The Showrunners and Creators of Emmy Season 2025

Sharon Horgan

Bad Sisters

Sharon Horgan didn’t set out to be a showrunner, but one thing led to another. The London-born Irish performer and writer came up as an actor but quickly pivoted to comedy writing when she decided that acting “just wasn’t happening” for her. And when she and Dennis Kelly collaborated on the British comedy series Pulling in 2006, she found that her job duties naturally expanded. 

“Dennis and I became exec producers on it because it was our vision and our baby,” she said of the series, which won her a British Comedy Award. “We had this amazing team of incredibly talented directors and producers, but it was our thing, you know? If you write something, you don’t just throw it over for someone else to figure out. You stay with it. The sensibility and tone and ethics that you brought to the script, you bring that into the production and see it through to the end.”

She did that on subsequent series Catastrophe and Divorce, and again with Bad Sisters, the two-season Apple TV+ series about five Irish sisters (Horgan plays one) whose lives are upended when one of them, Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), kills her abusive husband. A deft mixture of comedy and deadly serious subject matter, the first season received four Emmy nominations, including acting and writing noms for Horgan. That season was originally envisioned as a limited series — but a couple of months into the production, Horgan came up with a notion for Season 2, based on the idea that women who escape from abusive relationships often find themselves in similar situations.

“It felt truer and more real to show the worst-case scenario, I suppose,” she said. But even Horgan didn’t know how much worse that scenario could get until she brought together a writers’ room and someone suggested that Grace should die. “We went back and forth on it a lot, because I wondered if a show that had the tone of Bad Sisters could house something as tragic as that,” said Horgan, who showed her daughter an early cut of the scene in which the characters and the audience realize that Grace is dead. “She just looked at me and said, ‘What is the matter with you?’”

It’s to the credit of Bad Sisters, though, that it absorbed that kind of grief early on in Season 2 and fought its way back to a place where the underlying sense of loss can coexist with moments of humor within a thriller-type storyline. “I didn’t want to pull people into the depths of grief for too long,” she said. “I wanted to take them on a journey. I very recently lost my dad, so I was well-acquainted with grief and how it catches you, and how much you need to escape it as well. You need to allow yourself to find these dark, funny moments, because those are really what gets you through it.”

Horgan doesn’t anticipate a Season 3, though she admits to having occasional thoughts about where the show might go. But even if she wanted to do more Bad Sisters, she’d be hard-pressed to find the time: Her current projects include a half-hour series for HBO that she refers to as “stories about life”; the Netflix limited series Vladimir, starring Rachel Weisz; and the British comedy series Amandaland. 

And while she enjoys just being an actor at times, her heart is in the projects in which she is fully immersed. “You make a good show, I think, by caring about it so much that you’re there for every bit of it,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t like doing all three at once. It’s a bit exhausting. Sometimes I like to just produce, and sometimes I like to just act a bit, and sometimes I like to just write, you know? But in the end, I always end up getting involved anyway.” She laughed. “I always end up getting too involved.”  —SP

Tony Gilroy

Andor

In the wait between Andor’s first and second seasons, several live-action Star Wars series have come and gone, with few making the lasting impression that Tony Gilroy’s politically astute show has. Nobody digs into Star Wars like Gilroy, who focuses on the complex emotions of what it means to be a freedom fighter — or a fascistic goon. Season 2 of the Disney+ series barrels toward the events of 2016’s Rogue One, grouped into four three- episode arcs that take place a year apart from one another. If the first season was about how the title character (Diego Luna) went from being a petty thief to a radical member of the Rebellion, then Season 2 looks at how that commitment to the cause changes his life forever. When all is said and done, Andor will stand as one of the most profound stories in the Star Wars galaxy. —DT

John Hoffman

Only Murders in the Building

Four seasons in, Only Murders in the Building — Hulu’s most-watched comedy premiere in its history — keeps reinventing itself. Much of that credit goes to John Hoffman, who co-created the murder dramedy with Steve Martin and serves as the sole showrunner. Hailed for its inventive comedic take on the true-crime fixation, Only Murders struck gold, winning the top comedy-ensemble prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in February on its fourth try, indicating that the series is aging like fine wine. “The show has always been classic meets modern. That is carried through again in a very, very big way within (Season 5),” Hoffman said. “Another wildly funny world for our group to get thrown into.” —PN

Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson

Severance

Our collaboration evolved in a very organic way, because both of us had never done this job before.

