The neighborhood bard is required to please his audience and has a keen sense of what they want to hear. Otherwise he gets run out of town.

These days there aren't any TV shows I watch from the usual channels, because they are, yes, all the same drivel. The last truly great show I saw on regular cable was "Orphan Black" made in Canada and shown on BBC America. Now I mostly watch Korean, European and Israeli shows on streaming providers. And some of those end up being pretty pedestrian too. But the occasional gems are brilliant.