Why Are There So Many Good TV Shows to Watch Right Now?

Pedro Pascal arrives at a screening of "The Mandalorian," during PaleyFest, Friday, March 31, 2023, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP)
Pedro Pascal arrives at a screening of "The Mandalorian," during PaleyFest, Friday, March 31, 2023, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP)
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Why Are There So Many Good TV Shows to Watch Right Now?

Pedro Pascal arrives at a screening of "The Mandalorian," during PaleyFest, Friday, March 31, 2023, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP)
Pedro Pascal arrives at a screening of "The Mandalorian," during PaleyFest, Friday, March 31, 2023, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP)

Picture May 17, 2001. In the final seconds of the season seven finale of "Friends," Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel reveals she's pregnant — but who's the father? This was a classic May sweeps cliffhanger, luring viewers and reaping advertising dollars for NBC.

Most shows used to kick off in the fall, air big episodes in November and February, and go out with a bang in May. Baby announcements, marriage proposals and sudden deaths were just a few of the popular plot twists used in spring season finales to hook viewers and build anticipation for the fall season.

Network television still largely follows that model, but the streamers and premium cable competitors of the new guard tend to operate with different goals. Rather than angling for ratings, those companies are releasing new seasons of popular TV shows — "Ted Lasso," "Succession," "The Mandalorian," "The Last of Us," and "Yellowjackets" — with an eye to Primetime Emmy Award recognition.

Everyone wants to be fresh in the minds of voters, said Joyce Eng, a senior editor of the Hollywood awards-centric website Gold Derby.

"A lot of networks, streamers and campaigners will capitalize on recency bias," she said.

For a TV series to be eligible for a Primetime Emmy, it must air between June 1 and May 31 of the following year. Six episodes of a returning season need to air by May 31 to qualify for a series category. The cast and crew then cross their fingers for nominations, which this year will be announced July 12, followed by the Emmy telecast on September 18, when the awards are handed out.

Limited series have to air all their episodes by May 31 in order to be eligible for nomination. In March, Amazon Prime's highly anticipated " Daisy Jones & The Six " dropped its 10 episodes in four batches.

It can be a scramble for shows to finish by the end of May: "Ted Lasso" on Apple TV+ drops its final episode of season three, and maybe the entire series, on May 31. The fifth and final season of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" returns on Amazon on April 14 and swiftly wraps by May 26.

If a returning series does not release six episodes of its season by the May 31 deadline, the remaining "hanging" episodes can be nominated in categories that only require a single episode to enter, such as guest actor.

Season three of "The Handmaid’s Tale" premiered June 5, 2019 — which was too late for Emmy eligibility that year. Rather than sit the year out though, "they found a loophole," Eng said. They submitted three episodes that had aired in 2018 during the previous season for individual achievement categories, and earned 11 nominations.

When it comes to scheduling, network and streamer executives maintain tight control over the release-date calendar.

"They choose when we go," said Rob Eric, chief creative officer and executive producer of Scout Productions. This year, he has four series premiering right before the deadline.

"We can make suggestions, but really they’re in charge of how that rollout looks," he said of the platforms.

Release dates are not always entirely about potential accolades.

"Sometimes a series is released because it's timely and speaks to what’s happening in the world," said Tony Phelan, who created "A Small Light" with Joan Rater. The NatGeo series tells the story of Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank and her family.

"It's in direct response to what’s happening in the world, specifically in America in terms of division and the rise in nationalism and antisemitism," Phelan said of the show.

Still, to end the show in time for award eligibility, "A Small Light" will release two episodes each week on National Geographic, premiering May 1 and ending May 31.

"How did that happen?" Phelan asked in mock surprise of the reason behind the show's timeline.

It should be noted that shows released in late summer and fall can still garner attention from awards committees — just a little later. Netflix dropped all nine episodes of "Squid Game" in September 2021 — and it was still nominated for last year's Emmy Awards, including best drama series. Lee Jung-jae also won best actor in a drama series, making history as the first person to win in the drama category for a non-English speaking role.

The critically acclaimed and popular series "The Bear" debuted its first season last June, but it was too late for the 2022 Emmy Awards. By premiering in the summer though, the Hulu show shined and wasn't drowned out by competitors. And the Emmy Awards aren't everything: Star Jeremy Allen White cleaned up at the Golden Globes, where he won best actor in a musical or comedy series.

"There are just so many shows, so many streaming services, and people don’t have the time," Eng said. "From the studio and network standpoint, maybe you should pull something like ‘The Bear’ and drop it in the summer and build that momentum because that was a word-of-mouth hit."

Still, some award shows reign supreme.

Eric Korsh, the president of Scout Productions, distilled the value of award recognition: The Emmys, he said, "are about defining the best in television."



