Television reference books and other books: best and worst

Cafe Society
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Hopefully there is not already a thread on this here, so if there is, I apologize, but something else I’d like to ask here: what, in your opinion, are the best and worst of the various television reference books/other books ever written? Here are mine:

BEST: Hardcastle and McCormick: A Complete Viewer’s Guide to the Classic Eighties Action Series, by Deb Ohlin, Cheri DeFonteny, and Lynn Walker. Why is this book about that ABC action series one of my favorites? Because, for one thing, it has very detailed descriptions of every one of the 65-66-67 outings over the three seasons from 1983-86 (the reason why I put ‘65-66-67’ is because the only 2-hr. outings [“Rolling Thunder” and “The Homecoming”] could be interpreted as one story or as 2 parts of one story). As the descriptions are very detailed, there could be spoilers for those who have not seen the episodes, so what I would advise is that you look at the episodes first (on the off chance you haven’t), by way of the DVD releases if possible (Amazon has them, as well as this book), and then read that section of the book. By the way, for each outing, there is context and trivia and a cast listing with notes on memorable guest stars, and there is even a selection of quotes (1 or 2, maybe 3, per outing).

Besides that, it has a wealth of other information, including a profile of the late series creator Stephen J. Cannell, plus examinations of the stunts, the Coyote, the theme song and title sequence, and what kind of ratings it got against what was on CBS and NBC then. There is a short photo gallery with publicity photos and a few TV Guide ads, and there is even an unproduced script.

All of this was compiled as a labor of love by the aforementioned authors, who are “Hardcastle” fans just as I am, and that makes it among the best that I’ve read.

WORST: Dallas: The Complete Story of the World’s Favorite Prime-Time Soap, by Barbara A. Curran. Why is this my worst? Because while it does have episode titles, airdates, creative credits, cast listings, and behind-the-scenes info (that aspect is what it’s heavy on), and even some photos in the middle, it lacks plot summaries, unlike the “Hardcastle” book, and that’s a minus. All it has in that department is one-sentence summaries (a lot not even that) that don’t even scratch the surface, and that only hurts it. Of course, I can probably understand the reasoning (there are 357 of these as compared to the 65-66-67 of “Hardcastle”: also “Dallas” was a serial, and “Hardcastle” was not), but still, that is no excuse for not going at least as deep as the “Hardcastle” book did where plots were concerned.

So, to restate the question, what are your best and worst of these books?

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The best television reference book ever written, the one that is referred to as “the bible” in my house, is The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present". I’ve been purchasing each new edition of this book as it comes out since it didn’t even have “Cable” in the title.

I don’t have a worst in mind, but I’m going to guess that it’s on of the millions of Star Trek reference books. Some of them are bizarrely unreadable (although I’m sure there are a few gems in this genre as well).

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That book is AWESOME! I used to have a copy as a kid, before the Internet, and I read it almost every day. lol

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Written by my former boss (I worked for him when he was the VP of Research at USA). Brilliant man - he really was a walking encyclopedia.

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Quantum Leap: A to Z is, now that there’s IMDb, utterly worthless.

The Perry Mason TV Show Book is excellent, and my copy is worn from heavy use. I did (after like the fourth time of going looking through) bookmark the three times we see Perry lose a case.

I have two books on Taxi, and one’s quite good while the other isn’t, but I can’t remember which is which right now.

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I bought my wife a copy of The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths, and the Movies for Christmas a few years ago. Big ole hardcover, lots of photos and filled with enough words that I assume it was comprehensive.

It’s nice and pretty but my wife says it’s one of the worst edited books she’s ever seen with grammatical/typographical errors and is actually missing the last few pages of the conclusion before the index.

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My first memory of these kinds of books was the Star Trek Concordance, which (a) was an amazing resource back in the grim days before online databases, and (b) ruined for 10 years my understanding of the meaning of the word concordance.

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Thanks, everyone, for the responses. About the “Trek” books: I have three of those (one of them being the one on “Voyager” by Paul Ruditis), and I thought the “Voyager” one was good, but lacking. It does have good plot listings and cast summaries, and one or two photos from each outing, and at the end of each season section, the various characters are profiled (the #5 section has two: Seven of Nine in the middle and Torres at the end), but outside of that, the areas called “Alpha Quadrant,” “Delta Quadrant,” and “Personal Logs,” among others, are simply rehashes in description form of a lot of the dialogue.

On the other hand, I have the book called The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry (about the original NBC series; while it has its place in history, I never really cared for it), and it goes a lot deeper than the one on “Voyager.” The best parts of that one, I thought, were about the “on set” business and how the episodes were edited together and sent to NBC.

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Certainly not a reference book, but I have fond memories of my brother’s book The Grease Guide To Coolness.

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I always enjoyed The Nitpicker’s Guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation

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IMHO, the best is “Harry and Wally’s Favorite TV Shows.” It’s similar to the previously-mentioned Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present, only with more snark. You may be able to get a used copy from Amazon, and I highly recommend it. (Unlike what the title implies, it’s not just their “favorite” shows, it’s all network shows since the beginning.)

I happened to see this book at a dollar store in the early 90s, and it turned out to be a steal. It even includes some British shows that aired in the US, like Doctor Who and some of the PBS Britcoms, and it also has listings for some for some of the more well-known miniseries. A great book, but unfortunately it only goes up to 1989 and there have not been any newer editions.

