< Darker and Edgier

Darker and Edgier/Live Action TV

  • ABC Family's Lincoln Heights. For a show on a network known for soft-hearted family, teen shows it was pretty dark and gritty in the beginning. The first two seasons alone had robberies, kidnapping of minors, gang violence, prostitution, incest, racial tension, and drug use. Although by season 4 the show had [[Lighter and Softer|{{mellowed out considerably]] and seemed to become more like a typical ABC Family show, it still remains the darkest show the network has aired.
  • Cracked.com presents 5 Inexplicably Horrifying Episodes Of Classic Comedies, which is about... exactly what the title implies, really. The sitcoms referred to in this article include:
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the essence of this trope. The TV series is a considerable case of "Darker and Edgier" than the movie, which was a high-camp spoof of horror movies. Almost all viewers agree that the tone of the TV series was a marked improvement.** A Darker and Edgier remake of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie is currently[when?] under development. In season 1 of the TV series, some of the events of the movie were referenced, but a movie with a different script (an early draft), so a large number of fans have been keen for a remake which fits into the TV!Buffy canon. In spite of this, the news has not been well received, mainly due to the absence of Joss Whedon and the more understandable absence of Sarah Michelle Gellar[1].
    • In addition, Angel was a Darker and Edgier spin-off of Buffy, dealing with more mature issues, having a higher cast turnover, and including a higher mortality rate.
  • With its much smaller quantities of humor and less likable Protagonists, Dollhouse is quite a bit darker than Whedon's other work.
  • The Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood was billed as "Darker and Edgier" than its family-aimed parent, which amounted to quite a bit of sex and violence. While not as overt, series 2 still had far more sensitive material than could ever be shown at 7pm, and the miniseries Children of Earth upped the depression and utter hopelessness of the show to eleven.
  • Doctor Who has the mid-1980s period where Eric Saward went to town with his "gritty realism" ideals, and many of the adult-fan-aimed parts of the Doctor Who Expanded Universe.
    • Since Steven Moffat became the head writer, the whole show has become quite a bit darker.
  • The revival of Battlestar Galactica. This is one of the more successful -- and for that matter, logical -- cases of darkening. The original Battlestar Galactica wasn't exactly WAFFy, but it did devolve into 1970s camp a lot.
    • Parodied on CSI (of all places) in the episode, "A Space Oddity", where the Darker and Edgier and Bloodier and Gorier revival of a Star Trek-like show, "Astro Quest", was revealed to SF convention goers by the murder-victim-to be/new show's producer. This Galactica-esque Edgier version was so bad that one of the con-goers leaps up and screams to the producer, "You suck!" The yeller was Ron D. Moore, creator and Exec Producer of the new Galactica series, in a real-life Stealth Parody (embedded within a Parody Retcon) of what happened to himself when he introduced the "re-imagined" BSG, back in 2002. The episode, incidentally, was written by David Weddle and Bradley Thompson, writers of many Galactica episodes--who got to throw away their BSG Series Bible and use any and all Techno Babble that came to mind. During this scene, actress Grace Park (the Cylon Sharon and now-star of Yet Another Edgier and Darker remake, Hawaii Five-O) was in the audience, looking equally appalled, to complete the inside joke. Between the many Galactica references and Star Trek homages, this was certainly one of Television's Crowning Moment of Funny. Fortunately for the CSI 'verse the creator of the D&E&B&G version is also the episode's Asshole Victim.
  • Speaking of CSI, CSI New York was supposed to be the Darker and Edgier counterpart to the Brighter and Shinier CSI: Miami: Mac Taylor lost his wife in 9/11; the lab was in a dingy 100-year old stone building; the area where the deceased were identified by their loved ones was a cramped, dark room where the corpses were lifted into the light by a hydraulic "elevator"; and, of course, liberal abuse of Unnaturally Blue Lighting (lampshaded in the pilot when Mac and H are lit by their respective filters: H is bathed in a warm orange glow while Mac is in cold blue shadow), though it only lasted one season.
