After 17 Years, a TV Critic Lets the Credits Roll

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Mike Hale has seen a lot of change in his years watching, and writing about, television: the rise of prestige TV (“The Sopranos”! “Breaking Bad”!), the golden age of high-end fantasy (“Game of Thrones”), the triumph of streaming (“Stranger Things”).“TV is always changing — the kinds of content people make, the kinds of messages they’re trying to get across, the kinds of emotions they’re trying to evoke,” said Mr.Hale, a TV critic at The New York Times for 17 years.After starting at the paper as a copy editor on the Sports desk in 1995 and serving as a TV editor before becoming a critic in 2009, Mr.

Hale retired at the end of last week.He leaves behind several thousand reviews and a reputation for being thoughtful yet brutally honest.(“The Simpsons”? Hard yes.

“Big Little Lies?” “A compendium of clichés about upper-middle-class angst,” he wrote.)In an interview, he reflected on how TV has changed, his personal favorite shows and what trend might be coming next.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did you get started as a critic?I loved reading criticism, starting with my discovery of Pauline Kael in The New Yorker back in the 1970s.

I was the entertainment editor at my college newspaper, and I reviewed movies, theater, books, music, pop music, restaurants — everything except TV, which no one was watching in college in those days.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....