Links to Recent and Semi-Recent Stories, Reviews and Podcasts

 

Hi! I have been an entertainment critic and a journalist for a long time, and now I am a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair (thus feel free to address me as Baroness Von Ryan). I’m also the author of the new book Burn It Down: Power, Complicity and a Call for Change in Hollywood. It comes out June 6 from Mariner Books. If you’re in the media and you would like to talk to me about the book, the WGA strike, or the many issues facing Hollywood, please contact Ro (at) RoRomanelloPR.com

  • More on the book: It’s my reaction to and examination of the trends that produced #MeToo and various racial reckonings, as well as a look at how much has changed in the American TV and film industries (and how much hasn’t). I interviewed more than 150 people for it, at all levels of the industry, and did some deep dives on troubled productions that illuminate how entrenched the biggest problems are — examples that demonstrate how much more needs to be done. Many industry people are working for change on all kinds of fronts, and I spoke to dozens of those brave, persistent, amusing and intelligent folks. The book is available for pre-order, and if you look at the pre-order page, you can see that a bunch of extremely nice people have said very cool things about it. Kirkus Reviews was also kind. Here is a look at the book’s badass cover! By the way, here are all the places that you can find me and/or the book online.
  • If you want to know more about the book, what I’m watching and what I’m thinking about, I have an email newsletter.  Please sign up for Burner Account today! It is free! In the newsletter, I have shared thoughs the death of Twitter (which then didn’t die — rude), about Dark Winds, Rutherford Falls, For All Mankind and Star Trek: Picard, among other topics. 
  • This is what was in Publisher’s Weekly when Burn It Down was announced. And this is the pic the book team said could not be my author photo LOL. 
  • The rest of this site mainly features links to my recent and somewhat recent work. From last year: I wrote about House of the Dragon and nuclear proliferation, you know, fun stuff! 
  • Warner Bros. Discovery is having problems but a lot of its DC or DC-adjacent TV is… good? It’s true! Anyway, here are some thoughts on Pennyworth, The Sandman, Harley Quinn and The Boys, among other shows. 
  • I reviewed the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once for Vanity Fair. I really enjoyed it, and if this corner of the multiverse is the one where it’s Michelle Yeoh’s world and we’re just living in it, I’m super cool with that.
  • I penned a non-spoilery appreciation of one of my favorite, soothing television escapes: The Great Pottery Throwdown. It’s on HBO Max, and I love it so. 
  • I wrote about the first season of the breakout Showtime drama Yellowjackets!  
  • I talked to Michael Greyeyes about his career and his outstanding performance on the excellent comedy Rutherford Falls (it’s on Peacock, check it out!).
  • I interviewed Jeff Garlin of The Goldbergs and Curb Your Enthusiasm about workplace behavior and norms. It was… a journey. 
  • I made lists of my favorite TV and films of 2021
  • Cowboy Bebop is a beloved anime and Netflix has made a live-action TV show based on the original series. I wrote about why I dig it for VF
  • I wrote about how Netflix’s response to the controversy over a very high-profile comic’s transphobic comedy special was… not good. 
  • I had a ton of fun writing about why I love the Netflix show Lucifer, which wrapped up its six-season run in September. Longtime Lucifans may enjoy the piece, but it’s really designed to tempt newbies who have yet to check out the show (thus no spoilers about the final season, or much of anything else). It would be a sin not to give the devilish drama a chance, if my description of it intrigues you! 
  • I am a fan of the podcast Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss, in which those who work as writers and producers in film and TV (and beyond) talk about the challenges they’ve faced in their careers and what they learned along the way. The whole theme of the podcast is adversity in an often brutal industry, but I find it heartening (not to mention entertaining and just plain interesting) to listen to smart people tell good stories, and also offer insights into the obstacles they’ve faced and how they’ve climbed over them (or tunneled under them). I guested on the podcast this year and talked about what it’s like to write about and report on the entertainment industry. You will not be surprised to learn there are obstacles and challenges aplenty on that path! 
  • For Salon, a deep dive into the story of All Rise, one of the rare TV dramas with a Black female lead, and what went wrong during the two-year tenure of its showrunner. I ultimately spoke with 30 people, 18 of whom worked directly with EP/showrunner Greg Spottiswood. In the course of reporting the story, I learned of an appalling comment Spottiswood allegedly made on a Zoom call with staff last year. But this story, which is the culmination of months of work, isn’t just about one man or one comment, it’s about how the entertainment industry is still in need of major reforms; it still has a long way to go when it comes to true inclusion and matters of culture, equity, race, respect and professionalism.
  • A 2021 story for The Hollywood Reporter on two departures at Bull (a show previously in the news for alleged harassment of actor-producer Eliza Dushku): After investigations, showrunner Glenn Gordon Caron and cast member Freddy Rodriguez are both gone from the CBS drama. I spoke to several sources at Bull, all of whom alleged an unprofessional work environment in which it was common for Caron to berate the writing staff. A writer who worked for Caron on a previous show, Medium, had this to say about his leadership: “It was a toxic environment while I was there. And now that I have much more experience and I have been a showrunner myself, I can tell you, there are a lot of different ways to tell a writer that what they’re submitting didn’t work for you without attacking them in a cruel way.”
  • Never thought I’d write these stories: Warrior is coming back for a third season! It arrives June 29 on Max (the artist formerly known as HBO Max). My 2020 VF feature on the show is about, among other things, the quest for inclusion, Hollywood’s biased history, Bruce Lee and the challenging path of a rare U.S. drama with many key Asian characters. In the course of reporting that story, HBO Max altered course and said it would add Warrior to the streaming service, and that happened on Jan. 1, 2021. As recounted in this April 2021 VF story on the show’s revival, Warrior quickly became one of HBO Max’s Top 15 most-viewed series. Lots of intel on the renewal in that piece, and also in this April GQ interview with Warrior executive producer Justin Lin. (Before taking the plunge with Warrior, if you’d like more general info about the drama, here’s my review of the show’s first season.)
