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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: August 4, 2005
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Extras, “Kate Winslet” (Season 1, Episode 3) [Watch on HBO GO]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Television is not very good at predicting the future. We’re all still not quite over just how thoroughly The Jetsons lied to us about the feasibility of flying cars and robot maids. But every once in a while, TV gets strangely accurate, usually by accident. Like how The West Wing practically laid out the 2008 presidential race with their final season Santos/Vinnick campaign.
And then there’s Kate Winslet on Extras, the Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant series about background performers and the real-life actors who played themselves (or cracked versions of themselves). Winslet showed up in the very early going — it was the third episode aired in the U.S. but it how shows up as episode 1 on HBO Go — as herself, filming a movie where she plays a nun, sheltering Jews during the Holocaust. What drew her to the role? Well …
Cut to three and a half years later, when Winslet finally won her Oscar, for a film about the Holocaust. Amusing coincidence? Ricky Gervais being a smug but accurate predictor of Hollywood’s patterns of good taste? A pre-ordained wheel of fate set into motion by the events of an HBO comedy series? Perhaps a bit of all three, maybe. Either way, the world got to stop wondering “Why hasn’t Winslet won one?”
[You can watch the “Kate Winslet” episode of Extras on HBO GO]
Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.
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