Quality Television Quotes

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.

'The Great British Bake Off' is family entertainment. There aren't many programmes where all ages can sit and watch from beginning to end. Everything else is violent, cruel, and noisy. We're educational without viewers realising it.

I think television scripts have become really intriguing and well-done. And writers have stopped drawing any actual line between film and television they used to never cross.

'Heroes', 'Desperate Housewives', 'The Sopranos' - they're all very stylised. 'The Wire' is much more rooted in realism and honesty. In American television, I can't think of anything I'd rather have been in because it has got something to say and that is the kind of thing I want to do.

If you had told me in the Seventies and Eighties that TV would be as edgy or edgier than most films, and more intelligently written than most films, I wouldn't have believed it. There's great stuff out there.

'Breaking Bad.' Because it's the best American narrative fiction of the last ten years.

I watch a lot of television. The stuff that they're putting on television, series like 'The Americans' and 'Game of Thrones,' it's so superior to most of the films that are coming out of Hollywood in terms of drama, certainly in terms of what we're interested in.

It's a very powerful medium now, and should be celebrated as such, because we have the greatest television in the world.

I've been watching more American TV because of all the great TV series that have come out in the last five to 10 years. I'm a 'Sopranos' fan, I'm a 'Wire' fan, I'm a 'Mad Men' fan. I'm a 'Deadwood' fan. It makes me optimistic for the future of storytelling on TV that producers are willing to take that kind of jump.

Without 'Twin Peaks,' there would have been no 'Northern Exposure,' 'Picket Fences,' 'X-Files' or 'Alias.' It started the movement of 'off-center' television.

I want to do more independent film. I'm blessed to be working on really quality episodic television, which to me actually feels like a sort of 13-hour film.

I loved working on 'Boardwalk.' I had a very limited run on it, but I did love it and that was quality television.

It does cost a lot of money to make high-quality TV in exotic locations. I know everyone thinks we've been given a massive sack full of money and gone off and bought Lamborghinis and gone off for lunch, but it isn't actually like that.

If you had ever told me that the finest film work was going to be done on television, I wouldn't have believed it.

If there's something decent going in television, the mediums now are kind of equal. Television has become much higher quality.

I think 'Greenleaf' has taken television up a notch all the way across the boards - from wardrobe and everything.

There used to be a huge snobbism between the film industry and the television industry. I produced and acted in my first - well way back - but the first thing that I produced and acted in was Sarah, Plan and Tall. And the only place to go at the time for really quality television was Hallmark Hall of Fame. And think how much television has changed since then.

If there's a new HBO series, you know there's going to be a certain level of storytelling mastery - that you can trust it.

I don't know if we would have stuff like 'Deadwood' and 'Boardwalk Empire' if 'Twin Peaks' had never happened.

A big reason why I'm not a big TV watcher is that in my formative years as a viewer, there wasn't that much great television on, or at least, television that appealed to me.

I would never give up 'The Wire,' 'Breaking Bad,' and 'Game of Thrones.' I'm grateful for all these expensive, excellent, graphically ambitious programs.

I was proud of 'House, MD,' and I think it was good for what it was and remarkably smart for a television show. I loved Hugh Laurie and was proud to be by his side that long and to be trusted by him.

I love 'Girls' on HBO because it's brave and cool.

My feeling is, from when I started on 'Breaking Bad,' there's no reason to pick and choose because every episode is great. Whatever episode you get, you're lucky to do it.

I honestly love nothing better than digging into a really good serialized show, whether it's 'Breaking Bad' or 'Game of Thrones' or 'Justified.'