  • In the early hours of Monday, Feb. 1, Vanity Fair posted its first story collecting testimony from a  number of women alleging multiple kinds of abuse and violence from Marilyn Manson a.k.a. Brian Warner. Here’s a thread linking to our coverage of this story.
  • Media and entertainment industry executives are in a position to reward the odious men and women who encouraged the murderous Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol  — if past is prologue,  many of those grasping politicians and opportunistic creeps will be rewarded with convenient and possibly quite lucrative rebranding opportunities. I wrote about why media and entertainment executives should not give them those image-enhancing opportunities. They really, really shouldn’t.
  • Please enjoy my year-end lists of 2020 TV shows (and other things) I really loved; it comes with a side order of musings on baking, cruelty and compassion.
  • You may have heard of the cult Nxivm (the one Allison Mack of Smallville was in), and, well, wow. A lot going on there. In 2020, HBO debuted The Vow, a 9-part documentary on Nxivm, and I reviewed it for the New York Times. I think the documentary is fascinating, thoughtful and highly relevant to our times.
  • On the third anniversary of the arrival of that awful Access Hollywood tape, I wrote about what occurred then and what’s happened in the entertainment industry since (and believe it or not, I kinda sorta have some hope!)
  • I talked to more than 30 sources about Peter Lenkov, a CBS showrunner who was fired in 2020. The resulting in-depth story was the hardest of my career, and it’s not just about one man, it’s about a broken system that fails to train, curb and adequately supervise individuals who are allowed to amass and wield enormous amounts of power.  The entertainment industry (still) needs institutional, systemic and radical change.
  • For Vanity Fair, I wrote about how some Hollywood TV studios cut the pay of assistants during the pandemic, which added yet another obstacle to a path that is quite difficult for lower-level workers (and by the way, assistants’ very low pay was already making the television industry’s stated goal of greater inclusion very hard to achieve).
  • Another VF piece: I wrote about whether TV is sabotaging itself by letting the trend toward short seasons and short overall runs damage its finest ambitions. (Spoiler alert: It is!) I talked to some notable creators for the piece, and they’re concerned too. This piece means a lot to me; I’ve been pondering the issues it explores for a looong time. (Don’t write me an email about how short-run shows can be great. I promise I agree with you!) ALSO: As a companion piece to that column, check out this Q&A with Mike Schur, creator of The Good Place, who laid out the economic forces leading to generally shorter TV-show runs.
  • Hooray for the spring 2020 return of One Day at a Time, which was canceled by Netflix but, after a hue and cry from its many fans (including me), returned for a fourth season on PopTV. Here’s an in-depth feature for the New York Times on how the comeback came together.  (I’ve written a number of pieces for the Times in recent years, including pieces on Gentleman Jack, Rubicon, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend [don’t miss this sidebar] and Modern Love.)
  • For this 2019 six-part retrospective SyfyWire podcast about the legacy and impact of Lost, we talked to many veterans of the show, as well as critics and other Lost insiders, and we had a good time making it. I hope you’ll give it a shot.
  • Many things are Bad but the fourth season of Wynonna Earp, which finally arrived in 2020, is Good. It’s also super gay. Wrote about it!
  • The fifth season of Lucifer finally arrived on Netflix in August 2020. Yay! This show is a gem. I interviewed the showrunners, Ildy Modrovich and Joe Henderson, about where the show is going and where it’s been, and I also discussed those topics with stars Lauren German and Tom Ellis.
  • I talked to David Simon about the renewed popularity of The Wire, the landmark HBO series he created (and which turns 18 this year). We also talked about his 2020 limited series The Plot Against America, and the state of American democracy (RIP).
  • Lists! I compiled rosters of my favorite 100 TV programs of the past 10 years and the 40 best TV shows of 2019.
  • I wrote about how the creative team behind HBO’s Mrs. Fletcher depicted the lead character’s internal and external transformations.
  • Slings & Arrows has returned to streaming, via Acorn TV, and this early-aughts Canadian gem is so good!
  • I am an eternal superfan of HBO’s Enlightened, and I wrote about why the 2011-2013 program is  more relevant than ever and one of the best shows of the decade.
  • Some personal news. Extremely earnest thanks to every single person who was kind and nice and fantastic to me about this announcement. 💚🌈
  • I talked to Killjoys creator Michelle Lovretta about the show’s excellent and quietly subversive series finale. Killjoys is one of my favorite shows of the past decade, don’t sleep on its many delights. Team Awesome Force 4eva.
  • For Polygon, I wrote about the rise of Tentpole TV, the industry’s scramble to make programs out of sci-fi/fantasy properties, and the good and bad that might come out of this major shift in the television industry.
  • If you want to see all my writing on the final season of Game of Thrones (plus some other TV pieces I really enjoyed writing), it’s all on the TV Guide site!
  • You know I am down with shows that go for broke and make me cry and get fucking weird. So the week of the 20th anniversary of its U.S. debut, I wrote a tribute/viewing guide to one of the best science-fiction shows ever, Farscape (which is now on Amazon, completely with the Peacekeeper Wars wrap-up miniseries!). This piece has intel about Farscape’s past (and possible future) from one of the show’s executive producers and a Ben Mendelsohn mention you may not have been expecting. But the important thing about this Farscape viewing guide is that I give you permission to not watch every episode. No, really, it’ll be fine! Happy Farscaping!
