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The ArtsJune 2017Popular television drama
Critical perspectives
by Jonathan Bignell, Stephen Lacey
Popular television drama: critical perspectives' is a collection of essays examining landmark programmes of the last forty years, from 'Doctor Who' to 'The Office', and from 'The Demon Headmaster' to 'Queer As Folk'. Contributions from prominent academics focus on the full range of popular genres, from sitcoms to science fiction, gothic horror and children's drama, and challenge received wisdom by reconsidering how British television drama can be analysed. Each section is preceded by an introduction in which the editors discuss how the essays address existing problems in the field and also suggest new directions for study. The book is split into three sections, addressing the enduring appeal of popular genres, the notion of 'quality' in television drama, and analysing a range of programmes past and present. Popular television drama: critical perspectives will be of interest to students and researchers in many academic disciplines that study television drama. Its breadth and focus on popular programmes will also appeal to those interested in the shows themselves.
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The ArtsJune 2017Gothic television
by Helen Wheatley
Gothic television is the first full length study of the Gothic released on British and US television. An historical account, the book combines detailed archival research with analyses of key programmes, from Mystery and Imagination and Dark Shadows, to The Woman in White and Twin Peaks, and uncovers an aspect of television drama history which has, until now, remained critically unexplored. While some have seen television as too literal or homely a medium to successfully present Gothic fictions, Gothic television argues that the genre, in its many guises, is, and has always been, well-suited to television as a domestic medium, given the genre's obsessions with haunted houses and troubled families. This book will be of interest to lecturers and students across a number of disciplines including television studies, Gothic studies, and adaptation studies, as well as to the general reader with an interest in the Gothic, and in the history of television drama.
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The ArtsJune 2021Genre and performance: film and television
by Christine Cornea
Looking at contemporary film and television, this book explores how popular genres frame our understanding of on-screen performance. Previous studies of screen performance have tended to fix upon star actors, directors, or programme makers, or they have concentrated upon particular training and acting styles. Moving outside of these confines, this book provides a truly interdisciplinary account of performance in film and television and examines a much neglected area in our understanding of how popular genres and performance intersect on screen. Each chapter concentrates upon a particular genre or draws upon generic case studies in examining the significance of screen performance. Individual chapters examine contemporary film noir, horror, the biopic, drama-documentary, the western, science fiction, comedy performance in 'spoof news' programmes and the television 'sit com' and popular Bollywood films.
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Humanities & Social SciencesNovember 2007Public issue television
World in Action' 1963–98
by Peter Goddard, John Corner, Kay Richardson
Public issue television is a major contribution to understanding the relationship between television, politics and society. Based on full access to the archives, it offers a fascinating historical account of how one television series, Granada's World in Action, celebrated for its tough journalism, visual directness and public impact, functioned and developed over its run across 35 years between 1963 and 1998. In a succession of chapters looking at different periods in the series' development and at key dimensions of its distinctive identity, it gets deep inside the making of factual television and examines how a particular culture of production works within broader conditions of possibility and constraint. In particular, it charts the interwoven processes of change - technological, professional, aesthetic, institutional, economic, social and political. As well as discussing achievement and success, it examines the tensions, the debates and open conflicts that formed part of the context within which the series was made and transmitted across four decades. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesApril 2025The Jacobites and the Grand Tour
Educational travel and small-states' diplomacy
by Jérémy Filet
In the first monograph to fully examine the intersecting networks of Jacobites and travellers to the continent, Filet considers how small states used official diplomacy and deployed soft power - embodied by educational academies - to achieve foreign policy goals. This work uses little-known archival materials to explain how and why certain small states secretly supported the Jacobite cause during the crucial years surrounding the 1715 rising, while others stayed out of Jacobite affairs.At the same time, the book demonstrates how early modern small states sought to cultivate good relations with Britain by attracting travellers as part of a wider trend of ensuring connections with future diplomats or politicians in case a Stuart restoration never came.This publication therefore brings together a study of Britain, small states, Jacobitism, and educational travel, in its nexus at continental academies.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2025A grand strategy of peace
Britain and the creation of the United Nations Organization, 1939-1945
by Andrew Ehrhardt
A grand strategy of peace is the first detailed account of Britain's role in the creation of the United Nations Organization during the Second World War. As a work of traditional diplomatic history that brings in elements of intellectual history, the book describes how British officials, diplomats, politicians, and writers - previously seen to be secondary actors to the United States in this period - thought about, planned for, and helped to establish a future international order. While in the present day, many scholars and analysts have returned to the origins of the post- 1945 international system, this book offers an exhaustive account of how the statesmen and more importantly, the officials working below the statesmen, actually conceived of and worked to establish a post-war world order.