—Ben Stiller

Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson never planned to lead Severance together. Their partnership formed after Erickson’s bizarre, darkly funny script about a mysterious company where professionals can fully separate their work lives from their personal ones landed on his desk as a potential project to produce. He loved it. “(Our collaboration) evolved in a very organic way because both of us had never really done this job before,” Stiller said. 

He offered his help to Erickson, who hadn’t been part of a writers’ room prior to his Emmy-winning Apple TV+ original. That led to Stiller directing episodes and the duo developing one of the most creatively inventive teams on TV. Erickson writes, Stiller directs, and while both are executive-producers, no one has the title of showrunner. The Severance duo emphasized that their process isn’t a traditional one. It all starts with Erickson’s vision and scripts, which deftly blend corporate horror with surrealist comedy and earnest human connection. That initial draft gets passed to Stiller, who focuses on how to visually translate Erickson’s work.

The two then continue to communicate until the idea fits Severance’s distinct tone. “It really is a partnership in every sense of the word,” Erickson said. “It requires a lot of conversation, which requires a lot of respect.”

Over his many years on sets, Stiller has found that the most interesting projects always come from collaboration. So he and Erickson welcome actors’ takes on the material. Tramell Tillman, for instance, has influenced his character Mr. Milchick’s story as a Black man in a predominantly white space. “We talked a lot about how to do that in a way that felt authentic but also felt in the tone of the show,” Erickson said.

“We both figure out what we feel about each idea, and then we implement it,” Stiller said. “Luckily, we’re given the resources to figure that stuff out and the freedom from the studio to really explore the idea.” —KC

Amy Sherman Palladino
and Daniel Palladino

Étoile

I thought nothing could be harder than ‘Maisel.’
—Amy Sherman-Palladino 

The married showrunners dip their toes back into familiar territory with Prime Video’s ballet comedy Étoile, the pair’s first original series since the Emmy-winning Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. More than a decade after overseeing the ABC Family dance comedy Bunheads, they turn the spotlight on two world-renowned ballet companies — one in Manhattan, the other in Paris — whose artistic directors (Luke Kirby and Charlotte Gainsbourg, respectively) decide to swap their top talent in a last-ditch effort to save their organizations from irrelevancy. 

Bringing Étoile to life was far from easy. Splitting time between two metropolises — and going up against the Paris Olympics, which caused filming to move to New York City for a few months — meant Étoile was “much harder” to pull off than Maisel, Amy Sherman-Palladino said. “And I thought nothing could be harder than Maisel.” Overcoming scheduling challenges, logistical hiccups and cultural differences left the pair proud of what they accomplished. “I can’t believe we did it,” she said. “Everyone banded together and knew what we were up against.”

Étoile’s continent-hopping cosmopolitan settings may be new, but the mile-a-minute dialogue and arch wit will strike a chord with fans of Maisel, Bunheads and Gilmore Girls. That enduring storytelling voice helped Étoile earn the rare two-season pickup before filming for Season 1 even began.

Daniel Palladino credited their “old-school” half-hour sitcom training on shows such as Roseanne and Who’s the Boss? for allowing them “to morph our voices” and create their signature brand of comedy, which is all over Étoile. “It’s up to showrunners to always keep in mind what was your gut feeling and what got you excited about a project,” he said. “We’re very careful about maintaining where we want to go with it, even if we take some notes.” As for that trademark style of theirs, he added, “It’s partly our stubbornness and our training that’s created it because other people bring that up. So it’s obviously there.” —PN

Quinta Brunson, Patrick Schumacker
and Justin Halpern

Abbott Elementary

At the beginning of Season 4, for the first time in Abbott Elementary’s history, Quinta Brunson kicked off the writers’ room without knowing where she wanted to take the season. This opened the door for a twist that upped the stakes for one of the sitcom’s main characters. “That was very rewarding this season, because I feel like it worked out for us to really trust in ourselves, to let the stories come through us,” Brunson said. “Unless I get hit with something super specific and I feel like that’s the direction we go in, I like the idea of getting in the room on the first day, all of us talking and then figuring it out from there.”

