For what it’s worth: Speaking as a showrunner with two writers rooms going on now, this article from Ankler is insane. I don’t know who the insider is, but the reporter should call bullshit. This is a GPT press release.

COLOR THEORIES. Funniest play I’ve seen in a long time. Julio Torres is wonderful. His play is about the personality of colors and how they describe and influence us. That sounds pretentious, but the play is anything but. Every line gets a laugh. See it. Julio’s funniest work yet.

The second season of ENGLISH TEACHER is here and it’s very funny. It continues to deal with current issues: censorship, tech domination, COVID, but it uses them all as comic fodder. The funniest show of the year, and it’s got a lot of competition.

‘Rack’s Rules” is an excellent short story by Jeremy Larner (THE CANDIDATE) in the collection, “Sex, Death, and God in LA.” It’s about the crude power rules of a Mike Ovitz type. It’s still incredibly pertinent today. You’ll find the same thoughts flowing through Trump and Musk. Look for it.

K-POP DEMON HUNTERS. Funny. I understand why people are watching it over and over. It moves fast and the songs are catchy. I love the scene with the mystical cat knocking over a flower pot. A lot of wit in the animation. Great work from the director/writers, Maggie Kang and Chris Applehans.

WEAPONS. A very entertaining movie. It starts with a Twilight Zone premise, but then keeps turning over new cards. A surprising number of laughs. Beautifully shot. Great writing. From the brilliant writer/director, Zach Cregger. See it.

Proudly sleazy, HUNTING WIVES is BIG LITTLE LIES with guns. The show’s amorality is to be admired. Everybody is happily sleeping with everyone; just don’t call it an “open marriage” because that’s a liberal thing. The subculture of performative Christianity is well-observed.

Jerry Adler died last Saturday. The intent was only to have him for one episode of THE GOOD WIFE, but he was so funny in a diner scene, yelling “I said ice cream, you stupid bitch” we had him back for six years of Good Wife and three years of Good Fight. One of our favorite collaborators.

ALIEN: EARTH. There’s a lot to like about this series—modernist sculptures, Marie Antoinette parties—but what I like best is the portrayal of the children’s minds in adult synthetic bodies. It’s charming. Well-performed and well-written. It also offers some much-needed comedy.

THE NAKED GUN. It’s very funny. Very self-confident. Great visual and verbal gags throughout. Non-stop. Some great absurd detours—one involving a snowman is blissfully funny. See it. It’s worth seeing in the theaters.

HEADS OF STATE. Surprisingly witty script by Applebaum, Neman, Query. And funny direction from Naishuller. A lot of great lines and filmic creativity. It’s an intentionally dumb movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously, or even seriously at all. On Amazon Prime.

More about SISTER MIDNIGHT. You can really see the influence of Buster Keaton on the writer/director, Karan Kandhari. Very rarely do so many uninflected images in a movie make you laugh. He always knows where to put the camera for comedy.

SISTER MIDNIGHT. A bit like a Christopher Durang play: comically bizarre, wild, always surprising. It’s an Indian movie about a wife in an arranged marriage going crazy, and possibly becoming a witch. Radhika Apte is fantastic, as is the first time wr/director, Karan Kandhari. See it.

FAMILIES LIKE OURS is a fascinating series about the evacuation of Denmark as it sinks underwater from global warming. No tidal wave visual effects, it’s more a slow-moving bureaucratic disaster. What’s more interesting is flipping the usual immigration debate: the most advantaged become the least.

If you missed LOVE AND MERCY today is a good day to see it. A great tribute to Brian Wilson who just died. Great artist.

How did I ever not see this movie? LE TROU (THE HOLE). Written/directed: Jacques Becker. It’s an exciting French prison escape movie— just as great as A MAN ESCAPED. Intense, clever, focuses more on the procedure of escape than the melodrama. Stars one of the original prisoners. It’s on Criterion.

MOBLAND again. I did want to add that the dialogue is strikingly good. The showrunner is Ronan Bennett, but even more interesting his co-writer is Jez Butterworth, the great writer of the play THE FERRYMAN. Anyway, even more reason to see this series. It’s pulp but expertly written pulp.

MOBLAND. Lurid and propulsive. It’s anchored by three great performances: Tom Hardy, underplaying effectively; Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren, overplaying wildly effectively. Pierce is insane, imitating a pig. Reviews have been so-so because they only saw two episodes. See it. Good fast editing.

I’m 22 years too late, so lovers of TV probably already know this, but what a wonderful show SLINGS AND ARROWS is. It’s a comedy about the difficulties of artistic integrity. Very funny. So many good performances. Each season does something new and original. A streaming service named Acorn has it.

ADULTS. On FX. It’s very funny. Well-paced. Not just a slice of life comedy, but often smartly absurd too. It’s a bit like ENGLISH TEACHER. It has actual jokes. Written by Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw. See it. Start on episode 2 or 3. Don’t get thrown by the “voice of generation” ad campaign.

THE REHEARSAL FINALE. Still jaw-dropping. There was an Albert Brooks short he made for SNL about achieving his dream of performing open-heart surgery. This episode was like that, but real. Again, if you haven’t seen it, watch it today.

Premium streaming is often so thin on plot you can write on a post-it note what happens in any episode. That’s what’s so exciting about NO MAN’S LAND, a French series on Hulu about an all-female Syrian militia. It has plot upon plot upon plot. Many are imperfect, but they don’t let up.

