Univision’s Spanish-lingo station KMEX-TV leads all local TV stations for this year’s Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards, scoring 22 nods overall, the Television Academy announced Monday. KMEX is ahead of public broadcaster KCET, which earned 19 nominations for its roster of local-geared fare. KCET is the incumbent local Emmy leader, having won 11 last year,
Awards
“Boomerang” has its writers’ offices in Universal City, but Ben Cory Jones considers his downtown Los Angeles home office his primary space. While he filled it with practical necessities such as a whiteboard and 1960s-style desk to force him to work, he also decked it out with a number of design touches, such as a
Liz Feldman and Leslye Headland both have dark comedies that stream on Netflix: Feldman’s “Dead to Me” focuses on the new friendship between grieving widow Jen (Christina Applegate), and Judy (Linda Cardellini), who has more of a connection to Jen’s dead husband than it seems at first glance, while Headland’s “Russian Doll” is an addiction
A classic song for time-looping, surprising tunes for political campaigns, music for angst-ridden teenagers and wacky scores for dysfunctional families. All of these musical elements helped set the tone and make subtle storytelling points in much-talked-about comedies this television season. Netflix’s “Russian Doll” used a Harry Nilsson song (“Gotta Get Up”) as its signature tune,
Alexa Fogel was studying theater directing in college and working on an “off-off-Broadway” production, she recalls, when the casting director left mid-process and she “pieced it together.” Although may she joke that she fell into a career in casting in that moment, she ended up filling her resume with ground-breaking small screen series from “Oz”
Gone are the days when the worlds of such characters as Lucy Ricardo, Mary Richards and Jerry Seinfeld were largely limited to living rooms, workplaces and a handful of fixed locales. Since shifting toward single-camera storytelling, world-building in television comedy has radically expanded, providing rich universes — environments frequently shot off soundstages on location —
Workplace environments such as traditional corporate offices, branches of the government and even bars have provided colorful characters for decades, but as of late, half-hour formats have increasingly embraced the setting of television productions. It is a unique world, full of specific details about which a storyteller in the space must often educate its audience,
Prior to his role on CBS crime procedural “FBI,” Zeeko Zaki laments, he usually found himself in parts that perpetuated stereotypes about Arab Americans and Muslims. As Special Agent Omar Adom “O.A.” Zidan on the Dick Wolf-produced series, though, he is one of the few Arab American leading men on television, let alone broadcast. As
As Mike Flanagan was developing his limited-anthology series “The Haunting of Hill House,” he decided to set the quintessential scene of the Crain siblings back together at the youngest sister’s wake in real time. His goal was to immerse the audience in “one of those moments in people’s lives when time seems to work differently,”
Mike Schur has become a bit of a go-to voice for those of us who cover TV and are looking for a smart, well-reasoned take on the business. And it’s easy to see why: Not only is Schur thankfully accessible and willing to share his thoughts with those of us in the fourth estate, but
When uber-producer Marti Noxon read Gillian Flynn’s debut novel, “Sharp Objects,” she says she most admired the “incredible” and “unique” tale. But then she couldn’t shake it. The story — particularly its central figure, Camille, a troubled journalist who returned to her small hometown to investigate a series of brutal murders — stayed on Noxon’s
Betty Gilpin has played several “va-va-voom fancy Barbie people,” but loves the many layers to her “GLOW” character, Debbie Eagan. “Her insistence that she is more than a dress-up doll with an arched brow made me insist the same,” Gilpin says. And while the Emmy-nominated actress feared that red-carpet dressing meant having to “sell or
As A-list stars and auteurs made their way to TV this decade, “limited series” orders became a way to sign them up without having to lock in full-season commitments. The format has become such a dominant part of modern TV culture that it’s hard to believe that less than a decade ago there were too
In her first series regular role, Aliyah Royale had to run the gamut of emotions. Starting with the initial episode of “The Red Line,” her character, Jira, loses one of her fathers to gun violence and decides she wants to meet her birth mother. The latter decision draws disapproval from her other father (Noah Wyle),
How do you strike the correct musical tone when a piece of storytelling rides the line between comedy and drama? For many composers working in the limited series and television movie formats this year, the cues were taken directly fromthe scripts, but elements including choral music, jazz and even a detuned piano offered additional creative