With its blend of silliness and sincerity, the ABC series that Brunson created, stars in, writes, produces and co-showruns charged new life into the network sitcom. In 2022, she became the first Black woman to win an Emmy for comedy-series writing (and the second Black woman to win lead actress in a comedy for her portrayal of second-grade teacher Janine Teagues). Sharing showrunning duties with Patrick Schumacker and Justin Halpern allows for a “real harmony” among the series’ leaders, Brunson said. She makes it a point to nurture a supportive environment throughout the creative team. Recalling her own painful memories of being picked apart as an actor, she said, “Those things help inform me as a showrunner, to try to create a more equal world. You can’t change the whole industry, but you can take care of your own production and try to create change from within.” —PN

Ronan Bennett

The Day of the Jackal

Ronan Bennett created a rare one-two punch with The Day of the Jackal. When it premiered last November, the Eddie Redmayne-led British spy drama was the biggest new series ever to launch on the U.K.’s Sky network, and it simultaneously ranked in the Top 5 streaming shows on Peacock in the U.S. A Season 2 renewal swiftly followed. The series is a testament to Bennett’s creative vision, which puts a modern spin on the 1973 film adapted from Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel. Bennett, who also created the gripping new Paramount+ drama MobLand starring Pierce Brosnan, is the credited writer on seven of Jackal’s first ten episodes, and he crafts a twisty, invigorating cat-and-mouse story of a ruthless assassin who’s pursued by an equally driven intelligence officer. —PN

Alfonso Cuarón

Disclaimer

For most of his 30-plus-year career, Alfonso Cuarón hasn’t been much interested in the job of showrunner. Although he started out in television production in his home country of Mexico, he quickly moved into directing films that include A Little Princess, Y tu mamá también, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men, Gravity and Roma; the last two won him the Oscar for Best Director. But Cuarón said he’s been intrigued by long-form projects like Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz and Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900, all of which had TV incarnations. “It’s very interesting to see the way characters and storylines can develop (in long-form),” he said of the curiosity that led him to Disclaimer, a seven-part limited series on Apple TV+ starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline. Cuarón uses cinematic techniques like voice-over to play with point of view and keep the audience guessing as the characters deal with skeletons from the past. And now that he’s had success in his new role as showrunner, is he ready to embrace that job and do it a second time? “Never again,” he said, laughing. “The next one will be 90, 95 minutes.” —SP

Paul Thureen and Hannah Bos

Somebody Somewhere

While in production on their first TV show, Somebody Somewhere, Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen would boost each other’s spirits via a simple message: “We got this.” 

They more than had it. Over three seasons, the duo, longtime friends who created the refreshingly unflashy HBO series with star/EP Bridget Everett and EP Carolyn Strauss, explored a universal story of friendship, grief, laughs and poop jokes. When Everett’s Sam leaves New York City to return to the small Kansas town of her childhood following the death of her older sister, she reconnects with Joel (Jeff Hiller), a gay man struggling with his faith and self-confidence. Viewers follow the pair as they become best friends who lean on each other through big life changes, family strife and eventually romantic love. (Despite a Peabody Award win and universal acclaim, HBO opted not to renew the series after Season 3.)

Thureen explained that the collaboration with Everett, Hiller and Mary Catherine Garrison, who plays Sam’s younger sister, Tricia, was the key ingredient to the show’s natural, easy chemistry. “Working with these incredible actors, who bring so much heart and humor and reality to the role, if somebody did something that just felt so real and so funny and so perfect, we would use that take even if it meant that the story beat had to be shifted a little bit,” he said. Being open to those organic moments during filming led to some of the show’s best shifts — like a scene in Season 3 in which Joel gets into a fender bender. The elderly driver of the other car was supposed to walk over to him and start a conversation, but it took her an expectedly long time to exit her vehicle, so Hiller just stood there, his character’s irritation melting into guilt as he improvised, “Oh, no. What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?”

