Most of them weren't even built with dressing rooms for actors, so forget having convenient bathrooms. At our taping, the 1iota ushers had to ferry us to a mobile restroom trailer set up by the Universal backlot. So if you have trouble holding it for long, a sitcom taping may not be for you. Rule Four: Don't expect a theatrical-style presentation. Most sitcoms are performed in sound stages that are equipped with temporary risers and convention-style chairs that can be removed when the season is over and the next production moves into the space.
Sometimes, your view of the scene might be momentarily obstructed by a camera or a flimsy wall, and over the night you'll be looking all around the stage because sets may be spread in spaces all around you. But most of the scenes will be visible from about 30 feet away, and the audience always has the ability to watch and hear the proceedings via overhead monitors, too. No, the appeal of a taping lies in seeing actors you like and being fascinated by the process. And this is where a TV taping becomes incredibly rewarding.
At my recent taping, I got to see the legendary director James Burrows, a master of comic timing and full-bodied characters whose leadership made Cheers , Frasier , and Friends such standouts of the genre. Rule Five: Be prepared to give lots of time. In between every take, Burrows would confer with the writers and actors while music was turned up and the audience coordinator tried to distract the observers and keep them jazzed.
Then the ensemble would get back together to try it again, this time with a few new lines. Every scene was delivered three or four times this way, each version testing new punch lines that the writers thought would be increasingly funny. And it meant that our laughter never felt forced—it was funny, for every take. For our taping, it was illuminating to watch Sean Hayes or Megan Mullally be told a new line out of our earshot, see the cast giggle when they heard it, and then watch them nail it with flawless timing one minute later for the cameras, without ever having had a second to rehearse.
It takes talent to work this way, even without the chaos factor. With its on-the-fly, written-the-week-of-release style, South Park aims for big targets and still manages to generate controversy and chatter. The show is anchored by Zach Braff's John 'JD' Dorian, given to flights of fantasy all while he and his fellow fledgling medics — Donald Faison's Chris Turk and Sarah Chalke's nervy, talented Elliot Reed — brave the pressure of their chosen profession and the wrath of perennially grumpy mentor Dr.
Through its several years on the air, Scrubs mixed the madcap with solid character work, and a cast of funny supporting characters helped flesh out its world. That's the situation faced by Joel Fleischman Rob Morrow , who despite his early protestations, finds that he enjoys life in Cicely more than he's willing to admit. There's a real charm to Northern Exposure , helped by some carefully calibrated performances that anchor its oddball characters, and the writing is full of unusual poetry.
Spinning the clock back to the Prohibition era, the series explores the tough politics and criminal activity of s Atlantic City.
The nominal focus is Enoch "Nucky" Thompson Steve Buscemi , who makes deals with gangsters even as the Federal government starts to close in. It's full of the usual HBO staples — blood, boobs and bad language — but all used judiciously.
Part of the genius of Curb Your Enthusiasm is that it's impossible to tell where the real Larry David ends and the fictional David begins. After all, this is a man who used to go out on stage for stand-up shows, peer at the audience and then walk off if he didn't like the look of them.
Every episode draws him into ass-puckeringly awkward scrapes with waiters, doctors, salesmen and other celebrities, from Ben Stiller to Martin Scorsese. The combination of David's lack of social skills with the right-on political correctness of LA's denizens makes for edgy, hilarious viewing.
Its titular duo consists of a gruff-voiced alcoholic grandad and his overly sweet and naive grandson, playing out a twisted version of Back To The Future 's Marty McFly-Doc relationship, as they embark on 'adventures' riffing on Mad Max , infinite alternate universes, The Purge — and, in one particularly famous episode, sentient pickles. Dark, weird, unique, and sometimes emotionally perceptive — don't let its more annoying fans put you off. And yet Father Ted really, really works.
Dermot Morgan's Father Ted Crilly, punished for stealing the money was "resting" in his account, honest , lives with supreme idiot Dougal Ardal O'Hanlon and drunken nuisance Jack Hackett Frank Kelly , each episode cooking up some new madness for the trio to become embroiled in — with highlights including Ted leading a pack of terrified priests through a lingerie section as if they're in a war film, and a recreation of Speed on a milk float.
Wendy Carr Anna Torv talking to convicted killers in order to understand, track and catch current offenders. It has a lot on its mind, but it's never, ever boring. And though The Handmaid's Tale sometimes suffers from being unremittingly bleak, some light and hope has started to show through the cracks. Sparking real-life protest gear and any number of think-pieces, Tale 's big ideas are standing the test of time — and the show marks a stellar example of how to take a novel's key concept and run with it, the series weaving its own world from the threads established by the original writer.
A series of standalone episodes often set in worryingly plausible possible futures, the storytelling largely leans towards the bleak, shot through with Brooker's sardonic sense of humour.
