Jewish Representation on TV

Dissecting The Sopranos, The West Wing, The Wire and Mad Men

4 Mondays at 8 p.m. ET

Nov. 24 - Dec. 15

All classes will be recorded and sent to registrants.

How Jews are depicted on TV tells us a lot about identity, stereotypes and cultural history.

The period from around 1999 — the start of “The Sopranos” — to the 2020s has been called many things: the “Prestige TV” era, TV’s second “Golden Age,” “Peak TV.” The nicknames all allude to the unusual abundance of historically acclaimed TV series, driven by a variety of industry factors (and a generation of great screenwriters, of course).

Thanks to changes in society, pop culture and the entertainment industry, some of the era’s most famous shows — many helmed by Jewish writers — featured prominent Jewish characters and themes in complex new ways onscreen.

Have fun reliving the Jewishness of the recent Golden Age with Gabe Friedman — 70 Faces Media’s director of editorial experiences and a former JTA editor who covered Jewish representation on TV — as he takes you through an analysis of four seminal shows: “The Sopranos,” “The West Wing," “The Wire” and “Mad Men.”

You’ll discuss how each show portrays Jewish characters and nuanced aspects of Jewish history and culture — and you’ll debate the impacts they’ve had on Jews, and on the ways others think about Jews.

Each class is approximately 1 hour long. We will discuss plot points for all of these shows. There are no refunds for this course.