The looseness also allowed the creative team to respond in the moment and “grow with our main character up to the last moment of our last episode,” Bos said. “This whole ride has been like the most positive, life-affirming miracle. It was the job of a lifetime.”  —JAB

Lauren LeFranc

The Penguin

The first time Colin came on the set in full makeup and gave a big speech in the first episode, I thought, this is gonna be great.

Lauren LeFranc, a former writer on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., pulled off a rather stunning achievement with HBO’s The Penguin: a spin-off series that, while indebted to Matt Reeves’ The Batman, is very much its own creation. It is darker, sexier, more violent. An R-rated companion to a PG-13-rated film, The Penguin is anchored by an explosive performance by an unrecognizable Colin Farrell. And it operates within the demands of a weekly television program without ever feeling chintzy, unlike other shows spun off from theatrical blockbusters. Under LeFranc’s steady hand, The Penguin became one of the best series of the year: thoughtful, emotional and visceral. —DT

Dan Fogelman

Paradise

In his first series since This Is Us ended in 2022, Dan Fogelman veers away from pulling on our heartstrings via ultra-earnest family drama to instead pulling together complex plot strings in a soapy political thriller that has become one of Hulu’s biggest hits of 2025. Combining nuclear war, climate disaster and the ascendance of billionaires in politics, Paradise is unsettlingly timely in this age of a reelected felon and his unchecked tech-mogul sidekick, both of whom thumb their noses at global warming. Even the show’s most outlandish twists and turns land, thanks to grounding performances by Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson and James Marsden. Once you discover that there is in fact nothing paradisiacal about the setting of the ironically named series, you just hold on tighter for one heck of a ride. —MS

Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs
and Jen Statsky

Hacks

Deborah and Ava’s love language is arguing, so the fact that it was more intense this season gave Jean and Hannah a different gear to play in.
—Paul W. Downs             

Like its lead character, Deborah Vance, the Max comedy Hacks is bold, brazen and unafraid to take risks. Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky have never shied away from throwing out what has worked on their comedy series to attempt something new — which is abundantly evident in Season 4, when Deborah (Jean Smart) tries to launch her late-night show and a full-blown war erupts between the comedian and her head writer, Ava (Hannah Einbinder). Few shows capture the terror, bravado and ridiculousness of the entertainment industry as consistently and engagingly as Hacks. Long may its showrunners keep reinventing. —KC

Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne

Adolescence

It was Stephen Graham who initially came up with the idea for the Netflix limited series, drawing on the rise of knife violence among young boys in the U.K. However, it was Jack Thorne who ran with Graham’s note to never take the easy route, thereby transforming this show from a by-the-books crime drama into a harrowing journey through the effects of incel culture as captured in four episodes, each one a single continuous take. Early on, Graham told Thorne that the rule of the series was to avoid blaming the parents. In that stunned space between the horror of Jamie’s (Owen Cooper) actions and the child they thought they knew resides one of the most powerful shows of the year. —KC

Bill Lawrence

Shrinking

Not everybody can persuade one of the biggest American movie stars of the past 40 years to join a modest, charming shrinks-and-winks TV comedy. But Bill Lawrence, a potent force behind Scrubs, Ted Lasso and Spin City, nabbed Harrison Ford for a supple supporting role in Apple TV+’s Shrinking, starring Jason Segel and Jessica Williams, and reminded us why we love the actor so much. Lawrence is a purveyor of thoughtful, comedic comfort TV brimming with empathy and fully drawn characters. To paraphrase Ford’s Han Solo, “He’s got it where it counts, kid.” —JC

