Quotes & Sayings About Television Drama

From a dramatic viewpoint, there are few professions that grant their members entry into other lives, high among them cops, doctors, clergymen, journalists and prostitutes. Perhaps that explains why they figure in so much television and cinema. Their lives are lived in the midst of human drama. — Roger Ebert

To the question of writing at all we have sometimes been counselled to forget it, or rather the writing of books. What is required, we are told, is plays and films. Books are out of date! The book is dead, long live television! One question which is not even raised let alone considered is: Who will write the drama and film scripts when the generation that can read and write has been used up? — Chinua Achebe

To try something longer, I entered a half-hour radio drama contest with the national public broadcaster, CBC. To my surprise, I won. And that opened doors in film and television, because that broadcaster was looking to cultivate new Canadian talent, especially women who could write. — Karen Walton

When I was at drama school in the U.K., I was there for two and a half years, and we did one week of television and film. It's right before you leave. It's like, 'We've taught you Chekhov and Shakespeare; you are likely to be in a washing-up soap-liquid commercial.' — James Callis

Not only these were new kinds of stories, they were being told with a new kind of formal structure. [...] The result was a storytelling architecture you could picture as a colonnade - each episode a brick with its own solid, satisfying shape, but also part of a season-long arc that, in turn, would stand linked to other seasons to form a coherent, freestanding work of art. [...] The new structure allowed huge creative freedom: to develop characters over long stretches of time, to tell stories over the course of fifty hours or more, the equivalent of countless movies. — Brett Martin

With a play, you do it and it's gone. Films always date. Television drama always dates. Television comedy, for some reason, seems to go on. — Penelope Keith

But no matter what happens, the earth keeps turning. Monday always comes and eventually, sometimes excruciatingly slowly, that Monday is followed by a Friday. You take tests, hand in papers you wrote at two in the morning the day they were due, and your shoes get worn out, and the pollen in the air increases so that you go through an entire package of tissues during the SATs, and you wander through the crowds at parties looking for Natalie Banks because you came with her, and you watch her take off for the backyard with a senior who seems to be in the backyard with a different girl at every party, and you learn to play chess with your dad, and you eat too much ice cream, and your favorite television drama has its two-hour season finale, and then suddenly the school year ends and you pack your bags for Tennessee. — Dana Reinhardt

Opera on television in Europe is very important. If you think about it in the broadest sense: a lot of the dramas made in India with music are practically operas. They're not sung but they have a very big appeal. I don't know why American television people are so stupid but at the moment, they just seem to have some sort of a block. They just do what they do and they do it for a certain number of years. Then it wears out and they try something else. It's just a matter of time I think. — Robert Ashley

News is the best drama on television because it's real. — Deborah Turness

We didn't have television until I was about eight years old, so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television, you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things, and the comics, that I immersed myself in as a child. — Jessica Hagedorn

It is probable that television drama of high caliber and produced by first-rate artists will materially raise the level of dramatic taste of the nation. — David Sarnoff

I come out of TV. I come out of live television, BBC drama: that's where I started first as a designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV, then television advertising. — Ridley Scott

Penalties are not football. They are not even as television people keep telling us, great drama. They are cheap melodrama. — Simon Barnes

'Survivor' was, to me, an absolute reaction that the audience was having to the sort of staid nature of narrative drama on television. — Thomas Schlamme

I was my class playwright and I wrote plays set in villages with kings and chiefs.My plays were about treason and betrayals. If they were influenced by Macbeth, they were also influenced by Nigerian plays I had seen and Village Headmaster, a television drama series I had watched as a child. — Sefi Atta

Live television drama was like live theater, because you moved without thinking about the camera. It followed you around. In film you have to be more aware of what the camera is doing. — Louise Fletcher

Police thrillers are so widely read and police dramas so commonplace on television that many people think they have a good understanding of what a cop's world is like. But in truth that world is seldom revealed with anything approaching verisimilitude. We get it with The Wagon. — Daniel Horan

The actor Richard Burton once wrote an article for the New York Times about his experience playing the role of Winston Churchill in a television drama:
"In the course of preparing myself ... I realized afresh that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. I hate them virulently. They have stalked down the corridors of endless power all through history ... What man of sanity would say on hearing of the atrocities committed by the Japanese against British and Anzac prisoners of war, 'We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men, women, and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of the earth? Such simple
minded cravings for revenge leave me with a horrified but reluctant awe for such single
minded and merciless ferocity."
— Richard Francis Burton

