Televisionary Turns Ten: A Look Back

Ten years ago today, I decided to start a television blog. 

That choice was both a capricious whim and an intense need to find creative fulfillment in my professional life. I was working in television development at the time and wanted a way to offer commentary on the shows I was watching and the trends that I was noticing at play within the industry. It was a secret endeavor at first. I posted for a few weeks without telling anyone and then, slowly, began mentioning it to some incredibly supportive friends and people around me. It was a side project, something that was solely mine.

And then Televisionary took on a life of its own and pushed my life and career into some very unexpected and amazing directions. I could never have predicted 10 years ago the places to which that one single decision has lead, including a major career shift. In that time, I've written for some formidable outlets and interviewed some incredible people. I've broken news, reported, recapped, edited, and written criticism and profiles. I've had the pleasure of working with some amazing colleagues and peers and have fulfilled a lot of my own personal goals along the way. I'm incredibly proud of what I accomplished both with Televisionary and with the other professional endeavors I embarked on in the time since then. 

A decade ago, I sat down in front of a computer screen and began a story that has taken me here, to today and to an industry and a media culture that is now vastly different. It feels as though a long chapter has come to an end, although I'm excited to see what's next for me, for the media, and for television as a whole. 

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Masterpiece Studio Crosses 500,000 Listens!

Some big, big news for me: my podcast, MASTERPIECE STUDIO, the official companion podcast for PBS' Masterpiece, crossed the 500,000 listen mark on Monday after just a few weeks of launching! We're already well on our way to hitting the 1 million threshold (soon!), but I had to share this piece of good news.

Thanks to everyone who has listened to the podcast and tweeted/interacted with us over these last few weeks! And if you haven't had the chance to check it out, you can listen to MASTERPIECE STUDIO on iTunes, Stitcher, PBS.org, and also right here on this very website. Be sure to subscribe!

What I'm Watching: "Dickensian"

I'm absolutely loving ‎Dickensian on BBC One — a cracking adaptation that plucks characters from various Charles Dickens novels and deposits them side by side into a 30-minute soap narrative in the British soap tradition of EastEnders (no surprise then that creator Tony Jordan worked on the Albert Square-set show).

The characters may be, er, Dickensian, and the plot serialized in the fashion of Dickens himself, but the storytelling rhythms fuse both Dickens and EastEnders to full effect: loads of subplots, an omnibus' worth of characters both high and low, and an innate sense of setting. This might not be Albert Square, but the street that these gentlemen, ladies, urchins, and vagabonds inhabit feels lived-in and vibrant, a world of gated gas-lit mansions, fleabag public houses, gritty warehouses, all existing under the constant threat of the workhouse or the debtor's prison.

If you've ever wondered how Honoria Barbary, Amelia Havisham, Inspector Bucket, Fagin, and the Cratchits would get on, then Dickensian is the show for you. No word on whether the 20-episode first season will eventually make the trip across the Atlantic, but I can only hope that some U.S. outlet (Netflix? Acorn?) will pick this up soon — it's such a fun, engaging show featuring characters that you already know intimately but who still manage to surprise you.

What I'm Watching: "Call the Midwife"

Well, this week's episode of BBC One's Call The Midwife — which returns to PBS in March, I believe — wrecked me completely. The always amazing Liz White (Life on Mars' Annie) was absolutely incredible as Rhoda. (White is, it should be noted, also great in an upcoming episode of Season 2 of Grantchester as well, where she plays a very different sort of wife and mother.)

If you're not watching Call the Midwife, you're missing out on one of television's great dramas — and perhaps the best emotional catharsis you'll experience all week. Call the Midwife makes you CRY HARD, even when it's in happy mode: I can't manage to get through an episode without at least tearing up, if not sobbing outright. It is an innately beautiful drama about birth and death and everything in between.

And, in an era in which female reproductive rights are being fought tooth and nail, it depicts the rigors and marvels of childbirth and the socialized medicine of Britain's National Health Service. It's also just a cracking drama that features a plethora of well-crafted female characters of all ages.

Further reading:
BuzzFeed: "7 Reasons Call The Midwife Is One Of The Best Shows On Television"
The Daily Beast: "Call the Midwife: Miranda Hart’s Chummy Browne Steals the Show"

RIP Alan Rickman

Yes, he was Snape and Hans Gruber, but when I think of Alan Rickman, I think of his Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility or his Jamie in Truly Madly Deeply or his Harry in Love Actually. I think of his tremendous on-screen partnerships with Emma Thompson and how he could play kings or sad sacks, villains or heroes with equal aplomb. He had a voice that dripped with honey or venom, depending on who he was playing. He was a giant of an actor and he will be missed.

RIP Alan Rickman.