From its Channel 4 days to its current home on Netflix, the series has consistently drawn big name talent — from Daniel Kaluuya and Jon Hamm, to Bryce Dallas Howard, Anthony Mackie and Andrew Scott — a testament to the filmic quality and cultural cache the series has attracted. Each season has had a different flavour, but elements recur: world-weary cops, unsolved cases, multiple timelines unspooling different eras of the case.
The first season, with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson tracking down the 'Yellow King', is widely regarded as its best — an important milestone in 'Golden Age TV' for attracting such star names, and a key text in the McConaissance. But it endured, and rightly became known as one of the most audacious series on TV, effectively re-inventing the cop drama. It eschewed much of the hard-nosed cop cliches but used them well when embracing them and presented a serialised mixture of drama and comedy, featuring a diverse cast of three-dimensional characters at a run-down police precinct.
It scored 98 — count 'em — Emmy nominations across its run, and won eight in the first season alone, while also becoming a template for the sort of ambitious TV drama that was to follow. Aiming to explore universal concepts while creeping us out or making us think or both , Zone merged big ideas with popular ideals and proved that smart storytelling could work on television.
Once seen, rarely forgotten; especially with that unnerving theme and Serling's iconic introductions. The most recent iteration is overseen by Get Out 's Jordan Peele. Sometimes, there's nothing like a bit of old-fashioned British pessimism, but that isn't the whole story, either — with real emotion in the highs and lows of the relationship between Tim Martin Freeman, in an early star-making role and Dawn Lucy Davis , and plenty of fun with the rest of the weirdos who populate the Wernham Hogg office.
Yet Laurie was the perfect person to bring the grumpy genius doctor to life. Diagnosing the cases that appear to confound others, he's a difficult character in the Sherlock mould, battling his own demons even as he fights the worst, most confusing medical issues in his patients. Keeping to his personal credo that "everybody lies", he drives his staff to the heights professionally even as he castigates them personally. Bringing a little extra spice to the medical procedural genre, House established a solid spin on a well-used template.
And Line Of Duty is just the latest example, the acronym-stuffed look at the efforts of a team of corruption-battling cops and the moles they just can't seem to squash. Jed Mercurio who also whipped up Bodyguard has Martin Compston, Vicky McClure and Adrian Dunbar as the driven central trio of officers who must navigate twisty cases as they root-out wrongdoers from within and without.
It'll keep you guessing as to who's really manipulating events behind the scenes, while the dialogue crackles in extended interrogation sequences, and the show looks as good as anything from across the pond. Absolutely, but in the best way. With its ultra-non-linear storytelling from the perspective of it unreliable androids, Westworld is ambitious, baffling, and totally thrilling.
Expanding on the robo-theme-park-gone-wrong premise of Michael Crichton's film, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy's series deals in weighty themes like the existence of consciousness, the experience of time, and the morality of predestination — with all the astonishing production values and incredible performances Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton and Jeffrey Wright in particular you expect from HBO.
It's not quite the new Game Of Thrones , but when its storytelling coalesces and its twists are unveiled, it's hard not to be swept along by its smarts. Mirren is always watchable as Tennison, deeply ambitious and fiercely able, who nevertheless has to justify herself at every turn.
Later series saw her promoted, even as the challenges continued, but the series remained as great as ever. Unafraid to probe into dark places, Prime Suspect has such a standing impact that it has generated both a prequel and a short-lived attempt to remake it for the States. Bleak but brilliant, it gathers a group of characters from different walks of life and then subjects them to terrifying traumas on a weekly basis.
If anyone you know shudders when they see the perfectly charming and not at all psychopathic J. Simmons in other roles, Oz is to blame. It comes highly recommended, but a word of advice if you go bingeing: have something lighthearted and fun to watch in between seasons.
Trust us. But showrunner Noah Hawley was incredibly smart, using the movie's faux true crime trappings and small-town setting while weaving his own story into them. Del Boy and Rodney Trotter's doomed attempts to become millionaires kept the nation smiling for over 20 years and, thanks to constant repeats, they still manage to raise a giggle today.
Taking in comic book shops, rave culture, and video games, Edgar Wright, Jessica Hynes and Simon Pegg channelled their own pop-cultural obsessions and witty observations to spin gold out of a classic sitcom set-up. Kicking the careers of the three creators and co-star Nick Frost into high gear, Spaced is uproarious but also heartfelt, never forgetting to make the characters into people you care about while riffing on different genres.
And the fact that only 14 episodes exist adds to the reason we all like it so much — it never overstayed its welcome. Without Spaced , there is no Cornetto Trilogy, so how's that for a slice of fried gold? When it first arrived in , Arrested Development was so fiendishly clever, so densely plotted, so shrewdly ironic, that Fox barely knew what to do with it. Despite Fox's best efforts to bury the show in strange timeslots, the Bluth family earned a feverishly loyal cult audience, one that eventually conferred upon it a Netflix rebirth.
