If You Like TV, Read This Book

It’s nothing short of amazing, the remarkable TV shows we’ve gotten to watch over the last ten years. From The Wire to Friday Night Lights to Deadwood to The Sopranos, I’ve found that I’ve grown far more invested and interested in television stories than I am in movies.

It’s not much of a stretch to say that the last decade or so has been a bona fide television revolution. And one guy has been there in the thick of it the entire time: Television critic Alan Sepinwall.

I’ve been reading Sepinwall’s blog, “What’s Alan Watching?” for years, from back when he was still at the New Jersey Star-Ledger and writing in his free time at a regular ol’ Blogger blog. Nowadays he’s full-time at HitFix, and is a recommended first-stop the morning after each of the shows he’s covering airs.

He’s been covering TVs mega-shows for years now; his takes on Lost, Friday Night Lights, and The Sopranos were constant companions while those shows were on the air, and his analyses of The Wire are peerless.

So it makes sense that his new book, The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever would be good. And it is. I’ve been reading it over the past week, and it’s like reading a polished, comprehensive version of his blog, in the best way possible. He puts forth the argument that, starting with The Sopranos, television has seen a revolution.

I personally really enjoy his anecdote at in the book’s forward, where he talks about how people react to his job differently than they would when he first started in the 90s. “I’m a television critic,” he’d say, and they’re respond with mild bemusement, or mention how easy his job must be. Now, years later, they react differently: They take him aside and ask him about Friday Night Lights, or want to talk to him about The Wire.

I feel much the same way at parties these days when I tell people I write about video games for a living. Even a few years ago, I’d get a mild smile and a crack about how easy my job must be. But nowadays, it’s more likely that people perk up and start asking questions about games they’ve played, or think are interesting. We can only hope that video games reach the same sort of turning point TV did, and that in ten years’ time we’ll be talking about how the revolution started in the mid-2000s. Given some of the stuff we’ve seen in the last couple years, it wouldn’t surprise me.

Anyhow, it’s a good book. Fun to read, and a good last-minute Christmas gift, if you’re in the market.

Hope everyone’s set to have a good weekend, and a fun holiday. Feel free to discuss anything you like, here or over in the Talk Amongst Yourselves forum. Have good chatting, and a good weekend!

Originally written and published by Kirk Hamilton at Kotaku. Click here to read the original story.