  • The 2007 revival of Bionic Woman. Did we mention that it was produced by David Eick, the co-Exec Producer of the Edgier & Darker Battlestar Galactica? Oh, yeah...in the show's short lifetime, BSG stars Katee Sackhoff and Aaron Douglas came in to help add that extra touch of dark.
  • Home and Away took this direction in 2004 with the Summer Bay stalker storyline and has arguably remained the same.
  • Seasons 3-5 of Miami Vice are a marked departure from the first two seasons. This was largely caused by Law and Order writer Dick Wolf taking up head writer duties on the show. The Daytona was destroyed and replaced with the Testarossa, the pastel colours disappeared, the plots got much more serious (see Zito's death), and the overall tone was much more grim.
  • Degrassi after Miriam McDonald's departure in 2010.
  • Stargate Atlantis was announced to be Darker And Edgier than Stargate SG-1. It dealt with an all around darker atmosphere, Anyone Can Die, along with an arc enemy intended to be even more frightening than the Body Horror of the Goa'uld and Scary Dogmatic Aliens of the Ori. Unfortunately, they forgot to keep them dead, and the enemy's only advantages were soon nullified, until all they had was numbers.
    • To be fair, early on Stargate Atlantis did a good job of killing or bussing well-liked supporting characters and a main character was even Put on a Bus mid-season 2. They did start to shift away from this as the series progressed, though.
    • Stargate Universe in turn is a Darker and Edgier version of the previous two Stargate series. What makes this one significant is that the creators stated that it will be a Darker and Edgier Stargate from the get-go. And then... They never really shut up about it and all they were ever talking about was how much darker, edgier and grittier Universe will be.
    • The final two seasons of Stargate SG-1 were noticeably darker than the first eight, with the good guys on the wrong side of a galactic Curb Stomp Battle against a Nigh Invulnerable enemy.
  • Tin Man has DG (Dorothy Gale) going to the Outer Zone (yup, the O.Z.) where she befriends a man who has lost part of his brain to evil experimenters, and a tortured empathic beast who seems to be a human/lion crossbreed, and the "Tin Man" of the title, a cop who wears a tin star.
    • He was also locked in a metal life support box that kept him alive but awake and unable to move or talk, furthering the Darker And Edgier parallels. The whole thing is pretty much a combination of the movies, the book, and a bunch of Darker and Edgier twists and story details.
  • Judge Mathis Season 13 with more cussing with sounds of bleeps unlike previous seasons with less profanity with cuss words muted out.
  • Ultraman has had various installments like this. First there was Leo in 1974, which dealt with slavery and had a Kill'Em All style ending before Tomino even had his own series.
  • Power Rangers in Space seemed to have a more mature theme compared to the previous seasons at the time. It was the first season to carry the Luke, I Am Your Father trope. It was also the first season where the bad guys actually used their forces to take over all of Earth, not just aim for a single city. It was also a tragic fair well to a mentor who started it all, Zordon, who commits a Heroic Sacrifice, the first death of a good guy in the series.
  • Power Rangers RPM is much, much, much darker than either the whole Power Rangers franchise or its source material Engine Sentai Go-onger, going so far as to kill off a large percentage of humanity in the nuclear bombardment of a Robot War, and deal with serious psychological repercussions of traumatic events and childhoods at times. Power Rangers in general, by contrast, is generally the poster child for Never Say "Die", and Go-Onger was very much a silly Lighter and Softer Super Sentai series, complete with monster song-and-dance numbers.
  • One-Episode Wonder Lost in Oz is this to the Wizard of Oz movie and books.
  • In the original version of Survivors, the third season goes in this direction; at the very least, the characters appear to be taking a lot fewer baths.
