Practical Pastiche: TV Shows

“Practical Pastiche” is a series I expand on from time to time, offering drop-in names you can use in your home ttRPG campaigns to replace real-world organizations, places, groups, and anything else you might want to use in a fictional world without the baggage of using real-world elements.

TV SHOWS are often touchstones of modern life, and they can interface with ttRPG characters and campaigns in many ways. So whether you need a show to be boycotted by the Choco-Cola Company, a superhero to have a secret ID as a TV writer, or want to list what show a famous NPC media celebrity is the star of, these are the fictional series of fiction to use.

“Bleeding Ink”: Drama about a major newspaper facing the decline of print media. Tackles political issues, ethics in journalism, print vs video vs internet, and the risks of news as entertainment. Famous for the “rotating perch scene,” where one character leans or half-sits on a piece of furniture and talks to one or more other characters in the room as the camera rotates the POV constantly,

“BOLO”: And, of course, spin-offs BOLO: Baltimore, BOLO: Stockton, BOLO: Fugitive Recovery, and even foreign spinoffs such as BOLO: London, BOLO: Berlin, and BOLO: Saint-Jerome. The letters stand for “Be On the Look Out,” a police term. The original BOLO is a police procedural set in Chicago, and covers one precinct’s “war on crime,” with most episodes focusing on trying to find specific suspects. A huge franchise.

“Controlled”: Sitcom about a huge rent-controlled apartment in Oakland lived in by “Gamma Ruth,” a woman “so old they named a book of the Bible after her.” Gamma Ruth lets her 8 children, 11 grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren live in the massive apartment’s many bedrooms and salons rent-free, and pays a single dollar a month due to a rent-controlled contract. The building’s owner, Mr. Grundle, both wants to find Gamma Ruth in violation of the contract so he can raise her rent, AND wants to date one of her granddaughters. Hilarity ensues.

“Diplomacy Extreme”: A reality show where attractive people live together in a location with artificial scarcity, constantly form and re-form teams that vie for resources in various weird challenges, and make deals and alliances in an effort not to be “impeached” in a secret ballot that removes on contestant at the end of each episode (at which point all their previous votes in previous rounds are revealed). Last 3 people are then re-integrated with all previous contestants in the last episode, all the remaining 3’s votes are revealed, and the people removed in earlier shows vote for 1 of the 3 to win $1 million.

“Game of Empires:” Fantasy action/drama. Streaming company’s prestige fantasy series about a fantasy world thrown into turmoil when the High King dies without an acknowledged heir. Magic tends to be dangerous to use and more likely to make things worse than help, and there’s a lot of naked sexy women in most episodes, but it’s also genuinely compelling… at least for the first 6 seasons.

“Gang Stoppers”: Live drama where camera crews follow along with civilian patrol groups that try too pacify “The America, neighborhoods overrun by gangs, hoodlums’, and thugs.” The civilian patrol groups are mostly white, the people they try to detain with citizens arrests mostly aren’t. There have been a lot of lawsuits, but the show makes so much money it’s been on the air for more than 25 years.

“Nerd Friends With Benefits”: Half hour comedy. They’re young. They’re nerds. They’re… hot and horny? Dating/slice-of-life sitcom that tries to draw in the nerd market, but it often accused of mocking nerds rather than celebrating them.

“Tiffany’s Monster Hunting Service”: Supernatural/light horror/light comedy drama. Teen girl Tiffany Vannelle discovers the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-12th-century-grandmother she was named for was a monster hunter who founded a society to continue her work and, as the 7th daughter of a 7th daughter, she’s expected to run it someday. Since her monster-hunting training and duties leave her no time for babysitting, lawn-mowing, or seeing friends, she forms a teen branch monster-hunting agency so she can hang out with her “Buster Buddies” friends and make some money.

“Secret Sector”: An action/drama show about the world of private intelligence agencies, based on the concept of there being a Public Sector, a Private Sector, and then the Secret Sector. Follows two agents of the Red Harvest agency as they wrestle with spywork against both other private intelligence agencies and governments, as well as the dangers and ethical dilemmas of their jobs.

“Vaudeville Never Died”: A long-running late-night weekend comedy skit and music show with celebrity guest hosts each week, often just called VDN. Famously mocks itself for being unfunny. Opens each episode with a “cold open” sketch, that always ends with the line with the line “That’s Vaudeville, Baby!”

“WTF?!”: A premium cable channel show that looks at one unsolved bizzarre occurance or poorly-understood social construct ach week. Plays it for laughs, but the investigations and information are legit.

“Your Teacher Lied”: Irreverent but generally accurate investigation show that tackles wrong things people have been taught in schools in the US over the past 60 years, and why that was taught.

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