Creative 100: TV and Streaming's Top Innovators

It took the TV industry two years to fully recover from 2020’s pandemic-fueled production shutdowns—and as streaming services rapidly bulk up their original content slates, 2022 is on track to feature more original TV shows on linear and streaming than ever before (surpassing last year’s record 559 programs). The tsunami of new and returning series has made it tougher than ever for shows to break through—yet these creative visionaries managed to do just that with their electrifying series. Here are the linear and streaming innovators featured in this year’s Creative 100: Sterlin Harjo Co-creator, showrunner, Reservation Dogs, FX TV that’s not like TV: The independent filmmaker broke out last summer with FX’s Reservation Dogs, which is about four Indigenous teenagers coming of age in a rural Oklahoma town. For Harjo, the key to making groundbreaking television was … to not make TV. “One of the mantras of the writers room is, ‘That feels like TV.’ If it feels too much like other TV shows, we abandon it,” Harjo told Adweek last year. Representation matters: Reservation Dogs, which is also the first series to feature an all-Indigenous writing staff, director and series regulars, has been a pioneer for representation onscreen. “I do want people to feel seen, and our communities are diverse and interesting,” said the Seminoe and Muscogee Creek creator, who films the show in Okmulgee, Okla. “I belong to a community here, and I felt like I was near the source of where I get my inspiration from.” Raising the bar: Now, Harjo is trying to top himself with Reservation Dogs’ second season, which debuts Aug. 3 on Hulu. “We took the bar pretty high with Season 1, so that’s where we’re starting,” said Harjo. “It’s very much like, how do we do what we did last season but not repeat it.”—Jason Lynch Nida Manzoor Creator, writer and director, We Are Lady Parts, Peacock On her biggest creative challenge: In order to tell the story of a Muslim girl punk band, securing a cast with serious acting and musical chops was key. “I wanted our actors to be able to play the instruments and perform the songs in order to give the band a raucous authentic punk vibe," Manzoor told Adweek. “ We also had to find a cast that not only captured the uniqueness of their characters but also had great chemistry together. I knew the success of the show would rely on that group friendship so our casting director, Aisha Bywaters, put together extensive casting sessions, chemistry reads and music auditions to find the group of women who could bring the characters to life.” On her approach to making resonant television: “I didn’t really think about targeting audiences and being strategic on how to break through. I just focused on trying to create something authentic, something fun and telling a story I was itching to tell. I leaned into all the things I love—music, comedy, female friendships—and threw it into the show. I suppose I hoped that if I stayed authentic to myself, I would make something interesting, something that an audience might relate to and enjoy.” Advice to the next generation of TV creators: “As you are cultivating your voice and finding the stories you want to tell, it’s important to be finding producers who you want to work with, who understand the nuances of what you want to do, and can guide you and protect you as you look to make your show. Finding the right producer is crucial, as you may come across powerful industry forces that want you to change your show to make it more ‘palatable.’ To have producers who intimately understand what you want to do and will back you up is really important.”—Shannon Miller Dan Erickson Creator and showrunner, Severance, Apple TV+ Finding the corporate synergy for a critically acclaimed hit: “I had been trying to come up with a show idea for a while, so when I found myself walking into work one day and wishing I could just skip the next eight hours, I sort of instinctively started thinking of how that idea, which I figured was pretty relatable, could be sort of pumped up into a sci-fi story. I find that’s a good way to come up with interesting premises that also feel emotionally real.” Refining the Severance Macrodata: “Building the mythology was both really important and really hard. There are so many little details we had to invent, like calling the workers ‘Innies’ and ‘Outies.’ I probably took a whole day deciding on that.” Best practices for creatives: “I think movies and TV shows are taking a lot of big risks right now. … I feel like there’s a sense that the mold is broken and people can try really weird, new things. So you’re getting stuff like Everything Everywhere All at Once that’s taking big swings with form and tone and story. I think it’s kind of the wild west right now in certain places, so it’s a good time to develop that really weird idea about the spatula who learns how to love. It’s time for Spatulove.”