From TV Screens to Tableau: Visualize Your Favorite Shows with IMDb

Kevin Flerlage is a Tableau Visionary, Tableau Public Ambassador, and Data Visualization Consultant at Moxy Analytics. Kevin has been in analytics for nearly 20 years, and is among the most-favorited authors on Tableau Public. Kevin and his identical twin brother Ken share tips on their blog, The Flerlage Twins. 

My twin brother, Ken, and I were very much kids of the ‘80s. It was a very different time. Personal computers were rare, it was long before the days of smartphones (heck, I didn’t have a cell phone until my mid-20s), and video game systems were in their infancy. Because we didn’t have those addictive technologies to lure us inside, we spent 90% of our lives outside (when we weren’t in school, of course). We jumped our bikes off of poorly constructed wooden ramps, played home run derby, flipped baseball cards, and built forts.

As preteens, we built a treehouse in the woods behind my neighbor’s house. It was about 8 feet off the ground, had multiple levels, with a ladder as an entrance and a rusty playground slide in case we needed to make a quick getaway. We had a rivalry with the kids down the street (as strong a rivalry could be between kids living in 1986 suburbia could have) so we protected our treehouse with a variety of boobie traps. One such trap consisted of a tripwire with a shallow pit behind it that we covered with sticks and leaves made to look like flat ground. My dad would frequently visit the treehouse, sometimes on its own. He seemed to marvel at the fact that a bunch of 12-year-olds built this. On one particular day, we saw him walk back toward the treehouse just to see him return a few minutes later. He had tripped on the tripwire, fell in the hole, and hurt himself badly enough to be limping quite dramatically while covered in mud and leaves and yelling in our direction. He wasn’t pleased, but we considered it a huge success! That treehouse, and just being outside in general, provides me with some really great memories. (Speaking of memories, if you see Ken or me around, ask us about our treehouse “zip line” that we created using a small piece of PVC and a water hose nailed to two trees—it did not end well). 

Although being outside provided us with incredible memories, many of my greatest memories were born in the dark, panel-sided basement of our two-bedroom, one-bathroom home. That’s where the family TV was. I recall with much fondness sitting with my parents and brother eating from a hillbilly charcuterie board (buttery crackers, American cheese slices, packaged pepperoni, and jarred pickles) locked in on the television taking in ‘80s classics such as Knight Rider, Chips, The Dukes of Hazzard, and even some shows meant for a more adult audience, like Dallas. I’ll admit, even as a kid, I desperately desired to find out who shot JR.

Visualizing TV data

Few things bring us as much joy and memories as television.

According to IMDb, there were approximately 10,000 television series released in the 1980s. Since the ‘80s we’ve seen an escalated timeline in television innovation starting with cable moving onto satellite, dabbling in CDs that you could borrow and have shipped to your home (can you believe that was a concept that actually worked?), and culminating with dozens of streaming services making thousands of television shows available to us on demand with a click of a button. That 10,000 figure from the ‘80s has grown to nearly 100,000 in the 2010s. Television has seen a huge evolution. It used to be “appointment television” (I learned that term from a very wise friend) where we all gathered around the TV at a specific time to all watch the same show. Now it’s a very different, personalized experience, with hundreds of thousands of options, that can often be enjoyed on our own, at our own pace, and with shows tailored to our taste. Although the television landscape has changed dramatically, one thing remains unchanged—few things bring us as much joy and memories as television (yeah, I said it again).

To provide a bit of validity to this statement (at least from my perspective), my very first Tableau Public viz was about television and titled Surviving Survivor. It not only contained a review of past Survivor winners, but took a very unsophisticated approach to predicting the winner of the current (at that time) season of Survivor. No, I did not predict the winner. In fact, the person I predicted to have the best chance of winning was the 7th person voted off (out of 20 total) and the person I predicted to have the worst chance to win made it to the top four! And yes, if I had it to do all over again, I would change a ton of things about this viz—especially those rotated headers (and, of course, I’d predict the winner)!

