For a medium dubbed the “idiot box,†television has long been the subject of a number of sharp, perceptive films, from Real Life (1979) to Nightcrawler (2014). Capturing the wild spirit of live TV, however, is a trickier matter. As opposed to the carefully controlled nature of film, it doesn’t have the luxury of editing or second takes. The pressure is intense. The timing needs to be precise. The performers have just one shot to get it right.
Many films about live television are also portraits of loneliness, depicting entertainers and anchors who put on a show for the public, then fall apart in private. Everyone’s watching them, but who’s really looking out for them? The more lighthearted of these movies contrast the manicured, curated nature of the programming against the chaos of what’s happening backstage. They make the case for going off-script, embracing spontaneity, and, above all, having fun. After all, the performers get just one shot at this.
With this weekend’s release of Saturday Night, which recreates the 90 minutes leading up to the premiere of NBC’s Saturday Night, here are 13 essential films about live television, ranked by how stressful they are to watch:
13.
UHF (1989)
Live TV has never looked this free, this fun, this frivolous. When slacker George Newman (“Weird Al†Yankovic) takes over the local station his uncle has won the deed to, it’s grappling with low viewership and near-bankruptcy. But this comedy is infused with such kooky energy that these problems don’t even really register among all the gags. Run by a motley crew of down-on-their-luck weirdos, the channel has a slew of weaknesses that begin to feel like strengths: The fact that it’s a barely watched station means George can use it to send personalized broadcasts to his girlfriend; the fact that the anchor (Fran Drescher) isn’t formally trained makes her more approachable. UHF is an ode to the “anything goes†spirit of community TV, in which eccentricity is celebrated and the “villains†are a stuffy corporate network channel. In UHF, a janitor can secure a gig as a kids’-show host on a whim. Fun With Dirt is a regular program. A channel run entirely on the “no thoughts just vibes†philosophy goes No. 1 in the ratings. Where do I sign up to be a contestant on Wheel of Fish?
12.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)
As envisioned by director Adam McKay, the two most pressing dangers to male news anchors in the ’70s were Kodiak bears that can rip your arms off … and female news anchors. Anchorman trades the ratings-battle storyline of similar films for a battle of the sexes, pitting an infantile boys’ club against a new hire navigating their sexism with the seasoned poise of someone who’s done this all before. Under all its crude humor and low-stakes silliness is a sharp satire about a woman trying to make it in a male-dominated profession. Rival news stations, teleprompter snafus, and bickering co-anchors who must convey a united front on-air all become fodder for gags about male reporters who appear not to take their jobs too seriously — but who take themselves absurdly so.
11.
My Favorite Year (1982)
Whoever said you should never meet your heroes clearly never got to spend the week with matinee idol Alan Swann (a hysterically funny Peter O’Toole), a charming, down-to-earth mentor figure dispensing sage advice about life and love. (Only he does this in between bouts of drunken stupor, public indecency, and near-death experiences.) My Favorite Year is a breezy look at celebrity-guest management, going behind the scenes of a fictional live-comedy sketch show to frame the job of a writer as one that lets you not only hang out with your idols but also be privy to some of their deepest vulnerabilities. “Comedy is king†is how one character describes live TV, but it’s also the ethos of this film, in which no situation is ever so serious that it can’t form the setup to a steady stream of punchlines. Even when backstage mayhem spills out into the performance, the show rallies, toeing the line between hilarious disaster and improvisational masterpiece. The film makes the case for chaos and spontaneity being crucial to the magic of live television — some moments are so inspired you couldn’t have scripted them if you tried.
10.
Late Night With the Devil (2023)
If the axiom is that you have to sell your soul to make it in showbiz, then Late Night With the Devil makes the transaction amusingly literal. It’s set during a live broadcast of a fictional late-night ’70s show whose affable host, Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), conjures more fun than frights. Part of the intrigue lies in deciphering whether the sudden studio blackouts and guests’ heightened theatrics are evidence of the supernatural or simply good staging. But behind-the-scenes footage soon reveals the pressures that have piled up — low ratings, sponsorship troubles — and no matter how many touch-ups he gets, Dastmalchian really lets us see the character sweat. Nevertheless, for a film in which a TV host attempts to resurrect his career only to end up signing his audience’s death warrant, Late Night With the Devil is morbidly funny — the cut to a “station difficulties†intertitle after a bout of on-air demonic possession is an understatement if there ever was one.