In terms of television and movies, I've been really interested in seeing the partnership of comedy and beauty and heart. I think they can go together really well and really thoughtfully. But, I'm a total one-hour drama addict. I think when you're a comedian, you tend towards dramas because that's the less stressful thing to watch. — Sarah Silverman

I think television is a unique form, in terms of storytelling. Having source material for these really dense, complicated, serialized dramas is a great way of world-building. — Chris Albrecht

I love action shows. I love drama. There's no one type of thing. Television has gotten so good, and there's so much to do. — Bridget Regan

I've really dreamed of doing television. All of us do television, coming up. But when I was coming up, television was a black hole for actors. Now, television has a certain cache. Now everybody wants to be on TV because they're doing adult dramas. If you're an actor, it's like, "Well, get me on television," because it's the only place you can do it and also make a living at it. If my kids need shoes, I better do a TV show because I damn sure don't make any money with independent films. — Billy Bob Thornton

One of the more problematic aspects of the current state of cinema in Japan is that the movies playing in the theaters are by and large made not by film studios but by broadcasting companies. They're either extensions of popular television dramas or adaptations of manga or anime. Younger Japanese are simply not being exposed to good films. That situation needs to change. — Hirokazu Koreeda

If you spend any time on the shooting of a drama, for television or movies, it's very slow and there's a lot of standing around. — Rebecca Eaton

The world has never before had as much drama as today. Radio, films, television and video inundate us with drama. But while these forms can engage or even enrage the audience, in none of them can the viewer's response alter the artistic event itselfThat is why theatre is signing its own death warrant when it tries to play too safe. On the other hand, that is also the reason why, although its future often seems bleak, theatre will continue to live and to provoke. — Girish Karnad

I'd love to be in a feature film, and I don't just mean in a starring role - it could be a small part. And I would like to act in television, to do comedy and drama. — Barbara Mandrell

TV is a pornographic cacophony of violence, death obsession, screams, gunfire and drama. You think it's fine because you are damaged. — Bryant McGill

In television, women can really run anything. It can be a comedy, it can be a drama, it can be genre, it can be anything. But in films, women are still getting to the top. — Sarah Michelle Gellar

I danced from the age of three, so I was always going to do something performance-related. I got into the Television Workshop drama group in Nottingham when I was 11 and went there for ten years. — Vicky McClure

I went to drama school for four years at Carnegie Mellon, conservatory training before television comedy. I was doing Shakespeare and Chekov plays. It's about delivering on the promise of a $100,000 education and taking the shackles off and trying the hand at my craft. I'm thrilled with what I've seen so far. — Josh Gad

What serialized cable dramas have given us is the opportunity to not simply tell the same story with slightly different words and different costumes, every week. people are really mining the ability of storytellers to tell a long form story that goes from A to Z, and to trust that an audience will follow that. If they miss it, over the course of the week, they can watch it online or buy the DVD. There are so many different ways of interacting with it. Storytelling in television is getting more complex and more nuanced. — Sarah Wayne Callies

As Christians, I feel those of us in the creative community must seek to be more than scribes. If Diarmaid MacColloch is right in his immense history, The Reformation, we had plenty of Christian scribes on the eve of that enormous and painful upheaval. But it was the printing press that enabled the great thinkers of that time, both Reformer and Catholic, to transform our "assumptions about knowledge and originality of thought." I suggest now that we must seize the revolutionary media of our age in the way that those earlier Christians and Catholics seized the printed book. We must truly use the realistic novel, the television drama, and the motion picture to tell the Christian story anew. It is our obligation to tell that story over and over and to use the best means that we have. In that spirit this novel was written - with the hope of exploring and celebrating the mystery of the Hypostatic Union as well as the mystery of the Incarnation - in a wholly fresh way. — Anne Rice

Why do we have to have violence, torture, brutality in crime dramas every time we turn on television? Any new crime drama is going to have, sooner or later, a lot of torture and nasty things that make people flinch. Lots of young people I know shrink and flinch from that kind of thing on television, so I think showing it is a mistake. — Ruth Rendell

Drama's not safe and it's not pretty and it's not kind. People expect the basic template of television drama where there might be naughty villains, but everyone ends up having a nice cup of tea. You've got to do big moral choices and show the terrible things people do in terrible situations. Drama is failing if it doesn't do that. — Russell T. Davies

One of the things that makes any good entertainment, whether it's a play, drama, comedy, television, film, whatever, is that you feel a certain amount of spontaneity. — Glenn Howerton

