Browse

The British television director Alan Clarke is primarily associated with the visceral social realism of such works as his banned borstal play, Scum, and his study of football hooliganism, The Firm. This book uncovers the full range of his work from the mythic fantasy of Penda's Fen, to the radical short film on terrorism, Elephant. The author uses original research to examine the development of Clarke's career from the theatre and the ‘studio system’ of provocative television play strands of the 1960s and 1970s, to the increasingly personal work of the 1980s, which established him as one of Britain's greatest auteur directors. The book examines techniques of television direction and proposes new methodologies as it questions the critical neglect of directors in what is traditionally seen as a writer's medium. It raises issues in television studies, including aesthetics, authorship, censorship, the convergence of film and television, drama-documentary form, narrative and realism.

This book explores how news and information about the conflict in Northern Ireland was disseminated through the most accessible, powerful and popular form of media: television. It focuses on the BBC and considers how its broadcasts complicated ‘the Troubles’ by challenging decisions, policies and tactics developed by governments trying to defeat a stubborn insurgency that threatened national security. The BBC’s Irish Troubles explores the incessant wrangling between political elites, civil servants, military officials, broadcasting authorities and journalists about what should and should not be featured on the regional and national networks of BBC television. In many cases the anxiety and controversy created by these political skirmishes challenged the ability of the medium to accurately inform citizens of important events taking place within the United Kingdom, thereby undermining the BBC’s role as a public service provider. The crisis in Northern Ireland tested the integrity and independence of the BBC, one of the most trusted and respected media outlets in the world. Throughout the conflict, the BBC was attacked, threatened and bullied, by a variety of actors but did its best to stand its ground and maintain editorial independence and journalistic credibility. In spite of the infamous broadcasting restrictions put in place in 1988, professional staff remained determined to provide the public with informed news and information about the crisis. Senior broadcasting officials pushed back against awkward government efforts to silence voices that, although unpalatable, were critical to comprehending and eventually resolving a long and bloody conflict.

This book poses the question as to whether, over the last thirty years, there have been signs of ‘progress’ or ‘progressiveness’ in the representation of ‘marginalised’ or subaltern identity categories within television drama in Britain and the US. In doing so, it interrogates some of the key assumptions concerning the relationship between aesthetics and the politics of identity that have influenced and informed television drama criticism during this period. The book functions as a textbook because it provides students with a pathway through complex, wide-reaching and highly influential interdisciplinary terrain. Yet its re-evaluation of some of the key concepts that dominated academic thought in the twentieth century also make it of interest to scholars and specialists. Chapters examine ideas around politics and aesthetics emerging from Marxist-socialism and postmodernism, feminism and postmodern feminism, anti-racism and postcolonialism, queer theory and theories of globalisation, so as to evaluate their impact on television criticism and on television as an institution. These discussions are consolidated through case studies that offer analyses of a range of television drama texts including Big Women, Ally McBeal, Supply and Demand, The Bill, Second Generation, Star Trek (Enterprise), Queer as Folk, Metrosexuality and The Murder of Stephen Lawrence.

Why study television acting? While works focusing on cinema performance have increased in recent years, small screen drama has been largely neglected – despite the fact that developments in acting style provide as valuable an index of the times and places in which they were created as any other aspect of production. The Changing Spaces of Television Acting addresses this lack by providing an overview of historical changes in performance style from the live era to the present day. Utilised as case studies are programmes from three diverse eras of television production: The Quatermass Experiment (BBC, 1953), which was transmitted live; Doctor Who (BBC, 1963-89), pre-recorded ‘as live’ on videotape; and Survivors (BBC, 1975-77), which swiftly adopted an Outside Broadcast ‘rehearse/record’ model. Each was also re-made in the 2000s, allowing for both a chronological study and a ‘then-and-now’ comparison of television acting. Archive research into production and reception is combined with textual analysis and interviews with actors and production personnel to examine the effects of the shift from multi-camera studio production to single camera film location work. The result is the first book to investigate not only changes in acting style for television drama, but also the underlying factors which influenced them, from production process and technology to direction, actor training and experience. Only by fully comprehending the conditions under which performances are produced can we understand and appreciate the resulting acting style; The Changing Spaces of Television Acting is the first book to comprehensively address this neglected area of research.

The TV debut of Vic Reeves Big Night Out on Channel 4 in 1990 is often seen as marking a turning point for British TV Comedy, ushering in what is often characterised as the ‘post-alternative’ era. The 1990s would produce acclaimed series such as Father Ted, The League of Gentlemen and The Fast Show, while the new century would produce such notable shows as The Mighty Boosh, The Office and Psychoville. However, while these shows enjoy the status of ‘cult classics’, comparatively few of them have received scholarly attention. This book is the first sustained critical analysis of the ‘post-alternative’ era, from 1990 to the present day. It examines post-alternative comedy as a form of both ‘Cult’ and ‘Quality’ TV, programmes that mostly target niche audiences and possess a subcultural aura – in the early 90s, comedy was famously declared ‘the new rock’n’roll’. It places these developments within a variety of cultural and institutional contexts and examines a range of comic forms, from sitcom to sketch shows and ‘mock TV’ formats. It includes case studies of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer and the sitcom writer Graham LInehan. It examines developments in sketch shows and the emergence of ‘dark’ and ‘cringe’ comedy, and considers the politics of ‘offence’ during a period in which Brass Eye, ‘Sachsgate’ and Frankie Boyle provoked different kinds of media outrage. Cult British TV Comedy will be of interest to both students and fans of modern TV comedy.