  • In the '70s, not long after the series was created, MAD Magazine gave us a Sesame Street parody with random gang violence, drugs, evictions, prostitutes, pimps and gangsters called Reality Street (the writer was a pessimist). Even the intro was changed - "Smoggy days, feeling my lungs decay. It's a street of depression, Corruption, oppression! It's a sadist's dream come true! And masochists, too! Can you tell me how to get, get away from Reality Street?"
  • This trope happened to The West Wing in an odd way — since the original show had almost no on-screen violence involving the main cast, it couldn't be ramped-up: the last three seasons saw the artificial retconning of character personalities from the idealistic to the cynical end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, deleting a lot of the morality from the characters' choices to make them "grayer", a shift to Ripped from the Headlines crises instead of political ones, a lot more military-oriented storylines, more disasters and suspense, a lot of verbal fighting and drama to make up for the fact that there was no regular violence, making the rare instances of violence more frequent, and casting a much darker political climate over the previously sensible in-universe Washington. Needless to say, the fans saw through this ploy right away and disapproved of its artificiality, especially as seasons 3 and 4 had already done a very different, organic take on the darker and edgier convention. Oddly enough however, the show did avoid MOST (emphasis on "most") easy opportunities for inserting more sex into the show.
  • The American remake of Shameless: William H. Macy decided to play the main character as a "realistic" unsympathetic drunk, which pretty much sapped the humor out of the show. It should be noted that the original already takes place in a Crapsack World filled with Dirty Cops and other degenerates.
  • While Kamen Rider as a whole could be viewed as the darker counterpart to Super Sentai or Power Rangers, some entries stick out, like Kamen Rider Black, whose rival is his brother and both are to fight to the death, or the Deconstruction Shin Kamen Rider Prologue, whose Rider's Finishing Move is a spine rip that wouldn't look out of place in Mortal Kombat.
    • And now there's going to be a darker spinoff of Kamen Rider Double, based on the villain Kamen Rider Eternal. See for yourself.
    • And among the Heisei era of Kamen Rider, the darkest series to date was not Kamen Rider Kuuga but Kamen Rider Ryuki as even in Kuuga most of the protagonists were definitely good and the main character is a by the book Showa type hero who doesn't get put down for being a Wide-Eyed Idealist. Ryuki however puts the Riders as bad as their monsters they fight and it is seemingly impossible to escape this vicious loop.
      • Some believed that Kamen Rider Faiz was the darkest of the Heisei era, you got swearing and blood everywhere, characters dying on a regular basis by dissolving to ash, and the even darker novel. Regardly, both Ryuki and Faiz are commonly accepted as being the darkest Heisei rider series.
    • In a similar tone to the Japanese Kamen Rider series, Kamen Rider Dragon Knight is this for North American tokusatsu. Unlike its counterpart, Power Rangers, KRDK regularly dealt with betrayal, distrust, questionable motives and underlying truths in initially good-looking characters. It also did away with the formulaic Monster of the Week in lieu of a more naturally-flowing, arc-based narrative. KRDK was also much more serious and dramatic than Power Rangers, with very little in the way of comic relief outside of the occasional moment from Lacey and Trent, both of whom faded out of the show around episode 20. While still considerably lighter than the above-mentioned, grim-and-serious Kamen Rider Ryuki, KRDK deserves mention for making itself a name in tokusatsu circles as an attempt to make a US Kamen Rider without tampering with what makes a Kamen Rider a Kamen Rider by toning it down to a Power Rangers rip-off/copy.
  • Then Garo kicked in, reducing Kamen Rider into a three-storey building under its ten-storey height. To be short, it is full of kaijins which are far, far scarier than any kaijins ever made.
  • The 2011 pilot for a new version of Wonder Woman, although not picked up by NBC, was examined by a number of reviewers who almost unanimously indicated that Diana was depicted as darker and edgier than her comic book counterpart, using torture and deadly force without hesitation.
  • The French series Kaamelott is also a good example since it started out as only a parody and then evolved into something more epic and tragic (going as far as portraying suicide).
