Television Shows About Television Shows Quiz

Answer: 30 Rock

"30 Rock" ran for seven seasons between October 2006 and January 2013. In all, 138 episodes were shown.

The title of the show was a play on the address of the NBC studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, York City. At the centre of the action was production of a comedy sketch show "TGS with Tracy Jordan", with Tina Fey starring as the writer and director. "30 Rock" was a parody of relationships between the makers of television shows, their broadcasters and the commercial partners/advertisers of the network. Alec Baldwin starred as the executive she had to deal with daily. Baldwin's character was noted for whispering at key moments of conversation.

The show won a number of Emmys and Golden Globes amid a host of nominations. But time was not on its side. By the end of the fifth season, Baldwin was ready to leave. He told "Rolling Stone" magazine he felt the show was in decline. Fey, too, was feeling the pressure the writing and performing were having on her family life.

Answer: The Mary Tyler Moore Show

For seven seasons from 1970, Mary Tyler Moore starred as a producer of a TV news show based in Minneapolis. She was well supported by a cast that included Ed Asner, Valerie Harper, and Betty White.

"The Mary Tyler Moore Show", sometimes the definite article was dropped in the title, has been described as "groundbreaking" in its portrayal of Tyler Moore as a woman keeping down a high pressure job in a men's world. One review said the show "..."took 20 years of pointless, insipid situation comedy and spun it on its heels ... pioneered reality comedy and the establishment of clearly defined and motivated secondary characters." ["Rome News-Tribune", July 1973.]

As much as it was about news, the show was more about the relationships between co-workers and the highs, lows and in-betweens of their lives. Ed Asner was later to describe the cast as like a family.

Answer: Frontline

Not to be confused with a real American programme of the same name, the Australian "Frontline" parodied news gathering and output. Thirty-nine shows were broadcast in three seasons from 1994.

Focussing on the producers and presenters of a fictional current affairs show, "Frontline" cast a beady eye on their lives and working practices. No TV show in the world of documentary or investigative journalism is as altruistic as they would have us believe "Frontline" showed that more often ratings and getting one over on the competition were the prime movers.

Writing in the British newspaper "The Guardian" in 2014, Van Badham commented: "As satire on tabloid journalism, 'Frontline' was painfully acute; as comedy, it was trailblazing."

Answer: Barely Famous

Twelve episodes of "Barely Famous" were made over two seasons in 2015 and 2016.

Erin and Sarah Foster created and starred in the show which aimed to poke fun at other reality show (their words.) It was made in a "mockumentary" style centred around two privileged sisters trying to make it big in Los Angeles.

Answer: Extras

"Extras" ran for twelve shows on British television in 2005 and 2007. It was written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Gervais, the man behind the hit "The Office" also starred.

The basic premise was to show the making of a television show from the point of view of extras: those unsung people seen and most often not heard on real TV shows. Such was the cachet of working with Gervais, many well known actors were willing to join the cast, and were often poked fun at. They included Daniel Radcliffe, Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Stewart, Robert De Niro, and Orlando Bloom - all playing themselves. (Cast from both UK and US versions.)

The show and stars won numerous awards, including an Emmy, Golden Globe and BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts.)

Answer: Drop The Dead Donkey

Sixty-five episodes of "Drop The Dead Donkey" were shown on the UK's Channel Four over six seasons from 1990. C4 was at the time noted for edgy comedies, and few were edgier than "DTDD".

The title was a play on a standard practice in TV news programmes of having lightweight sequences or reports that could be dropped off the end if meatier items overran their planned lengths. "Dead Belgians Don't Count" was an early idea for the title.

It was not all out of left-field comedy fiction, many episodes dropped in references to news stories that were breaking in reality close to the transmission time. It could make pointed comments about real-life situations in the pretence of comedy. "DTDD" was hinting at contemporary rumours against a now dead (so he can't sue) television presenter who was to be embroiled in an abuse scandal years later. (Relax FT lawyers, I've fixed it so he is not named here.)

Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, the creators and writers of "DTDD", were old hands at this type of near-the-knuckle comedy and they portrayed many of the stereotypes of real television news. Victoria Wicks played the dim co-presenter hired because she was blonde and beautiful. David Swift played a vastly experienced correspondent who had been in wars and had seen it all, but now felt anchoring was beneath him. Stephen Tompkinson was the correspondent who sensationalised any story he worked on to the nth degree.

Answer: Jimmy MacDonald's Canada: The Lost Episodes

Just eight episodes of "Jimmy MacDonald's Canada: The Lost Episodes" were made. Richard Waugh starred as a programme maker who disappearance with recordings of shows he had made in the 1960s but had never been broadcast.

The show's concept was that the tapes were found some forty years later and were then aired. They exposed differences between then then and now and included commentaries from the "now" perspective on what had been considered right "then".

Answer: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

"Oh where did Arron Sorkin go wrong", some TV critics might have said after the "West Wing" creator brought forth "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip". Maybe it was too close to showing what really went on behind he scenes of actual TV late night shows and out of the concept of dog does not eat dog, reviewers wanted to hate it. The "New York Times" said "Studio 60" has funny moments, but it's a serious, at times sanctimonious look at show business..."

It got off to a great start when thirteen million Americans watched the first episode. It went downhill after that, with a third of those viewers switching off. The show lost its way and took a break after eighteen episodes. The final four were eventually shown, but it lasted just that one season in 2007.

Sorkin was later to say that people who had earlier liked the show turned against it. He admitted that he had made changes - he had warned that the changes would not work, and so it proved.

Ironically, although the live broadcasts lost viewer numbers in a year of quality competition, the number of people who recorded it and watched it later was presentable.

Answer: Murphy Brown

CBS first broadcast "Murphy Brown" in 1988 and it ran for ten years. It was revised in 2018, but was cancelled after just one season.

Even in the late 1980s and early 1990s it was considered remarkable for a woman to have a baby and a career - with no man to support her. Yet one such woman was Murphy Brown, played by Candice Bergen.

It may have helped - or even hindered - that "Murphy Brown" aired at a time when America was in the depth of self-analysis. It was often viewed through a political lens: Republicans did not know whether to like it or loathe it. (Dan Quayle, then a vice-presidential candidate, spoke of Murphy Brown as if she was a real person.)

As well as being a show about TV shows, "Murphy Brown" mixed in real life dilemmas among "ordinary" people. These included health issues as well as the aforementioned single motherhood.

Answer: The Newsroom

"The Newsroom" ran to twenty-five episodes on HBO between June 2012 and December 2014.

Jeff Daniels played Will McAvoy as the anchor on the dominant nightly news programme on ACN, As a strong personality with a penchant for accuracy, he demanded a lot of his crew and hated having to compromise his journalistic integrity to the demands of the bean counters for whom ratings and income were everything.

The show divided opinions: some liked it, others hated it. Many of the haters were in the genuine mainstream media. It was famously described as Aaron Sorkin's worst show. Sorkin wanted to set standards, but HBO was reluctant to move as quickly as he. In some ways the Sorkin vs HBO relationship mirrored that between Will McAvoy and his management in the show.

That it got to three seasons was something of a miracle in itself, although the third was shortened by HBO.