The 20 best films about the TV world

For a lot of years, TV was seen as a “lesser” medium than film. You had a TV career so you could have a movie career. When you went back to TV, it was “over” for you as a star. That’s not really true these days. Plus, film never seemed to have an issue with television. There have been several movies about the world of TV. Let’s channel surf our way through some of the more notable ones.

Not only did Wayne’s World begin as a sketch on television, but it’s also a movie largely about a TV show. Namely, the public access show that Wayne Campbell and his best friend Garth Algar do together. This is the best of the Saturday Night Live films and spawned a worthwhile sequel.

Before reality TV saturated the market, we got the ultimate reality show movie. Although, The Truman Show calls into question what qualifies as “reality” TV anyway. Jim Carrey plays a man who has lived his entire life in a fictional world at the center of a TV show. The problem? Truman does not know this fact…at first.

Is this what working in news in the ‘70s was like? Probably not. We don’t recall any newscasters losing both their arms in separate violent accidents. Will Ferrell and Adam McKay created a bonkers, absurd, and hilarious comedy in Anchorman, giving us a new iconic character in Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell).

This may be the best movie set in the world of television news and arguably the best movie of 1987, though it had to settle for merely being nominated for Best Picture. Holly Hunter, William Hurt, and Albert Brooks all give perhaps their career-best performance. It’s funny but acidic, a really impressive effort from James L. Brooks.

We know when a TV show is fictional. We don’t think that Star Trek is real or that William Shatner could do any of that stuff. Aliens, though, might be real. That’s the clever premise of Galaxy Quest, wherein the cast of a sci-fi show that’s long been off the air is mistaken for a real crew of heroes by some aliens who need help. Tim Allen has never been better (though that may be a bit of the old damning with faint praise).

This is the movie that made people think George Clooney was going to be the next big actor-turned-director. It’s a serious, “important” movie about Edward R. Murrow facing off with Joseph McCarthy during McCarthy’s Community witch hunt. Clooney shot it in black-and-white and everything. It worked. It was nominated for six Oscars, though it didn’t win any.

We’re going with back-to-back Clooney films. Yes, he directed two movies about television personalities as his first two outings. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is more out there, as it’s based on Gong Show host and TV producer Chuck Barris’ “autobiography” about his time as a hitman for the CIA. There’s no proof that is true, and Barris may not have been serious. Still, it makes for an interesting premise.

“Weird Al” Yankovic has done something nobody else has ever done: Build a successful career out of song parodies. He was given a chance to make a movie back in the ‘80s, giving us UHF. Yankovic plays a wayward guy who ends up in charge of a UHF channel. While it flopped at the time, it has unsurprisingly become a cult classic.

How do you spruce up Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol? Well, you turn it into a comedy starring Bill Murray, for starters. Then, you put it into the world of television. Murray plays Frank Cross, the head honcho of the IBC network. He’s the Scrooge of Scrooged, but in the film, we also get a television production of A Christmas Carol for good measure.

They say never meet your heroes, and My Favorite Year simultaneously bolsters and refutes that. In 1954, TV writer Benjy Stone managed to convince his Sid Caesar-esque boss, King Kaiser, to have the fading actor Alan Swann as a guest on his variety show. Swann is played excellently by Peter O’Toole in this comedy-drama. See, Swann has a bit of a problem with drinking, and that complicates things when Benjy sticks his neck out for him.

If any of these movies center around a negative opinion of television, it’s Network. Although, Pāddy Chayefsky’s script seems to have a negative opinion of humanity. Still, this is an all-time great dark comedy, even if you like television. Three actors won Oscars, but it still feels like the performances were under-rewarded. A true classic.

Two kids from the ‘90s are sucked into a squeaky-clean ‘50s sitcom. There are a lot of jokes about that, but also some depth mined from reality leaking its way into the world. Is it bad, or is it actually good? While kids today probably aren’t watching Leave it to Beaver reruns, the movie is worthwhile.

Jon Waters tends to make things that aren’t family-friendly — or “friendly” to anybody, frankly. And yet, the shock filmmaker made something somewhat palatable in Hairspray. All Tracy wants to do is dance on The Corny Collins Show, but complications arise for these teenagers in 1960s Baltimore.

In the ‘50s, a scandal changed the landscape of quiz shows in America. Now, that may seem a little dry, but the first is quite good and tells its story interestingly. Directed by Robert Redford, Quiz Show was nominated for Best Picture in 1994 alongside luminaries like Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption, and Forrest Gump.

OK, so the premise of Tootsie is built on the idea that a man can’t get any roles and needs to pretend to be a woman to get booked. That feels like a bit of a stretch, but if you get past that, you can find a fun comedy that some consider the best. Dustin Hoffman is great in the lead role, but actors like Teri Garr and Bill Murray help flesh out the class. Oh, and Jessica Lange won an Oscar.

They all can’t be good. Bewitched is not an adaptation of the hit sitcom into a film. No, the movie's premise is that they are rebooting the TV show, and somehow an actual witch gets cast as Samantha. The whole thing is a mess, but a fascinating one tied to classic television.

Michael Mann usually makes slick action movies like Heat and Miami Vice. The Insider is not that. It’s the story of the man who blew the whistle on the tobacco industry on 60 Minutes. Instead, this is more of a procedural that mines many depths to flesh out the picture. It also features Christopher Plummer as 60 Minutes centerpiece, Mike Wallace.

Soapdish is a movie about the making of a soap opera called "The Sun Also Sets.” Then, they add on a layer by making the reality of the world more and more like a soap opera. It’s meta without hitting us over the head, but that packs some extra fun into the film.

Hopefully, television never gets so bloodthirsty as to make The Running Man a reality. It is, after all, a film about a game show where convicts basically have to compete for their lives. Yes, it’s an Arnold Schwarzenegger action film from the ‘80s, as you probably guessed from that premise. In the movie, there’s also a villainous turn from actual game show host Richard Dawson.

The influence of I Love Lucy cannot be overstated, and the same goes for its star Lucille Ball. However, things weren’t always going swimmingly offstage for the couple, who ended up divorcing. Being the Ricardos is Aaron Sorkin mining the lives of the late Ball and Arnaz for his latest film. Starring in Bewitched didn’t scare Nicole Kidman off of movies about TV because she played Ball for this.