Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Purely Joyful Movie!

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Studio 60 has some nice elements. There were some moments that were smart, some that were funny. But as a whole, the show never really gelled.We'll at the very end, it got pretty good. After they turned it into "The West Wing". At the very end, they started dealing with war, and the military, and the kinds of big issues The West Wing dealt with.No the reason the show was fascinating was psychological, not artistic. There was lots in the press at the time about the on-again, off-again relationship between Sorkin and Kristen Chenoweth. In the show, Sorkin wrote a TV producer and a really talented performer who were parallels of them. Week after week, Sorkin would show us the conflicts between these characters. Sorkin was still trying to explain himself, win the argument, or accept blame for the conflicts in his own life.It was fascinating and creepy to watch art imitate life.

Aaron Sorkin has had a tough time with television, his first show Sports Night never gained out a mass audience and was cancelled after 2 short series, he left the great show The West Wing under hostile circumstances, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was cancelled after one season because of low rating. This was a shame because this show had a lot of potential that could have lasted 3 or 4 seasons.Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is set about the events of the running of Studio 60, a Saturday Night Live type show, with the wider events of the National Broadcast Service (NBS). When Jordan McDeere (Amanda Peet) takes over as the President of Entertainment programming she is thrown into crisis when the show runner of Studio 60 has a angry rant live on TV over the declaring quality of the state of Television and the nation. Her solution, hire Matt Albie (Matt Perry) and Danny Tripp (Bradley Whitford), two former producers/writers to run the show, who left after showing a controversial sketch after 9/11. Within the show Jordan wants to improve the quality of NBS' programming, making more scripted shows, hiring more talented writers and avoiding low-quality reality shows that rely on the humiliation of people. The quality of Studio 60 also quickly rises. But there are problems on the way, facing the FCC, the religious right and conservatives who are always critical of Hollywood, studio executives who care more about profit then quality and want to avoid offending anyone, infighting in the show and their own personal lives. Matt is in the middle of a on-off relationship Harriet Hayes (Sarah Paulson), a committed Christian, with a strong following the Christain community, compared to Matt who is a East Coast Atheist Jew. Danny is a recovering drug addict and has affections for Jordan.If you were an fan of the West Wing then you should like Studio 60. It is a witty dramedy, with a lot of substance. If you are interested in TV and Hollywood then the show would give you a good insight, and should appeal to an audience who long to see this version of Hollywood. The style of the show is very much like the West Wing, following a similar writing, dialogue driven style, with occasional flashbacks, and shot in a similar style. There are also returning West Wing cast members, like Matt Perry, Bradley Whitford and Timothy Busfield. This is a brilliant cast. Sorkin brings in his politics, criticising conservative Christians and the neo-Con who are too quick to criticise, judge and use fear to fulfil their agenda, the FCC for it's dogmatic view on moral and standards. There are criticisms about the Bush presidency and the wars in Iraq and Afghanstan. This was the West Wing mark II.This was a great show and it was shame it never got a second series.

I read through some of the user comments and I have to disagree with almost every criticism leveled at it. I also have to laugh irony given the main topic of the show.The characters were not mis-cast. Sarah Paulson's Harriet Hays was perfect, exactly the type of character missing on most TV shows to begin with and the most common face that many of us never see when Christian or religious characters are portrayed. She was not a stereotype, she created her own personality and being just like a real person. Amanda Peet, who I am no fan of, was playing the guarded tough gal in the boys club. What do we expect? Her to break down every time Steven Weber's Jack Rudolph yells at her? Comparing this show to the West Wing isn't fair, that was a show about how our ideals and the White House interact. This show has characters who are less than ideal and are already swayed to their beliefs, they don't spend time hashing them out as much as on the west wing, instead, they fight Amercia's perceived culture war on camera for us and usually wind up showing us just how few differences most of us really have. The sketches were not as funny as SNL's, but that's not the point of the show. Anyone who complained about that is utterly missing the point of the sketches to begin with, they are nothing more than social commentary. The comedy in the happens when the show within the show isn't on the air.The fact that this show fell victim to the very themes it was portraying may be the best sacrifice it could've made for the American TV audience. I realize not everyone is going to appreciate the things I do, and that's fine, but to allow TV to become nothing but the Real World with different settings over and over again is a waste. The mediocrity of most sitcoms, even Perry's Friends, is fine from time to time but every now and then something a bit more substantial would be nice.

You know, there's nothing worse than reading a review that does nothing other than refer to somebody's earlier work, and complain that it's not as good. Unfortunately, I can't think of another way of approaching this disaster of a television series.I respect the fact that a group of people enjoy working together. Witness Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. That was good stuff. A similar thing seems to have occurred during the casting for Studio 60, only what was missed, and missed big time, was the need for these people to play different characters. And in that sense, Studio 60 failed miserably, and when you add identical staging, you can't help but be reminded of a much better show.(Bradley Whitford reprises Josh Lyman, even to the point where he yells at the bald guy from Sex and the City and has the same relationship with Danny, sorry, Timothy Busfield, that he did in the last show) But this is not the biggest problem. What really killed it for me was the fact that this show they're producing, this cutting edge, hilarious live comedy, is quite possibly the lamest thing I have ever had the misfortune to come across. I've made it to episode three, the one with the ratings result, and ... what can I say? The sketches were terrible. I knew they were in trouble when they decided it would be ground breaking to do a filk of Modern Major General (a much better version can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suegH9Dbqko) but that's not really the point; it's been done, and it's not that interesting.But the "Science Schmiance" sketch was painful.I suppose having invested in the season, I should watch the rest. But life is too short.