TV Critics Choose Top TV Shows of All Time

Authors and TV critics, Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, talk with Steve Adubato about picking the best American TV shows of all time for their book “TV (THE BOOK)”.

2/1/17 #2013

Excerpt:

"Hi, I'm Steve Adubato. This is One on One from the heart of Lincoln Center at the Tisch WNET Studio. Two guys who know everything you ever needed or wanted to know about television. It's a good introduction. I appreciate it. Alan Sepinwall. Thank you. Matt Seitz, authors of "TV, the Book: Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time." You will not find One on One in this list but that is okay! Well, we had rules. One on One wouldn't have qualified. Because? Because originally, we were going to sort of rank every show ever made basically against each other and it would have been The Sopranos against 60 Minutes against Sesame Street against Wide World of Sports against The Tonight Show and at a certain point, we're like, "There's no way to compare all of these shows," so ultimately, we settled on just sitcoms and dramas which are still kind of tough but workable and also anybody who was too handsome was automatically disqualified which of course meant you couldn't be in the book Steve. You know, we were just talking about taste, you have such good taste! [laughter] By the way, I just remember way back early on, I just need to just disclose this, early on in my career, I used to work so hard to just get you guys to write anything about us. How many people kissed your butts to just say anything nice about them and their TV work? Umm, a lot. No, seriously, come on! A lot, a lot. All the time. Yeah, but there were also a lot of people who called us up to yell at us about stuff that we had written. Can we do that before we do this? Yeah, sure. Sure. Donald Trump? Yes. The President? Right. But back then... Elect? No, now as we do this but when we show the show he's going to be President. Oh boy. It's the end of 2016... Stop! So, seriously, he was doing The Apprentice? Yes. You write nasty things and say you don't think that The Apprentice is good. How did you describe Trump? Well, I described him as the toupee'd host of The Apprentice and his office called up and said Mr. Trump would like a retraction. He does not wear a toupee. I said, well, I have no way of personally verifying that but I'll take your word for it. And we ran the correction and then a few months later I was at a press tour in LA. There was a party for NBC and Trump was there and when I entered the room, he recognized me because my mug shot ran with my work and he said, "Matt ____" and I was like..."