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The ArtsSeptember 2008Entertaining television
The BBC and popular television culture in the 1950s
by Su Holmes
Entertaining television challenges the idea that the BBC in the 1950s was elitist and 'staid', upholding Reithian values in a paternalistic, even patronising way. By focusing on a number of (often controversial) programme case studies - such as the soap opera, the quiz/ game show, the 'problem' show and programmes dealing with celebrity culture - Su Holmes demonstrates how BBC television surprisingly explored popular interests and desires. She also uncovers a number of remarkable connections with programmes and topics at the forefront of television today, ranging from talk shows, 'Reality TV', even to our contemporary obsession with celebrity. The book is iconclastic, percipient and grounded in archival research, and will be of use to anyone studying television history. ;
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Popular cultureJuly 2015Experimental British television
by Martin Hargreaves
Throughout its history, British television has found a place, if only in its margins, for programmes that consciously worked to expand the boundaries of television aesthetics. Even in the present climate of increased academic interest in television history, its experimental tradition has generally either been approached generically or been lost within the assumption that television is simply a mass medium. Avaible for the first time in paperback, Experimental British television uncovers the history of experimental television, bringing back forgotten programmes in addition to looking at relatively more privileged artists or programme strands from fresh perspectives. The book therefore goes against the grain of dominant television studies, which tends to place the medium within the flow of the 'everyday', in order to scrutinise those productions that attempted to make more serious interventions within the medium.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMay 2015Experimental British television
by Laura Mulvey, Martin Hargreaves, Jamie Sexton
Throughout its history, British television has found a place, if only in its margins, for programmes that consciously worked to expand the boundaries of television aesthetics. Even in the present climate of increased academic interest in television history, its experimental tradition has generally either been approached generically or been lost within the assumption that television is simply a mass medium. Avaible for the first time in paperback, Experimental British television uncovers the history of experimental television, bringing back forgotten programmes in addition to looking at relatively more privileged artists or programme strands from fresh perspectives. The book therefore goes against the grain of dominant television studies, which tends to place the medium within the flow of the 'everyday', in order to scrutinise those productions that attempted to make more serious interventions within the medium. ;
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The ArtsAugust 2005Popular television drama
Critical perspectives
by Jonathan Bignell, Stephen Lacey, Susan Williams
'Popular television drama: critical perspectives' is a collection of essays examining landmark programmes of the last forty years, from 'Doctor Who' to 'The Office', and from 'The Demon Headmaster' to 'Queer As Folk'. Contributions from prominent academics focus on the full range of popular genres, from sitcoms to science fiction, gothic horror and children's drama, and challenge received wisdom by reconsidering how British television drama can be analysed. Each section is preceded by an introduction in which the editors discuss how the essays address existing problems in the field and also suggest new directions for study. The book is split into three sections, addressing the enduring appeal of popular genres, the notion of 'quality' in television drama, and analysing a range of programmes past and present. Popular television drama: critical perspectives will be of interest to students and researchers in many academic disciplines that study television drama. Its breadth and focus on popular programmes will also appeal to those interested in the shows themselves. ;
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The ArtsNovember 2013Popular television in authoritarian Europe
by Peter Goddard
This lively and ground-breaking collection brings together work on forms of popular television within the authoritarian regimes of Europe after World War Two. Ten chapters based on new and original research examine approaches to programming and individual programmes in Spain, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Romania, the USSR and the GDR at a time when they were governed as dictatorships or one-party states. 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. The introduction examines how television can be considered 'popular' in circumstances where audience appeal is often secondary to the need for state control. Published in English, 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. There is a foreword by John Corner and an informative timeline of events in the history of television in the countries covered. ;
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The ArtsMay 2025A new genre for television?