Taylor Sheridan

Landman

Sheridan’s vast territory encapsulates one of the most popular franchises on television, Yellowstone, with spin-offs 1883 and 1923 regularly breaking streaming records, along with series like Lioness, Mayor of Kingstown and Tulsa King. His latest, Landman on Paramount+, is the best thing he’s done since Yellowstone. He created the show with Christian Wallace, whose Texas Monthly podcast the series is based on. Sheridan also wrote every episode. Thematically, it is of a piece with his other endeavors, following an old-school frontiersman trapped in a modern world. In this case, it’s Billy Bob Thornton’s oil-company fixer, who is dealing with a tempestuous ex-wife, a demanding boss and a threatening cartel. Sheridan keeps it all together, combining his love of characters with his gift for compulsive plot mechanics, in a way that is galvanizing for the viewer. —DT

Shonda Rhimes, Betsy Beers, Jess Brownell, Meg Marinis and Paul William Davies

Bridgerton, Grey’s Anatomy and The Residence

Since founding her production company, Shondaland, in 2005, Shonda Rhimes has revolutionized television with a long list of groundbreaking shows all driven by diverse, majority-women ensembles and compelling storytelling. The duo of Rhimes and Betsy Beers, her producing partner from day one, have shepherded hundreds of hours of addictive, bingeable television, from Grey’s Anatomy to Scandal to How to Get Away With Murder. But it all started with Rhimes’ first series turned pop-culture phenomenon, Grey’s Anatomy (now overseen by executive producer Meg Marinis), which catapulted its cast — led by Ellen Pompeo — to stratospheric levels of fame. Twenty-one seasons in, Grey’s is still a top-streamed series. 

The shows that followed it have turned Shondaland into an unmatched talent incubator. “It was always in the DNA,” Beers said. “The best thing you can do in the world is to find people who love what you do, and with whom you can share the information you have, so that they can grow and rise up.” Bridgerton boss Jess Brownell and The Residence creator Paul William Davies, both Shondaland veterans, represent Rhimes and Beers’ keen eye for identifying worthy successors and giving them the space to cultivate their own voices. Brownell had the tall task of continuing the Bridgerton momentum in Season 3, delicately crafting a swoon-worthy romance between Penelope and Colin while injecting her own twists to keep audiences surprised. Davies channeled his love of mysteries into The Residence, a pulpy, twisty White House whodunit reminiscent of Clue and Knives Out that stars Uzo Aduba as a quirky detective who excels at spouting clever dialogue and sussing out murder suspects. —PN

Charlie Brooker

Black Mirror

After seven seasons of Black Mirror, creator and co-showrunner Charlie Brooker has a good sense of the “psychological profile” of fans: Some prefer a softer, more romantic touch, like Season 3’s “San Junipero,” while others crave more disquieting episodes with shocker twists, like “White Bear” from Season 2. But he tries not to let fan expectations enter his creative process, which would make any series creator, he said, “go crazy. You have to just make what excites you and what you want to make, and what you’re interested in doing at that time, and not overthink it.” 

That approach has worked wonders so far. Brooker’s dystopian sci-fi anthology series has racked up 17 Emmy nominations and won seven, six of which went to Season 4’s feature-length “USS Callister” — the Netflix series’ first episode to get a sequel (in Season 7). The series’ 33 total episodes are wildly different from one another, but they all cohere under his haunting vision of the darker side of humanity, often pushed to the brink by technology. Brooker, who was a video-game journalist in the ’90s, said he keeps “abreast of what’s going on” but doesn’t study tech journalism in search of ideas. “Someone has pointed out to me before that one of the things that’s often being interrogated in Black Mirror is: What’s real? What’s human?” he said. “I don’t sit down and think about that as I’m coming up with story ideas. I’m often just giggling over some sort of horrible idea, and when it strikes that bell, you realize, Oh, I’ve got a Black Mirror story here.” —LS

