Follow
As a fellow TV critic, Alan Sepinwall is as good as it gets: he knows his stuff, and when he goes deep in analysis, he goes way deep and has no match. That´s what he has us used to in his blog What´s Alan Watching, as a part of entertainment mega site Hitfix. And now, Sepinwall is putting all of his experience to work on this book called The Revolution was Televised, The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever. We could also call this one the History of Television and how TV Dramas became good, in which the author analyzes the evolution of TV Dramas, until the HBO revolution and how it developed into better TV and deeper shows with more complex storylines and troubled characters.
There´s one paragraph from the book that sums it better: ”
I was about to see a revolution.
And the revolution began not just with the talented creators of these shows —
television had, after all, been no stranger to creative geniuses, going back to Rod Serling and Paddy Chayefsky — but with dynamic shifts in the television business itself, and in the many ways people watched TV.”
In the book, Sepinwall dissects the forefathers of all TV Dramas, and their contributions to current TV, and then moves to go into a profound analysis of each of these shows: Oz, The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Lost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men and Breaking Bad and how they contribute to making this TV we see now and how it has become much more than the little brother to cinema.
The book is fun to read, has a lot of well thought references and commentary. Definitely a must read for all who are interested in television, both casual fans as members of the industry. I do think Dexter deserves more pages on the book than just a few mentions here and there, as the influence of Premium Cable TV in the way that broadcast tells the stories and constructs the characters, such as House for instance.
Who do I recommend The Revolution Was Televised to?
As I said, anyone interested in TV in more than just a boobtoob kind of way.
Editorial Info
Paperback: 306 pages
Publisher: What’s Alan Watching? (November 21, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0615718299
ISBN-13: 978-0615718293
How to Buy The Revolution Was Televised:
Follow me on Twitter for more book reviews.