirming his hitherto-secret Multiple Sclerosis, he was to run for a second term in office. Lightning flashed, crowds jostled, faces were flushed. The camera faded on Bartlet about to deliver his answer.

You kind of hoped there was the outside chance the show’s creators would defy probability and condemn The West Wing to a brutally short-term life span. As it was the near-inevitable happened, and so began the long haul towards re-election. This week’s episode, a whole series and a half later, marked the arrival at long last of polling day and the cue for what could’ve been another watershed moment in the programme’s history. But instead of a mouth-watering epic of, say, bleak political realism and thrilling personal confession, all we got was a deeply unsatisfying jamboree curiously devoid of feeling that really made you sorry Bartlet had, by the end of it all, won.

It’s now clear the business of driving the show to that point where Bartlet had to say publicly he’d run for office again, rather than the matter of him actually saying it, actually conspired to help tip The West Wing into such a precarious state. The episodes immediately in the aftermath of his declaration smacked of a feeling akin to that of being winded: on the back foot, unnaturally disabled, incoherent. It felt like all the energy invested in levering the programme up to one particular point of dramatic consequence – and a fantastic one at that – meant there was nothing left in reserve to follow through with anything of note, let alone sustain that same level of exhilaration.

In turn along came a messy procession of new spin doctor-esque characters that were never properly introduced, and plotlines that spun off into dark corners rarely to be seen again. Rather than the broad sweeping canvas of series two, or even the neat, perfectly-formed playlets of series one, The West Wing did something it had never ever done before: rambled. Scripts felt untidy and last minute. Characters behaved implausibly for a bunch of people that’d been on TV almost non-stop for two years. What substance there was within episodes was repeatedly obscured by side-stories involving staff relationships and endless personality clashes, rather than, as once had been the case, going hand in hand with illuminating, enhancing secondary subplots.

Again, the very fact all this was going on, and being allowed to go on by the programme’s famously protective production team, was the most curious dilemma of all. The West Wing has always been unpredictable – indeed, a playful manipulation of a viewer’s preconceptions of life inside the White House has remained perhaps the show’s one enduring defining quality. But you never dreamed proceedings would veer so far off the rails as it came to do towards the end of series three (aired on Channel 4 earlier this year), with all trace of the trademark big political picture exchanged for endless scenes of the previously steely press secretary CJ Craig debating the contents of her wardrobe, and the sight of the erstwhile rakish deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman squabbling with his girlfriend amongst the bedclothes.

The upshot was that, until this week, what had been earlier been established as the notional fulcrum of The West Wing‘s existence – a capable President under threat from afflictions not of his own making – disappeared completely. Now, at the point of his re-election, that same scenario has finally been re-introduced, but almost as an afterthought. We saw a couple of moments where Bartlet’s hands started shaking, and his secretary dropping hints about him not being able to remember who he’s phoned. It was useful to be reminded of the President’s condition, and how it might manifest itself more forcefully in years to come. But the almost throwaway manner in which it was done compounded the feeling that here was a programme brought sadly low by a lack of focus, a wayward script and the absence of any sense the show’s makers know just what they want their characters to be doing in the next scene, let alone the next episode.

Even with a subject like a national election to play with, The West Wing can’t seem to rekindle the fire and energy of its earlier years. With the Republican opposition having virtually conceded defeat in last week’s story, all that was left was to see how the Bartlet team adapted to the responsibilities of four more years in office. Would we get a study of triumph out of adversity, or a sober meditation on the awesome task that lay ahead? As it turned out, neither. The team didn’t even seem that bothered, and by extension it was desperately hard to feel that enthused or even mildly interested by the implications of what was happening on screen.

Despite all this the outlook isn’t entirely gloomy. Not only did this episode deliver The West Wing a second term, it also planted the seed for Rob Lowe’s departure from the cast. With his character off to become a congressman in California, hopefully his former colleagues will be able to benefit from not being constantly upstaged and undercut in every other scene. As for Lowe’s replacement, the omens look good: a nerdy campaign manager with the requisite predilection for talking insanely fast but with a depth and humanism his predecessor never had. The dull anonymous spin doctors have also disappeared, plus there’s evidence the show’s recovered some of its wit, demonstrated chiefly in a nicely staged pre-title sequence depicting Josh visiting a polling booth and being accosted by a host of Democrat voters who’d all spoiled their ballot papers, but who in reality were an acting troupe hired by communications director Toby Ziegler as a practical joke.

The show’s not beyond salvaging, then, nor is it in any way cursed by a cast who get lost amongst the deluge of words and contrary plot twists. If anything the reverse is true, with the actors often going a long way to save the series from the kind of slow-motion dismemberment you feel is only just around the corner. Still, the prospect of what happens next is both intriguing and unsettling – after all, the possibility that you’re about to watch one of your favourite TV dramas unravel into an embarrassing amateurish free-for-all before your eyes doesn’t exactly make tuning in an experience to relish. So The West Wing remains a programme with which to keep a regular appointment, albeit more out of routine than respect. Besides, you never quite know where it will dare to go next. John Goodman joins the cast in a few months time. To find out just what on earth that’s all about is, in itself, worth one hour of your time every week.

