About this item

The form is so elemental, so basic, that we have difficulty imagining a time before it existed: a single set, fixed cameras, canned laughter, zany sidekicks, quirky family antics. Obsessively watched and critically ignored, sitcoms were a distraction, a gentle lullaby of a kinder, gentler America - until suddenly the artificial boundary between the world and television entertainment collapsed. In this book we can watch the growth of the sitcom, following the path that leads from Lucy to The Phil Silvers Show; from The Dick Van Dyke Show to The Mary Tyler Moore Show; from M*A*S*H to Taxi; from Cheers to Roseanne; from Seinfeld to Curb Your Enthusiasm; and from The Larry Sanders Show to 30 Rock. In twenty-four episodes, Sitcom surveys the history of the form, and functions as both a TV mixtape of fondly remembered shows that will guide us to notable series and larger trends, and a carefully curated guided tour through the history of one of our most treasured art forms.



About the Author

Saul Austerlitz

I am a freelance writer whose work has been published in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Slate, and The New Republic, among others. I am an adjunct professor of writing and comedy history at New York University, as well as the author of Kind of a Big Deal: How Anchorman Stayed Classy and Became the Most Iconic Comedy of the Twenty-First Century (Dutton, 2023) , Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era (Dutton, 2019) , Just a Shot Away: Peace, Love, and Tragedy with the Rolling Stones at Altamont (Thomas Dunne Books, 2018) , Sitcom: A History in 24 Episodes from I Love Lucy to Community (Chicago Review Press, 2014) , Another Fine Mess: A History of American Film Comedy (Chicago Review Press, 2010) , and Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes (Continuum, 2007) . Booklist named Another Fine Mess one of the ten best arts books of 2010, and Just a Shot Away received rave reviews, including from the New York Times Book Review, which called it "the most blisteringly impassioned music book of the season. " Generation Friends was named the second-best comedy book of 2019 by New York magazine, as well as one of New York's 15 best books on TV comedies. I grew up in Los Angeles and am a graduate of Yale University and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. I lives with my wife and two children in Brooklyn.



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