9.
A Face in the Crowd (1957)
A television entertainer accrues enough power and sway over the masses that his involvement in the next election could decide the country’s political future. Sound familiar? The most stressful, sobering, and ultimately dispiriting part of A Face in the Crowd is how true it rings even all these years after its release. The film homes in on the stark irony of television, in which a host can make his audience feel seen and understood and, in being exactly who they need him to be, conceals his true nature from them. As “Lonesome†Rhodes’s (Andy Griffith) star rises, the last shreds of his decency fall away, his character ultimately becoming as phony as the placebos he hawks. “We get wise to him,†says a character of our ability to eventually spot such hucksters. But how much damage will we let them do first?
8.
Broadcast News (1987)
A rogue stream of sweat threatens to wash away a news anchor’s entire career before it even begins. As an assistant waits to be handed a tape containing an important news story seconds before broadcast, the scene is soundtracked to her increasingly breathless, high-pitched hyperventilation, which, from a purely auditory perspective, resembles labor pains. It makes sense — in a way, a crucial delivery is involved. Broadcast News captures the immense pressures of a newsroom but also the exhilaration of pulling off a great show. At the heart of the film’s tension is a producer (Holly Hunter) who has an astute sense of what would make each show memorable but struggles to apply the same mindfulness when it comes to her personal life, caught between a man she respects but isn’t attracted to and a man she’s attracted to but doesn’t respect.
7.
Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)
The specter of McCarthyism casts long shadows over the black-and-white photography of Good Night, and Good Luck, whose color palette not only evokes the television screens of that time but also makes sense thematically — for CBS anchor Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn), not every story is nuanced enough to contain shades of gray. When Murrow challenges Senator Joseph McCarthy’s methods of identifying Communists, the tension begins to increase with each successive broadcast. The film captures both the lighthearted banter of reporters as they run through their pitches for the day’s bulletin and the urgent overlapping chatter of the control room’s last-minute instructions and snafus. Much of Good Night, and Good Luck’s tension, however, is derived from the potential fallout of the broadcasts, an anxiety amplified through use of real-life footage of McCarthy. For all Murrow’s unblinking intensity and hypnotic eloquence, a sequence in which he nervously taps his foot before he goes on-air reveals the strain he’s under. After one broadcast ends, the shot foregrounds a telephone with his face in the back — there’s both anticipation and dread that ringing will soon shatter the silence.
6.
Network (1976)
Careers, relationships, people — in Network, they all live and and die by the diktats of live television. It’s simultaneously a profession that treats its employees as expendable (one anchor is fired, rehired, and fired again over the course of the film) while maintaining a deathgrip on their thoughts (a programming chief can’t stop fixating on work even on a romantic getaway, mid-kiss, mid-stroll on the beach, mid-dinner, even mid-sex.) When anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) initially begins his on-air rants, the film derives tension from the chasm between his precise words and disheveled appearance — at one point, he delivers a speech rain-soaked and in his pajamas. His fixed-gaze ferocity is contrasted against the profession’s pervasive attitude of hardened cynicism — the film wrings wry humor from a scene in which network execs hash out contract details with a terrorist group they’ve hired. If live television spurs Beale’s righteous anger, however, it’s also responsible for the mindless consumption that cancels it out. Take his “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore†screed. By the end, it’s flattened out into yet another rote slogan parroted by his audience.
5.
