Awards

In 1921, the film industry was dominated by silent black-and-white projects shot with boxy, wood-bodied 120 cameras using 35mm film. It was two years before the 16mm would be invented, and a few more before camera bodies would shift to metal and synchronized sound would become an option. When depicting this period for a pivotal

With the debut of Quibi, the short form categories at the Emmys may never be the same. The launch of the mobile streaming service hasn’t exactly been smooth: There were early questions about its business plan and whether consumers would want to pay for such content when free platforms including YouTube exist, subscriptions have already

Alternate history series have been all the rage for quite a few months now, something “Watchmen” executive producer Damon Lindelof says could be happening because “alternate history is just more palatable than real history.” His HBO limited series adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel of the same name explores the 1921 Tulsa

“The Killing” may have been ahead of its time. Veena Sud’s crime drama, which first ran on AMC and was later picked up by Netflix, delivered a 13-episode first season in 2011 that declined to solve the central mystery of who killed small-town teen Rosie Larsen (Katie Findlay). When the season ended that June, there

Those who make television often have little time to actually watch the medium, but that changed greatly in spring when a global pandemic hit and those who usually spend almost 20 hours a day creating suddenly found themselves with many of those hours free to consume media. Faced with approximately 500 scripted series alone —

It seems like every few years, the Television Academy reinvents the variety specials Emmy competition — and now, with an explosion in stand-up comedy on streaming platforms, it may have to rethink things once again. This year’s field of contenders in the variety special (pre-recorded) category is a hodgepodge of music showcases like Amazon Prime

When “The Simpsons” premiered in 1989, it was an outlier. Animated shows in primetime were by no means unprecedented — “The Flintstones” broke that barrier in the ’60s — but never before had an animated series aimed at adults resonated so powerfully or had as significant an impact on a network as “The Simpsons” did

Simone Missick, the star of CBS legal drama “All Rise,” received a meat mallet in the mail during quarantine. Missick doesn’t eat meat; it was a prop that her character used in the place of a gavel during the show’s virtual finale, which was shot entirely in the actors’ homes. Other shows, including Apple TV

During its six-season-and-a-movie Comedy Central run, “Reno 911” was always always known for off-the-cuff comedic riffs, and its new season on Quibi is no exception. But, bringing the law enforcement comedy back more than a decade after originally signing off, and on a digital platform, has allowed the show to take its humor to new,

Rob McElhenney is certainly no stranger to workplace comedies, having co-created “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” which launched in 2005 and whose 15th season will make it the longest-running live-action sitcom in small-screen history. But with “Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet,” which bowed on Apple TV Plus earlier this year, he moved from the world of

Could this be the year that the Television Academy voters finally shake up the Emmy race? Given that this is a time in our history like no other, perhaps people are in a different mindset right now — and that could very well impact how they’re choosing nominees. What that might mean is a few

Toward the end of Season 1 of “Succession,” J. Smith-Cameron and Kieran Culkin — who have known each other for years — improvised a cheeky, flirtatious banter at the conclusion of a scene. It didn’t make it into the episode, but it inspired a running Season 2 storyline in which his Roman gets turned on

The day after Matthew A. Cherry won the Oscar for animated short film, he stepped onto the set of ABC’s “Mixed-ish” to direct the pivotal first season episode “Bad Boys,” which featured themes of abuse of power and saw parents Alicia (Tika Sumpter) and Paul (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) discussing racial profiling with their young son (Ethan

When Robin Thede was in the process of writing “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” she already had a bad feeling about the state of the world. “I had a literal fever dream about the end of the world and the women living in it,” she recalls. “I came into the writers’ room the next day

As TV’s flagship reality shows grow up and evolve — and, in many cases, face down the production changes imposed by COVID — their hosts do, too. And this year set a surprising benchmark for ingenuity among the talent in the hunt for the reality host Emmy. To wit: With in-person taping suspended for the

