"Transparent" is a drama slash comedy series that could, in theory, make the Emmy nominations next year in either of those categories - it's that good.

I keep writing books about why TV is good. There's nothing more fun to me than steering people toward something that I really loved that I think they might not otherwise see. That's the reason I do what I do.

"Transparent" is a drama slash comedy series that could, in theory, make the Emmy nominations next year in either of those categories - it's that good.

I'm trying to accept the idea that there's a different definition of what matters now. The rating for James Corden at 12:30 at night doesn't matter as much as the number of hits he gets on YouTube when he goes driving around with Adele. There are old dogs out there doing new tricks, and I got to recognize them.

I got into television criticism because I thought it would be easier than film criticism. Film, you had to know 100 years of history, and TV you only had to know 40 when I started. And I thought, "Well, that's going to be so much easier." But film stayed pretty much the same. And television has changed so many times that my head hurts. So I made the wrong call there.

I would not even attempt to do a history of world television. I did a half dozen years where I was a juror at the Banff World Media Festival, and you get the best TV in the world there, and I was astounded at my ignorance. I would be watching a documentary made in Japan, and it was astounding, and I would never have heard of that otherwise. We're seeing more and more imports in the last years, and my dream for the next generation of TV is that somehow we get to tap into all of that.

Even though I'm a writer and I love books and writing books is my favorite thing to do, when you teach, and you can go through the history of children's television, and I show certain things, the students' jaws just drop. You're never going to hit the hammer quite as hard in print.