This is a critical work on Jack Rosenthal, the highly regarded British television dramatist. His career began with Coronation Street in the 1960s and he became famous for his popular sitcoms, including The Lovers and The Dustbinmen. During what is often known as the ‘golden age’ of British television drama, Rosenthal wrote such plays as The Knowledge, The Chain, Spend, Spend, Spend and P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang, as well as the pilot for the series London's Burning. This study offers a close analysis of all his best-known works, drawing on archival material as well as interviews with his collaborators, including Jonathan Lynn and Don Black. The book places Rosenthal's plays in their historical and televisual context, and does so by tracing the events that informed his writing – ranging from his comic take on the ‘permissive society’ of the 1960s, to recession in the 1970s and Thatcherism in the 1980s. His distinctive brand of melancholy humour is contrasted throughout with the work of contemporaries such as Dennis Potter, Alan Bleasdale and Johnny Speight, and his influence on contemporary television and film is analysed. Rosenthal is not usually placed in the canon of Anglo-Jewish writing, but the book argues this case by focusing on his prize-winning Plays for Today, The Evacuees and Bar Mitzvah Boy.

This is the first book-length study of one of the most significant of all British television writers, Jimmy McGovern. The book provides comprehensive coverage of all his work for television including early writing on Brookside, major documentary dramas such as Hillsborough and Sunday and more recent series such as The Street and Accused. Whilst the book is firmly focused on McGovern’s own work, the range of his output over the period in which he has been working also provides something of an overview of the radical changes in television drama commissioning that have taken place during this time. Without compromising his deeply-held convictions McGovern has managed to adapt to an ever changing environment, often using his position as a sought-after writer to defy industry trends. The book also challenges the notion of McGovern as an uncomplicated social realist in stylistic terms. Looking particularly at his later work, a case is made for McGovern employing a greater range of narrative approaches, albeit subtly and within boundaries that allow him to continue to write for large popular audiences. Finally it is worth pointing to the book’s examination of McGovern’s role in recent years as a mentor to new voices, frequently acting as a creative producer on series that he part-writes and part brings through different less-experienced names.

Paranoid Visions provides an extensive historical account of the spy and conspiracy genres in British television drama, tracing a lineage from 1960s Cold War series, through 1980s paranoid conspiracy dramas, to contemporary ‘war on terror’ thrillers. It argues that the on-screen depictions of intelligence services can interpreted as metaphors for the production cultures that created the programmes, meditating on the roles and responsibilities of public institutions whose trade is information and ideas. It incorporates close analyses of classic series including Callan, The Sandbaggers, Edge of Darkness, A Very British Coup, Spooks and the BBC adaptation of John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, supported by new archival research. The account is positioned against aesthetic, institutional and technological shifts in British television drama as it transitioned from its traditional public service principles to the more commercial priorities of the multi-channel era, in particular examining the growth of long-form serial narratives in ‘quality’ television. It is also mapped closely to the real history of British intelligence through consideration of how such programmes responded to key scandals and exposés and counterblast campaigns of transparency and openness. Finally, it also situates these dramas against key issues in the history of British culture and national identity, including discourses of class politics, Cold War culture, the heritage industry, terrorism past and present, the decline of the social-democratic consensus, the growth of personal computing and the ascendance of the free market economy.

This book provides an institutional case study of the BBC Television Service, as it undertook the responsibility of creating programmes that addressed the impact of black Britons, their attempts to establish citizenship within England and subsequent issues of race relations and colour prejudice. Beginning in the 1930s and into the post millennium, the book provides a historical analysis of policies invoked, and practices undertaken, as the Service attempted to assist white Britons in understanding the impact of African-Caribbeans on their lives, and their assimilation into constructs of Britishness. Management soon approved talks and scientific studies as a means of examining racial tensions, as ITV challenged the discourses of British broadcasting. Soon after, BBC 2 began broadcasting, and more issues of race appeared on the TV screens, each reflecting sometimes comedic, somewhat dystopic, often problematic circumstances of integration. In the years that followed, however, social tensions, such as those demonstrated by the Nottingham and Notting Hill riots, led to transmissions that included a series of news specials on Britain's Colour Bar, and docudramas, such as A Man From the Sun, which attempted to frame the immigrant experience for British television audiences, but from the African-Caribbean point of view. Subsequent chapters include an extensive analysis of television programming, along with personal interviews. Topics include current representations of race, the future of British television, and its impact upon multiethnic audiences. Also detailed are the efforts of Black Britons working within the British media as employees of the BBC, writers, producers and actors.

