1. Who are the big winners of the recent Emmy awards? Veep for Comedy. Game of Thrones for Drama. And most of all, HBO itself. Going in, traditional wisdom said Veep was too smart and political; a fantasy show like Game of Thrones had never and would never win; and the new distributio

There is keen interest worldwide in how to write for television. In this recent interview I did with Télérama in France, the high quality of questions allowed me to talk about some of the most important techniques and challenges in sitcom writing today.  –People often say there

The same night it won the Golden Globes for Best Sitcom, Girls premiered the first episode of its second season on HBO. That episode perfectly encapsulated the strengths of this unique television comedy, but also the costs. The biggest strength of Girls is that it purposely breaks the

30 Rock just pulled off a big upset by winning the Emmy for best sitcom. No matter what you think of the result, this represents a stunning improvement over the show’s initial start. Let’s see why.  I wrote my previous breakdown of 30 Rock after watching their first episod

Call it Friends for the next generation, but How I Met Your Motherholds its own as one of the few well-written sitcoms on these days. Each episode is told in flashback by main character Ted Mosby to his children, each story supposedly leading up to, yes, how he meets his wife. But we

This mockumentary follows the employees at Dunder-Mifflin, led by Steve Carrell’s lovable boss-from-hell Michael Scott. After four seasons, every worker in the office, from inappropriately open-minded Meredith to deadpan Stanley to enigmatic Creed, has been tailored to create a

With Fall comes the new TV season, and the foundation of TV is the sitcom. Sitcoms are about the central community in American life, the family. For that reason, sitcoms give us one of the best laboratories in storytelling for how to live in America today. They emphasize two things es

Now in its 19th season, The Simpsons is officially the longest-running sitcom in history. Why? Relatable characters in a familiar arena, and the perfect mix of the fantastical and the mundane. Yes, most of the characters are re-hashed from old sitcoms, and yes, after two decades a lot