Second Lives: Black-Market Melodramas and the Reinvention of Television

by Michael Szalay

A history of prestige television through the rise of the "black-market melodrama."

In Second Lives, Michael Szalay defines a new television genre that has driven the breathtaking ascent of TV as a cultural force over the last two decades: the black-market melodrama. Exemplified by the likes of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, the genre moves between a family's everyday life and its secret second life, which may involve...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226824802
• ISBN13: 9780226824802
• Release Date: March 2023
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"