As many people have noticed, we seem to be in a Golden Age of television drama. The shows over the last 15 years have increased the prestige of television to the point where many people consider it to be superior to movies in telling adult oriented dramatic stories. One of the people who was on the sidelines the entire time this was happening was television reviewer Alan Sepinwall. This makes him the perfect person to revisit a lot of these shows and show the progression of television dramas have led us to this golden age in his new book, The Revolution Was Televised. Let’s investigate further.
Normally known for his weekly recaps, Sepinwall steps back and looks at several television shows as a whole. The shows he digs into in this book are: Oz, The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Lost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men and Breaking Bad. The shows he presents are on most people lists of top shows of all time and it’s a great selection of shows. In the introduction, Sepinwall spends some time detailing why he didn’t pick some other shows.
He devotes a chapter to each show (as well as a prologue and an epilogue). The general approach is to talk about how the show came to be (how it started, who started it and why the network decided to run it) and goes over the basic plot of the show. Along the way he presents interviews with various people who were involved in the show. Sepinwall goes into detail about why each show was different from what came before and how each show helped push the boundaries of television.
For most of the shows (especially the ones on cable), the starting scenario seems to be that a network is trying to get some new shows that will make it more difficult for various cable companies from dropping them from their lineup. The basic idea seems to be that they want to have a show that people will call up and complain if they can’t see. This happened with HBO, AMC and FX during their development of shows.
It should not be assumed that these are the only shows which contributed to the glut of quality television available now, but these are a good cross section of the shows. The biggest thing that should be noticed is that almost every one of these shows (with the exception of Buffy) is set in a Man’s world with an anti-hero leading man. The absence of female focused shows in this run is commented on a few times (as well as the information that the Sopranos beat out a female show by the creator of My So Called Life) and is something that could have been expanded a bit.
As we have this group of quality shows now, the biggest question is whether or not the networks are now too risk adverse to bring shows similar to these to production going forward. Are we at the end of the golden age, or can it continue? That’s going to be the real question going forward. And Alan Sepinwall will be there to help document all of it. Highly recommended.