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BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Throughout TV's history, we've seen shows that revolve around the paranormal, but this season seems a trifle abnormal. There's Moonlight, about a vampire private eye, and True Blood, another vampire show from Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball. There's New Amsterdam, about an immortal cop, and Supernatural, where young detectives hunt down evil spirits. There's even a reality show -- kind of -- called Phenomenon. It debuted this week on NBC, where people compete to prove who has the most psychic powers.
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MAN:
We've searched the world to bring you 10 astonishing individuals who will claim to be able to see into the future and actually speak to those who are no longer with us. Tonight --
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BROOKE GLADSTONE:
From whence this freaky trend? Partly it's the lack of imagination in network executive suites, says New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley, but partly it's a sign of our times, just as the popularity of the occult was given a boost during the Civil War.
ALESSANDRA STANLEY:
It is true that there was a rise in interest in spiritualism and particularly in communication between the dead and the living after the Civil War, because there were so many people who were bereaved and who were seeking some kind of solace and would turn to, you know, Ouija boards and séances and all those things.

But there were all kinds of reasons. I mean, every time that there is a moment of progress in science, there's a backlash against it. People sort of naturally grope towards some theory that allows for both.

And when photography was new, there were certain ways of taking portraits of people with a certain light or a certain way of printing it. You would have an aura. And there was a whole school of photography that was supposed to be, you know, sort of occult photography that captured not the face of the person but their inner soul. It happens in cycles all the time.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
But the nature of the paranormal that we saw in television's early days was quite different. For one thing, nobody thought it was real. You had Rod Serling's Twilight Zone that ran from 1959 to '64, and then a bunch of comedies soon after that -- Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, My Favorite Martian.
ALESSANDRA STANLEY:
It's really hard to know why. Was it just that executives have no imagination, so if it worked on one network than everybody scrambled to do copycat versions of the same idea? Or was it that there was a playfulness in the comedy that allowed for all kinds of metaphors for repression of the times?

You know, I've heard it said that, you know, I Dream of Jeannie and all these things are about homosexuality; that you have this eccentricity, you have a secret side that you have to keep to yourself, only instead of saying, you know, it's my homosexuality, it's my [LAUGHS] imaginary friend from inside a bottle or something like that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
And you note in your piece that in Bewitched, the witch, Samantha, spent all her time trying to appear normal and make things seem normal for her husband.
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SAMANTHA:
Vacuum cleaner, I have a problem. I can spend four hours pushing you around and cleaning the attic, in which case I won't have any time to spend with Darrin -- or, well, you know [LAUGHS], get it all done in a flash and relax for the rest of the afternoon with my husband.
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ALESSANDRA STANLEY:
[LAUGHS] Well, that would certainly support the notion that this effort at conformity was such a strain that this poor woman, who could do anything in the world with her magical powers, spent it all trying to get dinner on time.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
After 9/11, we saw a spike in religious-themed programming, paranormal in the sense that, you know, the Bible is.
ALESSANDRA STANLEY:
What was interesting was that in one season you had three different versions of the same idea, which was a kind of Joan of Arc fantasy. One was called Joan of Arcadia, and that was a police detective's daughter.
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WOMAN:
Who are you?
MAN:
I'm God.
WOMAN:
You're what?
MAN:
God.
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ALESSANDRA STANLEY:
Another one was Tru Calling, and then there was a third one called Wonderfalls, which was just a sort of, you know, ordinary slacker like you or me, Brooke, [BROOKE LAUGHS] who ends up working in a gift shop and then all the little figurines start talking to her, and they turn out to be the voice of God.

But now we have something a little bit different. Television has been long preoccupied with the sort of hospital shows or cop shows for the last 30 years. We like to solve murders. But we're kind of tired of forensic science, so that it's almost as if you took CSI: Imaginary, you know, tried to basically do the same show -- who killed this person and why? -- but instead of looking for physical evidence, the dead person himself explains who killed him ,[LAUGHTER] which really does solve a lot.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Basically, they're pouring old wine into a somewhat new bottle.
ALESSANDRA STANLEY:
Right. The reason it fits into this new bottle is because this new bottle suddenly has more resonance than it used to.

We're now in a period where we're talking a lot about horrible calamities that are manmade, be it global warming or terrorism or war or weapons of mass destruction. These are all things that basically we can only blame ourselves.

So it's not that surprising that we would suddenly look for shows or entertainment or distraction for things in which there is a supernatural being or explanation for things so that you can sort of find a supernatural scapegoat.

People during the plague blamed themselves, but it was less concrete, you know, because they sort of thought, well, we're being punished for untold sins, but there's a similar kind of yearning for dramatic explanations, i.e., ones that are, you know, paranormal.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Alessandra, it was a pleasure.
ALESSANDRA STANLEY:
Thank you, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Alessandra Stanley is a TV critic for The New York Times.