I came out of drama school thinking I'd do some theatre, maybe some television, and maybe, someday, a film. — Orlando Bloom

I don't think anything connects with an audience as deeply as a long-form serialized drama, and much as I love television, I've always found a good ongoing comics series to be much more immersive. — Brian K. Vaughan

Even in a hostile press conference with hostile questions there was drama, and he could benefit from the drama and the hostility. He mastered the greatest art of television, appearing to be spontaneous without in fact being spontaneous. — David Halberstam

If all the shows on television were about happy, functional relationships, first of all I don't know how many role models there are out there, sadly. And secondly, who would watch? Drama is conflict. — Andrea Roth

I came into reality television with MTV's show 'The Real World,' specifically the 1994 season set in San Francisco. I was glued to the Puck and Pedro drama. — Molly O'Keefe

The experience of reading a novel and watching a television show are quite different. You can't let your audience get ahead of you, and you have to keep the energy and the pace and the drama up. They're very different things. — Michelle Fairley

'Shameless' is going to shake up television. Any drama is good drama. Bring it. — Justin Chatwin

It's funny: All my friends back home are always wondering why every television show I'm on is a drama, but all the comedy pilots I did died a slow and painful death. — Eric Ladin

A lot of people are doing television now. Great, legendary actors are doing movies on cable and stuff now, and you can't blame them, because they're still doing adult dramas and adult comedies on those stations. — Billy Bob Thornton

I just like the continue doing what I've been doing. A melange of funny, straight drama, television, movies, a little theater here and there wouldn't hurt. So if I can keep doing that, I'll be a very happy person. — Mary Tyler Moore

I think it's very rare that you see girl friendships on television. It's always cattiness and all that drama. — Lyndsy Fonseca

I suppose drama can either take the place of a novel or can be very closely allied with it. It's quite customary to turn a successful novel into a film or a television series because you can dramatize and pictorialize a novel. — William Golding

In the case of drama (stage, movies, television ), there appear to be people in almost every audience who never quite fully realize that a play is a set of fictional, symbolic representations. An actor is one who symbolizes other people, real or imagined. [ ... ] Also some years ago it was reported that when Edward G. Robinson, who used to play gangster roles with extraordinary vividness, visited Chicago, local hoodlums would telephone him at his hotel to pay their professional respects. — S.I. Hayakawa

I was dreading all of the ghost stories of working on American television, not in the least, the length. In Britain, a series is six episodes of an hour drama, maybe sometimes eight, but never twenty-two, so I was petrified of that. — Lennie James

In prose fiction the freedom to work honestly exists, although you may have to fight for it. In those other areas of literature, I mean drama, there is only silence. That sort of aesthetic integrity does not exist in radio and television, and seldom on film. — James Kelman

I was doing an hour drama on television and a Jackie Chan movie in Toronto, so I was on a plane every three days. — Debi Mazar

Comedy does offer an avenue to television and film careers for untelegenic people that great drama does not. — John Hodgman

I grew up in repertory theaters, so it was comedy one night, drama the next. I'm used to going from one to the other. And I worked for years in television as well. So, I like the interrelationship of it and having a good relationship with a group of artists creating something really where the sum is greater than all of our individual contributions, our parts. — Howard Shore

One of the things I've been most excited by is U.S. television drama. For my money, it's some of the greatest narrative art of our time. Each series is like a 19th-century Russian novel: you need to do a lot of work in the first few episodes, just as you do in the first 50-60 pages of those books. — Kevin Barry

I grew up in the theatre. It's where I got my start. Writing a television drama with theatrical dialogue about the theatre is beyond perfection. — Aaron Sorkin

I bored myself to tears with the daytime television drama of confrontation (I've been wronged!). I winced at sluggish morning half-memories of wearing wrongness like a lampshade on my head (I'm mentally ill!). — Merri Lisa Johnson

I'm a right pain in the hole for my agent. I won't take certain parts if I think they're offensive or banal. For instance, I won't do a film if I think it's full of violence for violence's sake, or a television drama if I don't think it's intelligent writing. — Anne-Marie Duff

We need to look to our laurels a bit with television in this country. I don't think enough risks are being taken in drama television in the U.K., and I think a lot of programme makers are underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public, basing it all on ratings. — Charles Dance

I love a bit of political drama; 'The West Wing' is probably my favourite television series of all time. — David Tennant