Movie Review: From Bumper to Bumper, ‘F1’ Is Formula One Spectacle 

Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
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Movie Review: From Bumper to Bumper, ‘F1’ Is Formula One Spectacle 

Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Brad Pitt, from left, Lewis Hamilton, and Damson Idris attend the world premiere of "F1 The Movie" on Monday, June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

The wide-screen spectacle of Formula One gets a gleaming, rip-roaring workout in Joseph Kosinski’s “F1,” a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor.

Kosinski, who last endeavored to put moviegoers in the seat of a fighter jet in “Top Gun: Maverick,” has moved to the open cockpits of Formula One with much the same affection, if not outright need, for speed. A lot of the same team is back. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. Ehren Kruger, a co-writer on “Maverick,” takes sole credit here. Hans Zimmer, a co-composer previously, supplies the thumping score.

And, again, our central figure is an older, high-flying cowboy plucked down in an ultramodern, gas-guzzling conveyance to teach a younger generation about old-school ingenuity and, maybe, the enduring appeal of denim.

But whereas Tom Cruise is a particularly forward-moving action star, Brad Pitt, who stars as the driving-addicted Sonny Hayes in “F1,” has always been a more arrestingly poised presence. Think of the way he so calmly and half-interestedly faces off with Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.” In the opening scene of “F1,” he’s sleeping in a van with headphones on when someone rouses him. He splashes some water on his face and walks a few steps over to the Daytona oval, where he quickly enters his team’s car, in the midst of a 24-hour race. Pitt goes from zero to 180 mph in a minute.

Sonny, a long-ago phenom who crashed out of Formula One decades earlier and has since been racing any vehicle, even a taxi, he can get behind the wheel of, is approached by an old friend, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) about joining his flagging F1 team, APX. Sonny turns him down at first but, of course, he joins and “F1” is off to the races.

The title sequence, exquisitely timed to the syncopated rhythms of Zimmer’s score, is a blistering introduction. The hotshot rookie driver Noah Pearce (Damson Idris) is just running a practice lap, but Kosinski, his camera adeptly moving in and out of the cockpit, uses the moment to plunge us into the high-tech world of Formula One, where every inch of the car is connected to digital sensors monitored by a watchful team. Here, that includes technical director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon) and Kaspar Molinski (Kim Bodnia), the team’s chief.

Verisimilitude is of obvious importance to the filmmakers, who bathe this very Formula One-authorized film in all the sleek operations and globe-trotting spectacle of the sport. That Apple, which produced the film, would even go for such a high-priced summer movie about Formula One is a testament to the upswing in popularity of a sport once quite niche in America, and of the halo effects of both the Netflix series “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” and the seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, an executive producer on “F1.”

Whether “F1” pleases diehards, I’ll leave to more ardent followers of the circuit. But what I can say definitively is that Claudio Miranda knows how to shoot it. The cinematographer, who has shot all of Kosinski’s films as well as wonders like Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi,” brings Formula One to vivid, visceral life. When “F1” heads to the big races, Miranda is always simultaneously capturing the zooming cars from the asphalt while backgrounding it with the sweeping spectacle of a course like the UK’s fabled Silverstone Circuit.

OK, you might be thinking, so the racing is good; is there a story? There’s what I’d call enough of one, though you might have to go to the photo finish to verify that. When Sonny shows up, and rapidly turns one practice vehicle into toast, it’s clear that he’s going to be an agent of chaos at APX, a low-ranking team that’s in heavy debt and struggling to find a car that performs.

This gives Pitt a fine opportunity to flash his charisma, playing Sonny as an obsessive who refuses any trophy and has no real interest in money, either. The flashier, media-ready Noah watches Sonny's arrival with skepticism, and the two begin more as rivals than teammates. Idris is up to the mano-a-mano challenge, but he’s limited by a role ultimately revolving around and reducing to a young Black man learning a lesson in work ethic.

A relationship does develop, but “F1” struggles to get its characters out of the starting blocks, keeping them closer to the cliches they start out as. The actor who, more than anyone, keeps the momentum going is Condon, playing an aerodynamics specialist whose connection with Pitt’s Sonny is immediate. Just as she did in between another pair of headstrong men in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Condon is a rush of naturalism.

If there’s something preventing “F1” from hitting full speed, it’s its insistence on having its characters constantly voice Sonny’s motivations. The same holds true on the race course, where broadcast commentary narrates virtually every moment of the drama. That may be a necessity for a sport where the crucial strategies of hot tires and pit-stop timing aren't quite household concepts. But the best car race movies — from “Grand Prix” to “Senna” to “Ferrari” — know when to rely on nothing but the roar of an engine.

“F1” steers predictably to the finish line, cribbing here and there from sports dramas before it. (Tobias Menzies plays a board member with uncertain corporate goals.) When “F1” does, finally, quiet down, for one blissful moment, the movie, almost literally, soars. It's not quite enough to forget all the high-octane macho dramatics before it, but it's enough to glimpse another road “F1” might have taken.