[finnish-food]

No they cannot. And I am not just speaking in abstract terms, in the 1960s and 1970s (and even before) many shows were made that had a moral core but did not moralize at the audience.

Shows like Star Trek, The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, etc. which would question or discuss complex ideas without turning them into soap operas or basic dramas.

The only shows that I can think of like that now are Black Mirror or perhaps your odd HBO offering, but those are not shining examples, and often, even if they do discuss or engage with deeper concepts or ideas, it’s not handled in a way that allows for nuance. (Black Mirror is happy to be quite crass at moments, same with HBO and other “top-tier” shows.)

[krapp]

>Shows like Star Trek, The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, etc. which would question or discuss complex ideas without turning them into soap operas or basic dramas.

Your memory of these shows differs dramatically from my own. None of the ideas discussed in any of them were complex or nuanced, much less culturally transgressive (no, not even Star Trek) and they were often ham-fisted and moralizing. I mean Star Trek and Twilight Zone so much so they became tropes and subjects of parody.

[baq]

The Expanse is pretty good .

[pjc50]

> Shows like Star Trek, The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, etc. which would question or discuss complex ideas without turning them into soap operas or basic dramas.

There's something in this. Tickbox diversity is a lazy solution that doesn't really satisfy people who want broader representation while at the same time causes the rightwing culture warriors to go increasingly berzerk. Writers need to get better at doing incidentally diverse shows, because "hello I'm a token look at me" is bad characterization. Or address it by commissioning a broader range of shows from different settings; not everything needs to be a flagship.

While at the same time there are still lots of odd misses (Ghost in the Shell 2017 managed to annoy almost everybody in this regard).