The Revolution Was Televised: Alan Sepinwall Takes On TV’s New Golden Age

David Milch (left) on the set of Deadwood

It has become almost cliché in some circles to proclaim that television – American television in particular – has never been better. Quality television is no longer, as it was for decades, confined to BBC adaptations of Jane Austen or Masterpiece Theatre on PBS. In the past fifteen years, television has grown into a genuinely popular art form, finally embracing all of its strengths as a medium: the ability to tell long, complicated stories rich in complex characters, compelling writing, and morally and narratively risky storylines. With new technological innovations (DVDs, Netflix, DirecTV) and the rise of the new business models that came with satellite TV and the ever-expanding cable universe, television is no longer a disposable medium. Shows are produced not only to be watched, but to be re-watched. We used to rent the shows we watched, but now we can literally own them. Television series like The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Breaking Bad actually reward our attention, instead of discouraging it. The more you watch these shows, the richer they become. The impact of these shows successes – both artistically and commercially – is being felt across the whole television universe, and that story is far from over. That television has decidedly entered a new Golden Age is apparent to all of us who love the medium – what is less talked about is that TV criticism has grown up just as much in that same period. This new age of television has been paralleled by the rise of new and exciting forms of writing about television – and Alan Sepinwall is among the best of the new breed.

In his new book, The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever, Sepinwall takes on the last fifteen years of television, and promises to tell “the story of that transformation in both the medium and how we saw it, through the prism of the best and/or most important shows of the era.” There are few people as perfectly situated to tell that story as Alan Sepinwall, and the book delivers what he promises and more. 

Who Watches the Watchers: Sepinwall and Seitz's TV (The Book)

A scene from The Sopranos, one of more than 100 shows discussed in Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz's TV (The Book).

“When you hear the words The Dick Van Dyke Show, imagine the gears of a Swiss watch ticking.”

– Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, TV (The Book).

The best criticism, whether it is of the written word or flickering images on a screen, isn't tempered by love – it is fuelled by it. TV (The Book) (Grand Central Publishing, 2016), by television critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, has the stated ambition to present an established TV canon, to boil down decades of television and take a first crack at providing readers with an "essential viewing list." Substantial television criticism is as new as TV's still-recent surge in ambition and quality, and popular book-length studies of any comprehensive nature are rare (Sepinwall's own 2012 The Revolution Was Televised and David Bianculli's 2016 The Platinum Age of Television are among the few). Sepinwall and Seitz shared a TV column in New Jersey's Star-Ledger in the late 90's and, though this is their first collaboration in two decades, the dialectical spirit of that relationship marks the text as a whole. With TV (The Book), Sepinwall and Seitz offer an appropriately down-to-earth reflection on an art form that is populist par excellence, a book that is more conversation than classroom.

Very Well Put: Watching Barney Miller in 2017

Jack Soo, Abe Vigoda and Hal Linden Barney Miller.

Det. Sgt. Yemana: No, I don't watch shows like that. I can't enjoy them because, being a cop myself, I spot the mistakes and inaccuracies and the fantastic things that in real life never happen.
Victim: On the show they caught him!
Yemana: Good example!

– Barney Miller ("Copy Cat," Season 4)

Barney Miller was in prime time and syndication throughout my childhood and, while I've long had strong memories of the show, until recently I hadn't watched a full episode in decades. But a few weeks ago, prompted by my reading of Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz's TV (The Book), my wife and I sat down to watch the series from the beginning. The groundbreaking sitcom – a multi-ethnic ensemble comedy set in New York City's fictional 12th Precinct – ran on ABC from 1975 to 1982, starring Tony-award winning Broadway actor Hal Linden as the eponymous Captain Miller. Running from the last days of the Ford administration to the early days of Reagan, Barney Miller offers a current viewer a sustained window into a turbulent decade, even though nearly every scene is set within the crumbling four walls of a second-floor Lower Manhattan squad room. The show has had its successors (most notably Fox's Brooklyn Nine-Nine), but it holds up brilliantly on its own terms. As a social document of its time, it is unquestionably relevant, but as a comedy Barney Miller is just plain delightful, notably of and ahead of its time: well-crafted and hilarious, pointed and sensitive, as often literate as it is slapstick.

Wait and See: Fox’s Ghosted and ABC’s The Mayor

Adam Scott and Craig Robinson in Fox's Ghosted.

I think I like Ghosted –  though, to be honest, I’m not sure. Even though I’ve watched roughly 22 minutes of Fox’s new paranormal comedy, I have no idea if I’ve seen anything that will be representative of the kind of show that it will eventually become. It’s a dilemma that’s inherent to any attempt to critically evaluate the sort of serial storytelling that’s central to how television currently functions, and one that initially put me off shows that would later become favorites of mine, most notably Parks and Recreation. For a number of reasons, this problem seems particularly acute in the case of Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten’s sitcom version of The X-Files.

House of Cards: Netflix Deals Us a New Hand

"You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment." – Kevin Spacey stars in House of Cards, on Netflix

On February 1st, the entire first season of the new American version of House of Cards became available on Netflix worldwide. In light of these unique circumstances, I should emphasize that this post only contains very minor spoilers for the first of the show’s 13 episodes.

A little over a year ago, Netflix launched its first original program, making the first season of Lilyhammer available to its subscribers. The Norwegian-American co-production was big hit in Scandinavia and a moderate critical success here in North America (it’s light, but uniformly enjoyable, fare). It was by no means a quiet rollout, but compared to the press and enthusiasm of the Kevin Spacey/David Fincher produced House of Cards, in retrospect Lilyhammer seems almost like an open secret. (A second season of the Steven Van Zandt series, it is worth noting, goes into to production in March).

Last January, when Lilyhammer was first being rolled out, there was some talk about Netflix’s entry into original programming, and even more talk in recent weeks since House of Cards’ much publicized launch on February 1st. Certainly, House of Cards deserves the press – it is actor Kevin Spacey (American Beauty) and director David Fincher’s (The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) first foray into television, and it is much more ambitious both narratively and artistically than Lilyhammer, but all talk of revolutions notwithstanding, it isn't likely to herald a new age of television by itself. But let’s just say this: House of Cards is worth watching. What else does a viewer really need to know?

Spies, Hackers, & Reality Stars: Summer TV Roundup

Shiri Appleby and Josh Kelly on Lifetime's UnREAL.

The growth of television over the last decade-and-a-half has been remarkable. A medium once derided for its vacuity has expanded to dominate much of high culture as well as low, with serious publications featuring detailed exegeses on the nuances of dramas such as Breaking Bad and comedies such as Parks and Recreation. At the same time, TV’s rise has resulted in an explosion of new programming, especially scripted content, leading major critics such as Linda Holmes and Alan Sepinwall to wonder whether, in the latter’s words, there is “too much good scripted television.”

One corollary of scripted TV’s rise has been its expansion to new platforms at the same time that the broadcast networks, once the only game in town, have become increasingly boring and formulaic. “Prestige” television is generally understood to have migrated to outlets such as premium cable, online venues such as Netflix and Amazon, and some basic cable channels such as FX and AMC. However, the proliferation of scripted TV hasn’t stopped there. One of the most notable developments of this past summer has been the appearance of a number of very good shows on unlikely or little-known basic cable channels. The appearance of these shows suggests that even networks that seemed to have found comfortable, if unambitious, niches for themselves are looking to add some of the luster conferred by a quality original series to their reputations. None of these shows represents a radical reinvention of the form, but all of them offer a fresh approach to the now-familiar tropes of television drama.