comedy

I recently texted a friend to complain about how overwhelmed I was by my lengthy to-do list — which included, incidentally, writing this blog post. Me: “My to-do list is never ending bleh.” Friend: “It always has been Marps. I’ve never met you when you told me ‘oh I’m so chill I got nothing on [...]

Thanks to Racialicious for linking! If you pay attention to web shows by and about people of color, you probably have come across 12 Steps to Recovery, a romantic comedy series about Parrish Diaz, a jingle composer and actor dealing with a hard break-up. In the show, Parrish’s friends decide the only way he’ll get over [...]

Confession: I prefer my TV comedies packed with more jokes than plot points. 30 Rock is really the only network sitcom I watch religiously, and my favorite comedies of the past ten years include Will & Grace and Sex and the City, which are really more collections of jokes and puns with characters thrown in to say [...]

At the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum at this year’s NYTVF, Phil Rosenthal (Everybody Loves Raymond) told new writers one of the most common notes he got from executives was to make his characters “likable.” We all know broadcast TV loves likable leads, but the cable revolution showed us how some unlikability makes things more interesting — [...]

If you’re a sci-fi fan, you probably know Jane Espenson, who has written and produced some of the most ambitious television of the last ten years including Battlestar Galactica, Dollhouse, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the sadly cancelled Caprica. With over 40,000 followers, Espenson is among Hollywood’s few prominent female TV producers. This week Espenson [...]

Full post at Tubefilter! You might not know Julie Ann Emery. In fact, when you look up Emery on IMDb, a user-generated list appears on the side titled, “The Best TV Actresses Whose Faces You Know But Names You Might Not.” Perhaps most often recognized for her supporting role in Hitch, Emery has been consistently working in [...]

A funny thing can happen on your way to success: people start paying attention to your other projects! One happy consequence of Issa Rae’s incredible success with Awkward Black Girl has been greater attention on her “other” web series — her first — Fly Guys Present The “F” Word. Premiering in late 2009, The “F” Word follows three [...]

“Web Series Spotlight” is a regular feature showcasing an indie web series I feel is culturally relevant, artistically notable or just plain interesting. Thanks to IPF for linking. The first question any writer should ask before starting a script for a web project is: why do this for the web? The point is: with more and [...]

Full post at Tubefilter! If you haven’t seen or heard of it, Half-Share, a show about six gay men vacationing on Fire Island, is hilarious. But as Edge Media editor Steve Weinstein noted, it may be “the funniest sitcom you’ll never see on TV.” Despite praise from audiences at festivals and screenings, Half-Share, like most [...]

“Web Series Spotlight” showcases an indie web series I feel is culturally relevant, artistically notable or simply interesting. I’ve been very upfront about my lack of respect for most reality TV, particularly “celebrity rehab,” which preys on our desire to see people at their worst, especially if we once knew them at their best. It’s [...]