As 2020 began, nobody could have doubted that the presidential election would be the story of the year when it came to late-night talk shows. The hosts and their teams spent most of 2019 getting into fighting shape for Trump: The Rematch. But a not-so-funny-thing happened on the way to the Oval Office. By late

Lilly Singh and Trevor Noah have been studying each other. Noah says he has been looking at some of Singh’s YouTube videos as he’s been hosting Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” from home, and “A Little Late’s” Singh keeps tabs on how Noah handles talk about politics and national affairs. Here, they get to compare notes

The Emmy race for variety talk series took a dramatic turn at the end of March, when the late-night shows all found themselves pivoting to a new, at-home format. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down most TV productions, but the talk shows were able to continue — albeit with makeshift setups that grew more professional as

If viewers were asked to point to the single most popular and influential TV character to emerge last year, it would have to be the Child, more casually referred to as Baby Yoda. The adorable animatronic puppet was introduced to the world in Season 1 of Disney Plus’ “The Mandalorian” and was solidified as a

Giancarlo Esposito can arguably be called the king of peak TV, playing a key role in some of the most critically acclaimed TV of this era. Just this past year, he appeared in Disney Plus’ “The Mandalorian,” Netflix’s “Dear White People,” Cinemax’s “Jett,” Amazon Prime Video’s “The Boys,” Epix’s “Godfather of Harlem” and, of course,

The second season of Netflix’s “You” saw Joe Goldberg, played by Penn Badgley, relocate from New York to Los Angeles. Goldberg wanted to turn over a new leaf after murdering an ex and framing her therapist for the crime, and in doing so, he assumed a different life as a man named Will. But old

As the titular Miriam “Midge” Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) becomes a bigger name in standup comedy within Amazon Prime Video’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” the venues she plays get larger and the scope of those scenes, too, continues to grow. Pivotal to making that possible are both co-creator, writer, executive producer and director Amy Sherman-Palladino and

A decade ago Goloka Bolte and her business partner Ethan Peterson founded the Casting Firm, and a little over eight years ago they were brought on to cast “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and its subsequent spinoffs. Since then they have been nominated three times for reality casting Emmys and now Bolte, who also acts as president

“Grace and Frankie” production designer Devorah Herbert recalls times in her career when she would walk into tech scout meetings and be the only woman in the room. She couldn’t say anything about it at then because “if you asked for equality in the workplace, you were seen as someone who was bitchy,” she says.

Liz Tigelaar’s “Little Fires Everywhere” writers’ room was on the Paramount lot, a central point between herself and many of her Eastside writers. But when the show wrapped, she wanted to move her space closer to home in Venice Beach. Her new location, into which she moved in January, is now only blocks from the

The working environment for women directors in television has steadily improved over the years, but while mentorship of the formal and informal variety has helpedto bridge the gap in representation behind the camera, there’s still a ways to go before parity is achieved. Of the more than 4,300 TV episodes produced in the 2018-19 season,

Looking back at some of my favorite new characters from the past year of television, I realized with a burst of pleasant surprise that many of them are, in fact, teenage girls. For as much as TV has been fascinated by them, it has been rarely good at portraying them with anything approaching nuance. On-screen,

When Liz Feldman and her writers’ room were working on the second season of “Dead to Me,” child separation at the border was dominating news headlines. Given that the majority of her room is made up of mothers, the writer and executive producer says such news was “weighing really heavily” and “almost subconsciously one of

When Olivia Colman needs to demonstrate Queen Elizabeth II’s authority on “The Crown,” there’s a lot of pomp and circumstance that producers can turn to, not to mention having her wear the titular headgear. But most female characters in contemporary drama series don’t have a crown handy when they need to project power in business

In 1852 Emily Dickinson published her first poem anonymously. She was still just a teenager, but the reason for keeping her name off the verses ran deeper: In the 1800s, a woman’s place was in the home, with few attending school, let alone pursuing public positions. But Dickinson was determined to “make sure her work