WARFARE. A remarkably tense and compact movie. It denies all the usual cliches of action: eg. lightness just before an explosion, comic byplay on radio transmissions— so you never know when the violence will hit. It trusts the audience to catch onto the military jargon. Very good.

THE ETERNAUT. I’m a sucker for these kind of apocalyptic shows; and this Argentinian epic has a great and disturbing look. The quietest images are the best: all the corpses dressed for summer lying in the snow, survivors camping out in a megastore. The fx are excellent too.

Not sure why I’m in an evangelical mood about this show but I am: some think it’s a “cringe comedy,” but it’s not. It’s a new invention, a hybrid of documentary, activist op-ed, and weird comic memoir. It’s better than anything else on TV. If you’re interested in what TV can do, watch REHEARSAL 2.

The honest satirist has to end up satirizing him or herself. Consistency requires it. This is what Randy Newman does, and definitely what Nathan Fielder does. His shows always swing back around to point fingers at himself. It’s what makes his work so fascinating. Watch it.

An effective statue in Trastevere.

We’ve been vacationing in Rome for the last few weeks so we were able to see the procession.

A great and holy man misunderstood by both the left and the right. To say “he will be missed” is a massive understatement.

Amazing show. To paraphrase James Agee, “like taking a nun on a rollercoaster.” THE REHEARSAL SEASON 2 is serious and funny— simultaneously. It’s a comedy with a real driving question: “Does subservience in the cockpit result in plane crashes?” Watch the first ten minutes, and you’ll be hooked.

Here’s a last appreciation for THE PITT. Streaming often has movie-envy, stretching out a story with a movie structure to eight episodes and ignoring the pleasures of good network TV: living with an ensemble. So I’m guessing I wasn’t alone in reacting to the finale: “I’m going to miss these people.”

THE PITT has been firing on all cylinders these last few weeks; and it shows what you can do with the fullest tools of filmmaking: complex layers of movement, paced cutting, overlapping dialogue. It’s also closer to an events lived experience than all this one-shot nonsense.

There’s an incisive satirical core to THE STUDIO: the executives who greenlight Jenga the Movie during the day go home to enjoy Goodfellas at night. Very funny lines, a second episode that satirizes the one-shot nonsense. A warning: anyone who’s worked on a set: the second episode can bring on PTSD.

“Could be qualified as terrorism” is a terrifying phrase.

This is a fantastic article with some damning Meta emails showing they knew what they were doing was theft. The earlier database was about TV and movie scripts being stolen. This one lets you search for your books and research papers.

In every writer’s room, around episode 7, writers will find themselves saying: “Hey, let’s see how we got here,” and will start to build a long flashback episode about “backstory,” or some character will return home so they can experience “backstory.” When this happens in your writers room… resist.

We all know TV is getting stupider as it tries to compensate for people watching it while looking at their phones but the new show I am watching that premieres soon is by far the recappingest bullshit I have ever seen. Even people watching while playing Royal Match are going to feel insulted

I’ve been sick for the last week so I’ve had nothing to do but watch TV. THE EASTERN GATE. A hard-edged Polish spy drama streaming now on Max. It moves fast, but its strongest asset is the female spy lead. The actress is Lena Gora who does a great minimalist job.

#Companion is a lot of fun, and since much of the fun comes from various surprises, there’s not much we can talk about. Just know: it’s well plotted and directed by Drew Hancock. Anyone writing a spec, this is a perfect example of how to write something excellent and makeable.

PARADISE. I didn’t get enthusiastic about this show until the seventh episode “The Day.” One of the most tense hours of TV I’ve seen in a while. If you’ve fallen away from this show, give it another chance by watching this episode. Great acting from Sterling K. Brown and J. Marsden.

KUGEL. A prequel to the wonderful Israeli series, SHTISEL, by the same showrunner, Indursky. Really excellent writing. Draws you in. Simple, but funny and authoritative. It just started on Izzy, the streaming service showing Israeli TV series. Catch it.

The best cure to this moment: watch STOP MAKING SENSE on repeat.

I was lucky enough to get to direct the Valentine’s day episode of ELSBETH. This is me showing the cast how to catch a basketball. Please watch the episode on February 13th.

“David Sacks suggested that DeepSeek used responses from OpenAI models to train its own. “I don’t think OpenAI is very happy about this,” Sacks said. Really? They’re not happy. Guess how happy I am that OpenAI stole all my scripts for its generative AI. Welcome to the club, OpenAI.

#8. We’re neck-and-neck with Fellini.

Words of wisdom.

It’s an excellent limited series. We produced it with Liz Glotzer, but the real artistic vision came from Jen Cacicio and the true life story. Dennis Quaid is fantastic in it as is Annaleigh Ashford who we worked with in Good Fight and Evil. Watch the trailer below.

There will come a very funny moment soon when Sam Altman accuses DeepSeek of stealing its advancements through industrial espionage. It would be lovely if DeepSeek turned around and responded that it’s just “fair use.”

The Agency was smart and worth seeing. Next year it needs more Richard Gere who is fantastic in it. A good cast. It was probably hurt by the expectations of a spy show having double-crosses within double-crosses; I never quite believed the love affair at the center of it.

Often I can fast-forward to the last five minutes of a binge episode, get the wallop, and move on. The advantage of a act-based structure from a viewer’s point-of-view: there are more essential plot turns. A lot of streaming shows these days: Walk walk walk, plot turn, walk, walk, walk, cliffhanger.