Time & Perspective Quote by William Devane

Devane’s gratitude has a quiet sting in it: praise as a vehicle for complaint. He’s ostensibly talking about David Jacobs, the creator-producer behind Dallas and Knots Landing, but he’s really talking about an industry that no longer trusts time. The key phrase is “sharing the creation of characters,” a nod to an older TV ecology where actors weren’t just interchangeable faces but collaborators who could shape behavior, backstory, even moral texture. It’s also a subtle flex: Devane comes from a moment when being an actor on a long-running show meant accruing authorship.

“Told the story of people over many years’ time” lands like a lost art. That kind of longitudinal storytelling requires patience, stable ensembles, and a belief that audiences will stick around for slow-burn change: marriages curdling, loyalties shifting, contradictions hardening into identity. In that model, character is plot.

The kicker is his aside: “Though nowadays that is frowned upon.” He doesn’t name the culprit, but you can hear the indictment of contemporary TV’s incentives: shorter seasons, streamer churn, analytics-driven pacing, writers’ rooms built for speed, and a culture of “no filler” that often confuses acceleration with depth. Even prestige TV can treat character development as a deliverable rather than a relationship.

Devane’s intent isn’t nostalgia for its own sake; it’s a defense of craft. When he mourns the long view, he’s arguing that people - and performances - only become interesting when they’re allowed to age on screen.