Surviving Survivor

Since my first viz, I’ve created a pile of TV-related vizzes on Tableau Public ranging from Jeopardy to Seinfeld. In fact, one of the first vizzes that “put me on the map” was the viz I titled “Kramer’s Lollipop”. It focused on the famous Seinfeld episode that started with the final scene and played backward to the first scene. In it, Kramer had one of those huge, circular, colorful lollipops reminiscent of a 1950’s candy shop. Since the show was played in reverse order, that lollipop started out tiny, but grew over time. My viz shows that lollipop and when you hover over it, each “segment” reveals one of the 3702 total words spoken during the episode. 

Kramer’s Lollipop

The Data + TV dataset

As you might know, Tableau released their Data + Movies challenge in November 2023. This massive IMDb data set included data for over 500,000 movies dating back 120 years and was loaded with ratings information, actor data, and so much more. It was certainly one of those white whale data sets. When I took the challenge, I had sooo many ideas ranging from the most despised actors to determining if Best Picture was really the best picture based on ratings. Ultimately I settled on something really simple—those actors that had a pile of roles, but never received top billing. I called it Always a Bridesmaid and topping the list was Joan Cusack, the sister of the famous leading man, John Cusack.

Always a Bridesmaid

I had so much fun exploring that data set, but now I’m even more excited to begin exploring TV data with the Data + TV challenge! Much like Data Plus Movies, this data set is very rich. The data reveals over 190,000 series, nearly 8 million titles, almost 2 million people, and 35 million individual roles. Maybe you’re interested in the series with the most episodes? Well, most of them are soap operas. How about the most episodes for a show that started in the 1980s? Doh! I should have known that one—it’s The Simpsons (well, it has the most for shows with at least 10,000 votes on IMDb). There are so many different angles to explore, just check out these simple insights from my very brief cursory look at it:

• Game of Thrones has more award nominations than any other television series in history and it’s not even close (1,023 versus #2 Saturday Night Live with 791).
• Although Game of Thrones is the most decorated television series, it is not the highest-rated. That honor goes to Breaking Bad with a 9.5 average rating (Planet Earth II also scored 9.5). Even Bluey burned down Game of Thrones. Okay, not burned down, but barely snuck by—9.4 versus 9.2. I really wish I had a gif of Bluey breathing fire.
• What series is more highly rated, Seinfeld or Friends? Oddly enough, they are tied at 8.9. (I can’t say that I’m in agreement here. Friends started amazing, but when Ross tries to remove his leather pants with butter, it felt like I was watching a modernized, yet cringy episode of Abbott and Costello. That ended my relationship with Friends). 
• What was the highest-rated episode of Seinfeld? Well, three episodes were knotted up at 9.5: The Contest, The Opposite, and The Soup Nazi…Jambalaya! As a side note the aforementioned backward episode “The Betrayal” tied for 11th at an 8.9 rating.
• Which actor has had the largest number of roles? The top spot goes to Indian actor, Dilip Joshi followed by Dan Castellaneta who famously voices Homer Simpson - doh…again.
• And last but not least, how many title plot synopses include the word “tableau”. The answer is two, both from Showtime’s serial killer hit, Dexter. The appearances were both in season 6—episodes 3 and 11. I’ve included the synopses below:
  • Dexter is confronted with a glimpse of his own possible future when a serial killer from his past reappears; Debra is uncomfortable in her new job; Travis and Gellar prepare a new twisted tableau.
  • Dexter finds that in order to catch the Doomsday Killers, he must create a macabre tableau of his own; Debra's battle with LaGuerta boils over, and her therapist makes an unnerving suggestion.
• Data, on the other hand, is mentioned a pile of times in the show synopses, but mainly in Star Trek: The Next Generation 😜.

I’m seriously having way too much fun digging into this data! And to make it even more exciting, this data set was built by the community for the community. A special shoutout to David Kelly for all the hard work he put into this.

Want to join us in the fun? You can! Just download the starter kit and you’ll be well on your way to taking the Data + TV challenge powered by IMDb. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!