Product Description

Meet Bobby Kahn: a smart enough, decent enough man of middle-of-the-road tastes and weaknesses, he's network TV's boy-wonder programming executive - or rather was, until the morning he was unceremoniously fired. Frantic to save face before the news gets out, he lunges for a job running a sorry family cable business in the cozy town of New Bedlam, Rhode Island. It won't take Bobby Kahn long to learn that the length in miles between New York City and New Bedlam does not do justice to the distance between the two worlds.

But that itself only begins to explain the gulf in taste and instincts between Bobby Kahn and the Kings, one of the more rewardingly dysfunctional families in recent American fiction. The patriarch, Dom, who made his fortune in car dealerships and lucked into a cable monopoly in the industry's dark ages, has ceded control of the three networks to his three quarreling children: Annie, the sincere na•f who runs Eureka!, the pretentious arts channel; Skyler, the cocky social climber who runs BoomerBox, the old-sitcom rerun channel; and the family black sheep, the obnoxious Kenny, who presides over the Comic Book Channel, a safe house for ill-socialized comic book devotees. Complicating matters, Bobby learns, is the extent to which the family is in foul odor in New Bedlam. The Kings' family secrets, and the enemies they have made along the way, are just a few of the obstacles Bobby has to overcome if he's going to turn around King Cable and make it back to the big leagues.

A bit The Devil Wears Prada transplanted to Richard Russo country, New Bedlam is a richly entertaining comic novel whose spit-take-quality laughs carry with them a wealth of sharply-observed insights into America's culture industry and the people who control it, from an author who shows us he's completely unafraid of biting the hand.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #942619 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Flanagan's snarkily entertaining second novel (after A&R) is a smorgasbord of colorful personalities and riotous events that would only be slightly less at-home on a reality TV show. Bobby Kahn—a hotshot young TV exec whose first big hit was the game show I'll Eat Anything!—is fired after a scandal flares up when it's discovered that the producers rigged his latest reality show. Desperate to find another job before news of his firing spreads, Bobby accepts an offer to run King Cable, a family-owned and operated enterprise located in New Bedlam, R.I. Leaving the big city and having to downsize his ambition are bad enough, but managing and trying to subvert the egotistical whims of the King family heirs who run the network's three channels (one channel is dedicated to comic books) proves the greatest challenge. Though MTV senior vice president Flanagan is wryly philosophical about popular television's influence and base delights, he still manages to savagely skewer the medium. Granted, Flanagan's humor sometimes degenerates into mean-spiritedness (one character dies after his urine is accidentally administered intravenously), but his take on television's pathological weirdness is fun, fast-paced and unexpectedly endearing. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
What Flanagan's first novel, A&R (2001), was to the music industry, this new one is to television, with its trenchant look at inside workings at high levels. Bobby Kahn, network senior vice president of programming and production, is 33 (late middle age for a TV executive) when he's fired after allowing tinkering with the outcome of his hit reality show. Desperate to find work before word of his firing gets out, he signs on as chief executive of New Bedlam, RI–based, family-owned King Cable, which has three channels: golden-oldies BoomerBox, run by Skyler King; arts channel Eureka, run by his half-sister Annie King; and the Comic Book Channel, run by stepbrother Kenny King, a wannabe who took the family name. Predictably, Bobby breathes new life and big profits into King Cable, generating press that opens up opportunities for him and humbles his former boss. In this tale bracketed by Bobby's ups and downs, the final chapter about Annie seems an unnecessary appendage; still, this slick, breezy commentary on more than just the medium of television is surefire entertainment. Leber, Michele

Review
“ A biting and hilarious satire of the pressure-filled TV business, with a bevy of rich characters—eccentric, egotistical, and some practically insane.”
—BusinessWeek

“ A deliciously sly novel . . . A lively, occasionally acid, picaresque novel in which all the biters get bit and entertainment and metaphor have a way of bumping together.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Customer Reviews

Kings of quirky
The book started out great, it was funny, interesting and appeared to be going in the right direction. It remained well written and full of steam until a little over halfway through. But by the end the book kind of fell on it's face. It wasn't that interesting, the characters lost thier zeal and the story just seemed rushed by the end. Like it had an alternate ending before it was editied out and the author has limited time to come up with another one. Or maybe he just ran out of ideas for the ending, who knows. It was a good read, it was funny and best of all it was different. However, the sizzle and flavor at the beginiing of the story, at least to me, was gone by the end. Would I read it again? Sure I would and I recommend it, you might feel differently about it.

4 1/2 stars
This is my first Bill Flanagan novel. I enjoyed it. With it's interesting characters--Sammy Bignose and Moe Notty were particularly funny--and it's satiric look at the television industry, it was a welcome relief from my normal suspense novels.

A Great Read
New Bedlam is a great satirical novel about the TV business and a dysfunctional family. While the characters are a bit zany at times, they never turn into a complete parody. Because they maintain their humanity I actually could empathize with them. This is a nice change from other humorous works of fiction that go for the big laughs without maintaining the story. Here Flanagan not only writes a decent story but a compelling one that kept me reading for hours. If you like books by authors like Carl Hiaasen you will love New Bedlam. Its full of crazy characters but also carries a positive message.