That’s a particular example for me, as well. I loved Castle while Andrew Marlowe (who was the show’s creator, as well as showrunner) was working on it, but when he left, the show became so unenjoyable, and so far removed from what it once was, that I stopped watching it just a few episdoes into that final season.
I’ll warn my wife - she’s been watching Castle but I don’t think she’s gotten to Season 8 yet.
I don’t think it’s exclusive to high quality TV at all. It’s just a way of denoting which of several people with the same title (“Executive Producer”) is the one who actually runs the show, in lieu of a separate title.
It’s kind of like having the title of “Arch-Director” for a series, in that the showrunners’ creative control decisions trump those of the director of any particular episode, unlike films, where the director exercises that particular sort of control.
Totally unrelated, but I remember reading how Marvel Studios are more similar to tv than other movies because it’s the producers who have all the power, not the directors.
(I’m curious how true that ends up being for Guardians of the Galaxy movies, as those are much more director-driven than most Marvel movies.)
…that may have had a ring of truth while Feige was reporting to Isaac Perlmutter. But Taika Waititi in interviews has been crystal clear how much freedom the producers gave him:
I think there was a shift around about Guardians where the power differential changed, and why I’m enjoying every Marvel movie that has come out since then just a little bit better than everything before it. They are picking the right directors to fit the tone of the movie they want to make: then essentially letting them do what they want, supporting them to create something that both “fits in the Marvel world” but also fits the creative vision of the director. Its brilliant, and almost the opposite of how traditional Hollywood works.
Slightly off topic, but this anecdote about how the directors of Infinity War found out they were getting both Civil War and Spider-Man really sums up how much fun it must be to work at Marvel. (Link to "Fatman on Batman interview with Infinity War directors, has some bad language, goes direct to the bit I’m talking about)
IMO, Season 7 wasn’t all that great, either. I seem to remember that, while Marlowe was still involved in the show at that time, I think that his involvement was also lessened in that season compared to earlier seasons. Also, and I’ll put this in spoilers, just in case:
Season 6 ends with a cliffhanger, with Castle going missing while en route to his wedding with Beckett. Season 7 begins with Castle being discovered after having been missing for two months, and with no memory of what had happened. The recurring plotline in season 7 is Castle trying to remember what had happened (the entirely of which was convoluted and unrealistic). But, more importantly, the dynamic between Castle and Beckett (and the rest of the 12th Precinct) changed a lot in Season 7, with Castle becoming a private investigator, and not working directly with Beckett and the police. It was widely rumored that Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic no longer got along, and the producers had to engineer plots and stories to have the two actors interacting as little as possible.
I’ve often heard that the Executive Producer title is frequently bestowed on people who provide (or arrange) the money. For example, Steve Mnuchin (currently Secretary of the Treasury in the Trump Administration, formerly a hedge fund manager) has an Executive Producer credit in a number of films, including Wonder Woman, The Lego Movie, Edge of Tomorrow, and Sully.
Heh. Free Silverman sounds like a nineteenth-century superhero with monetary policy-based powers.
I don’t know about Buffy, but Whedon wasn’t Firefly’s showrunner. That was Tim Minear.
I want to say that it was during Buffy that I first began hearing the term “showrunner”–not in reference to Whedon, interestingly enough, but in reference to Marti Noxon, who became Buffy’s showrunner during the fourth season, while Whedon was concentrating his attention on getting the spin-off Angel series up and running.
I think it’s useful to consider how TV and Movies are different. Showrunner essentially fills a gap that the unique aspects of making a TV Series creates.
For movies, you typically (some would say ideally) have one Director and one Screenwriter telling a self-contained story. This means that there’s inherent cohesion and unity of vision. The 2 guys primarily responsible for telling the story are there from start to finish and can consider the project as a whole.
TV is different. You almost always have different directors for each episode. Often they rotate the same 4-5 people and sometimes there’s “guest” directors brought in to spice things up. Similarly, each episode can have a different screenwriter. The screenwriter and director are there to make sure the single episode they are making tells a coherent and interesting story, but they often don’t have all the context about every previous episode or know the arc of the subsequent episodes and seasons. TV series aren’t filmed from start to finish either, they start and stop work between seasons and people can often take different jobs instead of coming back.
This additional complexity for a TV show requires there to be someone at the helm. Someone who creates continuity across episodes and across seasons. They have the long term vision for the story and ensure those various directors and screenwriters don’t take a episode off in a totally wrong direction that confuses viewers or spoils big plot points planned for later. That’s the showrunner. They are usually there from start to finish, they sell the idea and guide all the initial production, but delegate the day-to-day work on individual episodes.
Movie --> TV Series
Director --> Showrunner
Assistant Director --> Episode Director
Writer --> Showrunner
Screenwriter --> Episode Screenwriter
In most cases the Showrunner of a TV series get the top executive producer credit and they don’t have a real analog in the movie world. The top executive producer of a movie is usually the main financier. One big exception is for movie franchises. Kevin Feige is effectively the “showrunner” of the MCU and George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy were the “showrunners” of the Star Wars franchises at various points (George obviously filled other roles on some movies too).
The latest episode of the “Imaginary Worlds” podcast is about Rod Serling, and it asserts that Serling’s helm at “The Twilight Zone” is now considered to be the first example of what is now called a “showrunner,” that is, a writer (credited as an executive producer) who is given full authority over the direction of a show and the “auteur” status with the power to bring ēs vision to life.
Hmm. Mightn’t there be earlier examples of this if you consider radio shows?