25. Michaela Coel
Major Shows: “Chewing Gum”
Another of those pesky UK imports who keep coming over here and stealing all our airtime, Michaela Coel is perhaps the British answer to Issa Rae, though her gobby, day-glo, sex-obsessed, often crudely hilarious persona is entirely her own, and entirely unlike anything else on TV right now. Over the course of just two seasons (both available on Netflix), she’s established her unique voice: profane, profound and provocative, with a full-tilt, no-holds-barred, mercilessly self-deprecating style. As with many of these names who come to auteurdom via confessional comedy, it’s hard to see exactly how she’ll transition to less personal projects int he future, but there’s no doubt when you watch “Chewing Gum” that hers is a talent that practically overspills even her own show, so we expect more great things.
24. Steven Moffat
Major Shows: “Doctor Who,” “Sherlock”
With so much amazing U.S. TV happening all the time, it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a UK TV impresario to make it onto this list (only Armando Iannucci and Charlie Brooker have also managed that feat). But Moffat is an exception to almost every rule, and as the showrunner and chief creative force behind “Doctor Who” since 2009, he has developed some of the landmark sci-fi show’s most enduring and involving storylines. Of course, that was hardly his first credit: Moffat has been active since the late ’80s, when he wrote every episode of fondly remembered Brit TV show “Press Gang,” and also spearheaded the successful comedy “Coupling,” which did not, however survive the transition to the U.S. for its NBC remake despite Moffat’s involvement there. His highest-profile stateside success has instead come for “Sherlock,” which he co-created with Mark Gatiss, and has become something of a phenomenon both at home in the UK and abroad.
23. Lodge Kerrigan & Amy Seimetz
Major Shows: “The Girlfriend Experience”
On the one hand, seeing as both have big-screen careers, too (Kerrigan as director of titles like “Clean, Shaven” and “Rebecca H. (Return to the Dogs)” and Seimetz as an actress and also director of terrific indie “Sun Don’t Shine“), it might seem premature to put Kerrigan and Seimetz on this list after just one season of one show. But on the other hand, “The Girlfriend Experience” is about as auteurist as TV gets, with all 13 episodes written by the pair, and all directed by one or either of them. It’s also absolutely fucking brilliant, one of the best shows of last year, riffing loosely on Steven Soderbergh‘s film of the same name but improving on it exponentially, not least for the breakout turn by Riley Keough as the manipulative part-time call-girl and antihero at its chilly heart. And Seimetz and Kerrigan are due to return, with a whole new cast, toplined by Louisa Krause, Anna Friel and Carmen Ejogo, for season 2, where there’ll be changing it up even more with each writing and directing their own separate storylines within the same series. Cannot wait.
22. Ray McKinnon
Major Shows: “Rectify”
You might not even know his name that well, but dollars to donuts, Ray McKinnon is the only person on this list who starred in one of the greatest TV shows of all time (David Milch‘s “Deadwood“), created and wrote the majority of another in “Rectify,” and has an Oscar (for short film “The Accountant,” which he made in collaboration with wife Lisa Blount and actor Walton Goggins). Really, “Rectify,” which aired its fourth and final season late last year, feels almost destined to be one of those shows that people discover after the fact: it’s a slow-burn masterpiece with elements of southern Gothic that aired on Sundance TV to the adoration of critics, without ever catching fire with audiences the way it deserved to. Thankfully, Sundance allowed it to run its course despite never being a blockbuster, and what McKinnon can now boast is simply one of the most haunting, humane and melancholically beautiful shows ever made. We really hope he brings us another show soon.
21. Michael Schur
Major Shows: “Parks and Recreation,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “The Good Place”
It’s so indelibly associated with the great Amy Poehler that it could come as a surprise that the beloved, much-missed “Parks and Recreation,” which already feels like it belongs to a better, happier era in all our lives, was actually created by the ex-“Saturday Night Live” duo Michael Schur and Greg Daniels. Both have moved on to other projects, but Schur has gained more traction since the end of ‘Parks,’ co-creating the hit Andy Samberg-starring Fox comedy “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” with Dan Goor and solely creating and showrunning new NBC comedy “The Good Place.” The Kristen Bell and Ted Danson-starring afterlife comedy is really where it feels like Schur’s sensibilities have come into their own: it boasts a similar breezy, can-do optimism to ‘Parks,’ but tempered with sharp performances (Bell is basically a miracle) and a precise eye for human flaws and foibles that can be deeply sardonic amid all the sunny surreal silliness.