David E. Kelley

Presumed Innocent

You would think the creator of Emmy-winning series like Big Little Lies, The Practice, Chicago Hope, Ally McBeal and Picket Fences would be ready to put up his feet and bask in his long TV legacy. But David E. Kelley is eager to keep audiences in anticipation — and his Apple TV+ adaptation of Scott Turow’s twisty, psychologically complex novel Presumed Innocent proved to be just as addictive as the shows in his ’90s prime-time heyday. Cleverly ramping up the family dynamics and political machinations, as well as delivering a rug-pulling ending that is very different from that of the book and the 1990 film starring Harrison Ford, Kelley is still a master of the small-screen legal thriller. —JC

Eric Ledgin and Justin Spitzer

St. Denis Medical

“It’s a workplace comedy in the most interesting workplace you can think of,” Eric Ledgin said of St. Denis Medical, NBC’s quirky half-hour hospital comedy he co-created with Justin Spitzer. Told in a mockumentary format much like The Office, Parks and Recreation and Abbott Elementary, the series follows the overworked doctors, nurses and staff at an underfunded Oregon medical center led by Wendi McLendon-Covey. Finding humor in the mundane or in tragic situations isn’t new for Ledgin and Spitzer, who worked together on Superstore and American Auto. “When I’m in a hospital or meeting people who work there, I’m so interested in what their life is like — so high- stakes and dramatic,” Ledgin said. “But when I talk to them, they all have funny stories. There’s a lot of tension but also a lot of release of that tension, too.” —PN

R. Scott Gemmill

The Pitt

R. Scott Gemmill may be a native of Fort Erie, Ontario, but his tense, hour-by-hour Max drama set 225 miles south in a Pittsburgh hospital has been the breakout hit of the year. Chronicling the 15-hour shift of an emergency-room team, The Pitt breathed new life into the network-style procedural of the pre-streaming, Must See TV era, recalling the show’s obvious antecedent, NBC’s ER. Gemmill was a writer and producer on that ’90s classic, and he’s joined here by two other ER luminaries, EP John Wells and star Noah Wyle, doing his career-best work as an attending doctor with PTSD from the pandemic. There’s a quasi-meta aspect to it all, but The Pitt feels fresh, confirming that viewers are still hungry for well-told stories about dedicated physicians rolled out on a weekly basis. —JC

Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang

The Handmaid’s Tale

This season is kind of a love letter to our fans. We wanted to give them almost everything they wanted to see, because it was what we wanted to see, too.
—Yahlin Chang

After The Handmaid’s Tale creator Bruce Miller departed as showrunner in March 2023, series writers and EPs Eric Tuchman and Yahlin Chang stepped up to shepherd the Hulu show through its sixth and final season. Unlike past seasons, which focused on the horrors of Gilead and the flickering spark of an uprising, Season 6 lights the torch of rebellion in spectacular fashion. Tuchman and Chang go long on secrets and betrayals, deepening plots and opening up a show that has always featured stellar performances to some of the best acting of its run. As resistance leader June Osborne, Elisabeth Moss simmers with righteous rage, while Yvonne Strahovski, as the Gilead supporter turned reluctant June ally Serena Joy, leans into the twists and turns of her character’s arc like never before. —RH

Christopher Storer and Joanna Calo

The Bear

You’ve heard the discourse around what category The Bear belongs in: comedy or drama? But that’s the thing about the show centered on gastronomic chefs, Chicago, family and grieving: It’s not one thing. The critically acclaimed FX on Hulu series, starring Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Liza Colón-Zayas as colleagues striving for perfection in the art of cuisine, tackles some weighty topics, but it also captures the comic absurdity of life. With The Bear, Christopher Storer and Joanna Calo, who have directed several episodes in addition to writing, exec-producing and running the series, show us over and over how blurring the lines between genres yields some of today’s best, most daring television—the kind that breaks its own record for a comedy series with the most Emmy wins, which is what The Bear did in 2024 when it took home 11 statuettes. —PN

Hwang Dong-Hyuk

Squid Game

Heading into production for the second and third seasons of Squid Game (which were filmed together), creator Hwang Dong-hyuk knew he was in for the challenge of his career. When the Netflix original debuted in 2021, the show’s disturbing tale—adults enter a competition of deadly children’s games to escape poverty—hit a nerve around the world and made Emmy history as the first series not in English to be nominated for Outstanding Drama Series. (It lost to Succession but won six Emmys.) Hwang’s sharp commentary on the brutality of capitalism felt wholly new, and he hoped to recapture that lightning in a bigger, bolder second season. Middle-aged men battling gambling addictions once again compete, but so do a crypto bro who bankrupted his followers, a pregnant woman drowning in debt and a scene-stealing purple-haired rapper. Between doubling the number of main characters and having so many players survive past the first game of Season 2, Hwang realized this new round was going to be as difficult to make as it is to play.

“It was quite tough,” Hwang said. “Physically, it’s more challenging because of the many hours.”

In South Korea, there isn’t a word for showrunner. But Hwang has acted as one for all of his projects, simultaneously balancing the roles of writer, director and producer throughout his work. Those three roles are so interconnected, they emerge in the earliest stages of the creative process.

“(While writing), I would be thinking about how much coverage a particular scene is going to have, who the actors are going to be and how we’re going to get the scenes done,” he said. “I would have that producer hat on, too, thinking about, from the writing process, am I making this efficient enough? Am I complicating a particular scene?”

This thoughtfulness also translated into the respect Hwang showed each of his actors. Even though Squid Game’s latest installment includes big names in K-Entertainment like Lee Byung-hun, Choi Seung-hyun, Jo Yu-ri and, of course, Emmy-winning lead Lee Jung-jae, Hwang emphasized that “no one got special treatment,” and that everyone had to wait their turn because scenes were filmed in chronological order. “I found myself constantly being conscious about the fact that I have so many people waiting,” he said. “I guess you could say it is a bigger challenge being a showrunner for a series than it is for a film. It’s definitely more painful that way.” —KC

Mike White

The White Lotus

Few showrunners have the ability to keep the magic going like Mike White has with his caustic meditation on wealth, class and privilege, The White Lotus, which won 15 Emmys in its first two seasons. Season 3 raised the ante with a story set in Thailand that explored incest, spirituality, fraught friendships, suicidal ideation and, of course, what it means to be filthy, stinking rich in a world of staggering inequality. As he did for Seasons 1 and 2, White wrote, directed and exec- produced every episode, pulling brilliant performances out of cast standouts Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Sam Rockwell, Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey and Aimee Lou Wood. No wonder the HBO drama shattered viewership records for three consecutive weeks. —LS

Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story

In its first season, Monster made the argument that the racist Milwaukee police force was as much to blame for Jeffrey Dahmer’s reign of terror as the serial killer himself. In Season 2 of the Netflix anthology series, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan once again recontextualize a well-known true-crime narrative, pointedly asking the audience if the media and the public were perhaps as monstrous as the two brothers who murdered their parents. That’s not to say that the show lets Lyle and Erik off the hook for their crimes; it doesn’t. But the series takes care to hold America accountable for turning this story of alleged childhood sexual abuse into a punchline. —KC

Will Smith

Slow Horses

There has never been a spy drama quite like Slow Horses, Will Smith’s adaptation of the Mick Herron novels about MI5 flunkies thrown together in a ramshackle London office that’s miles away from the agency’s glitzy HQ. Led by Gary Oldman’s flatulent, greasy-haired but still brilliant spy Jackson Lamb, the Apple TV+ series has no interest in the slick 007 image of the British agent we know so well, showcasing instead a ragtag team of underdogs desperate to make it back to the respectable center of the counterintelligence world. With its blend of white-knuckled action and biting humor, Slow Horses broke through in Season 3, earning nine Emmy nominations and winning for drama-series writing. While accepting the award, Smith deadpanned, “First of all, relax. Despite my name, I come in peace,” demonstrating the wit that defines Slow Horses. —MS

Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann

The Last of Us

From episode to episode, you have to think, Where are viewers going to be? Do I want to accelerate their heart rates, or slow down and give them a chance to breathe?
—Craig Mazin

