20 of the most prolific showrunners in TV history
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20 of the most prolific showrunners in TV history
Norman Lear attends the 2019 Creative Arts Emmy Awards.
Television is undoubtedly a collaborative medium. However, there’s no denying showrunners have played an indelible role in shaping the art form. These creatives are forces in their own right, overseeing every aspect of production to bring each show to the screen and captivate an audience.
The term “showrunner” was likely popularized in the late 1980s in order to describe the people on set making final creative decisions amidst other producers. As television evolved into a more plot-driven medium, showrunners played a vital role in shaping the TV landscape. Take Rod Serling, who used his hit science-fiction anthology series “The Twilight Zone” to legitimize the dramatic storytelling potential of TV, or Norman Lear, whose ’70s shows weren’t afraid to incorporate political and social themes into the sitcom formula.
As we progress through this modern age of streaming TV, exciting voices like Mindy Kaling and Phoebe Waller-Bridge have found their footing across platforms and series. But with so many skilled showrunners in television, both past and present, which ones should viewers know?
To help you get started, Casino Bonus CA compiled a list of 20 of the most prolific showrunners in television history using a variety of sources, including news articles and TV archives. So read on and learn a bit more about television history and the people behind it.
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Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Sorkin attends the Molly’s Game U.K. premiere.
First and foremost a screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin brought his distinctive, walk-and-talk, monologue-filled storytelling to the screen as a showrunner on ABC’s “Sports Night.” After the series’ conclusion in 2000, Sorkin went on to helm politics-based shows such as “The West Wing” and “The Newsroom,” as well as the dramedy “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.”
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Amy Sherman-Palladino
Amy Sherman-Palladino holds two awards at the 70th Emmys Awards.
Amy Sherman-Palladino has built a TV legacy based on her pop-culture-laden dialogue, strong world-building, and multifaceted female characters, as well as her preference for the master shot filming method. Originally a writer on shows like “Roseanne” and “Can’t Hurry Love,” Sherman-Palladino broke out as a showrunner in 2000 with her beloved Warner Bros. show “Gilmore Girls.” She’s also known for creating ABC Family’s “Bunheads” and Prime Video’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” which recently ended after five seasons.
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Damon Lindelof
Damon Lindelof attends the Watchmen premiere.
Complex, character-driven stories that blend sci-fi and mystery are Damon Lindelof’s forté. Best known for co-showrunning “Lost,” the screenwriter and producer went on to helm bold, much-debated genre shows like “The Leftovers” and “Watchmen,” and the more recent Peacock limited series “Mrs. Davis.” In 2010, Time named Lindelof one of the 100 most influential people of the year.
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Dick Wolf
Dick Wolf attends a red carpet event.
When it comes to American procedural shows, Dick Wolf is king. The showrunner got his start in copywriting before heading to Hollywood and working on shows like “Hill Street Blues” and “Miami Vice.” Wolf is responsible for massively successful procedurals like the “Chicago” franchise and “Law & Order” (whose spinoff, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” is currently the longest-running primetime drama in TV history).
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J.J. Abrams
J.J. Abrams on the red carpet at the Turner Classic Movies film festival in 2022.
Before he started reviving sci-fi film franchises and employing plenty of lens flares, J.J. Abrams was best known for his work on genre television, from the thriller series “Alias” to buzzy dramas such as “Lost” and “Fringe.” Although his use of mystery box narratives has sometimes faced criticism, Abrams wastes no time grabbing audiences’ attention with his unique visual style and approach to storytelling.
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Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon attends a premiere.
With series like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel,” and “Firefly,” Joss Whedon reinvented the supernatural drama at the turn of the 21st century. Whether centering on vampires or space explorers, Whedon’s shows have amassed cult followings and received acclaim for subverting traditional hero narratives. In more recent years, Whedon has also faced allegations from previous colleagues for abusive and inappropriate behavior on set.
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Kenya Barris
Kenya Barris attends the premiere of Netflix’s You People.
Inspired by his own family life, Kenya Barris’ “Black-ish” centers on the Johnsons, an upper-middle-class Black family living in a predominantly white neighborhood. The groundbreaking network comedy explored Black culture and politics through the format of a family sitcom since its debut on ABC in 2014. Spinoff “Grown-ish” focused on the Johnsons’ oldest child, Zoey, as she goes off to college and experiences life as an almost adult. “Mixed-ish” gives audiences a look into the childhood of Rainbow Johnson, whose identity as the biracial daughter of a Black mother and white father becomes integral to the family dynamic on “Black-ish.” Barris has since moved on to create and star in the Netflix comedy “#BlackAF” and sign a deal with Paramount.
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Marta Kauffman
Marta Kauffman attends an event for Netflix’s Grace And Frankie.
Marta Kauffman became one of the most influential showrunners and female creatives of the ’90s when she created the iconic, long-running comedy “Friends,” based on her and co-creator David Crane’s own friend group. Years later, Kauffman once again centered the situational, heartfelt comedy of friendships as the showrunner of “Grace and Frankie.” The Netflix series followed the relationship between the titular characters, played by Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.
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Michael Schur
Michael Schur speaks at event.
After working as a writer and producer on “Saturday Night Live” and “The Office,” Michael Schur began making his own warm comedies, which often feature a lovable family of characters working to enact social change within the minutiae of everyday life. Schur has created beloved comedies like “Parks and Recreation,” “The Good Place,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” and “Rutherford Falls.”
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Mindy Kaling
Mindy Kaling attends the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party.
