A Guide to Your Favorite Showrunners' First Shows

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Best known for: Spartacus

Nudity has been a common theme in Steven DeKnight's career, though it is difficult to find much more common ground between Undressed and Spartacus. Undressed was an anthology show that chronicled the sexual exploits of different groups of young people in and around Los Angeles. The show often shifted between characters, juggling several numerous plot threads told through vignettes.

After leaving the unconventional MTV show, DeKnight became a steady employee of Joss Whedon, working on Buffy, Angel, and Dollhouse before landing his own showrunning gig. Whedon clearly had a greater impact on DeKnight than anyone he worked with at MTV. He often mentions or quotes Whedon in interviews. He has praised Whedon's "singular vision", which he missed when he worked on shows that were more network controlled, like Smallville.

Now that Spartacus has wrapped, it is safe to say that DeKnight was successful in bringing the idea of a "singular vision" to Starz's burgeoning stable of auteur showrunners with the critically adored, if Emmy ignored, series.

Best known for: Gilmore Girls, Bunheads

Sure, Roseanne's blunt, earthy tone strikes a sharp contrast with the witty patter of Gilmore Girls, but featured a blue collar slice-of-life sensibility. We couldn't see them as friends, but we could certainly see them as neighbors. This may come as no shock to Bunheads fans, but Palladino's career in TV writing began when she left her life as a ballet dancer behind to seize the opportunity to write for Roseanne.

It's likely that Roseanne had a hand in forming Palladino's distinctive, uncompromising writing style. Thanks to Roseanne Barr's stardom, the network and the studio were not allowed to give notes on Roseanne. Palladino admits that she was "so spoiled" on Roseanne, and felt that once she went to her next job, "[she] thought, 'Who the fuck are all these people sitting around the table and why are we talking to them?'"

Best known for: Parks and Recreation

One tried and true path for brainy comedians to launch themselves to superstardom goes through the Harvard Lampoon to writing for Saturday Night Live and on to greater success; Michael Schur is a prime example of how well this trajectory can pan out.

Quickly after graduating from Harvard, Schur landed a job at Saturday Night Live, where he became the producer of Weekend Update. After six seasons of writing on staff at SNL, Schur went to work on The Office. Parks and Recreation began as a spin-off of The Office, though Schur eventually decided that the show would work better as a stand-alone series, beginning our national love affair with Leslie Knope.

Best known for: Awkward

After spending a number of years working on the executive side of Hollywood (the only evidence of which on IMDB are credits on A Perfect Murder and U.S. Marshals), Iungerich shifted to the creative end of the business. Prior to creating Awkward, which has become an alternative to the reality TV schlock on MTV, Iungerich worked on the television adaptation of 10 Things I Hate About You and helmed a web series called My Two Fans, which had a total budget of a paltry $35,000. Awkward has already enjoyed a longer run than 10 Things I Hate About You, which lasted only twenty episodes.

Best known for: Glee, American Horror Story, Nip/Tuck

Television writing is a second career for the accomplished Ryan Murphy. Murphy worked as a journalist for various newspapers before selling a script entitled Why Can't I Be Audrey Hepburn to Stephen Spielberg in the late '90s. Murphy's career has been unique in that he has only worked on shows that he has created, beginning with the high school dramedy Popular on the WB. We wonder how the notoriously opinionated writer would handle working under another showrunner, as he seems to relish the spotlight and controversial headlines he has generated since Glee has thrust him onto the national stage.

Best known for: Grey's Anatomy, Scandal

Hit-maker Shonda Rhimes belongs to that exclusive club of showrunners who never served on writing staffs prior to creating a show. Rhimes created Grey's Anatomy when she had only a handful of feature writing credits to her name, including The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, Crossroads, and Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. Rhimes's success was by no means overnight: Years of working in film development preceded the launch of her writing career.

Best known for: Game of Thrones

Just because Weiss and Benioff had no prior TV writing experience when they landed Game of Thrones doesn't mean they weren't well qualified for the job. Benioff has had an impressive career as a feature writer: He penned the scripts for 25th Hour, Troy, and The Kite Runner, among others. Weiss's IMDB page lists Game of Thrones as his only credit, but remember that IMDB only lists produced projects. Weiss has written drafts of Ender's Game, an I Am Legend prequel, and a proposed Halo movie, all of which ended up unused. Benioff and Weiss are great examples of how when a first time TV writer is running a show, there is probably more to the story.

Best known for: The Wire, Treme

There are many ways to break into show business, but David Simon's route has to be one of the most circuitous of all time. Simon was a journalist with the Baltimore Sun for over a decade covering the police. After a bitter strike, Simon found himself enjoying his work at the paper less and less, feeling lasting tension with the higher-ups.

He began to seek an excuse to take a leave of absence from The Sun. He settled on writing a book, which became, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. The book chronicled a year Simon spent shadowing the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit. The book's publishers quickly began shopping the film rights and Simon found himself gearing up for a career change.

