Wintry mix spreads across Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

As the longtime television critic for NPR's 

, and a professor of TV and film, David Bianculli has spent decades waxing passionately about his favorite entertainment medium. But his new book, 

, does more than simply reaffirm that passion. Laid out encyclopedically and ranging from the 1950s through today, his account of TV's evolution is as dizzying in scope as it is intimate in detail — and it highlights television's undying appeal against a broader backdrop of culture and history.
While covering the gloriously messy development of the medium,

 is neatly structured. Bianculli defines the Platinum Age of TV as beginning in 1999 with the debuts of 

, two shows that radically reimagined what television could say and do. Not that the book sticks strictly to the last couple decades; Bianculli combines overviews of a number of genres (soap operas, crime, single working women, sci-fi/fantasy/horror, and so on) with interviews with high-profile creators such as Mel Brooks, Carol Burnett, Norman Lear, Vince Gilligan, unraveling a story that stretch all the way back to TV's advent.
As huge as the book is — and it's a whopper — it's not meant to be an exhaustive encyclopedia. Instead, Bianculli conscientiously curates five shows in each of his chosen genres that best exemplify what he calls "Key Evolutionary Stages" in the growth of television. Part of the fun is agreeing or disagreeing with what he includes and excludes. But even when he glaringly leaves out, say, 

 from his Key Evolutionary Stages, he makes space to talk about these programs in the context of others, astutely teasing out the continuum they're spread along.



His omission of the entire genre of reality TV from his mosaic is a little more controversial; an entry starting with 

would have meshed well with the book's thoughtful take on how TV parallels society. At the same time, sticking to scripted shows makes sense, seeing as how Bianculli shines the spotlight on the accomplishments of writers, showrunners, and actors alike.


 is well ordered, but Bianculli still loves to bounce back and forth amid eras and genres, letting his erudition boil over as he connects the dots between 

. Television, he illustrates, is having a constant conversation with itself — and we, in turn, are having a conversation with it, especially in our social-media-savvy Platinum Age.
He writes big, but he's also not afraid to get personal. At one point he delves into the first person to talk about how deeply he was effected by a scene from Louis CK's groundbreaking 

 — which Bianculli categorizes as a "splitcom," a hybrid between a family sitcom and a workplace sitcom. Then he splices in an interview with CK to get a breakdown of the fragmentary, tentative creative process that went into the scene, from concept to cinematography.

On a far less pleasant note, Bianculli recounts how his university students lately have justifiably begun to voice objections when they're shown clips of 

 in his class, in light of the overwhelming allegations against the program's creator. Bianculli doesn't flinch; instead, he works this into his analysis of the show, probing the cognitive distance between Cliff Huxtable the nurturing father and Billy Cosby the accused sexual predator, and what that indicates about the power of TV.
In his first book, 1992's 

Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously

, Bianculli made a strong argument for the value and relevance of TV at a time when it was still dismissed as "the boob tube" or "the idiot box." TV's come a long way since the early '90s — and since the middle of the 20th century, when censors and a lack of representation temporarily stunted the medium's progress. Through its dozens of whip-smart yet personable entries, 

 weaves a narrative about how television connects us, not just to each other, but to the culture at large. More than a mere guidebook, this is Bianculli's bible of TV — a wise, engaging celebration of a type of entertainment that's as much of an art form as it is a pastime.


a Hugo Award-winning editor and author of the novel

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Jason Heller

Author

Longtime Fresh Air TV critic David Bianculli's new book lays out what he calls the "Key Evolutionary Stages" in the development of the medium -- and the constant conversation we're having with it.

Golden age of television? More like 'Platinum Age'

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox