'The Studio' & Emmy's Stingy History With Shows About Showbiz
'The Studio' & Emmy's Stingy History With Shows About ShowbizAs Seth Rogen's satire about a bumbling film exec gathers steam, I look at how insider comedies from 'Dick Van Dyke' to 'Hacks' fared on awards night
The Apple TV+ comedy The Studio has some of the strongest awards buzz of any new show this year — but it would probably be a good idea not to let its main character, Matt Remick, know about that. Played by a very frazzled and funny Seth Rogen, Remick is the newly appointed head of the fictional Continental Studios, a guy who genuinely loves film and filmmakers but is constantly stymied by the shareholder-pleasing demands of the modern movie industry. Faced with the prospect of success — like watching Sarah Polley (playing herself in one of the season’s many excellent cameos) capture a stunning single-take scene — Matt inevitably gets in his own way, too desperate to create cinematic greatness to actually enjoy it when it happens.  The Studio is crammed with inside baseball lingo like what you hear in the Polley episode (titled “The Oner”), from on-set assistants referring to costumes as “wardrobe” to Greta Lee, the star of Polley’s fictional film, negotiating use of the studio’s private jet. It’s all irresistible to anyone who’s ever driven through a studio gate, and since that applies to the vast majority of Emmy voters, it’s no wonder some pundits are wondering if The Studio might barnstorm the comedy categories for its debut season. Making a show about Hollywood seems like it should be a golden ticket to awards glory — just look at how many movies have done it! But the history of industry-centered TV shows like The Studio is actually pretty limited, which might partly explain why The Studio feels so fresh. People in Hollywood love talking about themselves — that’s one of the guiding principles of The Ankler! But when it comes to seeing themselves on the small screen, it’s trickier to pull off than you might think. The Early Example: ‘I Love Lucy’
When TV comedy was still in its infancy — so new that we hadn’t yet shortened “situation comedy” to “sitcom” — it already had Hollywood in its sights. I Love Lucy, the second-ever winner of the best comedy series Emmy, was built around the real-life personalities of married stars Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Like most of the TV comedies of the ’50s, it relied on talent who had built their star power elsewhere before making the leap to television. But instead of playing herself, Ball created the wacky character of Lucy, constantly trying to break into Hollywood and creating comic messes with guest stars playing themselves, everyone from Hedda Hopper to Orson Welles. I Love Lucy is the bedrock on which so much of modern TV is built, but its most indelible contribution might be the character of the starry-eyed dreamer; if you’re going to have a small-screen protagonist with connections to Hollywood, there’s more narrative and comedic opportunity if they’re still striving than actually on the A-list. The 1960s brought The Dick Van Dyke Show, establishing yet another format that would shape TV for decades to come: a workplace comedy set in the writers room of a fictional TV show. Several of Dick Van Dyke’s descendants would go on to become Emmy juggernauts; others, like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Hulu’s recent, misbegotten The Reboot, proved that meta comedy is rarely as easy as it looks. Dick Van Dyke, on the other hand, dominated the Emmys throughout the 1960s, including at the very strange 1965 ceremony that streamlined the awards down to just four categories, pitting the sitcom against Barbra Streisand’s first TV special and a presentation by the New York Philharmonic. (Just in case you thought unnecessary awards show tweaking was entirely a modern phenomenon.) What’s So Funny About Showbiz
I Love Lucy and Dick van Dyke were both set in New York; many of the shows about television or media in general that followed it, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show and WKRP in Cincinnati, were set in other major American cities, despite the fact that every single one of them was filmed in Los Angeles. L.A. was the setting for any number of Emmy nominees throughout the ’60s and ’70s, from The Beverly Hillbillies to Columbo, but it took all the way until the ’90s for the Emmys to fully embrace another show that was undeniably about show business. An early HBO hit when it debuted in 1992, The Larry Sanders Show was, like Dick van Dyke, set behind the scenes of a fictional show. Like I Love Lucy, it brought in celebrities to play themselves. And like so many shows that have come since, it knew the best way to depict Hollywood was to satirize it. Whenever Garry Shandling’s Larry harbored starry-eyed ideas about celebrities, he would see them quickly dashed — as in one memorable episode where dating Sharon Stone turns out to be more trouble than it’s worth. Larry Sanders never won the best comedy series Emmy, losing to Seinfeld and then repeatedly to Frasier throughout the ’90s. The ’90s and 2000s brought Entourage and its handful of Emmy nominations, as well as Larry David’s Hollywood meta-comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it was only with 30 Rock’s series win in 2007 (its first of three) that a showbiz comedy was truly back on Emmy’s center stage. Incredibly, at least as far as I can tell, Hacks was the first comedy or drama about Hollywood, actually based in Hollywood (albeit partly via Vegas), to ever win its category’s top Emmy award. What’s really remarkable looking back at the history of TV shows about showbiz is how exceedingly few dramas there are. HBO had the short-lived The Idol last year, and you can certainly argue that Barry, though it always competed as a comedy, is one of the darkest visions of the industry ever put onscreen. Aaron Sorkin did his best to wring drama from backstage with both Studio 60 and The Newsroom, but both may have only served to prove that his high-minded style is better suited to politics. Think about how many great dramatic films there have been about the business, from The Bad and the Beautiful to the many different versions of A Star Is Born. Aside from the occasional limited series, like Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows or the recent The Offer, television seems unwilling or unable to look at its own industry without the lens of satire. So The Studio, even with its innovative cinematography and rich writing, is really just part of a long television legacy of sticking a finger in the eye of the industry that made it. It might win a bunch of Emmys for hitting a nerve — or, on the other hand, it might hit a little too close to home. Rogen himself has said the head of nearly every major studio has reached out to praise the show but also call it “a little traumatic.” “It’s written from the perspective of people who can’t deny that our dreams have come true because of this industry in many ways,” Rogen continued, “but it’s also so fucking frustrating and aggravating.” Closing Credits
Follow us: Instagram | YouTube | Bluesky | TikTok | X | Threads | Facebook | WhatsApp ICYMI
Like & Subscribe, a creator economy newsletter
The Optionist, a newsletter about IP
|