What I'm Watching: "The 100"

Finally all caught up on The CW's The 100 and am officially obsessed with this show — it's such a remarkably deft exploration of morality and group dynamics, adroitly examining how sacrifice, faith, fate, and authority are tested by the need to survive in the dystopian setting of a future Earth blighted by nuclear radiation. Hard choices are made and hard battles fought and lost. Deep philosophical questions are posed: What does it mean to be human? To be civilized? To lead? To follow? What is the cost of surviving?

If you're not watching, you're missing out on a truly addictive drama that makes you think and laugh and weep and pick your jaw off the floor on a regular basis. (Plus, Lexa. I haven't even mentioned Lexa!) Bring on Season 3!

RIP David Bowie

"Do you remember a guy that's been
In such an early song
I've heard a rumour from Ground Control
Oh no, don't say it's true..."

That was my first reaction to the news. RIP David Bowie, a creative visionary in every sense of the word. You are and will forever be a legend.

Stray Thoughts: Alice Morgan Edition

Oh, you know, just continuing to pretend that Season 4 of Luther didn't happen and doesn't exist...

Best New Shows of 2015 (In Brief)

For as long as I can remember, I've pulled together a list of the best new television shows of a particular year. Even though this year my role with covering television changed significantly, I felt I would be remiss if I didn't scroll back through the mental catalogue I was keeping of the best new shows of 2015 and offer up my take.

Unlike in previous years, I won't be writing captions for this and this list will have to stand on its own without qualifications or explanations. While others tend to offer overall best of lists, I have always found that comparing, say, the final season of Mad Men to a freshman show was always a bit of an uneven playing field to me — like comparing pomegranates to apples or something. Instead, I've chosen to offer a best new shows list and this year is the same.

Here then is my list of the 19 best new televisions shows of 2015:

Mr. Robot
iZombie
Togetherness
Agent Carter
The Jinx
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Poldark
Younger
Fresh Off the Boat
Empire
The Casual Vacancy
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Daredevil
Catastrophe
Difficult People
Master of None
Jessica Jones
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
And Then There Were None

**Note: I would also include Dickensian in this list as it technically premiered in 2015, but given that the vast majority of its 20-episode first season will air in 2016, I'm considering it a 2016 show. I'd also maybe include Season 2 of Fargo in this list as well, given that it offered a new cast of characters (largely), setting, and plot from its first season, but despite its anthology nature, it is an ongoing show...

What I'm Watching: "Broen"

Season 3 of Broen (The Bridge) deftly nailed its emotional ending. As Saga and Henrik, Sofia Helin and Thure Lindhardt were both incredible and erased any memory of Martin Rohde (no small feat, that).

Extraordinary television and proof positive that a third season show can punch you in the gut just as sharply as its first season. Well done all around. Here's hoping that there's a fourth.

What I'm Watching: "Jessica Jones"

Unstoppable meets unbreakable. Yes, Jessica Jones is just as incredible as you've heard. So hop on already.

What I'm Watching (Film): "Brooklyn"

I loved Brooklyn so much. Saoirse Ronan is outstanding and it's such a beautiful, bittersweet film about the journey away from home. Go see this film right now.

What I'm Eating: The NoMad's Chicken Pot Pie (New York)

The holy grail at the NoMad Bar: their heavenly chicken pot pie with fois gras and black truffles. A little skewer of additional fois arrives with a sprinkling of chives and more black truffles. The waiter bursts opens the pastry crust and gently adds the extra fois, a theatrical touch, and stirs, the steam cascading out of the achingly hot pie. The aroma of black truffles was intoxicating; the dish was transcendent and the most luxurious chicken pot pie ever to exist anywhere.

What I’m Eating: Sunday Roast at Birch (Los Angeles)

Sunday roast at Birch. The piece de resistance: roast pork loin with cauliflower cheese, roasted potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, carrots, English peas, roasted Brussels sprouts, gravy, and applesauce. Served family style. Incredible. Get there as soon as possible.

What I'm Cooking: Chicken Laksa

Because I am pretending that this isn't a fluke and Autumn has actually arrived in Los Angeles, I'm making some chicken curry laksa. Just because.

Of course, this isn't a traditional chicken curry laksa, per se: I sort of adapted a laksa recipe in my head and voila. Autumnal bliss.

Quick Mention: "Jane the Virgin"

I loved the Season 2 premiere of The CW's Jane the Virgin, which is even funnier/scarier/sweeter if you've recently had a baby of your own. This show is just so perfect in absolutely every way — the second season begins October 12.

Quick Mention: "iZombie"

Happily, the Season 2 premiere of The CW's iZombie, which airs in October, is so deliciously fantastic. I've missed you, Liv and Co. #‎brains

What I'm Cooking: Lamb Tagine

Just your ordinary weeknight dinner at home. I made lamb tagine with apricots and olives over lemon and pistachio couscous.

What I'm Cooking: Bread

My first ever attempt at making bread. It's a white loaf and it's just come out of the oven. The aroma is incredible!