Best known for: Breaking Bad

It is commonly known that Vince Gilligan got his start in television writing for the X-Files after penning two comedy features. However, you may not know that Gilligan first became acquainted with Bryan Cranston's acting chops while working on the series. In the sixth season's second episode, "Drive," Cranston played a deranged man trapped in a car with Mulder. Cranston, who was then best known for his comedic work on Malcolm in the Middle, flexed his dramatic chops in the episode and Gilligan remembered years later when developing Breaking Bad.

Best known for: Suburgatory

Before working on live-action comedies like Suburgatory and Parks and Recreation, Kapnek spent almost a decade working on animated shows. She earned credits on Hercules (the Disney adaptation, not the Kevin Sorbo vehicle) and Rocket Power after creating the hit As Told By Ginger. Kapnek got to work on Ginger as a result of winning first place in a contest run by Nickelodeon; the animated series ran for 65 episodes and earned three Emmy nominations.

Best known for: Six Feet Under, True Blood, Banshee

The master of that fine line between life and death got his start on a pair of female led '90s sitcoms, Grace Under Fire and Cybill. Chuck Lorre, later the creator of Two and a Half Men and Big Bang Theory, ran both shows. Ball speaks highly of Lorre, though his broad style of multi-camera comedy is starkly different from the cinematic, darkly comic space that has become Ball's playground.

Despite a fondness for Lorre, Ball, who was a New York playwright when he got the call to write on Grace Under Fire, didn't exactly make a smooth transition from theatre to television. Ball said of his experience on Grace Under Fire, "In a lot of ways it was the perfect first job to have because nothing will ever be that bad." He went on to say, "It was just hell at the beginning, and I really got sort of a slap in the face about—not in all TV shows, but in that show, particularly, how writers were just considered to be expendable and the script was kind of secondary to the persona of the star. And that was real new for me, because I had come out of the theater where writers have a certain amount of respect and control."

Ball seems to have gotten into television at the right time, as the rise of HBO has created circumstances in which TV can be a writer's medium.

Best Known For: Homeland, 24

Very few Hollywood writing careers have been as varied as Alex Gansa's. During his almost 30 years in the business, Gansa has written for The X-Files and Dawson's Creek, and has earned producing credits on Entourage and Numb3rs. His first writing job was on an hour-long drama that lasted all of one season called The Wizard, about a genius inventor and the secret agent who must protect him from being kidnapped by a foreign government. We had no idea that this show even existed either, so we dug up this trailer, which is the most '80s thing ever.

Best known for: Boardwalk Empire

Believe it or not, a police procedural starring Bill Cosby was unsuccessful. The Cosby Mysteries starred the Jell-o pitchman as a retired cop who was often called upon to help with tough cases. This short-lived show started a strange and varied period in Terence Winter's early career that began after he stopped practicing law in New York City to move to Hollywood. He went on to write for a number of shows, including Sister, Sister, Xena, Warrior Princess, and Flipper before settling into his gangster drama niche. Winter has served as scribe on a variety of gangster vehicles as varied as 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin', The Sopranos, and the show he created, Boardwalk Empire.

Best known for: Sons of Anarchy

Not every showrunner has to toil on no-name or no-shame shows before they rise to the role of showrunner, but that doesn't mean that they don't cut their teeth somehow. Before Sutter began his TV writing career on The Shield, he spent time as an off-Broadway actor. After he spent years as an actor, writer, and director in the New York theatre scene, Sutter decided to enter an MFA fellowship in Nothern Illinois University where his focus shifted from performance to writing. After graduating from his masters program, Sutter headed to Los Angeles and got his first job in television working along Shawn Ryan on The Shield before ultimately creating Sons of Anarchy.

Best known for: Girls

You probably already know a lot about Girls creator Lena Dunham, but you may not be as familiar with her co-showrunner Jenni Konner. Konner has intentionally been a silent public partner with the outspoken Dunham, but without Konner, Girls may have never come to be.

Konner took it upon herself to shop Tiny Furniture around Hollywood after she was blown away by the indie film. She was instrumental in bringing Dunham to Judd Apatow's attention; with Apatow onboard, HBO had the firepower they needed to pull the trigger on the series. Though Konner has amassed an impressive resumé, featuring work on over a half-dozen sitcoms, it was her first job that ultimately allowed her to land the show that would thrust her into the zeitgeist.

Best known for: Modern Family

Though the series doesn't often top critics' Best Of lists, Modern Family is an Emmy darling and fan favorite. It is tough to make a sitcom that has mass appeal that also takes home hardware during trophy season, but if anyone can do it, it would be a man with Levitan's sitcom pedigree.

Levitan's resumé is filled with a list of shows that you just can't turn off when you catch the reruns on cable. After getting his start on Wings, Levitan worked on Frasier, The Critic, The Larry Sanders Show, and Just Shoot Me before providing a long term anchor to ABC's comedy line-up with Modern Family.

Best known for: The Sopranos

David Chase is notoriously dismissive of network television. He has been quoted as saying, "The networks had great instincts for how to cut a script so they just ruined everything. You would give them something and they would just cook the vitamins out of it, until it was this big, blobby mass." He has even been critical of his own past writing gigs; he referred to Northern Exposure (a Pop Culture Channel favorite) as "self-conscious and self-congratulatory and precious."