I emailed one of the authors a couple of years ago to ask, and he said they had considered doing an update in the late 90s, but the deal fell through, and the book was going to be so big already that they don’t think an update now would be feasible. But he did mention a newer book they wrote called “Watching TV,” which is more of an overview of the history of television. I haven’t bought it yet, but it sounds interesting.

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Keith Topping’s book, "The Complete Slayer: An Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to Every Episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer " is pretty good and covers all 7 seasons of BtVS.

Link

He has written similar guides to *Angel *and The West Wing but neither book covers the entire series.

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Love those.

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Mark Scott Zicree’s The Twilight Zone Companion is great.

David L. Schow’s Outer Limits Companion is pretty good, too.

Matthew White’s The Official Prisoner Companion is extremely badly written, but very informative.
One of the classics is Stephen E. Whitfield’s The Making of Star Trek. It’s the first book I know of about the behind-the-scenes production of a TV show, and it actually came out while the original series was still airing. Before the series was cancelled. At the time, books this thick (with picture inserts) were pretty rare in mass-market paperbacks. This means that, even if the idiot executives at NBC and Paramount didn’t know what a ground-breaking series they had, someone else evidently did. The book went on to a zillion editions, and is better (IMHO) than the later Star Trek Companion. David Gerrold’s twop Star Trek books (The World of Star Trek and The Trouble with Tribbles), both published after the demise of the series and before it was clear that there ever would be a revived series or movie, are also excellent looks at the production and philosophy of the show. And don’t miss Harlan Ellison’s own book on the City on the Edge of Forever (Has any other TV show had two books devoted to an exhaustive examination of a single episode of that series?)

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Yes, I had that one, too, very thorough, and interesting, if you like TV and the history of!

The worst was a softcover “guide” to the first two or three seasons of Lost that I got for Christmas once, full of synopses of each episode already aired, and lotsa pictures of the cast. :rolleyes: Really kind of useless, and I don’t know if future ‘guides’ to Lost ever came out. I mean, what are you supposed to do, leaf through it on a cold winter’s night, saying, “oh, there’s a synopsis of the first episode, look, a picture of the crashed plane on the beach, I remember that!”

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I second Cal’s mention of David Gerrold, his book on the making of one Trek episode, his own Trouble with Tribbles. The book chronicles what goes into filming a script, how he came up with the name for “Sherman’s Planet” his trouble with possible plagiarism with one of Robert Heinlein’s works. A good read.

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Also look for The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television and Syndicated Television 1947-1987, both unfortunately out of print. Both are exhaustive treatments of television genres that are almost always ignored. The first shines with scads of rare photos; the second with its freely opinionated style that also shed light on the TV business.
For single shows, a great one is Are You Being Served–The Inside Story. Although it’s light on show descriptions, you won’t care with all the info on characters, actors, and behind the scenes action. It also mentions spinoffs from records to stage presentations, and explains a lot of British cultural stuff that probably went over American viewers’ heads.

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I kind of like the Lost Encyclopedia, Star Trek encyclopedia and chronology, various Nitpickers guides, and Robotech art books. Plus that sitcoms blueprint book.

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For television criticism, two sources of a lot of book reports for me back in high school:
The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat by Harlan Ellison
Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television by Erik Barnouw

The Ellison books have not, shall we say, aged gracefully in the 40 years since he started his column in the LA Free Press (these books collect those columns, which ran for about two years, IIRC), but he was very perceptive in his vitriol.

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Update: Last Tuesday, I purchased a book on the original “Hawaii Five-O” called, appropriately enough, Booking Hawaii Five-O, by Karen Rhodes. That purchase just arrived today. I looked through it earlier, and I feel that, just like the “Hardcastle” book, it’s an excellent book and goes among the best that I’ve ever read. Why?

–It first examines the humble beginnings prior to the pilot, including early choices for casting (it is written that Robert Brown was first considered for the role of McGarrett, but then on the Tuesday before first filming, CBS had second thoughts about that, leading to creator/E.P. Leonard Freeman reaching back to an unsuccessful pilot called “Grand Hotel,” and there, according to the book, finding the man who would carry “Five-O” through what would be a long, successful 12-season run: a New Yorker named John Joseph Patrick Ryan (whose famous stage name would be Jack Lord).

–It then looks at how “Five-O” stacked up for its time against some of the major issues of its time, like, for example, violence on television (in that respect, it was by some people excoriated; in its early going, it was on Thursdays @ 8, where the viewers at that time worried about looking at it without having their children interrupting and being exposed to the violent content; this was remedied by a move to Wednesdays @ 10: in this way, children would be in bed and chores completed by that time, and the higher ratings would reflect a freer audience, because they were unencumbered by worries about their children and could, according to Rhodes, “get away to Hawaii for an hour”).

–Next, it examines the 278 episodes in more detail (including the pilot), with Rhodes giving her comments on each one (on some, she has a good bit to say, and not so much on others). Each has an episode number, original airdate, and a list of guest stars, some Hawaiian as was the norm. Each season section profiles the major developments at that point in the run (for example, from #2 forward, the backdrop for the closing credits, which was in #1 a rapidly-flashing siren on the back of an emergency vehicle, was changed to footage of muscular outrigger paddlers in front of Diamond Head). Some season sections profile the new cast members who appeared in those seasons, and there is a list of the core players before the first season section.

–Finally, it talks about the syndication history and how the series stacked up in retrospect, and then includes sections about collectibles, Hawaiian words used in the series, and a list of the episodes in order of filming, before finishing with an index.

In short, this is at least as good a purchase for “Five-O” fans (at least, those of the original) as the “Hardcastle” book is for fans of that series.