TV (The Book)
Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time
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Is The Wire better than Breaking Bad? Is Cheers better than Seinfeld? What's the best high school show ever made? Why did Moonlighting really fall apart? Was the Arrested Development Netflix season brilliant or terrible? For twenty years-since they shared a TV column at Tony Soprano's hometown newspaper-critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz have been debating these questions and many more, but it all ultimately boils down to this: What's the greatest TV show ever? That debate reaches an epic conclusion in TV (THE BOOK). Sepinwall and Seitz have identified and ranked the 100 greatest scripted shows in American TV history. Using a complex, obsessively all-encompassing scoring system, they've created a Pantheon of top TV shows, each accompanied by essays delving into what made these shows great. From vintage classics like The Twilight Zone and I Love Lucy to modern masterpieces like Mad Men and Friday Night Lights, from huge hits like All in the Family and ER to short-lived favorites like Firefly and Freaks and Geeks, TV (THE BOOK) will bring the triumphs of the small screen together in one amazing compendium. Sepinwall and Seitz's argument has ended. Now it's time for yours to begin!
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Two TV critics decide the 100 best US shows of all time, decided on overall quality (writing, performance, directing, editing), innovation, consistency, how much they changed TV overall,... Every entry in the top 100 gets their own essay saying why that show was so good and how it earned their place.
Mixed in with the top 100 there's also a few fun stuff like “Best Bosses” or “Best Cliffhangers” or simply “Best Pilots” and “Best Finales”. After the top 100 is done, there is also a section on current shows that may get their place in the “all-time best” if they don't drop in quality before their end, and also shows that had at least one outstanding season but didn't make it because the overall quality of the series was inconsistent.
I love TV, and I love finding out about TV and discussing TV, so I was a bit disappointed to find out I wasn't really familiar with a lot of shows from the Top 100, since a lot of them were from the 60s-90s era, and a lot of them were classic US shows that I never bothered to check out. But I was way more familiar when they got to the parts after that.
Even then, it's still fun to hear both Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall talk passionately about TV, even if you're not familiar with what they're referencing. Of course, in the print or digital book you get to skip around to shows you know and read their essays, but as I listened to the audiobook, I didn't have that luxury. That's a good thing though! I may have to check out some of those classic TV shows.
