Turns out perverts make great movies

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025

#4 :  The Studio

From Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard to Robert Altman’s The Player, Hollywood has always loved to navel-gaze in films about filmmaking. But save for the bro-ier likes of Entourage, this fascination with the industry's navel has rarely found a home on television — and on a streaming service, no less. Enter Seth Rogen’s The Studio, a small-screen satire so incisive, funny, and devastatingly accurate that it has quickly become the must-watch show for industry insiders who recognise themselves in the egotistical, morally misguided behind-the-scenes movers and shakers. (Rogen has reported that nearly every movie studio head has called him to say it was a traumatic watch.) But you don’t have to be a cigar-chomping executive to appreciate cringe comedy this electric, energetic and farcical, often executed in breathless one-shot takes — and stuffed with slyly self-deprecating A-list cameos, from Steve Buscemi, to Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, to newly-minted Emmy nominee Martin Scorsese. “The job makes you stressed, and panicked, and miserable,” notes Catherine O'Hara’s exec Patty Leigh. “But when it all comes together and you make a good movie, it's good forever.” The Studio, by the same token, will be good forever.

This got lots of good write-ups and awards, but I've never felt the need to watch it. I suspect my main reason for that is that I thought it would just be a bit too smug for my liking - so let's confirm that one way or the other.

Well, it's certainly been made by people that lurve their fillums and fillum-making - and they want you to know that. There are loads of long tracking shots (and episode 2 is a "oner" - and very meta with it because it's about shooting a "oner") and lots of cameos - I bet people were queuing up to be in it.  And it is pretty smug, but (admittedly from what I saw) I think it just about remained bearable.

And whilst it's not at all shy about showing off its technical skills, I have to admit it uses them well with it all looking very stylish - there's been some money thrown at this and it's a pleasure to look at. And it's well acted - Seth Rogen takes centre stage and whilst he's often too much for me, I'm happy to admit he's a good actor and everyone else does a good job - it was also nice to Catherine O'Hara in one of her final roles. And, from all the industry plaudits, it's obviously written well and has struck home with people on lots of levels - I even understood some of the in-jokes (but I suspect it was only about 10% of them). But (you never guessed this was coming, did you?)...

... a) nearly everyone in it are completely unlikeable dicks and b) it's just not funny to mere mortals such as myself. So why would I want to watch it? I managed two episodes and I could handle the lack of humour (but suspect I would have soon found that tiresome), but the unlikeable nature of it all just meant I couldn't handle it. I checked out the general view on Rotten Tomatoes and wasn't surprised to see that the critics rating (92%) is much higher than the audience view (77%) - 77% still seems high to me, but that's probably a comment on the sort of person who contributes to Rotten Tomatoes. I can totally see that it will appeal to a certain type of person (and I mean that in the nicest way possible) so if you want to give it a go, then it's on Apple TV (four in a row for them) - but it was just too much for me.

#5 - An interesting life