Throughout her career, Mindy Kaling has proven that she’s so much more than just Kelly on NBC’s “The Office” (which she also wrote, directed, and produced). Following the sitcom’s success, Kaling created and starred in her sitcom “The Mindy Project,” going on to co-create streaming comedies like Netflix’s “Never Have I Ever” and HBO’s “The Sex Lives of College Girls” and “Velma.” Her works often showcase Indian American characters pushing back against common stereotypes alongside a colorful cast of characters in a workplace or coming-of-age setting.
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Norman Lear
Norman Lear in his later years attends an event.
When it comes to TV, few showrunners have contributed more to the medium than Norman Lear, who had worked on over 100 shows at the time of his death in late 2023. Known for creating influential ’70s and ’80s sitcoms like “All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son,” and “One Day at a Time,” Lear convinced Hollywood that political and social issues like race, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ+ rights had a place within the sitcom formula.
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Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Phoebe Waller-Bridge attends a Fleabag Season 2 screening.
Best known for creating and starring in her acclaimed dramedy series “Fleabag,” Phoebe Waller-Bridge has established her career by writing arch, genre-bending feminist television not afraid to center female anti-heroines. In addition to “Fleabag” and her first series, the London-based comedy “Crashing,” Waller-Bridge also created the spy thriller “Killing Eve” for BBC America.
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Robert and Michelle King
Robert King and Michelle King attend The Good Wife screening during 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.
Writing team and married couple Robert and Michelle King have created some of the most experimental, boundary-pushing shows of the late 2010s and early 2020s. After Robert got his start writing film screenplays, the two enjoyed their first breakout success by collaborating on the legal drama “The Good Wife,” which later spawned the spinoff “The Good Fight.” Several of the Kings’ shows, like “The Good Fight” and “BrainDead,” eviscerate the moral chaos of contemporary life through absurdist satire.
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Rod Serling
Rod Serling poses for portrait.
From 1959 to 1964, Rod Serling invited viewers to enter “The Twilight Zone” found in his iconic TV show of the same name and simultaneously played a major role in the development of television and genre storytelling. Each episode of the science-fiction series was a parable, with the writing often addressing current issues like war and racial inequality. To date, Serling holds the record for the most dramatic writing Emmy Awards, a fitting record for one of the key figures behind dramatic television.
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Russell T. Davies
Russell T. Davies poses at the Dr. Who premiere in London.
Sci-fi lovers everywhere will recognize Russell T. Davies for reviving “Doctor Who” in 2005 and overseeing its spinoffs. But the celebrated British TV showrunner also has a long legacy of crafting queer, character-based storytelling and thematically rich entertainment. At the time of its premiere in 2000, Davies’ “Queer as Folk” was the rare program that dared to portray gay men as complex, multi-layered individuals rather than one-dimensional stereotypes, a theme Davies continues in more recent shows like “It’s a Sin” and “A Very English Scandal.”
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Ryan Murphy
Ryan Murphy poses in the press room at the 68th annual Primetime Emmy Awards.
Highly stylized settings, musical interludes, and healthy doses of camp and melodrama—that’s a Ryan Murphy project for you. The showrunner is best known for launching massively popular TV series like “American Horror Story,” “Glee,” and “Scream Queens.” An openly gay creative, Murphy has also long championed queer storytelling in Hollywood, particularly through projects like “Nip/Tuck” and “Pose.”
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Shonda Rhimes
Shonda Rhimes visits The Queen’s Ball: A Bridgerton Experience in New York.
Since her series “Grey’s Anatomy” first premiered back in 2005, Shonda Rhimes has made a name for herself not only as one of the most successful Black or woman showrunners in Hollywood, but as one of the most successful showrunners, period. On top of the long-running medical drama, she created the popular ABC drama “Scandal” before executive-producing Netflix hits like “Bridgerton” and “Inventing Anna” as part of her multi-year development deal with the streamer. Expect strong female characters, diverse ensemble casts, and shocking twists in a Rhimes series.
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Taylor Sheridan
Taylor Sheridan attends the 1923 Las Vegas premiere.
American Westerns on TV have had a big comeback in recent years, thanks at least in part to Taylor Sheridan. After acting in projects like “Sons of Anarchy” and penning the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for “Hell or High Water,” he turned his attention to creating TV shows of his own for the Paramount Network. TV fans might recognize the family soap opera “Yellowstone,” its spinoffs (“1883” and “1923”), and the crime dramas “Mayor of Kingstown” and “Tulsa King” on Sheridan’s resume.
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Tina Fey
Tina Fey with her Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series for 30 Rock.
Tina Fey rose to fame as a cast member and eventual head writer for “Saturday Night Live,” and went on to become one of the most prolific showrunners in comedy. Her experiences as a “SNL” head writer inspired her to create the Emmy-winning sitcom “30 Rock,” which many critics consider one of the greatest TV series of all time. Known for her biting, observational humor and trenchant satire of contemporary issues, Fey went on to develop the Netflix comedy “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” with actor Ellie Kemper.
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Vince Gilligan
Vince Gilligan attends the premiere of the sixth season of Better Call Saul.
Vince Gilligan started as a writer, director, and producer on the classic Fox sci-fi procedural “The X-Files” before co-creating the drama’s spinoff, “The Lone Gunmen.” However, he’s best known for creating and running “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul,” both of which examine the fictionalized criminal underbelly of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Both shows are known for their character study-based writing, a focus on how incremental choices can shape people’s lives, and the slow-burn tension of their plotlines.
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