Video-game adaptations have always been hit-or-miss in Hollywood. But HBO’s The Last of Us, which was created by Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann (the game’s creative director and writer), fell squarely into the former category when Season 1 debuted in 2023. With its second season, the duo have transported audiences back to the brutal fictional apocalypse overridden with terrifying mushroom zombies and have showcased more stunning visuals, some of which are shot-for-shot game re-creations. While the pair have always shown respect for the show’s source material, they’ve also found new ways to expand the story to offer surprises for both die-hard game fans and first-time audiences. Crucially, they know when to stay true to the game, even when it means breaking viewers’ hearts and killing off a beloved major
character. —LM

Jennie Snyder Urman

Matlock

After Skye (P. Marshall) auditioned with Kathy (Bates), she left the room and Kathy said, ‘Well, that’s her, right?’ 

In the age of streaming, it’s rare that a broadcast show, especially a drama series, breaks through in the way that CBS’ Matlock has in its freshman season. Credit goes to Jennie Snyder Urman, who gives viewers the gift of Kathy Bates sinking her teeth into a rich role in the sixth decade of her career. Much more than a modern reboot of the classic series starring Andy Griffith, Urman’s Matlock plays with the idea of women over 40 being invisible
to the world, giving Bates’ whip-smart lawyer, Madeline Matlock, a folksy demeanor that makes everyone under- estimate her. This includes her boss Olympia (Skye P. Marshall). Watching their initially chilly relationship warm into a meaningful friendship is one of the best parts of
Season 1. —LS

Jac Schaeffer

Agatha All Along

It’s one thing to create an acclaimed spin-off TV series from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but quite another to pull it off twice and nail a spin-off of a spin-off. Jac Schaeffer’s WandaVision delighted audiences in 2021 with its blend of cheeky homage and family pathos, creating fan favorites like Agatha Harkness, the kooky neighbor with a secret played by the inimitable Kathryn Hahn. Agatha was so memorable that viewers craved more. Enter the Disney+ 2024 follow-up, Agatha All Along, which tossed Hahn into a literal witches’ brew of female empowerment alongside Aubrey Plaza, Patti LuPone, Sasheer Zamata and Ali Ahn. The show confirmed Schaeffer’s knack for putting together terrific ensembles and whiz-bang entertainment that satisfies a superhero legacy while also welcoming an entirely new audience. She even stepped in as director for a crucial episode of Agatha, calling it “fated in kind of the most beautiful way.” —JC

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg

The Studio

Longtime creative partners Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg take a whack at the Hollywood machine through their trenchant Apple TV+ satire (co-created with Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory). The half-hour comedy, which stars Rogen as a development executive who’s thrust into his dream job as a studio head, skewers the movie industry, examining the delicate balance between creative integrity and profit-driven decisions. Despite being entirely fictional, The Studio makes loving use of Rogen’s and Goldberg’s experiences navigating the Hollywood ecosystem, unfolding like a hilarious fever dream (a Martin Scorsese cameo!) against a percussive, jazzy score. “People just want to survive. They just want to live to fight another day. That’s a big theme in this world,” Rogen said. Forget surviving, these comic creators are thriving. —PN

Konrad Kay and Mickey Down

Industry

The third season was the charm for HBO’s series set in the cutthroat world of finance in London. Created by showrunners Konrad Kay and Mickey Down, Industry took its time finding an audience, eventually breaking through with its most ambitious season yet after moving into the network’s hallowed Sunday-night slot. “It’s massively satisfying,” said Down, who, like Kay, is an ex-banker. “It feels like the show grew up concurrently with us growing up as writers. The first two seasons, as much as I love them, were us trying to figure out how to write the show and the correct speed for it.” They certainly never struggled to write gripping arcs for their impressive ensemble cast (which includes Ken Leung, Myha’la, Marisa Abela and Harry Lawtey), crisscrossing their storylines to probe the series’ fundamental question of what it means to be a human being working in a capitalist pressure cooker that values nothing but money. Who knew impenetrable finance jargon could be so riveting? —MS

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