Though Kolchak was cancelled after just 20 episodes, it has influenced more successful paranormal television that has been created since. X-Files creator Chris Carter has cited Kolchak as "30 percent" of the inspiration for the show. Despite Kolchak's street cred among paranormal TV enthusiasts, it's still probably a safe bet that Chase has his share criticisms of the former ABC show.

Best known for: Mad Men

Cancelled after just six episodes, Party Girl doesn't exactly carry the cultural capital of Weiner's more recent jobs like Mad Men and The Sopranos. How good was Party Girl? Well, FOX's major marketing push used the acclaim of Christine Taylor's work in The Brady Bunch Movie in an attempt to bolster viewership. Weiner cut his teeth on a handful of short-lived sitcoms, including Becker and Andy Richter Controls the Universe before he began his stint in prestige drama with The Sopranos.

Best known for: New Girl

Other than a pilot that lives on IMDB as Untitled Liz Meriwether Project, Meriwhether's only TV writing credit prior to New Girl was a brief stint on Children's Hospital authoring one episode as a freelancer. Meriwether was a playwright while studying at Yale, though she eventually transitioned to screenwriting, penning the script for No Strings Attached. Though Meriwether has never been in a writers room that she hasn't been in charge of, she certainly perfected her craft before taking the reins of New Girl.

Best known for: Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me, Hannibal

It isn't often that a writer's first gig in the business is as prestigious as scripting stories for the Star Trek franchise. Bryan Fuller's incredible passion for Star Trek landed him writing credits on Deep Space Nine, which he eventually parlayed into a co-producer role on Star Trek: Voyager by its seventh season.

Despite his various successes in the industry since he worked on the Star Trek shows, Fuller would still like to get back into the Star Trek game. In 2009, he told iF Magazine, "I want to create another Star Trek series and have an idea that I'm kicking around. I would love to return to the spirit of the old series with the colors and attitude. I loved Voyager and Deep Space Nine, but they seem to have lost the '60s fun and I would love to take it back to its origin."

Best known for: How I Met Your Mother

It is unusual that two people can work together harmoniously on one project, let alone for 15 years, but Bays and Thomas have made it work through thick and thin. While Late Night with David Letterman is a pretty great first credit, they followed up their time working for Letterman with some less beloved work. They readily admit that they are not terribly proud of their time on Method & Red (starring Method Man and Red Man) and Quintuplets (bet you'll never guess the premise of that one), though they insist they have tried to treasure every minute of their career, no matter how hard it might have been at points.

Best known for: Friday Night Lights, Parenthood

There aren't many better shows to begin your career with than My So-Called Life if your endgame is to become king of network family drama. In the time since his stint on My So-Called Life, Katims has become the envy of showrunners and TV writers as he has found the sweet spot of running shows that earn both critical acclaim and network eyeballs.

Katims refers to his time on My So-Called Life as his "graduate school," allowing him to realize the possibilities of character-driven storytelling on television; the job was his first taste of work in television after spending years in the New York theatre scene. After the ex-playwright left the My So-Called Life writers room, he began to create shows, and has worn both producer's and writer's hats on most of his jobs since.

Best known for:  Justified, The Americans

Considering his recent critical victories with action-packed television like The Americans, Band of Brothers, and Justified, and his successful past in feature writing, which has included Speed and Broken Arrow, it seems strange that Yost got his start on the Nickelodeon tween comedy, Hey, Dude. It would be easy for Yost to overlook his time on the dude ranch comedy, but the Justified creator is still proud of his time on Hey, Dude. Yost recently claimed that he "still runs into people" who tell him, "I loved Hey, Dude."

Though we don't see much similarity between the Bar None Dude Ranch and Harlan County, Yost considers Hey, Dude an important part of his development, calling the experience "a writer's bootcamp."

Best known for: Bones

Bones creator Hart Hanson spent years in Canadian television before he made the jump to Hollywood. His first job was as a writer on the dramedy, The Beachcombers. The premise of the series might be the most Canadian thing we have ever heard: The show chronicles the travels of a lumber salvager and his friends.

Hanson's career in Canadian television zipped along for a decade until he was lured to L.A. in 1998. Hanson's jump to Hollywood was occasioned by mounting interest in Canadian-produced series due to tax advantages. After turning down the offer to run a show seeking lower tax rates, Hanson made the move to L.A. and joined the staff of Judging Amy and Joan of Arcadia before creating Bones.

Best known for: The Shield

We have Nash Bridges to thank for many of our favorite television shows. The show, which was created by eventual Lost executive producer Carleton Cuse, featured a murderer's row of writing talent including Glenn Mazzara (Walking Dead), Damon Lindelof (Lost), and even Hunter S. Thompson.

Though Nash Bridges opened up many doors for Ryan, and is often cited as the job that helped him break int to TV, it was not his first television writing job. His first job was a somewhat less well-regarded show called My Two Dads, which basically sounds like Full House, but starring Paul Reiser, and featuring fewer cast members. The show somehow lasted for three seasons.