Tom Shales’s excellent book Live from New York jump-started a weird new publishing genre: the TV series oral history. (Live from New York tells the behind-the-scenes story of SNL through new interviews with dozens–hundreds?–of cast members, writers, musicians, guest stars, etc.)

Sadly, the two other entries in the genre that I’ve seen haven’t really distinguished themselves much. Michael Davis’s Street Gang, a history of Sesame Street, seems like it’s been specifically designed to avoid any topic that actual Sesame Street fans might want to hear about. Nothing about the genesis of your favorite sketches, no you-are-there glimpses behind the scenes, but hundreds of pages on the extensive educational testing and semi-governmental wrangling that went on to get the show on the air in 1969. Fun!

And now there’s John Ortved’s The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History. Let me give you the list of interviews Ortved didn’t get. Show creators Matt Groening, James Brooks, and Sam Simon. Cast members Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, and Harry Shearer. All the current Simpsons staff. Most of the show’s influential longtime writers, like George Meyer, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, Matt Selman, Mike Reiss…

Wow, that’s quite a list. So who does talk about The Simpsons? Hank Azaria and Conan O’Brien are the big “gets.” Everyone else is represented by reprinted clips from past news interviews. It’s a Simpsons book that daringly rips off the format of a Simpsons clip show!

Everyone reads these books for friction, scandals, fights, pranks, sexy stories, etc. The dirt. Is there anything new here? Not really. Even the Sesame Street book finally gave me the tragic/horrifying story of how Northern Calloway (“David”) left the show. (David liked to go home with wealthy white women after Live from Sesame Street tour performances! But then, uh, he started assaulting them with curtain rods.) All we learn in The Simpsons is that Groening clashed with Sam Simon, who is actually the one responsible for the show’s style of humor, supporting cast, and ace writing staff. And there’s a funny story called “****gate.” Wait, that one’s not so funny with the asterisks. Oh well.

So what’s the moral here? For these books, access is everything. Don’t write The Shocking True Story Behind Silver Spoons if you can’t get Ricky Schroder on tape. I wonder what other shows could generate one of these “oral histories”? My ten predictions, probably coming soon to a bookstore near you:

• American Idol
• Friends
• Letterman (good luck getting interviews!)
• M*A*S*H
• Monday Night Football
• Monty Python
• Seinfeld
• 60 Minutes
• Star Trek (wait, I think there’s already one of these)
• The Tonight Show

My personal dream: to write the Murder, She Wrote one of these before Miss Angela Lansbury passes. I bet that lady has some stories to tell!