Hyperreality TV: Political Fact Meets HBO Fiction

[Khephra]

AFTER scoring a hit with a series about funeral home operators, HBO now sees potential in another behind-the-curtain peek at an unsavory, macabre business: Washington's lobbying industry.

In "K Street," a half-hour show that makes its debut on Sept. 14, HBO is aiming for something that Steven Soderbergh, a co-executive producer, calls "real-time fiction." The show will depict a make-believe firm of lobbyists and consultants, but will blend in real politicians, lawmakers and issues to give an insiderish flavor of how Washington wheels, deals, logrolls, backscratches and backstabs. (The show will be broadcast at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time on the 14th, and at 10 p.m. thereafter.)

From Shakespeare's plays to "Ragtime" to Mr. Soderbergh's Oscar-winning film "Traffic," the technique of mixing the real and unreal in entertainment has a long tradition. But the characters in those works fall into familiar categories: they're either pure creations, fictional versions of real figures, or cameos. Here Mr. Soderbergh and his creative team, including the actor George Clooney, the writer Henry Bean and the producer Mark Sennet, are heightening the trompe l'oeil effect by having real lobbyists and consultants play alternate versions of themselves, while grappling with real issues about real people in a fake firm. Like "Law and Order," "K Street" will rip its plots from the headlines. But it will do so only days after those headlines appear, while the issues in question are still live ones, and do only as much fictionalizing as necessary to keep the plots interesting.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/24/arts/television/24ABRA.html