  • Here is a deeply reported Vulture piece from 2019, which contains revelations about CBS, Eliza Dushku, deep-rooted patterns of toxicity and another HR investigation at a show with a history of turmoil.
  • I collected a list of links to reporting about the many #MeToo stories that came out of just one media/entertainment company in the past year (this thread began in November 2018 and it’s still going in December 2019 as more stories about systematic problems emerge). In an op-ed for the Hollywood Reporter, I wrote about how the work of changing abusive cultures in the industry has barely begun, and propose one possible way forward.
  • I wrote about Claire Fraser of Outlander for Entertainment Weekly. I really enjoyed this chance to gab about why she’s not only important in her own right, she’s a precursor to a wave of ambitious TV shows that unapologetically present stories about complex women.
  • Even if you know nothing about Doctor Who, this in-depth feature story should get you up to speed. For the piece, I talked to showrunner Chris Chibnall, Jodie Whittaker, a writer, a director and knowledgeable fans of the show; we discussed what it’s all about, why it works, where it has been in its 55 years and where it’s going. This piece was truly a labor of love, and I hope you enjoy it. As part of the reporting for the story, I got to do this enjoyable and enlightening interview with star Jodie Whittaker.
  • My favorite shows of 2018. Yay for good and great TV!
  • I wrote a big Sunday feature on Wynonna Earp for The New York Times, a definite high point in my professional life! Even if you don’t watch the show, aren’t you intrigued by the fact that this Syfy series already has multiple conventions devoted just to it? And it’s been on for only a few seasons? I think the rip-roaring show’s history, themes and fandom come together to create an interesting saga, one that I think has value to any interested observer of the evolving TV landscape. Also there are tentacles and mustaches, what else do you want? (A couple reported Wynonna pieces from 2019 are here and here, and just for fun, here’s a 2017 review of the show.)
  • After more than a year of reporting on Brad Kern, a showrunner cited by dozens of ex-employees for harassment, vindictiveness, inappropriate behavior, repeated mistreatment of a nursing mom and racist comments (among many other allegations), he was finally fired by CBS. As I said in this Twitter thread, “It SHOULD NOT take multiple major stories in the press to remove a toxic exec, showrunner or anyone else with power in TV. That’s not the system working: That’s a sign the system has failed its workers.”
  • The culture of CBS, and entertainment-industry cultures in general, need massive, revolutionary overhauls. Abuses of power for the most part are still ignored, enabled and whitewashed. This is a reported Vulture story, with some analysis of those issues, on Brad Kern, Leslie Moonves, CBS and the changes the past year have not brought about.
  • The documentary This Changes Everything is an examination of decades of sexism and the systematic exclusion of women in Hollywood. Fun stuff, right? But honestly, this film (which features Taraji P. Henson, Meryl Streep, Shonda Rhimes, Jessica Chastain and so many other amazing women) is brisk, lively and interesting, and I’m not just saying that because I’m in it (toward the end, they interview me about my reporting on this topic). This Changes Everything premiered at TIFF, had a well-regarded run on the festival circuit and got a theatrical release before arriving on Starz in late 2019. It’s now streaming on Netflix.
  • Fuuuuuuuuck nooooooooooo.
  • Some stories give me frustration migraines: This one did not! Yay! I’ve been reporting on issues of inclusion and representation in the TV industry for many, many years (see all the links at the end of this post). HBO has made serious strides since I wrote this story about the then-abysmal stats on inclusion in at high-end TV networks in 2014. Check out this story, for The Hollywood Reporter, about the progress HBO has made on the inclusion front as of 2018. (FX has changed a lot as well.) No, the TV industry has not fixed everything when it comes to matters of representation in front of and behind the camera. But here’s my two cents, as someone who will continue to shine a light on these issues whenever I can: Why not celebrate real progress when it arrives? I think a lot about how much still needs to be done. But what Casey Bloys of HBO said regarding these issues made me feel hope. I like hope! I am pro-hope.
  • More for The Hollywood Reporter: Devilish problems behind the scenes at American Gods during its troubled second season. Toxic showrunner 101: Don’t be this guy. Also, ageism is all over Hollywood and I’m over it. Something fun: The time I met Meghan Markle, plus thoughts on women’s progress, Suits and The Crown.
  • More for The New York Times: An interview with the great Ann Dowd on The Handmaid’s Tale (there’s also a mention of The Leftovers); a review/explainer of the fine true-crime series The Staircase; a review of the documentary series The Fourth Estate, which is about The New York Times; an interview with Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys about the series finale of The Americans; Jane the Virgin showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman makes it official that Season Five is the final season and talks about why that is and what she’s thinking as she and the team head into the endgame of this wonderful show.
  • I guested on the Tom and Lorenzo podcast, check it out here, here and here. I love Tom and Lorenzo so much and we had a blast talking pop culture, film, TV and Me Too. Tom’s baked goods were amazing.
  • More podcastery! Here is an earlier visit to the Extra Hot Great podcast, where we talked about The Fourth Estate and several other shows. I nominated an episode of One Day at a Time for the TV canon and I definitely did not tear up during that segment. This one’s for the true nerds (a.k.a. my people): In a 2016 appearance on Extra Hot Great, I participated in a Star Trek TV fantasy draft and nominated a truly exceptional episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for the TV canon. Here’s another Extra Hot Great podcast appearance! And yet another EHG chat, in which we talk about Star Trek: Picard.
  • I was honored to be on a panel at CUNY’s School of Journalism with New York Times critic A.O. Scott, the AP’s Nekesa Moody, and writer/journalist/podcaster Kurt Andersen; CUNY Professor Janice C. Simpson moderated. The panel, which is available as a Studio 360 podcast here, was titled, “When Bad People Create Good Art.”

