TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time: Sepinwall, Alan, Zoller Seitz, Matt: 9781455588190: Amazon.com: Books

If you are like me and have spent much of your life searching the shelves of Borders and Barnes & Noble in vain for a great book of TV criticism, then TV (THE BOOK) is what you’ve been waiting for. If you aren’t like me, (THE BOOK) is essential reading anyway. Matt and Alan have long been my primary go-tos for TV criticism and recaps – at Vulture and HitFix, respectively. I call them Matt and Alan, knowing Matt only marginally and Alan not at all, because they offer the reader an informal comfort-zone in which they wear their knowledge of the medium lightly, even though each obviously knows it very well. That they’ve known each other for years make them ideal co-authors for their Herculean task: ranking the best American shows of all time based on quantitative categories that they knew going in everybody would agree with wholeheartedly and nobody would say indignantly, “What about X?”

I’m not going to say, “What about X?” I might say something like, “THE SHIELD is overrated,” or “BARNEY MILLER is undervalued,” but then I would remember where I was commenting and think better of it. Instead I’ll just say that Matt and Alan make a very good case for their choices, and that they complement each other beautifully. Sometimes they pair up on the essays (you can tell who wrote what by the initials left at the end – AS or MZS or both). Oftentimes each tackles a particular show individually, and after a while it becomes fairly easy to guess who wrote the piece. Matt gets the lion’s share of “vintage” television and is extremely authoritative on the history of the medium. Alan writes about more contemporary shows, and tends to make a case for “traditional” fare to Matt’s leanings toward experimentation and the avant-garde. Let me emphasize that I’m comparing them to each other; when compared to most TV critics, both lead in all of these categories.

As anyone who reads their regular work knows, both love dramas and comedies, hit shows and shows struggling to find an audience. Each has also been a consistent champion of shows about women, by women, or “for” women. I still part ways with them on GIRLS, and especially Matt’s claim that Lena Dunham “had no idea what a hornet’s nest she would stir” with her show, when Dunham’s calculated provocations are by now pretty clear. But each is open to the possibilities of television, from its early years to “Peak TV.” Film Twitter has been even more defensive than usual since (THE BOOK) launched, always a sure sign that somebody is doing something right.