Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain
Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain

Author: David Forrest

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-06-13

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1137555068

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This collection is a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary British television drama and its representations of social class. Through early studio-set plays, soap operas and period drama, the volume demonstrates how class provides a bridge across multiple genres and traditions of television drama. The authors trace this thematic emphasis into the present day, offering fascinating new insights into the national conversation around class and identity in Britain today. The chapters engage with a range of topics including authorial explorations of Stephen Poliakoff and Jimmy McGovern, case studies of television performers Maxine Peake and Jimmy Nail, and discussions of the sitcom genre and animation form. This book offers new perspectives on popular British television shows such as Goodnight Sweetheart and Footballers’ Wives, and analysis of more recent series such as Peaky Blinders and This is England.

Contemporary British Television Drama
Contemporary British Television Drama

Author: James Chapman

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 9781350152519

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"The early twenty-first century has seen the emergence of a new style of television drama in Britain that adopts the professional practices and production values of high-end American television while remaining emphatically 'British' in content and outlook. This book analyses eight of these dramas - Spooks, Foyle's War, Hustle, Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, Downton Abbey, Sherlock and Broadchurch - which have all proved popular with audiences and in their different ways represent the thematic and formal paradigms of post-millennial drama. James Chapman locates new British drama in its institutional and economic contexts, considers their critical and popular reception, and analyses their social politics in relation to their representations of class, gender and nationhood. He demonstrates how contemporary drama has mobilised both new and residual elements in re-configuring genres such as the spy series, cop show and costume drama for the cultural tastes of modern audiences. And it concludes that television drama has played an integral role in both the economic and the cultural export of 'Britishness'"--

Heroes in Contemporary British Culture
Heroes in Contemporary British Culture

Author: Barbara Korte

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-14

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1000382699

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This book explores how British culture is negotiating heroes and heroisms in the twenty-first century. It posits a nexus between the heroic and the state of the nation and explores this idea through British television drama. Drawing on case studies including programmes such as The Last Kingdom, Spooks, Luther and Merlin, the book explores the aesthetic strategies of heroisation in television drama and contextualises the programmes within British public discourses at the time of their production, original broadcasting and first reception. British television drama is a cultural forum in which contemporary Britain’s problems, wishes and cultural values are revealed and debated. By revealing the tensions in contemporary notions of heroes and heroisms, television drama employs the heroic as a lens through which to scrutinise contemporary British society and its responses to crisis and change. Looking back on the development of heroic representations in British television drama over the last twenty years, this book’s analyses show how heroisation in television drama reacts to, and reveals shifts in, British structures of feeling in a time marked by insecurity. The book is ideal for readers interested in British cultural studies, studies of the heroic and popular culture.

Producing British Television Drama
Producing British Television Drama

Author: Ruth McElroy

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1137578750

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This book presents a compelling case for a paradigmatic shift in the analysis of television drama production that recentres questions of power, control and sustainability. Television drama production has become an increasingly lucrative global export business as drama as a form enjoys increased prestige. However, this book argues that the growing emphasis on international markets and global players such as Netflix and Amazon Prime neglects the realities of commissioning and making television drama in specific national and regional contexts. Drawing on extensive empirical research, Producing British Television Drama demonstrates the centrality of public service broadcasters in serving audiences and sustaining the commercial independent sector in a digital age. It attends closely to three elements—the role of place in the production of content; the experiences of those working in the sector; and the interventions from cultural intermediaries in articulating and ascribing value to television drama. With chapters examining the evolution of British TV drama, as well as what might be in store in its future, this book offers invaluable insights into the UK as a major supplier of and market for television drama.