The Truman Show (1998)
They say you shouldn’t believe everything you see on television, but what of Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey), for whom reality itself is a scripted studio production? The Truman Show is exploitative reality TV at its extreme, in which its protagonist’s birth is a globally televised event and his death would make a great finale. His entire life has been one carefully constructed illusion, the production of which alternates between meticulous, with the townspeople springing into choreographed action when it looks like he might uncover the truth, and amusingly slack, letting him get close enough in the first place (one of the film’s funniest and yet most tense sequences is when actors have to perform live “surgery†on the fly for a peeping Truman). It’s a high-wire act — for a format that otherwise thrives on chaos and unpredictability, every course of action in the show must be plotted and rehearsed. Between his closest friends, paid to fake an interest in his life, and the strangers around the globe genuinely invested in it, Truman is trapped. After being spied on, gaslit, and manipulated into performing, you can’t help but cheer when he literally breaks out of his (idiot) box.
4.
Ghostwatch (1992)
A mockumentary presented as a live broadcast attempting to capture evidence of a poltergeist at a home in Northolt, England, Ghostwatch elicited calls from frightened BBC viewers back in 1992, and the years haven’t slackened its haunting grip. Initial stretches coast by on a stream of breezy banter from reporters relaxed enough to prank one another, but its strength is its slow-burn eeriness, especially when sisters Suzanne (Michelle Wesson) and Kim (Cherise Wesson) begin describing their ghostly encounters with the unnerving innocence that only children possess. Ghostwatch builds its atmosphere with testimonials from distressed neighbors, thudding noises, and anecdotes tied to local history, which only add to the story’s “authenticity.†The final 20 minutes dial up the anxiety to near-unbearable levels. Ghostwatch understands the heart-stopping horror of the access-TV format — the only thing more terrifying than watching a family be terrorized in real time is a lost transmission.
3.
The Hunger Games (2012)
Author Suzanne Collins’s inspiration for The Hunger Games trilogy, in which 24 children must fight to the death on live TV, came from flipping between reality shows and footage of the Iraq War, violently contrasting tonalities that the film distills into the tense spectacle of kids who must craft compelling-enough narratives about their lives to prevent them from being cruelly cut short. In the arena, survival itself is a spectator sport and showmanship the only ticket out of starvation. Director Gary Ross captures a level of stress the polished live broadcasts and their chipper commentary couldn’t possibly — his quick cuts and shaky cam convey the disorientation of hallucinatory experience, and the high-pitched ringing in the aftermath of an explosion is unnerving. “If no one watches, they don’t have a game,†says Liam Hemsworth’s Gale. But the perverse truth of The Hunger Games is that they just can’t look away.
2.
Christine (2016)
Christine begins with a “based on true events†title card, creating a dread-inducing tension that hangs over the rest of the film for those who know how her story ends. The reporter is hyper-aware of what her expressions look like, how she comes across, if she nods “too sympathetically,†if her leaning in is “too forced.†Compounding the immense pressure she puts on herself is the pressure of the job, particularly the struggle to increase ratings — “if it bleeds, it leads†is a particularly gruesome news motto. Rebecca Hall plays Christine like a pressure cooker accumulating steam, dangerously close to blowing. Her stomach aches from the stress. She slumps over her desk, breathing heavily. The lead-up to her on-air suicide depicts her at her calmest, rendering that final countdown unbearably tense but also unbearably sad. To watch Christine is an exercise in anxiety but also ache for a woman who made a living drawing attention to other people’s lives but believed she couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to hers.
1.
The Contestant (2023)
The highs of reality TV come from watching strangers hit rock bottom, and in 1998, 30 million people tuned in to watch an oblivious man at his lowest on the Japanese show Susunu! Denpa ShÅnen. The line between reality-show contestant and human experiment becomes frighteningly porous as Tomoaki Hamatsu is stripped naked, confined to an apartment, and left to survive on only the food he wins through sweepstakes. The canned laugh track and cutesy graphics are horrific packaging for a show about a man who might just succumb to death or depression. The cruelties he’s subjected to for entertainment’s sake render any promises the producers make him suspicious, a frequent source of tension the documentary about the show taps into. Hamatsu’s experience is a searing indictment of the manipulations of reality TV — he is simultaneously in millions of homes and yet utterly alone.