Here’s one they made earlier: Previous shows by current TV hit makers

For the most part, television’s creators still lack the signature surname of leading filmmakers. Referencing a Scorsese, Campion or Spielberg brings to mind a recognisable style and storied body of work. But as the streaming era matures, the opportunities available to television’s creators, whether as writers, producers or directors, means there are careers to trace backwards and discoveries to be made.

If you’re in need of a new show, one way to search is to check what the creators of some of this year’s most acclaimed or high-profile releases have previously made. There’s no guarantee you’ll get a like-for-like series, but it can give you the inside running on your next binge. Here are some selections to get you started.

Jessica Barden as Alyssa in Charlie Covell’s The End of the F***ing World.Credit: Netflix

CHARLIE COVELL
Now: KAOS (Netflix)
Previously: The End of the F***ing World (Netflix)

Charlie Covell imagines worlds, whatever their size, that are not just confounding, but also compelling. KAOS reinvented Greek mythology for the present day, with a delicious lead turn by Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, but in 2017 the actor turned writer put some real heartbreak in high school with their unhinged but ultimately moving teenage drama The End of the F***ing World. Self-diagnosed psychopath James (Alex Lawther) and traumatised classmate Alyssa (Jessica Barden) go on the run together – from society and their own fears. The episodes are sharpened-teeth short at 20 minutes, and Covell has no issue turning your understanding of their blithe, bittersweet show upside down mid-season.

Before The Acolyte, there was Russian Doll, starring Natasha Lyonne.

LESLYE HEADLAND
Now: The Acolyte (Disney+)
Previously: Russian Doll (Netflix)

Disney dropped the ball in cancelling this Star Wars series, which set aside the Skywalker clan to look anew at the Jedi Knights and their hidden failings. Nonetheless, the one-and-done season was another reminder of how eclectic creator Leslye Headland’s eye is. Having previously stoked the romantic comedy with 2015’s Sleeping with Other People (also on Netflix), Headland was the co-creator and lead director of 2019’s Russian Doll, a screwball existential comedy about a piquant New Yorker, Nadia (co-creator Natasha Lyonne) who realises her 36th birthday is a mordant life-and-death time loop. Lightning didn’t strike twice for the second season, but the first remains must-see: tender, idiosyncratic, and knowing.

Anjelica Bette Fellini, Maddie Phillips and Kadeem Hardison in Teenage Bounty Hunters: Ludicrous but witty.Credit: Netflix

KATHLEEN JORDAN
Now: The Decameron (Netflix)
Previously: Teenage Bounty Hunters (Netflix)

Kathleen Jordan went big this year with her 14th-century black comedy about a chaotic rural retreat during the Black Death plague, but I think Jordan’s previous series, Teenage Bounty Hunters, is the better, more seditious, series on her CV. Released in 2020, this teen comedy was outrageous in both concept and how it undercut the world it depicted. The daughters of white, conservative parents in Atlanta, twins and high school students Sterling (Maddie Phillips) and Blair Wesley (Anjelica Bette Fellini) literally crash (a car) into an unexpected side hustle as bounty hunters. It’s ludicrous but witty, as the teenagers – who are armed to the teeth with guns mum and dad gave them – put their privilege to good use.

Ben Mendelsohn in Bloodline: A painfully conflicted black sheep.

TODD A. KESSLER
Now: The New Look (Apple TV+)
Previously: Bloodline (Netflix)

Reviews, including mine, were mixed for the first season of The New Look, a lush haute couture period drama about the rivalry, beginning during World War II in Nazi-occupied Paris, between Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn) and Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche). But I have long been an advocate for the first season of Bloodline, Todd A. Kessler’s previous show. Released in 2015 and one of Netflix’s first original series, it’s a familial drama that captures the accumulated anguish of a fractured clan to a heartbreaking degree. Sam Shepard and Sissy Spacek are the parents, with Linda Cardellini, Kyle Chandler, and Mendelsohn playing offspring – the latter is remarkable as the painfully conflicted black sheep come home.

Jason Segel and Harrison Ford in Shrinking: The struggle to connect.Credit: Apple TV+

BILL LAWRENCE
Now: Bad Monkey (Apple TV+)
Previously: Shrinking (Apple TV+)

Bill Lawrence already has a decent profile: the success of Scrubs and Ted Lasso will do that without fail. But even with the recent praise for Bad Monkey, a Florida noir that finally puts Vince Vaughn’s particular talents to fine use, some viewers are still not picking up on Shrinking. Debuting in January of last year, it’s a peach of a Californian comedy about the struggle to connect with just the right mix of everyday absurdity and hard-fought understanding. Lawrence’s co-creator, Jason Segel, plays a psychiatrist grieving for his dead wife and worryingly willing to talk bluntly to his patients. The cherry on top: Harrison Ford nails his every scene as a friend and fellow shrink too old for niceties. Catch up now, because season two is just a fortnight away.

The weird and wonderful make sense in Los Espookys.

JULIO TORRES
Now: Fantasmas (Binge)
Previously: Los Espookys (Binge)

The Salvadoran-American comic actor, writer and filmmaker Julio Torres has made a succession of eccentric and entertaining series since breaking through with his one-of-a-kind sketches on Saturday Night Live. Fantasmas was the most recent of Torres’ pocket universes, following his fictionalised self through a series of surrealist-tinged encounters in an off-key New York. The best, perhaps because it required more collaboration, remains Los Espookys, a dreamy, big-hearted comedy about a group of horror buffs in a Latin American country who ingeniously produce supernatural events for their clients. It is capital-O Oddball comedy, but also intimately genuine and slyly astute. The weird and the wonderful really do make sense together here.

Riz Ahmed inThe Night Of: Entangled legal thriller.Credit: Showcase

STEVEN ZAILLIAN
Now: Ripley (Netflix)
Previously: The Night Of (Binge)

Steven Zaillian has been one of the leading screenwriters in Hollywood for over 30 years now, writing for the aforementioned Scorsese (The Irishman) and Spielberg (Schindler’s List). It felt like he distilled his entire career into Ripley, a bolt-from-the-blue classic released in April in which every black and white shot felt essential and Andrew Scott was icily magnetic as a 1960s grifter discovering identity theft. But it’s not the first limited series Zaillian has authored. In 2016 he co-created this entangled legal thriller about a Muslim-American university student (Riz Ahmed) accused of murder and the world-weary lawyer who defends him (John Turturro). It has pungent dialogue, deeply held performances and a refusal to be definitive with the truth.

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