The brain-melting ambition of Season 4 may have been a noble failure for some, and Season 5 didn't necessarily correct that, but its initial run remains one of the most innovative comedies ever produced. Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can't lose. As memorable mantras for a TV show go, this is up there. Peter Berg's knowing adaptation of the H. Bissinger book and the movie he drew from it, broadened the scope of the world and wrangled memorable characters that live and breathe.
Its young players are realistically flawed, and the team doesn't always win — which just makes it that much more watchable. Plus, in coach Eric Taylor Kyle Chandler and wife Tami Connie Britton , we got one of the best married couples on TV, human people dealing with their lives but always leading with love. And most importantly, especially for those of us in the UK, you don't need to worship at the church of the gridiron to appreciate it.
In its earliest days, this spin-off to Star Trek: The Next Generation felt like the storytelling was going to be by-the-numbers Trek, only on a space station. Flash-forward a couple of seasons, and this is the show that broke the Star Trek mould, filled with flesh-and-blood human beings even if they were aliens , character arcs that frequently stretched over the course of seasons, groundbreaking storytelling and complex characters. Some complained early on that this station-bound show didn't go anywhere — but really, this was the Trek that truly went where none had gone before.
Complicated, passionate and thrown together by Mother Russia, Philip Matthew Rhys and Elizabeth Jennings Keri Russell are fascinating creations: driven by patriotism but torn by the pull of their adopted home and the American family they raised as a cover.
They're conflicted killers, murdering people when the mission demands it — and the show doesn't shy away from the darker sides of their nature, finding inventive ways to dispatch innocent and not-so-innocent victims. Elsewhere, the show provides some top-drawer needle drops and provides great roles for the likes of Margo Martindale and Frank Langella. Sometimes vicious, often touching, always excellent. Having turned an insightful, frank and frequently filthy one-woman show into a TV series that allowed her to explore the emotional waters to a much greater degree.
Writing and starring, Waller-Bridge brought to life a young woman trying to reconcile her worldview and actions with the impact it has on those around her.
The show will make you giggle, but Waller-Bridge doesn't shy away from going dark when need be. Stellar turns from Olivia Colman and Sian Clifford have anchored the show through both seasons, while Andrew Scott was a highlight of the second, playing the character that will forever be known by fans as Hot Priest.
A straight zero on TripAdvisor, the very layout of Fawlty Towers itself offers comedy gold as Basil John Cleese , his wife Sybil Prunella Scales , waitress Polly Connie Booth and poor, benighted Manuel Andrew Sachs manoeuvre themselves and the odd corpse around its dowdy interior without ruining anyone's stay.
Basil, needless to say, fails. Often and hilariously. Stranger Things channels the era perfectly, mixing up a horror and sci-fi blend that hits you right in the Spielberg and Stephen King sweet-spot, depicting a seemingly quiet Indiana town that suddenly becomes a hotbed of terror as scientific tinkering unleashes an otherworldly dimension lurking beneath the surface or sharing a parallel space.
The show boasts a revolving door of period-appropriate faces Winona Ryder! The four skippers base their boats at Bud N' Mary's Fishing Marina, a year-old Islamorada marina steeped in Keys sportfishing history.
The Keys are the setting of countless weddings, as couples live out their love stories for audiences. Platinum Weddings was filmed on location in Islamorada to document the million-dollar wedding of two New York investment bankers and their guests at Cheeca Lodge and Spa.
Several foreign and domestic travel shows have been filmed in the Keys, including Travel Channel's Trip Flip , Man vs. Food , and Samantha Brown. The madcap caper, about a spy whose personal and professional lives collide, involved action sequences of helicopter stunts, a warehouse explosion and bridge blast — depicting segments that, constructed on Sugarloaf Key, in the movie replicated the iconic Seven Mile Bridge in the Middle Keys.
Scenes from Red Dragon starring Anthony Hopkins were filmed next to the popular Islander Resort at a resident doctor's home in Islamorada. A lot of guys are accustomed to making what they make. If it changed, it would bring in a whole new element of drivers who might not get the job done.
They take no pride in it. My cousin owns two restaurants and he works sixteen hours a day. The hours have always been the same. I started out in soap operas, which have great hours; then I went into multi-cams, which have even better hours; but once I entered the world of single-camera [meaning one-hour shows and feature films], I was in shock.
I thought only in third-world countries people worked hours like this — a fourteen-hour day is the norm for the makeup department. It affects me in the sense that I give up all of my personal life. The weekends I spend recovering. Right now the [Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which is the organization that negotiates on behalf of the studios] are fighting with our union, local IATSE, to change our double time [the point in the day where their rate changes from time and a half to double the starting rate] from twelve hours to fourteen hours, so that they can hold us longer without paying a penalty, which will only encourage them to keep shooting.
Nobody in production wants to go over twelve hours, if for no other reason than it is costly because of all the overtime. But it regularly happens when overly optimistic scheduling falls prey to bad luck, like cameras breaking, incompetence, and director egomania though that is usually reserved for big-budget feature films.
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