Alan Sepinwall

This book identifies something important, something overlooked: just how fucking great some TV series now are (compared to just how dire they used to be). And it does so in considerable detail.

You know: it's great having someone discuss and celebrate something you've loved: Mad Men, Deadwood, Breaking Bad (some). And discussed with intelligence, aplomb and taste. Have to admit that he gave chapters to programs I couldn't stomach (Friday Night Lights) . . . but compared to the past, my god. show more

One more thing: the author, Mr Sepinwall, is the first other person I've ever heard - other than myself - acknowledge how important Hill Street Blues was. Even at the time, as a teenager (I'm old) I could see that it was (then) in a class of its own. show less

This masterfully engaging book by two smart guys who really know their stuff is one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in a long time. Intelligent discussions of the very best of television, show by show, are wonderfully readable, as though one were a participant in those discussions and learning much from the insights of one's magnificently well-informed friends. Though they left out a few items from my own list of excellences from TV's history (the brilliant Combat!, the charming and show more moving Brooklyn Bridge), there's scarcely a show listed that doesn't deserve to be on a list of the most meaningful works in the medium. Fun, informative, revelatory, TV (The Book) was addictive, one of the most compelling "just one more page" experiences I've had in a long time. show less

Half this book is just recaps with some light analysis. It's fine, feels like a discussion with a fellow fan, but definitely not 'spoiler free'. The meat of the book are a short series of interviews with David Chase where he's unusually candid about the process and the controversies (famously where he 'slips up' regarding the plans about the finale for those desperate to get a confirmation). It's a lot less planned out than I expected or than any fan would want it to be, the closest thing show more I'm reminded of is Room to Dream, except in that case people expected David Lynch to use a nonsensical vibes approach. Finding out most of Sopranos wasn't intended and planned out but just Gromit laying tracks in front of the running train could be disappointing, or exactly fitting the show. You get to choose, just like with the rest of it.
The final bit of the book is contemporary reviews of Sopranos which felt the most like filler and is eminently skippable. show less

Alan Sepinwall started out as a TV critic back in the mid-90s, when most people still couldn't conceive that there was anything on TV you could write enough about to earn the title "critic". Then came the new wave of US TV drama in the late 90s and throughout the 00s, with shows that tried to use the medium to tell stories that no other medium could; complex, ambitious, character-driven, taking months or even years to unfold and add to themsleves, tackling real-life issues from the personal show more to the political through fiction. Oz, The Sopranos, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men, Breaking Bad...

So in this book, Sepinwall goes around and interviews the producers, writers and actors of these and other shows, talks to them about how it happened, what they were trying to do, how they work, their relationship to the network and to other media, and how come creative talent seems to shift to the so-called idiot box while Hollywood becomes ever more obsessed with blockbusters and needless remakes.

Obviously, your opinion of the book will depend on your opinion of the subject. If you're a fan - however you define that term - of any or some of these series, it's a very good read indeed; if you couldn't care less, you won't care any more. Sepinwall is obviously fascinated with them, and at times he becomes a little too respectful of them, but he gets his interviewees talking and gets to the root of the trickier issues around them - why we care about virtually irredeemable characters like Tony Soprano and Walter White, what does it say that the first TV series inspired by 9/11 was a sci-fi series loosely based on a crap 70s show, the way people elevate Don Draper to a style icon even as his story becomes more disturbing, whether this is a permanent improvement of the medium or just a lucky blip on the radar...

The only major drawback is that the book is entirely focused on the shows Sepinwall likes. Everything else - including the fact that the CSIs, the American Idols and the 2 1/2 Mens of the world still get 10 times the viewership of any well-scripted HBO drama aiming for Great American Novel territory - barely gets a mention. But then, that's not the point either. show less