Quotes About Television

I often say television is not a job for grown men. You go to a set, they pick out your clothes for you, they tell you where to stand, what to say, and your chair has your name on it in case you can't find a place to sit.

In a film you only get two hours to do this big arc and so you have to pick and choose your moments carefully, but with television you get to take your time and just take it episode by episode and discover new things.

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.

Television is like a library. There are a lot of library books in it, and you have to pick and choose what you take out of it.

About a year after leaving drama school or a year and a half - and I was working solidly ever since leaving drama school - I picked up 'Game of Thrones.'

I don't know why it was canceled, but 'Mancuso, FBI,' it should have had a good long run, but it wasn't picked up. Maybe there was a problem with me. I have no idea.

I happened to see a really old 'Doctor Who', the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, and he'd picked up a Scotsman from 1745. It was an 18 or 19-year-old man who appeared in a kilt, and I thought, 'That's rather fetching.'

Jeff Wachtel, who was the main reason our show came back, and also got picked up to begin with, is from the New York theater.

I'd love to be on an Australian show and in Australian cinemas - they've really picked up their game.

When you book a network show as an actor, it's like, 'Oh my gosh, I booked a network show,' and then it gets picked up.

I went off and did 'Space,' which turned out very well, and when the series was picked up, my options were to stay with 'Space' as a producer/director or go to 'The X-Files' as a producer/director.

Everyone gives 'Picket Fences' credit for being so willing to delve into issues that now would be no big deal. But it was then. It was ahead of its time.

There are lots of procedural shows that I love, but I never really wanted to be a doctor on 'E.R.' - which I'm just picking as an example - or be on a crime procedural.

It is ridiculous that somebody picks up the phone and calls somebody they see on television. Why don't they call somebody in their area? Don't they know about that?

I don't like to leave my children for long periods of time. It's made me more picky about roles that are close, especially on television.

Supermodels are over, and the new picture girl has become the television actress.

I see TV as a picture medium rather than a narrative medium.

That is the godawful thing about television today. Performers don't have any place to hit and miss. You're either in or you're out; you don't have a chance to become good at your craft. If you make three pictures in a row and they don't go over, you're out of the business.

I think that televisions are unnecessarily complex. The irony is that as the pictures get better and the choice of content gets broader, that the complexity of the experience of using the television gets more and more complicated.

I don't want to do something just to be on TV. If I did I might as well just go on and put a meat pie on my head! If I go on TV I want to be doing something I want to do.

Because there are so many shows on and because I've been so hands-on - I've had a piece on almost every single week - I don't know how to cut back on that. You really can't.

I think, a lot of times, network shows are under a lot of mandates. There's a lot of moving pieces. There's a lot of money. There's a lot of people who are going to be disappointed if anything goes wrong.

Simple stories... emerge as lovely films or television pieces.

Fortunately, both television adaptations and the film I've been involved with are pieces of work that I'm proud of, so I'm very happy for people to focus on them.