Cultures of TV Drama

European Journal of Communication, 2006

What makes eleven essays by eleven different authors cohere in a way that makes sense to present them together as a book? Whatever that is, I do not quite find it in this collection. The editors assert that the various contributions function as an organic whole and indeed they strive arduously to make connections in a general introduction, section introductions and an afterword. Nevertheless, I am left with a sense of irreducible bittiness.

2005

What makes eleven essays by eleven different authors cohere in a way that makes sense to present them together as a book? Whatever that is, I do not quite find it in this collection. The editors assert that the various contributions function as an organic whole and indeed they strive arduously to make connections in a general introduction, section introductions and an afterword. Nevertheless, I am left with a sense of irreducible bittiness. There is a section on situation comedy, which includes Barry Langford on The Office and Robin Nelson on Dad's Army. There are several essays on children's programmes, such as Maire Messenger Davies on The Demon Headmaster and Jonathan Bignell on Doctor Who. Another section deals with programmes considered somehow 'other', for example, Mark Bould on The Prisoner and Peter Billingham on Queer as Folk.

2019

This book focuses on the specific experiences and structure of local production and considers its relationship to global markets and domestic players such as PSBs. This leads us to conclude the book with a call for urgent and profound attention to power and sustainability. Power within the TV industry remains consolidated to a few key players and issues relating to the prominence and discoverability of content testify to the ongoing struggles and imbalances that characterise the television production landscape. We also critique the ubiquitous concept of sustainability as one which emphasises economic growth as the only view of progress or innovation. We propose the necessary conditions for creating a truly sustainable local production ecology and we argue for reinvigorating notions of television drama as a public good.

2005

In recent years American television drama series have been celebrated as 'quality television' at the expense of their British counterparts, yet in the 1970s and 1980s British television was frequently proclaimed to be 'the best television in the world'. This article will consider this critical turnaround and argue that, contrary to critical opinion, the last few years has seen the emergence of a 'new wave' in British television drama, comparable in its thematic and stylistic importance to the New Wave that emerged in British cinema and television in the early 1960s.

Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies, 2010

According to , RTÉ drama, and RTÉ television in general, excludes society's powerless. This is, in his view, a result of the ideology of RTÉ drama producers. Devereux's research on RTÉ drama concentrates on Glenroe 1 . It states that Glenroe fails to represent adequately those who are marginalised in Irish society. In passing, Devereux mentions some material and organisational constraints which may help to explain why this is so. However, disregarding these constraints, he argues that the ideology of RTÉ producers is the real reason for the exclusion of society's powerless from television drama:

E-Compós

As soap operas britânicas têm uma história enraizada no realismo, um forte senso de comunidade e um tratamento sério de questões sociais. Este ensaio sugere que, no final dos anos 90 e início dos anos 2000, as soap operas britânicas adotaram uma estética mais melodramática com uma ênfase no indivíduo isolado, nas situações extremas, nas paisagens simbólicas e numa polaridade moral. Seguindo Zygmunt Bauman, sugiro que estas mudanças refletem o sentimento de que a idéia de sociedade está sob ataque.

2019

The purpose of this study is to show how TV series reflect real life, which references they make, and to which extent they represent and project the culture and life. In this globalizing world, the definition and borders of culture, of course, expand and change. People now share almost similar lifestyles, same concepts, and same products, therefore it becomes unhealthier to define all cultures in their specific geographical borders. In this essay, the quick summary of TV series becoming the essential part of our lives is given, TV series is defined and creation of this cultural media product is described. Later on, with analysis of two examples, "Victoria" and "Black Mirror: Nosedive", in the context of projecting the real life, the development of essay is made. This study shows that whether a TV series is fictional or realistic at the extreme levels, it contains elements from real life and it is inevitable, since it is a human work. The arguments given in the introduction are supported.

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2015

2022

This document describes a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant AH/E509592/1) that ran from October 2007 until September 2010. It was based in the department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading. Dr Derek Paget led the research, assisted by Professor Jonathan Bignell and Professor Lib Taylor, with Dr Heather Sutherland as the project’s Postdoctoral Researcher. The project set out to examine the premise that political change domestically and internationally since 1990 has contributed to a greater prominence in British stage and screen culture for the docudrama. We chose to interview actors who had performed in docudrama in order to assess their contribution. In theatre, we researched Documentary Theatre's substantial revival in the forms of the 'Verbatim' and 'Tribunal' theatre plays produced at (for example) the Royal Court and the Tricycle Theatres. The accent on testimony and witness statement evident in theatre forms has also manifested itself in television, where blending of genres has reshaped conventions of documentary and drama forms and created new hybrids that emphasise the personal (e.g. docusoap, Reality TV, documusical). The 'Historical-Event' TV docudrama also provided a focus for study. In film, synergy between the film and television industries has led to an increased presence of docudramatic forms. Films have been 'dual purposed' for release to both small and large screens, and workers in both industries (including actors) routinely move between them. Film form has gone beyond the 'biopic', with films that owe much to television docudrama (incorporating, for example, more archive footage and graphical information). On stage and screen, the use of facts in drama has been an important part of a general media response to political and social change. Docudrama has become part of a cultural response to greater national and global uncertainty.