The festival’s programming officer on ‘the Sundance of television,’ what’s changed since 2015 and why first-timers should just pick a panel and go.

SeriesFest returns to Denver May 6–10 for Season 12, with five days of premieres, pilot competitions, panels and parties anchored at Sie FilmCenter. The festival has grown up alongside the streaming era it covers — launching in 2015, before Disney+, Apple TV+ or the prestige-TV gold rush of the late 2010s — and now positions itself as something close to a Sundance for episodic storytelling.

Claire Taylor-Smith

OnScreen Colorado caught up with Claire Taylor-Smith, SeriesFest’s Chief Programming Officer and a Summit County native who has been with the festival since Season One, to talk about how the lineup comes together, what’s drawing emerging creators to Denver and what a first-time attendee should actually do once they arrive.

The elevator version first — what is SeriesFest?

We’re a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Denver that focuses on connecting and discovery around emerging filmmakers in the episodic space. Everything we do is episodic. The industry way to describe us would be a Sundance of television. What they have done historically with championing independent film, we’re doing the same thing with television in the independent space, and bringing emerging creatives to Denver to meet with established people working in the industry.

You’ve been with SeriesFest since Season One. Episodic television was in a very different place in 2015 — how has the festival’s identity evolved alongside the industry it covers?

Thinking back to 2015 — there was no Disney+, there was no Apple TV+. It was really all about what HBO Go was doing, and how many different iterations have we even seen there? It’s truly changed every single year that I’ve done this job — where the focus has been, and how this content is being made. It’s a community of innovators.

We’ve seen a lot of the streamers start, but we’ve also seen a lot of exciting, diverse voices being championed and new stories being told. It’s different every year — how much the technology has changed, how people are approaching writing and creating content.

You have a theatre background. What does that eye bring to programming a TV festival that someone with a pure film or TV background might miss?

When I first started at SeriesFest, my main focus was our Storytellers Initiative, which is our scriptwriting competition. That’s where my background in theatre came in, because we were doing live reads of these scripts. So I got involved with SeriesFest from the writer’s perspective.

As programming officer now, that’s really what I’m looking at — what are the nuggets in the writing, in the production, in the heart of the story? Not just the entertainment factor or the flashy things. It comes from that genuine question of, is this an episodic property? When you have a background in dramaturgy and theatre, you can really get your pulse on that.

Walk me through how a Season 12 program comes together. When does the work actually start?

I would love it if it started right now for next year, but the reality is we start looking for new independent content in September — that’s when we open submissions. Then we really start looking at our main network programming slate at the top of the year, in the January space. So it goes pretty quickly.

Because of this ever-evolving industry, our timelines always change. Sometimes there are long leads, but most of the time they’re very short, because a lot of these networks and streamers hold their plans for promotion until the last minute. We’re lucky because we’re also in what’s called an FYC window — for your consideration — in partnership with the Television Academy, so we get to do a lot of programming around celebrated TV from the past year, and build unique programming that leads into their awards campaigns.

The Independent Pilot Competition is a SeriesFest signature. What are you looking for in a pilot in 2026 that’s different from what you would have looked at in 2015?

We really got excited this year when we saw stories that weren’t taking place in major entertainment market hubs like LA or New York. Not that those stories aren’t interesting, and we have some of those as well, but when we’re seeing stories taking place in Ohio, Georgia, Colorado — that’s really what we’re looking for. That broader perspective. And taking it internationally too, from Spain, France. We want that worldview, and to see things that aren’t just familiar to us.

We see a lot of shows that are based in that entertainment-industry world, and it’s like inside baseball. You want to see stuff that you can watch with your parents, or with your friends who don’t work in this industry.

How did SeriesFest end up in Denver in the first place? And do people from the coasts actually like coming here for it?

They love coming to Denver. A lot of people haven’t had the opportunity to come here before. We chose Denver in 2015 because Kaily Smith Westbrook, the co-founder, is from the Colorado area — she grew up in Denver, and had a relationship with then-Governor Hickenlooper, who introduced us to Denver Film.

