Browse

Ancient Greece has inspired television producers and captivated viewing audiences in the United Kingdom for over half a century. By examining how and why political, social and cultural narratives of Greece have been constructed through television’s distinctive audiovisual languages, and also in relation to its influential sister-medium radio, this volume explores the nature and function of these public engagements with the written and material remains of the Hellenic past. Through ten case studies drawn from feature programmes, educational broadcasts, children’s animations, theatre play productions, dramatic fiction and documentaries broadcast across the decades, this collection offers wide-ranging insights into the significance of ancient Greece on British television.

This study of the contemporary prime-time ‘quality’ serial television format gives an account of prominent programmes such as 24, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ER, The Sopranos and The West Wing, and explores their influential position within the television industry. Divided into the areas of history, aesthetics and reception, the text provides an overview of an increasingly hybrid television studies discipline. Chapters consider the formal and aesthetic elements in the contemporary television serial through approaches ranging from those concerned with issues of gender and sexuality, national identity and reception to industry history and textual analysis. The book also includes British examples of ‘quality’ serial television, emphasising not only their cultural specificity but also the transnational context in which these programmes operate.

In Britain since the 1960s television has been the most influential medium of popular culture. Television is also the site where the Western Front of popular culture clashes with the Western Front of history. This book examines the ways in which those involved in the production of historical documentaries for this most influential media have struggled to communicate the stories of the First World War to British audiences. Documents in the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham, Berkshire, the Imperial War Museum, and the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives all inform the analysis. Interviews and correspondence with television producers, scriptwriters and production crew, as well as two First World War veterans who appeared in several recent documentaries provide new insights for the reader. Emma Hanna takes the reader behind the scenes of the making of the most influential documentaries from the landmark epic series The Great War (BBC, 1964) up to more recent controversial productions such as The Trench (BBC, 2002) and Not Forgotten: The Men Who Wouldn't Fight (BBC, 2008). By examining the production, broadcast and reception of a number of British television documentaries this book examines the difficult relationship between the war's history and its popular memory.

The author of this book reads the depiction of masculinity in the soap opera, homosexuality in the situation comedy, fatherhood in prime-time animation, emerging manhood in the supernatural teen text, alternative gender roles in science fiction, male authority in police procedurals, masculine anxieties in the hospital drama, violence and aggression in sports coverage, ordinariness and emotional connectedness in the reality game show and domesticity in lifestyle television. The book illuminates the construction, circulation and interrogation of masculinities in contemporary British and American programming and relates such images to the ‘common sense’ model of the hegemonic male that dominates the cultural landscape.

The quiz show has often been marginalised in studies of popular television. This book seeks to redress this neglect, while revisiting, updating and expanding on existing scholarship. Moving across programmes such as Double Your Money, Twenty-One, The Price is Right, Who Wants to be a Millionaire and The Weakest Link to the controversial ‘Call TV Quiz’ phenomenon, topics covered include the relationship between quiz shows and genre; the early broadcast history of the quiz show, questions of institutional regulation; quiz show form; ‘ordinary’ people as performers, and the relationship between the quiz show and its audience. The book primarily focuses on the British context, from the origins of the broadcast quiz show to the present day, but it also examines the relations with, and influence of, the American context.

This book examines the popular television genre – the sitcom – via a wide range of frameworks, and places that analysis in historical institutional, and national contexts. The aim of the book is to think about how sitcom has been analysed in the past, and what this might tell us about television; and then also to offer newer ways of examining the genre that take into account contemporary contexts in broadcasting and academic research. The book is divided into sections on: genre; the television industry; analysing programmes; thinking about audiences; the future of the sitcom. While the programmes referred to are primarily contemporary and predominantly from the UK and USA, these texts are placed within historical contexts and series from other nations are also explored. In particular, the relationships between society, comedy and the sitcom are repeatedly foregrounded, and it is argued throughout that the sitcom can be used as a tool to think about wider social norms and conventions. The book draws on a wealth of primary material not published anywhere else, including interviews with sitcom audiences, and interviews with sitcom writers, producers and directors.

Why are some controversial issues covered in TV soaps and dramas and not others? How are decisions really made ‘behind the scenes’? How do programme makers push boundaries without losing viewers? What do audiences take away from their viewing experience? Does TV fiction have a greater impact on public understanding than TV news? This book draws on unique empirical data to examine the relationship between popular television fiction and wider society. It gives insights into how and why socially sensitive story lines were taken up by different TV programmes from the late 1980s to the 2000s. Drawing on a series of case studies of medicine, health, illness and social problems including breast cancer, mental distress, sexual abuse and violence, the book comprehensively traces the path of storylines from initial conception through to audience reception and uses contemporary examples to link practice to theory. It addresses production and reception processes across a range of programmes and demonstrates the ways in which television fiction plays a vital and powerful role in reflecting and shaping socio-cultural attitudes.

This book offers an account of the major developments in television programming and policy since 1976 by collecting in a single volume the James MacTaggart Memorial Lectures delivered at the Edinburgh International Television Festival across the last quarter of a century. The MacTaggart lecturers include the most celebrated and distinguished programme makers, producers, performers, playwrights, policymakers, and senior media executives across all sectors of broadcasting. The book provides a forum for the significant debates that have helped to shape both television content and policy across twenty five years of considerable and unprecedented change in broadcasting. Topics covered include the future of public service programming, the relationship of government to broadcasters, the impact of ownership on the freedom of broadcasters, and debates about whether and how television should be regulated.