The TV Shows Steven Spielberg Has Quietly Championed Over the Years

Steven Spielberg has spent the better part of five decades reshaping what cinema can accomplish, but the question of what he watches when he's not behind the camera has long been a source of genuine curiosity. According to ScreenRant, the director's television recommendations span a surprisingly wide range of genres and eras — and together they paint a portrait of a storyteller who gravitates toward authentic character work and high-stakes drama in whatever form they take.

A Man of Particular (and Surprising) Taste

For a filmmaker whose career encompasses everything from the wartime immersion of Saving Private Ryan to the intimate alien wonder of E.T., it would be reasonable to assume Spielberg's TV viewing leans toward prestige drama or perhaps ambitious genre work. The reality is more interesting. His recommendations suggest someone who prizes craft and commitment regardless of format — a sensibility that extends from scripted legal dramas to unscripted documentary television.

Spielberg has reportedly indicated he intends to eventually develop a long-form television project of his own, which makes parsing his viewing habits feel like useful context rather than idle celebrity gossip. What a filmmaker chooses to absorb tends, sooner or later, to surface in what he creates.

SCTV and the Comedy Roots of a Serious Director

One of the more illuminating entries on Spielberg's watch list is SCTV — the Canadian sketch comedy institution that ran from 1976 to 1981 and launched the careers of John Candy, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, and Andrea Martin, among others. Long before the series found its way to streaming platforms, Spielberg was reportedly an admirer during its original run. His appreciation was demonstrably sincere: he is said to have specifically sought out John Candy after watching him excel on the series, hoping to forge a professional relationship with the performer.

That connection matters because it illuminates something about Spielberg's directorial instincts — his ability to recognize specific, irreplaceable talent and pursue it deliberately. It's a quality visible throughout his casting history, and Ke Huy Quan's memoir offers a similar glimpse into the personal attention he brings to the performers he believes in.

David E. Kelley and the Pull of Ethical Drama

On the scripted side, Spielberg has been openly enthusiastic about David E. Kelley's legal drama The Practice and its spinoff Boston Legal. The Practice, anchored by Dylan McDermott's portrayal of attorney Bobby Donnell, distinguished itself by prioritizing the ethical and financial pressures that shape legal decision-making over courtroom theatrics. It was a show more interested in the cost of compromise than in the drama of the verdict — and that moral seriousness aligns naturally with the thematic concerns Spielberg has pursued across much of his own filmography.

His admiration for Kelley reportedly extended beyond any single series; Spielberg has indicated he would watch essentially anything the writer produced, which speaks to a genuine respect for authorial voice rather than mere genre preference. It's the kind of loyalty one craftsperson tends to extend to another.

The Unlikely Guilty Pleasure: Deadliest Catch

Perhaps the most disarming entry in Spielberg's television canon is Deadliest Catch, the long-running Discovery series that documents the commercial crab fishing industry in the notoriously treacherous waters of the Bering Sea. Spielberg has described it as his favorite show of the 2010s and acknowledged it as something of a guilty pleasure — which carries its own gentle irony given that he directed Jaws early in his career and has maintained a complicated relationship with the ocean as a cinematic subject ever since.

What Deadliest Catch offers, beneath its reality-TV surface, is something Spielberg has always responded to: genuine human stakes, extraordinary physical environments, and the weight of real consequence. It's the only unscripted series he has publicly cited, and that distinction alone makes it worth noting. It's also, frankly, a rather endearing quirk for one of cinema's most celebrated directors to own.

What These Choices Reveal

Taken together, Spielberg's television tastes reflect the same qualities he has brought to his best work — a commitment to character, an appetite for moral complexity, and an openness to finding great storytelling in unexpected places. For fans who've followed his career from its earliest blockbusters to recent projects like The Fabelmans, or who are keeping watch on his ongoing relationships with fellow industry figures, these viewing habits offer a rare, unguarded window into how one of Hollywood's most analytical minds actually engages with the medium when no one expects him to be taking notes.