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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 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 …
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 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.