That Fargo has some high-profile actors (including Danson, a longtime Emmy favorite) probably gives it a leg up over some other FX dramas in this area. I’d say Dunst has an excellent chance.
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Only you can decide what’s a good budget line item (especially if you’re going to be devoting money to buying my book #shamelessplug), but I’m optimistic about Vinyl (the Scorsese/Winter/Jagger ‘70s music drama with Bobby Cannavale), and I’d be surprised if David Simons ‘70s porn drama with James Franco doesn’t go to… Read more

It’s really amazing how the network of Cheers, Seinfeld, and Friends, not to mention of The Office, 30 Rock, Parks, and Community, has gotten almost entirely out of the comedy business. But Undateable has its moments, and Carmichael Show feels like it could be special if it has the time to grow.
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Yeah, you need some distance from it, I would say. Then again, I knew the second Ozymandias ended — when, admittedly, I was doped up on painkillers and IV antibiotics after my appendix burst earlier that day — that it was one of the greatest things I’d ever seen. I loved Loplop, but I’m not even sure it’s my favorite… Read more

Remember what I said about how if Americans hadn’t gotten significant Emmy nominations after three seasons, it never will? Always Sunny has been on the air for over a decade; it ain’t happening, much as some of us love the gang.
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Outstanding. It shouldn’t be a surprise, given how many people involved worked on Parks and Rec, which is a Hall of Fame comedy, but given how different it is from Parks, it’s still impressive how fully-realized it was by the start of its second episode.
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I think doing the faithful adaptation is the safer commercial bet. Remember, there were holdover fans of the Glen Larson version of BSG who *hated* what Ron Moore was doing, and referred to it as GINO (for “Galactica in Name Only”). Shows like Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and Flash (which borrows from a lot of eras… Read more

FX is a safe bet. So, really, is HBO, which has its ups and downs but still has the ability to take bigger and crazier swings than anyone else. I like what Amazon’s been doing, even though I haven’t loved every one of their shows. And Cinemax has gone from 0-60 awfully fast. Neither The Knick nor Banshee quite made my… Read more

I’m about a year and a half behind on Vikings, but I was really pleasantly surprised by it, and keep meaning to catch up. It’s a much better poor man’s Game of Thrones than Bastard Executioner was. It stays in its lane and knows what it is.
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That’s part of it, the fact that it was essentially a half-hour drama was part of it, the fact that Amy Jellicoe was, by design, an incredibly annoying human who was difficult to be around was part of it. I took almost a whole year to warm to that show, but the second season is an all-time favorite.
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It’s kind of a chicken or the egg thing, in that I think a lot of recent series were so influenced by it, and viewers who discovered the show years after it was canceled have been so conditioned to look for shows like it that they’ll happily watch far lesser Novels For Television. If you use a time machine to take The… Read more

I think it’s definitely a growth area, but a bit limited commercially. Kids are naturally drawn to cartoons, but I don’t want my kids anywhere near BoJack, and think my older daughter is still a few years away from being introduced to Bob’s Burgers (though I just started introducing her to the Simpsons, one episode at… Read more

Homicide is one of my favorites, and is in the book’s prologue along with NYPD Blue, Hill Street, and some of the other ancestors of the revolution. I sure wish there was room for a network procedural with that level of craft and artistry and commitment to character, but it feels like anyone who’d be interested in… Read more

This will make me sound like the middle-aged man that I am, but I’m really wary of any kind of interactivity that affects things on a creative level. While occasionally viewer feedback can be useful to creators, more often than not everyone is better off following their own muse. Josh Schwartz has talked about how he… Read more

Orange is probably still their best, even though season 3 was a bit of a step back. But Master of None season 1 was fantastic and I *love* BoJack Horseman.
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I think you need to find one or two shows and do your best to keep up with that, if you can. And, as you note, I would probably not make The Affair one of those shows. The great thing about Peak TV is that there are so many options in terms of both subject and tone; the hard part is finding ones that fit your… Read more

Hannibal was such a fluke, and made possible via the weird business arrangement NBC had with Gaumont, who was paying most of the freight for the series. So it was treated less like an NBC show than like a cheap foreign acquisition — or like Friday Night Lights was in the DirecTV years, where they were able to show a… Read more

Ryan Murphy’s almost never been my thing, and I could only get through the first hour of Scream Queens. Way too much of Emma Roberts saying hateful things that are meant to be satire, but that the people making the show take a little too much pleasure in having her say. So I can’t speak to anything after.
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The demand for new content in every corner has made it a little easier for people to enter through the side door. Look at Abbi and Ilana from Broad City: the tried to work their way up through the traditional New York comedy ranks, got frustrated, and made a web series that (after Amy Poehler became a fan of it,… Read more

I think West Wing is still beloved by critics, including me. Sorkin’s later shows have exposed some of his weaknesses, such that you can’t help but notice them even when you’re watching West Wing repeats from the early days. (CJ’s easily the best female character he’s written for TV, but even she had to get stuff… Read more