Writers are told to write about what they know, and if there’s one thing TV writers know more about than anything else, it’s making TV shows. Carl Reiner turned his experiences writing for Sid Caesar into The Dick Van Dyke Show. Ricky Gervais turned his experiences working on a BBC sitcom into the BBC sitcom Extras. Tina Fey turned her experiences as the head writer of SNL into Liz Lemon’s experiences as the head writer of TGS in 30 Rock.
From The Newsroom to The Comeback to The Larry Sanders Show, some of the best TV shows ever made are about the making of TV shows.
The Comeback (2005-2014)
Lisa Kudrow’s most famous TV role will always be Phoebe Buffay, but The Comeback’s Valerie Cherish is a close second. Valerie is a has-been sitcom star who tries to revive her career with a new TV role and a reality show about her return to fame, with disastrous results.
Although it was canceled by HBO after one season, The Comeback proved to be such a cult hit that it was brought back for a second season nearly a decade later.
The Newsroom (2012-2014)
Aaron Sorkin has made a bunch of TV dramas about TV production. Sports Night takes a look behind the scenes of a sports news show, while Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip takes a look behind the scenes of an SNL-style comedy variety show. But his most acclaimed TV show about a TV show is The Newsroom.
Starring Jeff Daniels as anchor Will McAvoy, The Newsroom takes a look behind the scenes at the fictional Atlantis Cable News network, where the staff tries to report the news without corporate or commercial (or personal) interference.
Episodes (2011-2017)
The premise of Episodes is about as meta as they come. Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig star as a married writing team who move to Hollywood to adapt their successful fictional British TV series for American television.
Matt LeBlanc returned to regular television work for the first time since Joey Tribbiani’s infamous spin-off with his role as a fictionalized version of himself in Episodes as the star of the show.
GLOW (2017-2019)
With a massively talented ensemble cast headlined by Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, and Marc Maron, GLOW dramatizes the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling show and its journey to the TV airwaves in the 1980s. Creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch nailed the balance of zany comedy and sincere drama from the outset.
Netflix unexpectedly cut the series short and canceled it after three seasons. But in spite of the fact that the writers never got to finish their story, GLOW is still one of the best original series in the Netflix library.
This Time With Alan Partridge (2019-)
Most Alan Partridge shows either present his fictional TV projects, like Knowing Me Knowing You, or depict his everyday life, like I’m Alan Partridge. But Alan’s most recent TV outing, This Time with Alan Partridge, finds the perfect intersection between the two.
For the most part, This Time is a parody of One Show-style magazine shows. But whenever they cut to a pre-taped segment, the audience gets a glimpse of Alan’s troubled existence behind the scenes.
Extras (2005-2007)
After The Office shot him to fame, Ricky Gervais satirized fame itself with his next show, Extras. In the first season, Andy Millman works as a background extra on the sets of movies and TV shows starring much more prolific actors like Samuel L. Jackson and Patrick Stewart (playing exaggerated versions of themselves).
But in the second season, Andy writes and stars in a sitcom pilot and becomes an A-lister in his own right. The show-within-a-show, When the Whistle Blows, lampoons all the tired tropes and clichés of workplace comedies, from overused catchphrases to gratuitous celebrity cameos.
30 Rock (2006-2013)
Following her tenure as the head writer of Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey got to work on a sitcom about the head writer of a similarly popular sketch variety series. In the bizzaro world of 30 Rock, TGS is a stand-in for SNL and Liz Lemon is a stand-in for Fey.
The surreal satire of 30 Rock takes aim at the absurdity of the entertainment industry. Throughout the series, Liz constantly butts heads with network executive Jack Donaghy, the Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming.
Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-)
After revolutionizing the multi-cam sitcom with Seinfeld, Larry David left the format in his dust with the improvised dialogue and single-camera shooting style of Curb Your Enthusiasm. For the most part, Curb focuses on the mundane frustrations of everyday life. But since David plays a fictionalized version of himself, the show takes place against the backdrop of the TV industry.
Throughout 11 seasons of Curb, in between social faux pas, Larry has developed a sitcom with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a Seinfeld reunion special, and a streaming series about his own youth.
The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966)
Although The Dick Van Dyke Show is named after its iconic star, the series is really the brainchild of Carl Reiner. Van Dyke stars as Rob Petrie, the head writer of The Alan Brady Show, drawn from Reiner’s experiences in the writers’ room of Your Show of Shows with such legendary comedic minds as Mel Brooks and Neil Simon.
The series is split between a traditional family sitcom (with a surprisingly progressive marital dynamic between Rob and his wife Laura) and a meta comedy about comedy. This show taught a generation of aspiring comedians that they could make a living writing jokes with their friends.
The Larry Sanders Show (1992-1998)
The phoniness of late-night talk shows is ripe for satire and Garry Shandling hit the nail on the head with The Larry Sanders Show. The hugely influential series explores the duality of a man who puts on a nightly show on one side of the curtain and is an insecure wreck with a messy personal life on the other side of the curtain.
Shandling anchors the show with a hysterical performance as Larry, a precursor to every flawed sitcom protagonist from David Brent to Larry David, and he’s surrounded by standout supporting players like Rip Torn as foul-mouthed producer Artie and Janeane Garofalo as disgruntled talent booker Paula.
