"Television shows have now eclipsed films as the premier form of visual narrative art of our time. This new book by one of our finest critics explains--historically, in depth, and with interviews with the celebrated creators themselves--how the art of must-see/binge-watch television evolved. Darwin had his theory of evolution, and David Bianculli has his. Bianculli's theory has to do with the concept of quality television: what it is and, crucially, how it got that way. In tracing the evolutionary history of our progress toward a Platinum Age of Television--our age, the era of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad and Mad Men and The Wire and Homeland and Girls--he focuses on the development of the classic TV genres, among them the sitcom, the crime show, the miniseries, the soap opera, the western, the animated series and the late night talk show. In each genre, he selects five key examples of the form, tracing its continuities and its dramatic departures and drawing on exclusive and in-depth interviews with many of the most famed auteurs in television history. Television has triumphantly come of age artistically; David Bianculli's book is the first to date to examine, in depth and in detail and with a keen critical and historical sense, how this inspiring development came about"--
7 See also Lynn Spigel, “Seducing the Innocent: Childhood and Television in Postwar America,” in William S. Solomon and Robert W. McChesney, eds., Ruthless Criticism: New Perspectives in U.S. Communication History (Minneapolis: ...
God, whom I'm sure you'll remember from last week's sermon. ... launching into his version of Moses and the burning bush: Moses was wandering in the wilderness, when he saw a bush that was burning, yet it would not consume itself.
Richard Levinson and William Link , the talented writer - producer team that created Columbo and such landmark telemovies as The Execution of Private Slovik and That Certain Summer , prefaced their 1981 book Stay Tuned with a defense of ...
Whatever dark feelings were driving the script, and whatever desires Weiner had to get out of comedy, they weren't apparent to his new colleagues at Becker. Writer/director Ken Levine, an Emmy-winning veteran of M*A*S*H and Cheers, ...
David Thomson surveying a Boschian landscape, illuminated by that singular glow—always “on”—and peopled by everyone from Donna Reed to Dennis Potter, will be the first complete history of the defining medium of our time.
This third edition includes coverage up through the mid-2010s and looks ahead to the next waves of change.
Full of facts, firsts, insights, and exploits, as well as rare and memorable photographs, Watching TV is the standard history of American television. This expanded edition includes thorough coverage up to the 2009–10 television season.
The figure of Janet Wood exemplifies how media industry changes can sideline careers, screening off the realities of collaborative authorship in postwar television. Whatever Happened to Janet Wood? The Story Editor in Feminist Media ...
—MZS The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–1977) Total score: 98 In the early 1970s, Ethel Winant, CBS's vice president of talent and casting, had to place her high heels outside the restroom to alert men that the room was occupied, ...
To the public eye, medical stories often begin with sirens and flashing lights and culminate in survival or death. But these are only the most visible narratives.