From about 2000 and 2018, I was a TV critic at Variety, at HuffPost, and at the Chicago Tribune. Everything I wrote at Variety, from fall 2015 to spring 2018, is collected here. Here is a selection of pieces from the last few years that I would love for you to read:

In case it’s of interest, I have an Instagram (warning: It’s mostly pictures of my travels, animals and pretty flowers). Three other things before I get to the next section: One, I frequently get the questions, “How did you become a TV critic? How could I get into the writing-about-TV game?” and I’ve addressed those queries in this post. Two, I still love TV and, as you can see from the links above, I’m still writing about it, reporting on it and even doing the occasional review, but I’m no longer reviewing TV full time, and this Vanity Fair article explains why. Three, if you’d like to know more about my life and tattoos, this post from 2013 is from the middle of my family-pocalypsethis is about life stuff and my arm tattoos, and this is what I wrote when my mom died in 2016. More tattoo content: This is my back piece.

Before I joined Variety, I was the TV critic for Huffington Post. Quite a bit of that work is here. You can also find the HP pieces here, and there are archives going back to 2011 on the right side of that page. Until the fall of 2010, I was the TV critic for the Chicago Tribune. All the links to my work there are gone now.  Not great, Bob.

Here’s a long 2007 feature on the production of Friday Night Lights. I visited the set in Austin way back in Season 1, and was moved and delighted to write about the way they shot the show and how that influenced the intimacy of its vibe. To this day, that long FNL feature is one of my favorite things I’ve ever gotten to do. Texas Forever. 

The drama that might be closest to my heart – and the show I’ve almost certainly written about more than any other – is Battlestar Galactica. For BSG’s final run of episodes, I interviewed the writer of each episode and also offered my own thoughts; those posts are long but I so enjoyed doing them (and now that they have disappeared into a black hole, I may post them here eventually). Perhaps the most extensive entry into that array of final-season coverage is an in-depth, post-finale interview with executive producer Ron Moore; that piece also contains my thoughts on the finale as well as comments from actors Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell. In late 2013, I interviewed Moore again, on the 10th anniversary of BSG’s debut, and you can find that conversation in both story and podcast form.  I still miss Adama and Roslin and Saul damn Tigh. So say we all.  

I wrote a ton about Breaking Bad back in the day; here are a few links to some pieces I wrote during the show’s home stretch. I’m still not over “Ozymandias.”