20. Sam Esmail
Major Shows: “Mr. Robot”
Aside from making an instant star of Rami Malek, Sam Esmail’s techno-paranoia thriller show gave the USA network its first bona-fide flagship hit, and one that appealed to the tech-savvy and highly desirable millennial demographic to boot. Combining the attraction of cutting-edge tech with the plotting of a 1970s conspiracy thriller and and the hoodie-and jeans aesthetic of the anti-authoritarian resistance movement, it felt like an unexpectedly fresh and ambitious riff on its (admittedly often obvious) influences, but its msot impressive aspect was how Esmail really managed to get us to occupy the subjectivity of the damaged, fearful, depressive main character. Season two went even more auteur as Esmail took over the directing duties on every episode, to, we would argue, lesser effect. But as the herald of our terrifyingly techno-reliant future, Esmail retains an outlook that’s distinctively cynical and provocative, and frighteningly timely.
19. The Duffer Bros.
Major Shows: “Stranger Things”
There was no bigger out-of-nowhere surprise last year than Matt and Ross Duffer‘s Netflix smash “Stranger Things,” which, like “Mr. Robot,” is an obvious melding of influences, homages and throwback references, yet also feels completely confident in itself and its novel approach to how those influences should be combined. With the brothers boasting few previous credits aside from writing a few episodes of “Wayward Pines” (a case study in a much less successful, if superficially similar, show) and little-seen 2015 horror movie “Hidden,” there’s not a whole lot to go on outside “Stranger Things.” But the show delivered such an instantly engaging and moreish hit of ’80s nostalgia and Stephen King references all wrapped up in one Spielbergian whole, that it feels like it’s the work of completely assured veterans, and we join the throngs counting the days ’til the October debut of season 2.
18. Sharon Horgan
Major Shows: “Pulling,” “Catastrophe,” “Divorce”
The three shows that London-based Irish multi-hyphenate Horgan has created or co-created to date, deal, in chronological order, with 20-something single life (“Pulling“), 30-something hookups, pregnancy, relationships and marriage (“Catastrophe“) and 50-something divorce (“Divorce“). Other than their neat continuity, all her shows are characterized by her withering honesty and rapid-fire wit: Horgan’s is the kind of comedy that give no quarter and leaves the characters nowhere to hide. Her move to HBO for the Sarah Jessica Parker-starring “Divorce” has been met with a rather more muted reception than her brilliant show “Catastrophe,” in which she stars alongside co-creator and co-writer Rob Delaney, but despite somewhat underwhelming audience figures (possibly a factor of Horgan never giving a damn about making her characters likable as long they’re real), it’s been renewed for season 2, while “Catastrophe” continues to go from strength to strength.
17. Louis CK
Major Shows: “Louie,” “Horace And Pete”
If shows like “The Wire” and “The Sopranos” ushered in our new Golden Age of TV drama, it took a little longer for the modern comedy renaissance to really take. But right at the vanguard was this deceptively shaggy, shambolic show from a big, balding ginger stand-up comedian and writer whom few outside of the rarefied confines of the New York comedy circuit would have recognized. “Louie” pioneered a loose style of confessional comedy that often eschewed any recognizable joke-punchline rhythm in favor of a wincingly real character portrait — almost a serial self-assassination — whose influence you can now see in everything from “Master Of None” to “Lady Dynamite” to “Atlanta.” Perhaps even more impressive, though, is that rather than continue to plough that furrow ad infinitum, after five seasons, 61 episodes and a massive expansion of his fame, CK made low-key tragicomic wonder “Horace And Pete,” perhaps the most creative and unexpected response that he could have had to the enormous change in his own circumstances. Again, it sort of lights the way for comedians wondering if there is life after their semi-autobiographical TV show.
16. Robert & Michelle King
Major Shows: “The Good Wife,” “BrainDead,” “The Good Fight”
Husband-and-wife writing-partner team Robert and Michelle King don’t get enough props in the pages of The Playlist, maybe because their biggest show to date, the CBS legal/political drama “The Good Wife” had the taint of “network procedural” about it (despite being so much more than that) and so seemed somewhat outside our wheelhouse. But “BrainDead,” their wonderfully whimsical and gross political satire, followed, only to have its exaggerated comic outlook on partisanship in DC outweirded instantly by current events and cancelled after one very enjoyable season. But they bounced back with ‘Good Wife’ spinoff “The Good Fight,” which, if anything, is even better than its big sister: a shorter season means there’s less filler, but the borderline miraculous topicality that characterizes their savvy approach (sometimes the plotlines seem torn from headlines on which the ink is scarcely dry) is still in evidence, with a pleasingly diverse new cast on board to boot (you may not realize how much you’ve missed Delroy Lindo until you start watching it). Season 1 ended last month, and CBS have already renewed it.