It was the tracking shot seen, and endlessly discussed, around — if not the world — the community of passionate television fans.

Cary Joji Fukunaga’s depiction of a chase scene in public housing during the first season of “True Detective” gave that series artistic credibility it would immediately squander a year later, and announced to anyone who hadn’t been paying attention that TV directing was leveling up after decades of seeming artistic indifference.

The big movie stars who were moving to television, attracted by regular work and steady paychecks as well as the improving writing for the medium, finally seemed to be drawing directors with cinematic sensibilities as well.

There are still good reasons to feel like television is a writer- rather than director-driven medium. Most shows don’t have the same director helm every episode, and directors must subsume at least some of their artistic sensibilities to the house style to achieve a consistent look from episode to episode.

So in August, as I was talking to showrunners for a number of series that are distinguished by their visual styles, I asked how they handled the competing imperatives to hire great directors without letting their shows devolve into a disjointed series of short films.

“I like working with film directors,” “Empire” showrunner Ilene Chaiken told me of her show’s directors, who, like its writers, are mostly African-American. “I like filmmakers, I like people who really come at this with a vision as a filmmaker, not directors who are used to kind of painting by the numbers, who come onto the show and say ‘This is how they do the show, and I’m going to do it like that.’ So the show is really challenging. There are people who always overachieve.”

As “Empire” brings in directors with the strong visions Chaiken prefers, she credits the series cinematographer, Sidney Sidell, and director-producer Sanaa Hamri with preserving the show’s core cinematic values. Hamri “works very closely with every director, helps to film each episode, and talks to the directors about some of the conventions that we’ve created for the show,” Chaiken explained. “We have something, we call it the ‘Empire’ Wide (shot), because we like the show to be cinematic.”

Stephen Falk, the creator of FXX’s exuberant romantic comedy “You’re The Worst,” also credits Ross Riege, who was his director of photography for the series pilot, and Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who directed the episode, with helping to establish the show’s signature look. “You’re The Worst” uses the perpetual sunshine of Los Angeles as a contrast to its characters’ scabrous views of life, and often makes transitions between scenes with close-up shots of food and drink.

“I chose them specifically out of the world of Sundance movies, they made a feature for Sundance this year, because I knew look, a pilot for FX is going to be maybe a million dollars. There’s no reason it has to look like (expletive),” Falk told me. “There are movies at Sundance made for half of that and they look amazing. What’s the disconnect? Why does it have to be like that? And I refused to let it be like that, so I picked a director and a DP (director of photography) who I knew could make a fantastic-looking show on a budget, and I’ve tried to follow their lead through the two seasons.”

Vogt-Roberts has since returned to the world of feature films; he’s helming “Kong: Skull Island,” the “King Kong” prequel. But Falk has managed to hold on to some of his first-season directors, including Alex Hardcastle, who directed three of the first season’s 10 episodes.

For Mike O’Malley, the creator and showrunner of Starz’s basketball comedy “Survivor’s Remorse,” his approach to his directors was similar to that of his actors: he viewed them as resources and collaborators, rather than mere executors of his vision.

“I do think that you gotta hire people and let them go. I am particular about the stories we do and how we do it, but in terms of the visual look of the show and the directors, that’s all them, they really go for it,” O’Malley told me when we met in Los Angeles. “The cinematography, they go for it. If I have a question, it’ll be ‘This shot is too much about the shot and not enough about his or her eyes, I need to see that.’”

Another factor O’Malley points to is the decision to shoot “Survivor’s Remorse” on location in Atlanta, which gave him access to new pools of talent for smaller roles and to what he described as excellent staffers behind the camera.

“What’s wonderful about shooting in Atlanta, the crews are great, there’s a lot of work out there. I do think that location shooting, we shoot everything on location, lends itself to an authentic sense of place. There’s so many television shows and they’re all fighting for what’s our niche, what are we doing here? And Atlanta gives us that,” he reflected. “It’s very easy to get around. The people aren’t jaded yet. There’s a good, upcoming crop of actors that are from there. If I was a young actor, if I was starting out, I would tell people to move there.”