2024 the best tv show review
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(as of Dec 11, 2024 02:59:17 UTC - Details)
“The Best Bathroom Reading EVER," - San Francisco Chronicle
This lively and entertaining book looks at the three hundred best and worst TV series ideas—known in the industry as "pilots"—that never made it to primetime from 1955-1990. From the adventures of a Samurai D.A. to the antics of an invisible alien baby, Lee Goldberg reveals the most astonishing, funny, and bizarre shows that never were.
"A must-browse for media freaks.” —USA Today
“Irresistible and enthralling.” —Hartford Courant
“Full of fool’s gold and genuine TV treasures.” —The New York Post
“You’ll slap your head in disbelief—try not to hurt yourself—at the idea of John Denver as a singing FBI agent. You’ll wonder whether Joe Penny as a samurai district attorney would have been funnier—unintentionally—that John Belushi’s ‘Saturday Night Live.’ For tube-historians, this is a must see.” — People Magazine
This book was previously published as "Unsold TV Pilots: The Greatest Shows You Never Saw" and "Unsold TV Pilots: The Almost Complete Guide To Everything You Never Saw on TV"
ASIN : B010GEIYA2
Publisher : Adventures in Television; 3rd edition (June 25, 2015)
Publication date : June 25, 2015
Language : English
File size : 701 KB
Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 204 pages
Reviewer: Tonya Johnson
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good reference book
Review: After reading the plots lines of these unsold pilots, I think I would rather see some of those than what's on now.
Reviewer: LibSL
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: I love reading about class tv
Review: Very interesting book. I love reading about class tv.
Reviewer: Lupine Smile
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Good Reference Material With This Nod to Popular Culture
Review: I was given the opportunity to read an electronic copy of The Best TV Shows That Never Were via NetGalley and Adventures in Television. This is my honest opinion of the book.This version of the book is a new edition of The Best TV Shows That Never Were, originally released in 1991. 300 unsold television pilots are compiled in this book, shows that were not picked up by any network. The author explains how the key to a pilot being sold to a network is a matter of timing and of price. Name recognition, whether it be the star of the show, the writer, or the director, can turn an average idea into a successful sale. Some pilots become series, but only air a few episodes before cancellation. Some pilots are simply scripts that are not understood by the potential network. Some pilots are cleverly worked into existing series, with the viewing audience as unwitting participants. For example, Assignment: Earth was aired as an episode of Star Trek, with Robert Lansing as a benevolent alien who comes to Earth to protect its citizens.I found the potential pilots to be very interesting, as I could see some of the ideas contained within the pages of the book to be very successful in today's market. With many books in the science fiction/dystopian realm, the failed pilots about individuals with psychic abilities that help the police, or cyborgs that help to patrol the American West are not outside what readers might want to see on the screen. As a reference material, The Best TV Shows That Never Were is a great nod to popular culture, but its readability is limited and not very exciting.
Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Write another one, please
Review: I hope a sequel is written picking up where this book leaves off.
Reviewer: Melvin Larisch
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Five Stars
Review: Great!
Reviewer: Daniel
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great book for anyone interested in television.
Review: This review originally published in [...]. Rated 4.0 of 5In television lingo, a 'pilot' is a one-time television episode that is made to show television executives what a show might look like (apparently because these executives have no imagination from simply reading a script). Every year, there are MANY television pilots made by a variety of networks and studios, all trying to create the next 'hit' television series. And every year, most of those pilots are shown to some executives and then sent to a shelf never to be seen again. In this book, Lee Goldberg shares with the reader a number of pilots that were never sold to become series'.For someone like myself, who grew up with television, who grew up as a fan of television, this is a great reference book.I've written before on how I really like television reference books and this is a great addition to my bookshelf of television-related books. The difference here is that usually my tv-related tomes are something I refer to while watching a show or movie. Because this is a book about shows that were never aired, I'm not likely to use this as a reference. I did, however, really enjoy reading through this, getting a sense of the sorts of shows that were popular (or trying to be popular) in these previous decades.There are some very nice little gems in this book. One of my favorites is a show called The Bakery, made in 1990. "An exceptionally well-made, innovative twist on the conventional cop show, developed for CBS for the 1989â90 season. Each episode of the proposed series would frequently time-shift between decades while following a core group of police officers through the 1960s, the 1990s, and the early part of the twenty-first century. " Author Goldberg doesn't hold back on his own thoughts and writes that "CBS should have made room" on their schedule for this.In addition to reading about these shows, it's also fun to look at some of the actors who were making pilots. I don't think I was aware that Harrison Ford had a small role in a pilot ("The Possessed" in 1977), but it doesn't surprise me how many pilots William Shatner made.The only disappointment here is that while this book is published in 2015 (reissued, I believe), it doesn't have much in the way of updated, modern pilots. I'm not sure the purpose of reissuing a book like this but not updating the information. This still only covers the years 1955-1990. I would imagine that trying to uncover information on television pilots in the age of 100+ television channels quite a challenge.All in all, this is a great book for anyone who enjoys television-related history or just enjoy random trivia.Looking for a good book? Lee Goldberg's The Best TV Shows That Were Never Made is a great book for anyone interested in television.I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Reviewer: Robert Morgan
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: More like 1/10th complete; fun but shallow.
Review: This is a fun book to read (indeed a cover blurb announces it as "Best Bathroom Reading Ever"), but it fails as a comprehensive reference work to TV pilots.The book lists over 300 pilots, along with a plot synopsis and information on stars, running time, network, and more. The problem is that there have been many more pilots than this book covers ("Experimental Television, Test Films, Pilots, and Trial Series, 1925 Through 1995 : Seven Decades of Small Screen Almosts" by Vincent Terrace lists 10 times the number of pilots.) The book also divides the pilots by topic, rather than sorting them by title, which makes for annoying reading. I would have preferred the pilots to all be listed together, alphabetically, perhaps with a small topic index in the back.Fun for a quick overview of the follies of TV, but useless for reference work. To be honest, I wouldn't be giving this a bad review if it weren't for the fact that the book is advertised on the cover as "The Almost Complete Guide..."- I doubt highly that this was the intention of the author. He makes note in his acknowledgements that this is an abridged edition of his book, and thanks other authors who have written more complete guides.