  • A December 2011 report in The Hollywood Reporter on a planned TV series remake of The Munsters by Bryan Singer refers to this trope by name, indicating plans to give the 1960s monster sitcom "an edgier and slightly darker take".
  • The 1994-1995 Gerry Anderson sci-fi series Space Precinct is a darker, more serious reworking of a primarily comedic pilot called Space Police that Anderson made a decade earlier.
  • The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries: The first two seasons had a very light-hearted, humorous tone. Season Three, though...oh dear GOD. It not only dropped Nancy Drew completely, but started off by killing Joe's fiancée in a car wreck (complete with Joe weeping over her body) and having Joe go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge in response ("Last Kiss of Summer"). Season Three ditched almost all the light-hearted humor, showed actual dead bodies, and involved more dangerous situations (including references to selling off Joe and a missing woman to white slavers in China — huhwhat?) and more conflict between the brothers ("Game Plan" had Frank pulling a gun on Joe). The turn confused the show's teen audience, and lost viewers.
  • Smallville started out as fairly light-hearted show that gradually grew Darker and Edgier over its ten-year run
    • Season 3 is this to the first two seasons but only in certain spots though. There are still a lot of episode in Season Three that focus on one episode story lines that drove the first two seasons with the same mix of humour and actual peril. However, it is also the first season to focus more on big-picture elements, and it deals with the main characters going though a lot more turmoil. Clark starts off the season dealing with his dark side and living a very rough and rebellious lifestyle in Metropolis, Lex has a psychotic break (well, partly) and ends up institutionalized at Belle Reve, Chloe life's is turned into a living nightmare at times, and Pete starts to occasionally feel the bad effects of keeping Clark's secret under wraps.
    • After the Lighter and Softer fourth season, Season 5 alo had some dark moments, most notably the death of Clark's dad but also the end of his and Lex's friendship, Lana going to Lex and Lex turning to the dark side.
    • The second half of Season Eight, compared to the first half mainly due to the heavy focus on Clark and Davis Bloome/Doomsday fighting to the death.
    • In general, from Season 6 onwards, the show was much darker in tone and more violent than the earlier seasons, with season 9 being the darkest season.
  • Star Trek as a franchise has received two doses of Darker and Edgier in the last few decades.
    • The first was the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Best of Both Worlds, during which happened the battle at Wolf 359, which is in some circles referred to as "The 9/11 of Star Trek", which is especially relevant in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. After this point, stories started focusing more on the imperfections of the Federation, which had until that point been portrayed as a Utopia.
      • Notably, Star Trek did not go Darker and Edgier by adding a load of sex, violence, and profanity, but it did (particularly in DS9) turn away from the Black and White Morality utopia Federation and introduced some grey into the Federation and their allies and enemies,
      • The Federation is still a decent enough state in DS9. The main difference is between the Federation as a confident and peaceful superpower, and The Federation fighting for its life (and making moral compromises in the process). There are aspects revealed about the Federation that are not exactly nice, like a rogue conspiracy preparing bioweapons, and a civil war with the Maquis in which it is hard to say the Feds are definitely the good guys. But in general most of the difference can be written off as being in the context of the time period. Much as the stuff the Allies did during World War 2 makes us wince today but wincing is kind of a luxury.
    • The second was the 2009 Star Trek film, which destroyed Vulcan and killed Kirk's father, years before Star Trek: The Original Series is set. As a result, the Federation in future Treks is likely to more closely resemble the post-Wolf 359 and post-Dominion War Federation seen in DS9 instead of the happy-go-lucky world of TOS and early TNG.
  • United States of Tara: The series starts out pretty dark, but becomes an absolute Crapsack World in the third season.
  • Seasons V, VI and VII of Red Dwarf.
  1. ↑ The TV series was Dawson Casting in the first place, but some people still want to see the older cast reprising even younger roles
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