The show’s potential to be both unashamedly exciting, but also indulge in the most blatant preaching and rabblerousing, remains undimmed from its first appearance on British screens last year. It’s a mix that is undoubtedly entertaining, often in surprisingly obvious ways (thanks to a modest quota of punch the air moments). But while the dense politicking and obscure references have all but intensified, there have been changes to its manipulation of our appreciation of both plot and characterisation. It’s possible to speak of The West Wing as having reached that crucial moment in any programme’s history where an appreciation of itself more in recognition of its own award-ridden legacy than anything else is governing the whims of both producers and actors.

So far, this has proved no bad thing. At least Rob Lowe’s been taken down a peg or two, and is not so much the centre of attention and star of the piece. In fact, while the first series rather dutifully but awkwardly portioned out episodes to each of the principal characters in turn, the second has evolved quite rapidly into a more finely orchestrated ensemble affair. The depth of the relationships and dependencies between the main cast has been robustly examined for weak areas and pressure points; the sum of which have then been presented for prolonged exposure on screen, usually contrasted with another burgeoning domestic and foreign policy crisis. The political and the personal have therefore been drawn ever tighter, the result being cases where two separate storylines – such as the failure of an undercover CIA rescue mission, and a concurrent bitchy row between the President and his wife – end up packaged as ostensibly different yet foundationally identical studies of contemporary morals and ethics.

Strong stuff, and for the most part the show continues to get away with it. Though this particular episode boasted a variety of plots, including a collapsing foreign economy, an oil spill, and a damaging leaked soundbite, they were all thrown into relief by the ongoing travails of the President himself. This was a tactic the writers seemed to avoid in the early days, seeking to build up attention and interest on other personalities amongst the White House staff. The results were often a little perverse – focusing on the love lives of a bloke from the press corps while ignoring the most important man on the planet next door busy preventing war in the Middle East.

Now the emphasis has changed, and this series has taken on the guise of one giant unbundling of many of the tensions, grudges and regrets the chief characters had previously, both self-consciously and subtly, entertained. It’s been done carefully, but blatantly, to ensure various short and long-term storylines are now whirling and unravelling into a crescendo that is making for impressionable viewing. Though this is reward, perhaps, for audiences in from the beginning – relishing payback as much as the cast – the serialised aspect of The West Wing has been increasingly discarded. Rounded, intriguing episodic case studies, profiling the numerous tasks and responsibilities of the American executive government, coupled with compelling examples of contrasting opinions, dilemmas, solutions, have grown scarce. The show is more of a soap opera now than it’s ever been.

This is a necessary development, maybe, for a creation that’s never shied from trading in epic blows, painting the workings of American democracy in its most illuminating fluorescent colours, while forever teetering just on the edge of cornball melodrama. Yet it doesn’t feel like it’s a direction the show has been prodded into taking. It’s a natural evolution, and the judders and jolts of a sloppy or botched characterisation along the way (usually in the form of a visiting “dignitary” or minor member of staff) are papered over with another smooth exposition from one of the accomplished central players. Here’s where the ensemble nature of this latest series seems to have the greatest impact. The multi-handed plotlines and scenes repeatedly divert attention away from any unduly prominent pronounced outburst of, say, someone spitting incantations at the camera or, that unwelcome favourite, close-ups of ritualised gurning.

So for the most part, what clunking dialogue there is doesn’t stay long in the memory. For another thing there’s not enough time; this show has lost none of the killer pace it introduced right from episode one, or that obsession with ultra-long tracking shots around the labyrinthine corridors of the White House. A sense of momentum, stronger now in fact than at any point in the series’ history, safely carries the viewer hastily, though not always cleanly, over murky exchanges and still murkier subplots, onto solid ground; and this is no more vital than when faced with the perennial, and always very laboured, “I’ve-got-a-few-questions” routine, which comes up in every episode.

This is where a more junior member of the team very pointedly interrogates their immediate superior about the latest plot twist in order to fully underscore its significance for us watching at home. In this episode, it was – as it almost always is – secretary Donna Moss who acted as the goon, “spontaneously” quizzing her boss, deputy communications director Josh Lyman, over the historical and moral basis for authorising a $30m loan to Mexico.

These exchanges, though usually quite humorous, never quite come off as they always have the deadening ring of a classroom lecture, or a debating society. “Before you send $30m of my money to Mexico I want to ask some questions,” opened Donna. Josh, strutting about his office as usual, summoned “an eighth grade text book” from a drawer to make a point about America helping Britain fight Hitler during World War II. He then pretended there was a phone call for Donna – on the line was “Europe, in 1939″. So it went on, until the requisite I-see-it-all-now moment was reached (“We help them – because we can!”)

Such historical and theoretical sparring is not uninteresting in a bookish kind of way, but cannot help feel mawkish and cumbersome alongside the more smooth and impassioned rhetoric that you know will be evident in the Oval Office. Consequently it all comes back to the President in the end, and to Martin Sheen’s consummate performance.

You feel like you’re seeing more lines multiply and groove his weathered face with each successive threat and the acknowledgement of weakness. His deepest secret – that he has Multiple Sclerosis – is now challenging his legal right to be President and to run for a second term. As a result it seems to be genuinely gloomier inside the hushed offices and conference rooms of the White House than ever before. Events and emotions are now being parcelled up in a manner that assigns The West Wing relevance on a par with the grandest of all tragic operas. It’s as breathtaking as it is audacious. There’s little else on television at the moment that seems to be prepared to utilise conventions and clichés in such a brazen fashion, and end up making a statement as daring or as exhilarating.