By the way, I used to be half of a podcast duo: Talking TV with Ryan and Ryan is over – and if you ever listened, thank you. And you can still listen, if it’s new to you. It usually consisted of Ryan McGee and I blathering about whatever shows we were into (or not into) at that moment in time. Sometimes the podcasts contain interviews with actors and TV writers. (You can search the podcast’s site for show names.) This podcast (which is also on iTunes) may just be in your wheelhouse.

In addition to the ones names above, of course there are dozens of shows I want you to watch and catch up on and love. I don’t have time to list them all, but here are a few worth mentioning: I wrote quite a bit about Spartacus over the years – interviews and reviews and a “what to watch before you binge it on Netflix” explainer. If you think you’re too good for Spartacus and that Spartacus is something you should sneer at, think again.

Just a few favorites from the past half-decade or so (and I need to add to this list! I really do!): Peaky fooking Blinders, the incredible Hall of Famer Rectify, and the wonderful Happy Valley are on Netflix, You’re the Worst and The Shield are on Hulu (as is the cult gem Mary Kills People), get into The Americans for Lenin’s sake (comrades, that final season!!) The Returned is magnificently cry-inducing and weird, Banshee and Strike Back both had wobbly final seasons but were really worth watching before that.

Comedy got so wild and risky and great in the past decade that I wrote a big piece in 2016 about how half-hour shows are crushing it even more than drama (it’s good to live in a world in which half-hours as varied as Atlanta, One Day at a Time, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place are so consistently excellent). More raves! Killjoys is my sci-fi jam. Oh, also, Black-ish! (And more Black-ish!)

Some of the shows listed above are a little bit obscure, but I watch and like a lot of popular dramas as well! Some of them are on my end-of-year Best TV lists: Check out my 20 favorite shows of 2017, with many honorable mentions. Here’s my 2016 Top 20 list (I ranked shows for the first time! Exciting! I did not rank programs on two other lists of very good shows from that year). Here’s my 2015 Top 20 list (which contains links to two other lists of very good shows from that year). Also, feel free to check out my 2014 Top TV list, my 2013 Top TV list and 2012 Top TV list, all of which you can treat as rosters full of viewing suggestions. Finally, follow me on Twitter if you want the full scope of my daily obsessions, enthusiasms and rants. (Spoiler: I post a lot of pictures of foxes.)

But wait, there’s more! Here are a few reported stories worth noting:

Representation of women and people of color as TV showrunners for the 2016-2017 broadcast network season and what those dire statistics mean for the pipeline of future TV creators.

Representation of women and people of color as TV directors: The amount of scripted TV has doubled in the past five years, but guess who is directing most of it? I bet you don’t have to guess. If you only read one or two sidebars from this story, make it the ACLU interview and/or the roundup of comments from TV directors.

[Addendum to the directors story: If you think real change is not possible when it comes to diversity and inclusion in the TV industry, think again. This story proves that significant improvements are indeed possible. Everyone in the TV industry should take note.]

Representation of women in writers’ rooms. Spoiler alert: The percentages are not great. (This story is a couple years old but … yeah. Still not great.)

Film world bonus! Check out the stats on the writers and directors of Star Wars. I love Star Wars a lot. Its writers and directors are almost all white guys.

Representation of women and people of color as creators at prestige-drama outlets. Spoiler alert: I’ll let Sisko take this one.

[Four years later update: HBO has changed its ways – everyone in the TV industry should take note. I’m leaving Sisko in place because there’s much more work to be done.]

The Top TV Shows of 2019

This is a love story. 

Television, there’s too much of you. Stop. But also, don’t. 

I didn’t do individual writeups of each show on this list, as I did with my 2018 list, in part because this was a looong year and I still have a lot of things to get done before 2019 calls it a day. OK, fine, that’s partly a dodge. I am pretty busy, but even if I wasn’t, the truth is, penning 40 41* individual writeups is challenging. Fun fact: Writing short is often harder than writing long. It’s true. 

You may assume that every show on this list will bring you joy for a distinct and delightful array of reasons. Watch them all. 

A few bits of houskeeping: One reason I’ve posted this list is to draw your attention to something completely unrelated (I guess this is my version of a pop-up ad?).  Feel free to skip ahead to the list(s) if that’s the only #content you desire.

The documentary This Changes Everything (which is already available to rent/buy on various platforms) arrives on Starz on Dec. 16. I would love it if you watched it, and not just because I’m in it (stone-cold humblebrag, Mo! Wow! This is the real brag: Someone said that I sort of serve as the Neville Longbottom of the film and I have never felt more profoundly complimented. I recently re-read the entire Harry Potter book cycle, and Neville and Luna Lovegood are kind of the best. Also, the fact that Hermione ends up with Ron is one of the great literary catastrophes of our age, but that’s not the topic at hand right now.) 

This Changes Everything systematically (and entertainingly and thoughtfully, in my opinion) takes on the issues of institutional and informal exclusion, bias and sexism in Hollywood. It contains a lot of useful facts and figures but also a bracing array of interviews with top actresses and directors. And yes, I’d say all these positive things even if the film wasn’t the reason I became best friends with Yara Shahidi and Meryl Streep. (This is a lie. We are not friends. Let me dream.) Here are some critics’ takes on TCE in case you want to read up on it before deciding whether to check it out. 