The quality of TV drama nowadays is getting better and better. They've had to invent a new term for it: 'high-end television.' — Robert Carlyle

I think in television and film, it's not usually the child's point of view. It's the story of an adult. If there's a child in a drama or an action-adventure movie, they're someone who needs to be saved, someone who needs to be protected, or if they're killed, someone who needs to be avenged. Their character doesn't matter much. — George R R Martin

As a child growing up in a grey-skied Yorkshire village, I would occasionally happen upon a Bollywood movie on the television. After a few minutes watching a bunch of sari-clad dancers cavorting on a Swiss mountain to tuneless music, I would switch over to some proper drama about housing estates and single mothers. — Simon Beaufoy

Fake is not a word I like to use because there's nothing fake about what I do. It's a show, it's a predetermined outcome; we're putting on a television drama, action, comedy, whatever you want to call it - but it's not fake. Fake would be if I was just about to take a body slam, and my stuntman did it. Fake would be if I was going to take a chair shot to the head, and the chair was made of rubber. I'll tell the world that it's a show, but I hate the word fake. It's such an unfair term to us. — Chris Jericho

Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance, no more real than a television drama. Death, who now stood by her side, was as familiar to her as a family member, missing for a long time but now returned. — Han Kang

If we really exist merely to fulfill God's plan: then life is a television drama; with God being the scriptwriter, the director, and, the audience. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I started on television, and on sitcoms, and loved them, but then they sort of seemed to be going through sort of an ice age, and they started dying off one by one, and I recognized that, and my representatives recognized that, and we said 'Well, let's look at dramas and other things like that.' — David Alan Basche

I'm a great admirer, fan and consumer of television. I love serial drama. I have been a major fan of HBO's series for many years. — Todd Haynes

One feels relieved these days when a play is not like television. — Valerie Martin

I certainly do all sorts of work. I'm very, very blessed to do drama and other types of television, and things like that, but I always go back to sci-fi, whenever possible, because that's really exciting for me. — Gina Holden

I like the fact that a modern television and modern drama on cable has characters that are really intricate and deep and have multiple layers. — Matthew Lillard

Why be so bloody miserable when you can pick up a good book or watch a great television drama? — Michael Dobbs

Of the people who cook on television, I have admired people like Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver and a few others because they are free of drama, display good taste and masterful technique, and use clear exposition to bring you up to speed. — Steve Albini

Kate was about to protest when something caused her to look in her mother's direction. She was standing statue-like in front of the television with that brave, painted-on smile. Then Kate realized what had caught her attention: her mother's tear-filled eyes were reflecting the on-off motion of the blinkers like a watery mirror. Kate stared transfixed at the flashing points of light that betrayed her mother's pain. The urge to tell her father how much she wanted him to be proud of her and how much he had hurt her, faded in the dark depths of her mother's eyes. — Sabrynne McLain

When I was trying to find work after drama school in London, it felt like the same actors always got the plum roles, especially in television. We have a smaller market place, vastly fewer drama-producing networks, and they seem to compete for the same established names for those projects. — Jamie Bamber

I was in television drama, which is a first cousin to the movies, and I trust myself to make the right decisions. — Lee Child

Downton Abbey is the most popular drama in the history of public television. When the whole of the TV universe is fragmenting, that isn't just impressive. It's almost impossible. But here we are. — David Bianculli

The problem is these days people don't watch television together. The husband is downstairs watching The Game and the wife is upstairs watching The Good Wife. They don't need a show they can watch together. What family dramas are on now that are working? — Warren Leight

Whereas Absurdism in Europe seemed a logical, almost inevitable response to the irrationality of war, the analogous elements that surfaced in American drama seemed more a response to a materialist society run amok. The American-style Absurdism seemed to spring full-blown out of television advertisements and situation comedies, which had become new myth-making machines. — Arnold Aronson

I'm too young and ridiculous a person to speak for my generation, but I'd be happy to talk about my own experiences as a generation Y writer. I was raised by a generation of hippies. Throughout my childhood, teachers urged me to fight the establishment. My English teacher assigned Ginsberg and Kerouac and declared Bob Dylan "a genius." My science teacher told me that television was "the new opiate of the masses" and bragged about never having owned one. My drama teacher made us perform Beckett. — Simon Rich

One thing about television in Britain is that they're so scared about complaints. It curbs a lot of drama. — Alice Lowe

Whatever you do, whether you're doing a television drama or a romantic comedy, you want to be relevant, to some degree. — John Ridley