The television shows produced by studio moguls such as Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Silver are much more interesting than the blockbusters they deliver for the big screen. Melinda Houston reports.

David Lynch started it. He’d had another one of his crazy ideas. Something about a girl going missing in a backwoods town, but something so complex he knew he’d never squeeze it into 120 minutes in a cinema. So he took it to the small screen instead, and the result was Twin Peaks, the most intriguing, challenging, addictive and downright weird television we’d ever seen.

Lynch (and America’s ABC network) had a massive hit on their hands that blurred the boundaries between cult, soap and prime time and set a benchmark for out-there TV.

Television has long been considered film’s bogan cousin, but that’s just blind prejudice. Given half a chance, TV offers everything in quality and more in complexity than the movies can. And we’re not just talking glossy, film-like miniseries.

Joss Whedon figured it out: after corporate meddling botched the film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he started from scratch on a TV version: a 10th of the budget, but 100 times the control. With Six Feet Under, writer Alan Ball recognised that TV is the novel to cinema’s short story. And increasing numbers of Hollywood types are realising that while television may not have the budget, the prestige or the general mega-wattage of the movies, it more than makes up for it in sheer freedom. TV is where Hollywood goes to play.

Jerry "Pirates 2" Bruckheimer has developed a colossal stable of top-rating television shows, most of which, frankly, display a degree of sophistication glaringly lacking in his cinematic efforts. He’s also had to relinquish his predilection for massive explosions. (The two are, probably, related.) But he has brought his keen eye for great storytelling and often a sly sense of fun to his television fare.

The breakaway hits have been the CSI cohort: slick, tightly plotted, always engaging and with a touch of the special-effects magic Bruckheimer loves so much. And in a double dose of Hollywood oomph, Quentin Tarantino directed a special double-episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation that screened earlier this year, bringing his own unique touch to a storyline that blended film horror with old-fashioned cinema serial dramas.

And Bruckheimer has backed more sophisticated drama, too, as executive producer of Without a Trace. One of the classiest hours on television, a good episode is easily equal - in terms of production values, script and acting - to anything you see in the cinema. The violent, poignant showdown between Anthony LaPaglia’s Jack Malone and his ex-wife that screened last year was something any dramaturge would be proud of, and something you’d happily pay money to see.

The massive audience and relatively low production costs of TV also let Hollywood producers, directors and writers play with ideas they could never get up on the big screen. Like this one: powerful female protagonists, cutting it in a man’s world. When was the last time you saw a crime-fighting chick on the big screen, outside of a spoof? But Mr B clearly thought it was so crazy it just might work, and has put his name behind two: Lilly Rush in Cold Case, and Annabeth Chase in Close to Home. The programs themselves are of moderate quality but at least television allows them to exist.

Then there’s Veronica Mars, another crime-busting blonde and one of the highlights of the viewing week. She comes to us courtesy of Joel Silver, a producer and director better known for testosterone-fuelled Lethal Weapon and Die Hard franchises.

The fact that he also backed the Matrix trilogy does indicate he’s open to weird ideas, and what a weird idea Veronica Mars is, bending genres and crossing demographics in a witty, moody teen drama that has our heroine solving high school mysteries while being haunted by the ghost of her dead best friend, trying to find her vanished mother, helping out her PI dad, and worrying if she’ll ever find time for romance. And like Without a Trace, Veronica Mars also takes advantage of that other wonderful televisual freedom: the ability to play out complex plotlines over 20 hours, instead of two.

Even the Scott brothers - Ridley (Blade Runner, Blackhawk Down) and Tony (Man on Fire) - have taken the opportunity to do something a little different. (Tellingly, their TV production company is called Scott Free.) Their special project is Numb3rs, yet another crime drama, but one in which FBI agent Don Eppes engages the help of his genius brother Charlie to apprehend a range of diabolical felons using complex mathematical theories. That’s even crazier than the idea of a female detective. As well as being fascinating (if occasionally bemusing), in the US the series has a partnership with Texas Instruments and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics to run an educational outreach program based on the maths presented in each episode. It’s a very cool idea, and quite beyond the scope of cinema.

Scan the credits and it quickly becomes apparent that the bulk of top-rating TV is coming to us from the hands of Hollywood big names. Some of it is genuinely exciting, boundary-pushing, complex drama; even the worst of it takes us beyond the bounds of what’s possible at the megaplex.

Now what we really need is a big-name Australian - Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford or, even better, Alex Proyas (I, Robot, Dark City) - to bring their skills and experience to some long-form creative projects, their authority and persuasiveness to some local television boardrooms, and give us some cracking television drama of our own.