Today's challenge for myself was baking bread by hand. I've never made bread before, full stop, but I was not going to cut corners by turning to the dough hook. Instead, the dough was formed, kneaded, proved, punched, shaped, all by hand. Exciting and so much fun to make. I wish I could bake bread all the time now.

What I'm Watching: "Mr. Robot"

Slogging through this year’s crop of fall broadcast pilots, it’s impossible not to feel disenchanted with television as an artistic form. For the most part, these latest offerings are largely devoid of creativity or ingenuity: it’s almost as though they’ve been constructed from leftover pieces of a factory assembly line. Considering that the broadcasters are waging a war on multiple fronts — now battling against and cable and streaming platforms — it’s a depressing state of affairs to see how dull most of these projects are. (There are, of course, some exceptions to that statement.) Forget about the winter of our discontent — autumn is looking pretty insipid.

Thank god then for USA’s Mr. Robot.

USA dramas have largely tended to be of a similar ilk: blue sky programming with double-entendre-laden titles that often make for sunny, easy viewing. But lately, the cable network has strayed into darker climes. With hacker drama Mr. Robot — which wraps up its first season later this month — USA has perhaps entered a territory of peak bleakness and reached a creative apex, one that is on par with the very best programs currently on television. (Hell, even Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner recently acknowledged that he was hooked on Mr. Robot.)

Created by Sam Esmail, Mr. Robot might just be the most dangerous unpredictable show to come along in a while, a keenly twisted morality play for the digital age. The show revolves around a group of hackers doing their best to wreak tech-spawned anarchy at a time of unprecedented cyber attacks and identity theft in the US. Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a damaged and paranoid cyber security engineer, finds himself recruited by the enigmatic Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) to join a team of talented hackers known as fsociety. (MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD!)

Rami Malek and Christian Slater. USA

The hackers’ target: monolithic multinational E Corp, a blend of Google, Apple, and the worst elements of corporate malfeasance, that is referred to by Elliot as Evil Corp., a codename that, like a hacker’s toolkit, infects everything it touches. 

Elliot is in the unenviable position of defending the company responsible for his father’s death in order to protect their bottom line. He’s paid to protect Evil Corp in his day job, working alongside his best friend Angela (Portia Doubleday) at an IT security firm. Worse still, Elliot, who suffers from social anxiety disorder, is addicted to morphine, which he uses in order to dull his fraught emotions. He speaks to the audience via an internal monologue with the imaginary friend he has created in his mind. Brilliant but deeply delusional, Elliot makes for an extremely unreliable narrator — and that’s where Mr. Robot truly begins to shine as it plays with notions of perception, reality, and fantasy.

Many viewers suspected that Mr. Robot was a figment of Elliot’s imagination, a version of Fight Club’s Tyler Durden, a theory that was thankfully proven to be a red herring. Instead, the truth of Mr. Robot’s identity, revealed in the show’s Aug. 12 episode, is even more troubling, particularly in light of the conflicting menace and charm Slater’s character has demonstrated towards Elliot since the show began.

Like Elliot and Mr. Robot, the show’s characters exist in a perpetual moral twilight, committing bad deeds in order to achieve specific ends that are either for anarchy or personal gain. Surly fsociety hacker Darlene (Carly Chaiken) steals scenes with her deadpan delivery and lack of personal boundaries, but she cares about Elliot deeply. Evil Corp’s interim CTO, Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström), a conniving social climber who engages in BDSM with his heavily pregnant Lady Macbeth-like wife (Stephanie Corneliussen), pays homeless people to beat them up in order to vent his anger, and seduces the CEO’s male assistant in order to hack his phone.

Martin Wallström. USA

Wellick wants to get ahead at any cost, a force of nature in a world of circuit boards. He’s all raging emotion to Elliot’s cold, clinical logic. The two seem bound together by fate, locked in an inexorable collision course with one another. 

Just what the season’s end game is remains tantalizingly unclear and the show continues to tunnel down the rabbit hole each week. Mr. Robot excels at infecting the viewer with the characters’ paranoia, resulting in a taut thriller that is impossible to predict. In an era of Big Twist Television, Esmail’s Mr. Robot is a deeply intelligent drama that pulses with possibility. This is a show that makes you believe in the medium again: populated by complex characters fighting their inner demons, whiplash-inducing plot twists, and a gorgeous use of music to heighten the innate tension.

Malek and Wallström are at the top of their respective games, each delivering a staggering performance that pushes the two men well past the point of breaking for ordinary mortals. As the titular character, Slater exudes an unpredictable danger that encapsulates the essence of the show itself.

Mr. Robot can be viewed as a high-stakes suspense thriller about coding and corporate greed, but at its pulsing heart, it’s also a heartbreaking tragedy about identity and memory. Ultimately, this is a dark drama that embodies the risks that television needs to be willing to take in order to achieve true greatness — and a reminder that there’s still potential for the medium to surprise me.

Mr. Robot airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. on USA.

Carly Chaiken. USA