—Bill Bradley Jesse Armstrong Creator of Succession, HBO Pre-Success-ion: Armstrong grew up in Oswestry in Shropshire, England, attending Manchester University to take on American studies as an undergraduate and studying American history for his masters. He later worked as a researcher for a member of Parliament. But a career in politics didn’t quite work out. So Armstrong did the sensible thing: He turned to comedy writing. Can't make a Tomlette without breaking some Greggs: Armstrong had a long career in comedy prior to Succession. Among his many projects, he co-created and co-wrote nine seasons of Channel 4’s BAFTA-winning comedy Peep Show, and he was nominated for an Academy Award for writing the film In The Loop. Then, in 2016, HBO commissioned his media family drama. Now, heading into Season 4, the dark comedy has earned 21 Emmy nominations, securing nine wins. How Succession, like Armstrong’s career, keeps getting better with time: Speaking to reporters at the TCA press tour last summer, Armstrong said, “We're a bit about politics, culture and media, but we're also very much about psychology and families. And so the good thing for us is that the more people are with us, the longer people are with us in a way there's just more to do. The relationships become like somebody you've known, a family you've known or a couple. The longer you've known them, the more terrible and fascinating it is.”—Bill Bradley Elizabeth Meriwether Creator of The Dropout, Hulu An established career: Meriwether started building a name for herself a decade ago with the 2011 film No Strings Attached, before going on to create hit series New Girl for Fox, and then Single Parents and Bless this Mess for ABC, before landing at Hulu with The Dropout. “I try to keep my head down and do the work, because you never know what's going to resonate with people at the end of the day. But, because there is so much great television out there, I think audiences and executives are willing to take risks in a new way,” she said. Challenges of The Dropout: “The biggest creative challenge was making the show at the same time as Elizabeth Holmes' trial,” said Meriwether. “I had to incorporate new evidence into scripts that we were already shooting, and Amanda [Seyfried] and Naveen [Andrews] had to incorporate the new information into their performances as well.” Follow your passion: “Everything is changing so quickly—don't listen to what me or anyone else tells you about the ‘way things are.’ But here's a good piece of advice I got early on: Most television shows fail, so you might as well try to fail with a show that you love.” —Mollie Cahillane Hwang Dong-hyuk Creator of Squid Game, Netflix The path to Squid Game: Dong-hyuk's series Squid Game became a global phenomenon in 2021, and Netflix’s most-watched series ever. But it wasn’t easy to break through the noise. “There are so many projects in the world, some even being made as we speak. That’s why creating something completely new has become almost impossible. I think that a way to create a breakthrough show within this crowded field is to take something that already exists and tell it from your own perspective, adding uniqueness to familiarity.” Creative challenges: “The greatest challenge was to make this story of the desperate, lifelike characters risking their lives to play these childish—and even comical—games both realistic and interesting for the viewers, without making anything look forced. Also, it was difficult to create the spaces for the games within the island and the costumes, including the masks.” Advice for the next generation: “If you’ve chosen this career path, watching and reading should be a form of work for you. And you have to try to write a lot of scripts. Before you’ve written anything, you don’t know if you’re talented in this field or if this line of work suits you. Writing a script is not easy. Make sure you know what you’re getting into and give it a go."—Mollie Cahillane Soo Hugh Creator, showrunner, Pachinko, Apple TV+ Go big or go home: For her critically acclaimed Apple TV+ series—based on Min Jin Lee’s New York Times bestselling novel that follows a Korean immigrant family across four generations starting in South Korea in the early 1900s—Hugh knew she had no choice but to go big for the sweeping global production, involving three languages (Korean, Japanese and English) and more than 600 actors. “With a production this big, the only solve is to put together a passionate, smart and experienced team who understood the challenges,” she said. “We were fortunate because so many people loved the show that they were very much willing to bleed for it. Without them, this show could not have been made.” Breaking through: Hugh is undaunted by the glut of top-shelf TV content that is fighting for attention alongside Pachinko. “At the end of the day, it’s about the story and the characters. If those elements are strong and unique, an audience will come,” Hugh said. “It’s an exciting time to be in television.” Advice to the next generation of creators: “Don’t follow the mold. If you go chasing after the zeitgeist, you will always be behind. Instead, create the zeitgeist by creating bold, individual shows that haven’t been dared before. Together, we can all be braver.”