Back to the list! Yearly whine: These are not all the shows I watched. I viewed part or all of many more programs. These are the ones I deemed worthy of being on this long (and yet difficult to pare down) list.

If I wrote about a show this year, I’ve linked to that piece within the list. And if you want to know where to stream any of the shows below (that information can be confusing and non-intuitive), or you just want to know where to find obscure gems like Rubicon and Slings & Arrows), I find Just Watch quite helpful on that topic.

Here are the house rules on why some shows are not on the list:

  • I didn’t have time to get to it.
  • I sampled it and didn’t like it as much as you did.
  • I tried it and strongly disliked it. What were they thinking?
  • I’m a cruel hellbeast determined to bring pain and suffering to the world. (This is probably the reason.)

The Best

As you already know, Fleabag was the best TV program of 2019. Kneel

My 2019 Top 10 (in alphabetical order)

Better Things, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Fleabag, The Good Fight, The Good Place, Lucifer, One Day at a Time, Schitt’s Creek, Succession, Watchmen.

The Top 41* Television Programs of 2019 (in alphabetical order)

*Update on Dec. 31, 2019: When first published, this roster had 40 shows, but I’ve now added The Expanse, which released its fourth season 10 days after this list came out. Around the middle of the show’s second season, I fell behind on The Expanse, in large part due to Peak TV glut and various other time-devouring commitments. Fortunately I’ve had time lately to get caught up, and we finished Season 4 on Dec. 31, 2019. It’s a late-breaking and deserving addition to the list!

Barry (HBO)

Better Things (FX) 

Big Mouth (Netflix) 

A Black Lady Sketch Show (HBO)

Blood & Treasure (CBS)

BoJack Horseman (Netflix) 

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (NBC)

Catastrophe (Amazon)

Chernobyl (HBO) 

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (CW)

The Crown (Netflix)

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (Netflix)

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (CW)

Deadwood: The Movie (HBO)

Derry Girls (Netflix)

Emergence (ABC)

The Expanse (Amazon)

Fleabag (Amazon)

Fosse/Verdon (FX)

Gentleman Jack (HBO)

The Good Place (NBC)

The Good Fight (CBS All Access) 

I Think You Should Leave (Netflix)

Into the Badlands (AMC)

Jane the Virgin (CW)

Killjoys (Syfy)

Lucifer (Netflix)

Mrs. Fletcher (HBO)

One Day at a Time (Netflix/Pop TV)

Pennyworth (Epix)

Pose (FX)

Russian Doll (Netflix) 

Schitt’s Creek (Pop TV) 

Stranger Things (Netflix)

Stumptown (ABC)

Succession (HBO)

Superstore (NBC)

Warrior (Cinemax)

Watchmen (HBO)

When They See Us (Netflix)

You’re the Worst (FX) 

Shout-out to shows that had good, very good or great wrap-ups or series finales this year. Among them: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Jane the Virgin, You’re the Worst, Into the Badlands, Killjoys, Catastrophe, Fleabag and Deadwood. I miss them all, but they went out on supremely entertaining and emotionally satisfying high notes. And by the way, it is an utterly fantastic troll that the Deadwood movie, which was released by a network owned by AT&T, is in part about the deeply unwelcome arrival of a telephone company. 

Not done yet: I re-watched the following shows this year. They remain great. 

  • Deadwood (didn’t write about it! Still fucking incredible!)

Those links probably whetted your appetite for more of my writing, which you can find here.  One mo’ thing: Here’s my list of the 100* best TV shows of the past decade. (Well, 101 now that I added The Expanse to that list too!)

Finally, science tells us that even-numbered years are better than odd-numbered years. I can’t wait to see what we all get up to in 2020. Sincerely wishing you all good things.

See You On the Other Side: My Battlestar Galactica Post-Finale Interviews and Review

This piece was originally published March 14, 2009. The publication I worked for then let the post lapse into the void. But there were many copies.

Can you believe it’s really over? I can’t either. Before accepting that fact, let’s talk and think and write about the finale way too much. Here goes…

Part 1: The interview with Moore

MR: I think one thing that threw me about the finale was that it was hopeful.

RDM: [laughs] There were a fair number of people that were prepared for the most nihilistic [finale ever].

MR: “You’re going to kill them all, aren’t you!?”

RDM: I know.

MR: It’s the ultimate sucker punch of “Battlestar Galactica” — that it ends on a hopeful note.

RDM: Yeah, it’s true. It’s the final twist. The final twist is — that it’s all OK. 

MR: Talk to me about that whole second Earth thing. That kind of gave me pause me when I saw it.

