Steven Knight Quotes

Sometimes in TV, it can get really stale, especially if you're doing these 23-episode years. It's a lot of work, and to put your family through that, on a location, is not always the greatest thing in the world.

When you're working on a television series, you only get a very short off-season. The scheduling of TV is relentless.

'Law & Order' is a six-month shoot. Everything has to be crammed in. I had so much fun, but it wasn't a holiday. We had seriously long days, and we'd finish at 8 P.M. and start again at 7 A.M. We were doing six-day weeks, which sometimes tripped onto the seventh. But I loved it all.

I do 280 episodes of TV a year, write 15 recipes for the magazine, and publish an annual book. With all of that, we try to get one weekend a month with Isaboo at our home in the Adirondacks to relax and recharge.

Normally, if you do a television show, it's 25 episodes. Your year is kind of shot, you know what I mean?

I remember what it was like to be doing 'Lost' and how creatively immersive it was. I just couldn't really engage on anything else, other than 'Lost;' I was just thinking about it all the time, and then there was just the pure workload, the 70- or 80-hour weeks.

'Game of Thrones' is shot on a very similar kind of schedule to a TV show, but there's a lot more time and focus put into the script.

When I'm in meetings until 5am and then have to get up two hours later for filming, sometimes I ask myself 'why?'

Let me tell you something - compared to a TV-drama production schedule, touring is not strenuous.

A lot of the TV shows, they do long hours, and they do a lot of days, and you don't get a lot of time. But the good thing is, if you get one that's made in L.A., or made in a place you want to be, you get to go home every night.

I think television is a big commitment, so it has to be something that you're really excited about and something that you want to potentially commit a lot of time to.

'Grey's Anatomy,' that was a great show to be part of, but they work really long hours. They were all just really tired. Just worn out.

I've been working some really long hours for the last five or six years. Anybody who works on series television knows, and especially women because women spend probably two hours more than the guys with all their hair and makeup crap.

Looking back now on our workload, I just shake my head at our pace. 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' was my first series, so I didn't know anything about that when I started. I just assumed it was normal to make 26 episodes a year on a seven-day shooting schedule.

It's incredible. Twenty-three minutes on the air, and I've got to shoot for twelve, fifteen hours a day. What the hell's that?

I don't want to carry a network show. I don't want to give up 10 months, working 17 hours a day, up at five in the morning.

Hollywood is crazy because if you're working, you're constantly working. There's all sorts of scheduling and stuff, and maybe you have a day off, but you don't have the whole day. You've got a photo shoot or whatever.

'Battlestar' was 22 episodes - 9 to 10 months a year - and we were exhausted. You finish shooting, and the last thing you want to do is go back to work. You want those 3 months off because you're tired - it's a grueling shooting schedule.

At the end of the day, the last thing I want to do is - well, anything. I just want to sleep. I crash out hard every day at 'Common Law.' I definitely lost a couple years of my life just on the fatigue factor on the first season.

It's an interesting thing to come to New York and do a television show. You're doing 10 hours of content in four and a half months. Eighty-hour weeks are par for the course.

We work the full year round to make 10 or 12 episodes, and 'The Good Wife' makes, like, 26 in that time or something, which I can't believe. I don't know how they do it.

We did 'Doctor Who' for forty-eight weeks a year but I loved it.

I feel like I don't have much of a preference. With TV, it's just a longer process, so you need to be more sure that you really want to be involved in it for a longer time than you would be with film.

A director has to be on the set when the crew is called and is the last one to leave at night. I'm not saying it's not possible, but that's partly why we're not seeing more women.

'Spooks' was unique. It took up such a lot of your life - I think we did 10 episodes for the first few seasons. That's six months of your life.