I think cable TV in the United States is amazing right now. It's reinvented television, really. What's going on in the States with some of these cable shows like 'Breaking Bad' and 'Mad Men' is amazing stuff.
I'd been brought up on... American TV: 'Lou Grant,' 'Starsky & Hutch;' 'Gilligan's Island.'
'Family Ties,' to me, was strictly '80s. It was from the beginning of the '80s until the end of the '80s, and it was very specific to that time. Ronald Reagan was president.
I was a big fan of 'Awake' and also 'Lone Star.'
I think good-looking people seldom make good television. And American television studios almost concede before they start: 'Well, it won't be good, but at least it'll be good-looking. We'll have nice-looking girls in tight shirts with F.B.I. badges and fit-looking guys with lots of hair gel vaulting over things.'
I'm obsessed with American talk shows.
My favorite television show is 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.'
How often do we see a Muslim woman who is intelligent and independent, and has a voice of her own and is career-driven, on American TV?
Well, certainly I think American television is - that's proper TV.
I grew up with 'Roseanne'; I kind of adore her and stuff like' Home Improvement', really traditional American stuff.
The French like burgers, Madonna and Miami Vice.
Some of the most provocative TV that I'm inspired by is in the U.K. You guys take it for granted, but in America, we can't do it.
I've done shows that aired on American TV, but none of them proved to be successful, so yes, no one here knows who I am.
'The David Letterman Show' is a show of comedy.
'O.J.: Made in America' was one of the best things I've seen in a long time.
I usually tell people I watch like '24' and 'Prison Break.'
I grew up watching 'The Office' and 'Father Ted' and all the British things at that time - 'The Royle Family' - and the American ones like 'Friends,' 'Frasier' and 'The Simpsons.'
American television really is pathetic.
If you had to pay separately for just PBS, probably, sadly, not a majority of Americans would do that. So there's many channels, whether it's Discovery Channel or C-SPAN or many, many others, that just aren't viable.
I like watching American TV shows like 'The Sopranos,' 'Game of Thrones,' etc. I also like to watch dance reality shows since I love to dance, even though I haven't been trained in dancing.
Television in America is so elaborate. There are so many remote cranes, and they have all the toys to play with. The directors are really good. They really work with you. So, I'm not really on set thinking, "Oh, my God, this is television. It's very different."
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.
I was raised in the '90s. I love 'Seinfeld.'
'Breaking Bad.' Because it's the best American narrative fiction of the last ten years.
You might be a redneck if an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger changed your life.