RDM: It was built into the show when we decided to get to Earth. This was always the plan – the plan was to get to Earth, have it be a cinder, and then go, “God, where now?” And take the audience on this other journey and make them forget about that and not think about it. Because the concept of the show was to search for a place called Earth.

So we wanted to give that to you before you expected it and make it a downer and [have you go,] “Oh shoot, now what?” And now you’re really adrift. [The intention was] to put the audience with the characters, where they were really adrift and not hoping that anything better was going to happen.

And at the very last, at the very end, to then have a moment of hope, to have something to hang on to, and to give them the thing that they had quested for for so long, and to give that to the audience too.

MR: And so it’s as if this Earth is an homage to the other Earth, the first one.

RDM: I thought there was something interesting about that. This isn’t the original Earth. We’re actually [living on] an homage, as you said, to the original Earth. They come here and try to learn a lesson from the original Earth and make this Earth a better story.

MR: So the question is, did they learn their lesson?

RDM: Exactly. And the show could not answer that. It didn’t feel right for the show, like [happens] with so many things, to give a definitive answer to that. Any more than the show said, “This is the answer to terrorism, this is the answer to Iraq, these are the answers to security and freedom.” It gets to a place where you have an opportunity and you have a hope, but you couldn’t definitively say, “It’s going to be OK.”

MR: I went back and watched the closing moments of “Crossroads, Part 2” again, and the final image is of a planet that looks a lot like Earth. How does that fit in to what we see in “Daybreak”? Can you walk me through that?

RDM: That was all specifically thought out. The planet that you see at the end of “Crossroads” is this planet that we stand on. It has the North American continent and the South American [continent], it’s very clear, we wanted it to be visually easy to identify for everybody.

Kara takes them to both Earths, as a matter of fact. She takes them to the original Earth, which, when we showed it in Revelations, we were careful to never quite be able to identify the land masses from orbit. We wanted you to accept it as Earth, and most people assumed it was this Earth, but we didn’t want to flat out mislead you, so we didn’t want to have it look like North America too.

MR: So Kara comes back in “Crossroads,” she says, “I’ve been to Earth”…

RDM: She had been to that Earth. The original Earth.

MR: The crispy Earth.

RDM: She guided the fleet to get there. She takes us to that. That’s part of her experience that she remembers. She remembers traveling there, seeing there, and comes back to the fleet saying, “I know how to get to that place.”

In the finale, she makes an intuitive leap connecting the music as coordinates, enters the into the jump computer and those coordinates take us to the second Earth, this place.

MR: It was a little bit of a fakeout, you have to admit.

RDM: Yeah, we did a head fake. But I don’t think it crosses the line, I don’t think it’s unduly misleading. I think you accept it as you go along. And clearly [we] wanted people to draw the connection that it was going to be this Earth, but we also didn’t put anything in the show that prevented us from doing the finale the way we wanted to.

Continue reading See You On the Other Side: My Battlestar Galactica Post-Finale Interviews and Review

A 2007 Friday Night Lights Set Visit: Witnessing the How the Magic Was Made

This piece was originally published March 20, 2007. 

AUSTIN, Texas — A dusty field in Texas. A ramshackle house in a cash-strapped part of town. The cramped, battered office of a high school guidance counselor.

They’re all unlikely places for a creative revolution, but there’s no other way to describe what’s happening on the set of “Friday Night Lights,” NBC’s acclaimed series about life in the small town of Dillon, Texas.

Far from the bright lights of Hollywood, in vibrant yet laid-back Austin, the actors, writers and directors of the show have created one of the most realistic, subtle, enthralling dramas on any screen, large or small. And they’ve done it on this first-year show by breaking many of the rules of television.

“When I first came on [the ‘FNL’] set, I thought, it’s interesting — this is what I imagined filmmaking would be, before I saw what filmmaking was,” says executive producer Jason Katims, the show’s head writer and a veteran of beloved cult series such as “Roswell” and “My So-Called Life.”

“What I imagined it would be was, people moving really fast, actors trying this and trying that, everybody being very excited, and it being very creative and it being a place to sort of discover things. That’s what I thought it would be, and this is the first time I actually saw it work that way.”

Indeed, a visit to the set of “Friday Night Lights,” which touches on the fortunes of the Dillon High School Panthers football team but is much more about the lives of the residents of the town, demonstrates that the show’s creative process is like nothing else on television.

There are no fancy lighting setups. Actors are not only allowed but encouraged to improvise their lines. Every single scene is shot in real locations, unlike most TV series, which use prefabricated sets. And with inspiration from what director of photography David Boyd calls “gonzo documentary guys” such as D.A. Pennebaker and David and Albert Maysles, three cameras simultaneously record the action, capturing nuances and moments that many other shows ignore in their forced march to the next plot point.

It took a little time to settle into its groove — even NBC entertainment president Kevin Reilly says he got a little tired of the show’s “jiggly camera” style, which has been toned down since the pilot.

