Pandora’s Box

The revolution has been televized. From The Sopranos to Stranger Things, the shows we watch - and the ways we watch them - have been transformed over the past fifty years. Out of the bland wasteland of 'play-it-safe' broadcasting came astonishing stories of sex , violence, and corruption shown first on cable, and then by way of streaming. Today, the power of viewers to select what they want and when they want it is greater than ever before. In short, we are living in a new golden age of television, but golden ages don't last forever, and this one may turn out to be too much of a good thing. Revolutions have a habit of eating their own, and the era of 'peak TV' may have an unhappy ending.Pandora's Box is a major new account of the small screen from incisive cultural critic Peter Biskind. Through exclusive, candid and colourful interviews with writers, showrunners, directors and actors, Biskind brings us face to face with the people whose creations we encounter every day on our sofas, revealing the dynamic interplay of art, commerce and technology. We follow executives down the corridors of power and see how their money and guile cultivate, then crush creativity; we witness the making - and unmaking - of TVs biggest hits. There has never been a more exciting time in entertainment history, and in Peter Biskind, the ideal insider guide, captures all of it.

Peter Biskind's Pandora's Box is not only a richly detailed and colorful account of how TV has defiantly superseded the cinema in the last thirty years, but also an important historic document. Biskind brilliantly maneuvers his way through a panoply of cinematic and television endeavor with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel. A gripping and compulsive read, Peter Biskind has always been the most rigorous and amusing Hollywood historian we have, taking on the great men of the past--and now with his trademark cheeky intelligence he takes on the giants of the present age of television-as-cinema. Despite my having lived much of the book's arc, Biskind offers a fresh perspective on the new Wild West of home entertainment, This brisk, blistering overview of how streaming has changed where we put our eyeballs is classic binge-worthy reading. I had no idea the people who created culture-altering shows are as entertaining as the shows themselves, but Peter Biskind did, and you'll never look at them same way again, Peter Biskind takes on a wild, whirlwind tour of the birth, life, death, and rebirth of cable and streaming services, introducing us to the people behind them who turn out to be as ferociously nutty as the characters they put on the screen, - - Praise for Peter Biskind

Peter Biskind is a cultural critic and film historian. He was formerly editor-in-chief of American Film magazine and executive editor of Premiere magazine. His writing has appeared in scores of national publications, including The New York Times and Rolling Stone, as well as several film journals. He is currently a contributing editor at American Vanity Fair. He has published eight books, including the bestseller Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and is Executive Director of the FilmColumbia Festival held in the Hudson Valley.