Andrij Parekh brings a cinematographer’s attention to faces to his television directing. We rate his work on Succession and Watchmen, though fine lighting and alert camerawork cannot solve every problem in the writing.
Fi1m perspective
In Succession (2018), the handheld camera edges towards a face after the person has finished speaking, catching the little check for a listener’s response. Parekh shares that camerawork with Patrick Capone, Christopher Norr and Katelin Arizmendi; we should not credit him with every revealing pause. He did, though, shoot the pilot and help establish the visual style, then direct multiple episodes. That fraction of a second gives us time to look for calculation behind an apparently ordinary exchange.
His route into directing ran through cinematography on Half Nelson (2006) and Blue Valentine (2010). He favours naturalistic lighting, often from a single source, and adapts the camera to the script and director rather than imposing a fixed look. Before directing an episode, he discusses character intentions with the actors, which makes sense of the care for small reactions in his television work. That is a useful habit on Jesse Armstrong’s Succession, where the writing and performances need attention more than decoration.
Watchmen (2019) asks for a different sort of control, and his contribution is worth separating from Damon Lindelof’s habit of withholding answers. Parekh shot the pilot and directed the fourth episode; alongside Xavier Grobet, Gregory Middleton and Alex Disenhof, he helps give the manor scenes their soft gold and Tulsa its hard, flat daylight. We laughed at Jeremy Irons’s Adrian Veidt, then grew impatient because those manor scenes keep offering a puzzle without explaining what kind. The lighting makes the contrast clear, but cannot make the delay less trying.
The weakness of Succession is different: it can repeat itself and takes time to trust its audience. These reservations do not stop us recommending either programme, but they do set a limit on what attentive direction and photography can fix. Parekh’s move on to directing episodes of House of the Dragon (2022) gives that adaptable approach another setting, though our strongest case for him remains his work among Armstrong’s media dynasty. Start with Succession and watch what happens just after someone stops talking.
Biography
Andrij Parekh is an American cinematographer and television director. Born on 20 September 1971 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he studied at Carleton College and earned an MFA in cinematography from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, also attending the FAMU film school in Prague.
Parekh’s cinematography credits include Half Nelson (2006), Blue Valentine (2010), The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017) and Watchmen (2019). He has served as director of photography and director on the HBO series Succession (2018–2023), winning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series in 2020. He has also directed episodes of Watchmen and House of the Dragon.