If you’ve been to Sie FilmCenter — it’s beautiful. It really feels like a unique hub that keeps everybody together and experiencing the work in one community. That’s a draw. And of course, next year we’re seeing Sundance come here, so it’s kind of the state to celebrate film and content right now between us, Sundance, Denver Film and Telluride.

Sundance moves to Boulder in January 2027. Is that a force multiplier for Colorado as a screen-industry destination?

It’s a great step forward — the industry is looking at Colorado and how we’re championing film and TV here. What’s cool about TV specifically is it’s a long game. Films are created in a much shorter, more contained timeline, versus TV where you can build studios, you can really create an ecosystem for production.

The Pitch-A-Thon and the Roadshow Showcase put emerging creators directly in front of industry. What happens to those projects after the festival ends? Can you point to an alum whose trajectory tells the story you want SeriesFest to be telling?

The Pitch-A-Thon is an opportunity for writers to pitch their shows in five minutes — a very untraditional format. Most of the time when you pitch your show, you have an hour sit-down where you really get into characters. But to have that muscle memory, to home in on the logline of what you’re trying to do and who you are, it goes really far in a festival format where you’re meeting a lot of people and having quick interactions that hopefully plant seeds.

An example: we had a pitch last year around a series called R&R. They did their five-minute pitch, there was a producer in the room who saw it, fell in love with the series, met with them after — we’re hoping to break some news about next steps soon, but it’s looking really good that they’re actually going to get it to production. Other examples are, “This is a great idea, I want to do a writer’s lab, I want to bring you into a writer’s room on a TV show that’s already existing.” That happens too.

The lineup also includes established properties — The Four Seasons, The Testaments, Spartacus: House of Ashur, Little House on the Prairie. Do the actors and creators show up for those?

For The Four Seasons, which we actually premiered last year, we’re excited to have them back for season two. I love saying that we’re showing season two of The Four Seasons at Season 12 of SeriesFest — favorite tongue twister. We’ll have stars Marco Calvani and Kerri Kenney-Silver out on Wednesday, May 6 for that screening, as well as showrunner Tracey Wigfield.

For The Testaments, we’ll have Amy Seimetz, who plays a villainous figure, out for a Q&A after the episode. For Spartacus: House of Ashur, we’ll have Graham McTavish, Nick Tarabay and Jaime Murray, plus Steven S. DeKnight, the creator of Spartacus. We try to pair everything with a behind-the-scenes conversation with talent and creatives.

For people who’ve never been: can anyone attend, or is this primarily an industry event?

Anyone can attend. You can purchase badges and experience a number of things with that badge access, or you can focus on something you’re really interested in to get your feet wet — which is actually what I’d recommend. If you’ve not been to SeriesFest before, take a look at the schedule and maybe pick a panel, an unscripted independent block, and a network screening to get a taste of what you’re interested in.

We’ve got stuff for everybody, whether you’re just a fan of TV or you’re somebody really interested in how the craft is put together. It’s a community that’s very welcoming, and filmmakers love when people who don’t work in the industry come see their stuff, because they want to make it for you — not just for people they already know.

One of the reasons we started the Pitch-A-Thon was that we were getting questions about what a pitch even is, because that’s not taught in schools. So we threw the writers up there and said, this is what a pitch is. It’s as much an experience for the creatives as it is for people attending the festival.

Programming goes beyond the U.S. Can you speak to some of what we’ll see from other parts of the world?

We’re international — we have projects from France, Spain and England this year, including a new title from Netflix called Lord of the Flies, which is absolutely beautiful. Seeing these international projects on the big screen — you’re not going to get this opportunity anywhere else. You may have a chance to watch them at home, but seeing them at Sie FilmCenter with fellow TV lovers, and just experiencing the cinema of it, is very unique.

SeriesFest: Season 12 runs May 6–10, 2026, at Sie FilmCenter. Full schedule and badge information at seriesfest.com.