Author Archives: pjmaciak

For those of you who may be interested, I recently started a tinyletter email newsletter with the questionable title, “Netflix and Phil.” I’m sending out semi-weekly short essays on TV, film, books, and pork chops. Subscribe if this is relevant to your interests! Netflix and Phil  

Girls was the first series that Dear Television ever covered. It lost its way a little bit, but I returned this week, five seasons in, to write about maybe the best set of episodes the show has ever produced. “But Girls is where this started for us, and so, as we come to the end of a triumphantContinue reading “GIRLS!”

Before we get into this week’s writing: I’m starting an email newsletter! It’ll feature links to my work, links to other writing I admire, but, more specifically, it’ll feature essays about TV and a range of other subjects that don’t make it into the pages of DearTV. If you’re interested, subscribe here. The first installmentContinue reading “BILLIONS / AMERICANS”

I wrote, with Lili Loofbourow, about the series finale of FX’s extraordinary historical drama, American Crime Story: The People v. OJ Simpson. Specifically, I wrote about how specific this unusual show was to its medium: “For all of the echoing of Victorian historicity that one may find in The People v. OJ Simpson, it is so veryContinue reading “PEOPLE v. OJ SIMPSON”

I haven’t updated here in a little while, so, without any further ado, here’s what I’ve been up to: At The Los Angeles Review of Books, Sarah Mesle and I had another series of conversations for Dear Television. First, we wrote about this year’s Academy Awards (“I feel like basically everything that happened last night happenedContinue reading “THE PAST FEW WEEKS”

For the past two years, I’ve organized a faculty/student Oscar debate for the LSU Film & Media Arts Program. (In year two, we started including snubs as well as nominees.) This year, we’ll have talks on all the Best Picture nominees as well as Straight Outta Compton, Carol, and Creed. This is the ad I made for it. (IContinue reading “OSCAR NIGHT”

Sarah Mesle and I wrote about the season premiere of Broad City for Dear Television at the LA Review of Books: “So, this is a show about friendship and closeness, but much of it happens at a distance. Abbi and Ilana are so often apart, for all that we think of them as inseparably together. The split screenContinue reading “BROAD CITY”

Sarah Mesle and I are back again, this time writing about Super Bowl 50 as a television spectacle. “At the same time, maybe the best, or most responsible emblem, for the contemporary NFL isn’t the undeterrable hero, shaking off tacklers, bouncing up after a hit with a smile and a dab. Maybe Peyton Manning, theContinue reading “SUPER BOWL”

Sarah Mesle and I wrote for Dear Television about FX’s new American Crime Story: The People v. OJ Simpson, which is really extraordinarily good TV: “The OJ trial is the adolescence of our media culture. The Kardashian kids may be a tangential part of this grand drama, but their presence brings it into our present inContinue reading “THE PEOPLE V. OJ SIMPSON”

After a bit of a hiatus, I’m back writing for Dear Television at the Los Angeles Review of Books, this time with Sarah Mesle on the return of The X-Files. “Our Lady of Sorrows”