This collection brings together work on forms of popular television produced within the authoritarian regimes of Europe after World War II. Ten chapters based on new and original research examine approaches to programming and individual programmes in Spain, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Romania, the Soviet Union and the GDR at a time when they were governed as dictatorships or one-party states. Rather than foregrounding the political economy of television or its role as an overt tool of state propaganda, the focus is on popular television-everyday programming that ordinary people watched. An editorial introduction examines the question of what can be considered ‘popular’ when audience appeal is often secondary to the need for state control. With familiar measures of popularity often absent, contributors adopt various approaches in applying the term to the programming they examine and in considering the reasons for its popularity. Drawing on surviving archives, scripts and production records, contemporary publications, YouTube clips, and interviews with producers and performers, its chapters recover examples of television programming history unknown beyond national borders and often preserved largely in the memories of the audiences who lived with them. Popular Television in Authoritarian Europe represents a significant intervention in transnational television studies, making these histories available to scholars for the first time, encouraging comparative enquiry and extending the reach – intellectually and geographically – of European television history.

This pioneering study examines regional British television drama from its beginnings on the BBC and ITV in the 1950s to the arrival of Channel Four in 1982. It discusses the ways in which regionalism, regional culture and regional identity have been defined historically, outlines the history of regional broadcasting in the UK, and includes two detailed case studies – of Granada Television and BBC English Regions Drama – representing contrasting examples of regional television drama production during what is often described as the ‘golden age’ of British television. The conclusion brings the study up to date by discussing recent developments in regional drama production, and by considering future possibilities. A Sense of Place is based on original research and draws on interviews by the author with writers, producers, directors and executives including John Finch, Denis Forman, Alan Plater, David Rose, Philip Saville and Herbert Wise. It analyses a wide range of television plays, series and serials, including many previously given little attention such as The Younger Generation (1961), The Villains (1964-65), City ’68 (1967-68), Second City Firsts (1973-78), Trinity Tales (1975) and Empire Road (1978-79). Written in a scholarly but accessible style the book uncovers a forgotten history of British television drama that will be of interest to lecturers and students of television, media and cultural studies, as well as the general reader with an interest in the history of British television.

This book updates and develops the arguments of TV drama in transition (1997). It sets its analysis of the aesthetics and compositional principles of texts within a broad conceptual framework (technologies, institutions, economics, cultural trends). Tracing ‘the great value shift from conduit to content’ (Todreas, 1999), the book's view is relatively optimistic about the future quality of TV drama in a global market-place. But, characteristically taking up questions of worth where others have avoided them, it recognises that certain types of ‘quality’ are privileged for viewers able to pay, possibly at the expense of viewer preference worldwide for ‘local’ resonances in television. The mix of arts and cultural studies methodologies makes for an unusual approach.

This is a book-length study of one of the most respected and prolific producers working in British television. From ground-breaking dramas from the 1960s such as Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home to the ‘must-see’ series in the 1990s and 2000s such as This Life and The Cops, Tony Garnett has produced some of the most important and influential British television drama. This book charts his career from his early days as an actor to his position as executive producer and head of World Productions, focusing on the ways in which he has helped to define the role of the creative producer, shaping the distinctive politics and aesthetics of the drama he has produced, and enabling and facilitating the contributions of others. Garnett's distinctive contribution to the development of a social realist aesthetic is also examined, through the documentary-inspired early single plays to the subversion of genre within popular drama series.

This book provides a full-length study of the screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, whose work for film and television includes Z Cars, The Italian Job, Kelly's Heroes, The Sweeney, Reilly—Ace of Spies and Edge of Darkness. With a career spanning six decades, Kennedy Martin has seen the rise and fall of the television dramatist, making his debut in the era of studio-based television drama in the late 1950s. This was prior to the transition to filmed drama (for which he argued in a famous manifesto), as the television play was gradually replaced by popular series and serials, for which Kennedy Martin, of course, created some of his best work.

TV antiquity explores representations of ancient Greece and Rome throughout television history. It is the first comprehensive overview of the genre in television. More specifically, the author argues that serial television set in antiquity offers a perspective on the ancient world quite distinct from their cinematic counterparts. The book traces the historic development of fictional representations of antiquity from the staged black-and-white shows of the 1950s and 60s to the most recent digital spectacles. A key argument explored throughout the book is that the structure of serial television (with its focus on intimacy and narrative complexity) is at times better suited to explore the complex mythic and historic plots of antiquity. Therefore, the book consciously focusses on multipart television dramas rather than made-for-TV feature films. This enables the author to explore the specific narrative and aesthetic possibilities of this format. The book features a range of insightful case studies, from the high-profile serials I, Claudius (1976) and Rome (2005-8) to lesser known works like The Caesars (1968) or The Eagle of the Ninth (1976) and popular entertainment shows such as Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995-9) and STARZ Spartacus (2010-3). Each of the case studies also draws out broader issues in the specific decade under consideration. Consequently, the book highlights the creative interplay between television genres and production environments and illustrates how cultural and political events have influenced the representations of antiquity in television.