—Jason Lynch Rose Matafeo Creator of Starstruck, HBO Max Romantic lead: Award-winning New Zealand comedian Matafeo has struck romantic comedy gold with her HBO Max comedy, Starstruck. As the show’s creator, writer and star, Matafeo has managed to make a sitcom about a twentysomething everywoman’s sweeping romance with A-list actor Tom Kapoor (Nikesh Patel) engaging and deeply relatable. Beyond the happy ending: With Starstruck, Matafeo bucks traditional romantic comedy tropes by showing the messy aftermath of the grand gesture. Season 2, which debuted in February, triumphantly showcased how Jessie’s (Matafeo) decision to stay in London and pursue her relationship with Tom didn’t result in the neatly buttoned-up happy ending that we’re used to seeing. “Rom-coms rarely have sequels because you want to end on a high,” Matafeo told Elle. “What we did was just naturally follow the question posed at the end of the first season, which in a more meta way, is a question for all rom-coms: What happens directly after the happy ending?”—Shannon Miller Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson Creators of Yellowjackets, Showtime Developing a unique voice: Yellowjackets burst onto the scene in late 2021, receiving critical and fan acclaim, and earning a pickup for Season 2 before the first season finished. “The biggest creative challenge we faced with this show was establishing its unique tone. From the outset, we knew that we wanted to incorporate elements from different (and often wildly disparate) genres—horror, thriller, dark comedy, coming of age—and it was up to us and our writers to find a way to make them work together as a cohesive whole. Is there something in this script that makes us laugh out loud? That makes us gasp? That might give us nightmares? That reminds us, with real emotional honesty, of our own teenaged selves?” A surprise hit: “We tend to think that the more you attempt to chase or manufacture the ‘next big thing,’ the less likely you are to do it. Audiences can smell something inauthentic or cynical a mile away. We made this show for ourselves and our many collaborators; essentially, we set out to create a story that we would be truly excited to tell.” Advice for future creators: "It sounds terribly clichéd, but stay true to your creative instincts, create the show that you really want to watch and that only you can write."—Mollie Cahillane Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould Co-creators, Better Call Saul, AMC Doubling down: It’s one thing to be brazen enough to make a prequel series to one of the greatest TV shows ever (Breaking Bad, created by Gilligan), but it’s another thing to craft a series that—in its sixth and final season—creatively stands toe-to-toe with the original. And no one is more surprised by the AMC drama’s evolution (of showing how Bob Odenkirk’s lawyer character evolved from mild-mannered Jimmy McGill to Breaking’s Saul Goodman) than its creators. “We thought he’d be Saul Goodman in the crazy office by Episode 6,” Gould told the Hollywood Reporter in April. “We had no idea of the journey that we were going to go on with this guy.” Prepare for landing: After May’s jaw-dropping midseason finale, Better Call Saul will return for its final six episodes beginning July 11, as Gould and Gilligan look to end (at least for now) a journey that also encompasses Breaking Bad and its sequel film, El Camino. “We’re pulling a lot of threads together—sometimes they’re threads; sometimes they’re ropes,” Gould (who took over Saul as lone showrunner starting in Season 3) told Entertainment Weekly in April. And while he’s not sharing finale spoilers, he does have one seismic promise: “I don’t think you’re going to look at Breaking Bad the same way again after you’ve seen this season.”—Jason Lynch Check out Adweek’s Creative 100 for 2022 by category: Agency Leaders | Agency Talents to Watch | Branded Content Innovators | Visionary Directors | Media Innovators | Icons and Influencers | Visual Innovators

The Creative 100

Creative 100: TV and Streaming's Top Innovators

The year’s most creative talents in television who captivated audiences with electrifying shows

Sterlin Harjo

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Adweek Staff

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