Post-heritage Perspectives on British Period Drama Television
Post-heritage Perspectives on British Period Drama Television

Author: Will Stanford Abbiss

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-06-09

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1000894002

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Drawing upon the existing scholarship of period drama and emerging research into new media ecologies, instigated by television streaming services such as Netflix, this book establishes a critical framework for understanding the representation of nationhood and cultural identity in television drama. By formalising the term ‘post-heritage’ the book proposes a methodology which recognises the interplay of traditional and innovative elements within period drama productions. The book applies this critical perspective to popular British period drama productions from the 2010s, with examples including The Crown, the ‘society dramas’ of Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey, Steven Knight’s Dickens adaptations, and Stephen Poliakoff’s recent oeuvre, to demonstrate the benefits of evaluating period drama as part of twenty-first century television’s developments. It challenges the assumptions around characteristics and ideological purpose that period drama discourse often contends with, and offers new perspectives on understanding the past through televisual representations. This book will be important reading for students and scholars of television studies, film studies and cultural studies.

Sound / image
Sound / image

Author: Sarah Cardwell

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2022-04-26

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1526149184

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An exciting new strand in The Television Series, the ‘Moments in Television’ collections celebrate the power and artistry of television, whilst interrogating key critical concepts in television scholarship. Each ‘Moments’ book is organised around a provocative binary theme. Sound / image reassesses the synergy between televisual images, and sounds and music, as a key creative interaction warranting closer attention. Through close scrutiny of visual and sonic elements, the book’s chosen programmes are persuasively illuminated in new ways. The book explores an eclectic range of TV fictions, dramatic and comedic. Contributors from diverse perspectives come together to expand and enrich the kind of close analysis most commonly found in television aesthetics. Sustained, detailed programme analyses are sensitively framed within historical, technological, institutional, cultural, creative and art-historical contexts.

British Television Drama
British Television Drama

Author: J. Bignell

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-05-12

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1137327588

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Featuring leading scholars of British television drama and noted writers and producers from the television industry, this new edition of British Television Drama evaluates past and present TV fiction since the 1960s, and considers its likely future.

Television Dramas and the Global Village
Television Dramas and the Global Village

Author: Diana I. Ríos

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-10-18

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1793613532

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This book discusses the role of television drama series on a global scale, analyzing these dramas across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Contributors consider the role of television dramas as economically valuable cultural products and with their depictions of gender roles, sexualities, race, cultural values, political systems, and religious beliefs as they analyze how these programs allow us to indulge our innate desire to share human narratives in a way that binds us together and encourages audiences to persevere as a community on a global scale. Contributors also go on to explore the role of television dramas as a medium that indulges fantasies and escapism and reckons with reality as it allows audiences to experience emotions of happiness, sorrow, fear, and outrage in both realistic and fantastical scenarios.

The Best Murders Are British
The Best Murders Are British

Author: Jim Daems

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2020-08-12

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1476679398

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A staple of television since the early years of the BBC, British crime drama first crossed the Atlantic on public broadcasting stations and specialty cable channels, and later through streaming services. Often engaging with domestic anxieties about the government's power (or lack thereof), and with larger issues of social justice like gender equality, racism, and homophobia, it has constantly evolved to reflect social and cultural changes while adapting U.S. and Nordic noir influences in a way that retains its characteristically British elements. This collection examines the continuing appeal of British crime drama from The Sweeney through Sherlock, Marcella, and Happy Valley. Individual essays focus on male melodrama, nostalgia, definitions of community, gender and LGBTQ representation, and neoliberalism. The persistence of the English murder, as each chapter of this collection reveals, points to the complexity of British crime drama's engagement with social, political, and cultural issues. It is precisely the mix of British stereotypes, coupled with a willingness to engage with broader global social and political issues, that makes British crime drama such a successful cultural export.

The North East of England on Film and Television
The North East of England on Film and Television

Author: James Leggott

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-06-28

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 3030691462

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This book analyses the representation of North-East England in film and television. It is a response to the way a number of important British films and programmes—for example, Get Carter (1971), Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads (1973-74), Our Friends in the North (1996) and Billy Elliot (2000)—have used this particular setting to explore questions of class, identity and history. It argues for the significance and coherence of a North-East corpus of film and television through a series of case studies relating to specific eras or types of representation. These include regional writers working for television in the 1970s, the achievements of the workshop movement in the 1980s and works produced within the genres of documentary, crime drama, comedy, period drama and reality television. The book discusses how the communities and landscapes of the region have been used to explore processes of cultural change, and legacies of de-industrialisation.