This particular night, the crew was setting up to shoot scenes from Wong's eighth film, "2046," an ambitious, star-studded, futuristic drama.

This big, ambitious drama watches Clara's fortunes shift until she is inextricably tied to the conservative Esteban, who has political ambitions of his own.

Kelly Avery, head of home entertainment for DreamWorks, said it was unfair to compare an ambitious drama with an action film in DVD sales.

The day he was interviewed for this article, he was working on a Victor Packer epic called "Spies," an overly ambitious 24-part drama.

It's an ambitious drama that doesn't lose sight of what Patrick tells a television interviewer about retirement: 'Sometimes, you miss hitting people.'

"California Mystery Park," finally, is an ambitious drama detailing domestic crisis and inter-racial tensions in postwar America.

And ABC is adding no new ambitious hourlong dramas at all.

He does say that the blame, aside from his own occasionally faulty judgment, lies in the very enterprise of producing ambitious dramas on a low budget.

This is good news if you're a fan of ambitious long-form American drama, as there will be more HBO series broadcast in this country.

Tim Robey reviews a breathtakingly ambitious drama set in post-9/11 New York.