The female president seems to me to be a very obvious hat tip to Jamie Tarses — a ballsy but excellent network president of ABC until 1999. She was known as a tough,  volatile, yet incredibly creative and insightful executive, writer-friendly but also uncompromising in a pursuit of excellence. The character’s name is even similar, Jordan.

The writing on Studio 60 is excellent, as is the casting, the acting and the production. There are probably some Industry in-jokes that those outside the Industry won’t get, but overall I think it will appeal to most. They even have an unflinchingly, unapologizingly normal Christian character, rather than succumbing to the tired Hollywood cliches of a rabid, prejudice, stupid Christian caricature.

It’s a promising start. One on which I believe, based on Schlamme’s and Sorkin’s track record, they can deliver on a weekly basis. Unless, of course, they fall victim to the same network creative hacking as the fictional "Studio 60" did in the pilot.