The Revolution Was Televised by Alan Sepinwall

The Revolution Was Televised by Alan Sepinwall is a look at twelve of television dramas that changed the way we view TV and society as a whole. This is a great book for fans of these series, and a good guide for good TV series to catch up on.

Book Description

“In The Revolution Was Televised, celebrated TV critic Alan Sepinwall chronicles the remarkable transformation of the small screen over the past fifteen years. Focusing on twelve innovative television dramas that changed the medium and the culture at large forever, including The Sopranos, Oz, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Lost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad, Sepinwall weaves his trademark incisive criticism with highly entertaining reporting about the real-life characters and conflicts behind the scenes. 

Drawing on interviews with writers David Chase, David Simon, David Milch, Joel Surnow and Howard Gordon, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, and Vince Gilligan, among others, along with the network executives responsible for green-lighting these groundbreaking shows, The Revolution Was Televised is the story of a new golden age in TV, one that’s as rich with drama and thrills as the very shows themselves.” – The Revolution Was Televised

My Thoughts

The Revolution Was Televised is a book about the important television shows that changed our culture. The author has the dream job for fans of TV – he gets to watch it and write about it for a living! I’m not gonna lie, I am jealous. I can only dream of having such an awesome job that would actually pay for everything I need.

The TV critic focuses down on his top picks of shows that changed TV and our culture forever. The top twelve include:  and Breaking Bad.

I am a big fan of quite a few listed, namely The Sopranos, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Lost. I even have those as a complete collection on DVD. As I said, I am a big fan of great television. I have seen the others, at least an episode here and there, and I had of course heard of them. You would have to be living under a rock to not have heard of at least one of these shows.

The sections on the shows capture the history of them, the people involved that made it so amazing, and why it meant so much for our culture. These shows really did change how we view TV and revolutionized what was accepted in our society as a whole.

There are many interesting facts and behind the scenes information that fans of these TV series will enjoy reading. If you haven’t seen the series that you are reading about, it may make you want to go watch it, too. For me though, it made me want to pull out my DVDs of my favorite shows and watch them all over again.

Fans of TV will definitely appreciate this book. I highly recommend it.

* Thank you to the publisher of The Revolution Was Televised, Touchstone, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.