You're listening to Episode 254 of TV's Top 5, the Hollywood Reporter's TV podcast.

I'm Leslie Goldberg, the West Coast TV editor, and I'm joined, as always, by the great Dan Feinberg, the Hollywood Reporter's chief TV critic.

How's going, Dan?

Just drowning in programming. How about you, Leslie?

Oh, Dodgers off to a good start. I'm pretty happy and published a story I've

been working on for two months this week. So, yeah, it's a depressing look at the state of the

industry for TV writers post-strike. And spoiler alert, it's, again, depressing. It's a really good story, though, because, you know, obviously on this podcast, we cover a lot of the

biggest names in the industry, and that is, you know, one of the things we do, because what we

have is a showrunner spotlight.

This week, we don't, but hopefully next week, you never know.

But what's so great about the story that Leslie wrote is the number of junior writers,

low-level writers, assistants, et cetera, that Leslie talked to. And just getting those voices

out there and getting that perspective, I think, just makes that story a really excellent story.

Many thanks to all the people that I spoke with, especially the ones who were

willing, as you said, to go on record and speak with their name attached. That's a very brave thing to

do. Hats off, or in my case today, Beanie's off to the showrunners that I also spoke with that

had more to lose. It didn't want to speak on record, but still wanted to talk for the story.

And to all the other people and executives, everything else. I talked to a lot of people for this

piece. So anyway, yeah, things are depressing. So that's not a great way to open this episode.

But that's what I've been working on for two months.

What about you, Dan? What are you in the midst of watching right now? I know most of the stuff you're reviewing right now is under embargo, but can you give us any kind of teasers? Well, in a couple minutes, we'll get to Critics Corner. And at least one of the shows that's one of the biggest shows currently in new release is a really, really good show. So we'll talk about it, though.

My review is already up for Ripley, so it's not like it's a huge surprise or anything.

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