Television’s fascination with crime stories dates back decades, but in order to capture an audience’s attention today, when it is pulled in multiple directions by 500 scripted series alone, a deeper dive inside the mind of those who do wrong has proven to be a recipe for successful storytelling. More specifically, there has been an
Over the past few years television has become an arena that is overflowing with period dramas and historical explorations. However, the difference in recent years is that many viewers are no longer as content to see, and showrunners are no longer as satisfied make, straight period dramas. To set themselves apart, today’s shows that play
The making of one of filmmaker Bob Fosse’s early triumphs, the sizzling “Big Spender” sequence from the 1969 musical “Sweet Charity,” kicks off the opening moments of the first episode of FX’s bio-limited series “Fosse/Verdon” in the same sultry style for which the legendary director-choreographer was known. It juxtaposes the film’s dancers in a sinuous,
The Tony Awards: Now with more mud wrestling! Nominations for the theater world’s biggest night can always make things awkwardly competitive between co-workers, as industry colleagues vie against each other in categories that will have only one winner each. Things got even trickier this year when an unusually high number of nominees found themselves competing
For most of its run, “Saturday Night Live” has been a minor Emmy contender. Between 1976 and 2008, the NBC late-night sketch comedy series earned 101 nominations and 23 wins. Respectable — but not a juggernaut. And then the dam broke. Since 2009, “SNL” has been on a tear, scoring 151 nominations and winning 44
As the real world around the entertainment industry is becoming increasingly dark, the number of shows that deal with faith and spirituality is bordering on the miraculous.For many writers and producers, this is an opportunity to offer an antidote to the stress of daily life and try to infuse their audience with a sense of
The writer’s office for true crime series “Dirty John” closed down after the first season, but ended up in the same space on the Universal lot for the second season. Showrunner Alexandra Cunningham set up her space for maximum comfort — including testing various couches before she found the one with the right “squishability” —
As the titular Mrs. Maisel’s mother in Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino’s Amazon comedy, Marin Hinkle’s Rose Weissman at first glance appeared to be a prim and proper homemaker. In the second season, however, she got to explore a freer, more independent side: Sick of being taken for granted, she jetted off to Paris. Hinkle’s
When Sera Gamble and Greg Berlanti sat down to co-write the pilot of “You,” based on Caroline Kepnes’ novel of the same name, the first decision they made, Gamble says, was to start the story in the same place as the book — inside protagonist Joe Goldberg’s head as he first catches sight of his
The fact that “Game of Thrones” is not only a ratings juggernaut and a pop culture phenomenon but also dominates at the Emmys is nothing short of remarkable. Television Academy voters have rarely recognized genre series, be they sci-fi, fantasy, horror or superheroes, for its top prize. But that’s changing — with some caveats. In
At the beginning of “Orange Is the New Black,” Uzo Aduba related to her character Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren’s desire for love. “Now, that’s something that I have for myself first, rather than looking for it outside of myself,” says the two-time Emmy winner. “And with our last season, we really get to watch her
For the first season of CBS All Access drama “Star Trek: Discovery,” costume designer Gersha Phillips had to set the visual tone for an era of Starfleet history that takes place roughly a decade before the franchise’s original series. For Season 2, Phillips faced a different challenge: She had to find a way to reimagine
Emerald Fennell and Steven Canals are new to the Emmy race. Although Fennell’s show (“Killing Eve”) was eligible last year, she hadn’t joined the team, let alone taken the reins, in that first season. And Canals’ “Pose” premiered just after the eligibility window closed. Both series received critical acclaim and other awards attention first —
The idea of using traditional thriller tropes in a TV show can be a tricky one. Unlike action movies, in which the story is typically used to string together elaborately choreographed fight scenes long enough for the hero to limp off into the sunset, with a series, the action has to be balanced out with
As the amount of scripted television continues to grow, a number of drama series are embracing larger casts to expand their storytelling potential. “I prefer ensembles, because that’s the only way you can tell a real story,” says “The Chi” executive producer Lena Waithe. “To me, the really good shows are about relationships [rather than]