Creativity in historical drama documentary
by Justin Hardy
In A New Genre for Television?, filmmaker Justin Hardy argues the dramatised history documentaries broadcast by British public service channels in the 2000s constituted a distinct television genre. Offering a vital distinction between docudramas and drama documentaries, Hardy contributes to the field of television history through exclusive interviews with key figures from BBC and Channel 4 - many of whom have never been publicly interviewed before - and envisions a future model for the portrayal of national histories on screen.
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Humanities & Social SciencesOctober 2014Theorising Media
Power, form and subjectivity
by John Corner
In this book, John Corner explores how issues of power, form and subjectivity feature at the core of all serious thinking about the media, including appreciations of their creativity as well as anxiety about the risks they pose. Drawing widely on an interdisciplinary literature, he connects his exposition to examples from film, television, radio, photography, painting, web practice, music and writing in order to bring in topics as diverse as reporting the war in Afghanistan, the televising of football, documentary portrayals of 9/11, reality television, the diversity of taste in the arts and the construction of civic identity. Theorising media brings together concepts both from social studies and the arts and humanities, addressing a readership wider than the sub-specialisms of media research. It refreshes ideas about why the media matter and how understanding them better remains a key aim of cultural inquiry and a continuing requirement for public policy. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2023Now that's what I call a history of the 1980s
by Lucy Robinson
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2023Soft power and the future of US foreign policy
by Hendrik W. Ohnesorge
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The ArtsFebruary 2025Screening Sherlock
A cultural history of the Great Detective on film and television
by James Chapman
Screening Sherlock is the first book-length academic study of the film and television career of the most famous detective in fiction. Chapman explores the contexts, adaptation strategies and critical reception of Sherlock Holmes (and Dr Watson) on film and television in Britain and the United States. The book includes case studies of such famous Holmes impersonators as William Gillette, Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Jeremy Brett and Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as charting a path through many lesser-known productions. From early cinema to the Hollywood studio system, and from heritage drama to contemporary postmodern television, Screening Sherlock is an indispensible work for all aficionados of Arthur Conan Doyle's consulting detective of Baker Street.
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Humanities & Social SciencesApril 2022Russian grand strategy in the era of global power competition
by Andrew Monaghan, Richard Connolly
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The ArtsJanuary 2019Michael Winterbottom
by Brian McFarlane, Deane Williams, Brian McFarlane, Neil Sinyard
This is the first book-length study of the most prolific and most critically acclaimed director working in British cinema today. Michael Winterbottom has also established himself, and his company, Revolution Films, as a dynamic force in world cinema. No other British director can claim such an impressive body of work in such a variety of genres, from road movie to literary adaptation, from musical to sex film, to stories of contemporary political significance. The authors of this book use a range of critical approaches to analyse the filmmaker's eclectic interests in cinema and the world at large. With this in mind, the realist elements of such films as Welcome to Sarajevo are examined in the light of a long history of cinema's dealings with realism, as far back as post-war Italian neo-realist filmmaking; whereas Jude and The claim are approached as both literary adaptations (a continuing strand in British cinema history) and examples of other reworked genres (the road movie, the western). This lively study of his work, written in a wholly accessible style, will engage all those who have followed his career as well as those with a wide-ranging interest in British cinema.