But over the past six months, as it has unfurled surprising, deeply human stories about an injured quarterback suing his coach; a high school boy’s attempt to care for his sick grandmother; and one couple’s attempt to raise a spirited, smart daughter while dealing with the pressures of modern life, “Friday Night Lights” has quickly become appointment television for a growing number of critics and fans.

One of several fan sites devoted to campaigning for a second “FNL” season, fightforlights.com, has collected dozens of the show’s critical raves, and a recent Tribune column on the show prompted an outpouring of more than 100 positive emails and message-board comments from readers.

“Everything about the show just feels so natural and real, which is a rarity on TV. It’s not about quippy one-liners or bombastic arguments,” one commenter wrote. “All of the characters are flawed, some more than others. But all of it is beautiful to watch.”

Though the “FNL” audience has hovered around 7 million viewers, well below NBC’s expectations, its viewers are positively rabid about the show, as Reilly well knows.

“I just got an e-mail today forwarded to me from one of the heads of one of the major advertising agencies — and I literally get a version of this every day — saying this is the best television show in years, or the best television show on the air,” Reilly says.

“Everything’s real, and all the relationships [make you] feel like you know these people,” says Scott Porter, who plays former Panther quarterback Jason Street, the character who was paralyzed in the show’s first episode. “I think that’s why people who watch the show have such a strong connection to it.”

But if fans travel to Austin to find the show’s fancy soundstages, they’ll be out of luck. There is a bare-bones production office on the outskirts of the city, but there is no soundstage, there are no sets.

All scenes are shot in houses, businesses and stores in and around Austin, which is where you’ll find the gritty high school that doubles as the home of the Dillon Panthers, the tiny house that quarterback Matt Saracen (Evanston’s Zach Gilford) shares with his grandma, and the fast-food joint that doubles as one of the show’s hangouts, the Alamo Freeze.

On the farthest outskirts of Austin on a recent February evening, klieg lights and cranes carrying a rainmaking machine were poised like towering robots over that day’s set, which recently had been home to a herd of cows, judging by what was underfoot. In the March 28 episode, which was filming that night, circumstances force the residents of Dillon to build an improvised football field for an important Panthers game.

On the sidelines, Tim and Billy Riggins —actors Taylor Kitsch and Derek Phillips — tossed perfect spirals at each other during breaks in the filming. Extras wandered around in Dillon Panther shirts and waved pennants during the big plays, which were filmed until the wee hours. As the night wore on and this “Mud Bowl” episode lived up to its name, the actors playing the Panther team members and coaches were soaked by the rain and covered in mud. Nobody minded.

Addressing the show’s critical acclaim and glowing press notices, Kyle Chandler, who plays Coach Eric Taylor, said in an interview the next day, “I don’t think anyone’s going, ‘Oh, well, now I’m going to get this new car.’ I think all the actors on this show love the process more than anything we’ll get out of it in the long run. I love this process. It’s an actor’s dream.”

Shooting in real locations in Texas has given the show an authentic feel that it would never have had in Los Angeles, says Chandler, who was raised in a small town in Georgia.

“When you live in this town, you are from Texas. You’re experiencing and feeling it,” Chandler said. “Austin is a great place. It’s not hard to get ideas for your character when you just go to breakfast across the street.”

But there’s far more to the show than a palpable sense of place. The show’s actors and directors have unprecedented freedom to change lines, alter scenes and improvise moments that feel true to the moment and to their characters. And the show’s writers, who’ve come up with some of the most nuanced, compelling story lines on television (most of which don’t have a thing to do with football, despite the show’s origins as H.G. Bissinger’s non-fiction account of a real Texas high school football team), are fine with those improvised alterations.

“Truthfully, 95 percent of the time, the actors are only lifting up what we originally envisioned as writers,” says Katims. “Every once in a while, you’ll be like, ‘I wanted that line because I wanted that transition.’ But you work it out.”

But on most shows, changing one line – heck, one word — of dialogue can lead to tense negotiations between actors, director and writers.

“Normally you’ve got a writer sitting there, watching every single word,” says Jesse Plemons, who plays Landry Clarke.

In the tiny high school guidance counselor’s office that serves as the office of Dillon High School counselor Tami Taylor (Connie Britton), the quest to convey the emotional truth of a scene and not just recite each word as scripted was demonstrated again and again.

In the scene being shot that night, for a different upcoming episode, Landry is struggling to tell Taylor, a Dillon guidance counselor, about a friend who has been physically attacked. Taylor’s comforting words change slightly with each take. And the words Landry is struggling for come out differently every time; he doesn’t want to reveal the friend’s name, and at one point, Taylor thinks he may have been the one who was assaulted. The words keep changing, but the emotional impact only grows as Britton and Plemons mine the difficult emotions at the heart of this moment.

“We try to definitely hit all the points in a scene, but we’re allowed to change the lines around to kind of fit us and fit our characters,” says Plemons.

Continue reading A 2007 Friday Night Lights Set Visit: Witnessing the How the Magic Was Made