Author: CSTonline

NB- Post may contain spoilers regarding Game of Thrones Season 4 Over the past few weeks, CST Online has seen a number of posts discussing the nature (I might say, ethos) of television studies. The question has been addressed...

A furry number 2, perched on a neatly-draped table set with fruit and little cakes, peers at a bowl of strawberries. In the background birthday cards pinned to a cheerful yellow wall spell out the number 50.  But with its...

I thought this time I would take a moment to reflect on some of the ideas generated by three recent CST blogs: TEACHING TELEVISION: WHERE DO I START? by Elke Weissmann, THE PLACE OF THE PROGRAMME IN TELEVISION TEACHING by...

I remember watching ‘Mystery Men’ the fourth episode of Mad Men’s extraordinary fifth season and being struck by the moment when Joan at the breakfast table, tells her husband Greg, an army surgeon who is voluntarily returning...

Recently I re-watched Battlestar Galactica.  No, not that one, but the 1978-1979 series that originally aired on ABC, complete with tinny Cylons, hysterically questionable ‘triad’ costumes and a ‘daggit’ named Muffy.  A while...

I was not interested in the Sixties.  I was interested in the Fifties.  It’s an important distinction. — Matthew Weiner, Austin Film Festival, 26 October 2009 Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner had little idea of what exactly he...

At the end of March I was invited to take part in the University of Glasgow’s RSE funded workshop series “Shaping Scotland’s Talent: Change, Flexibility and New Pathways in the Screen Industries”. It was a fascinating...

‘A good bake’ As regular viewers of The Great British Bake Off will know, ‘a good bake’ is the highest praise indeed. It is a perfect pastry base: short, smooth and golden; it is a crisp, evenly-coloured biscuit; it is a cake of...

BBC2’s  Big Allotment Challenge pushes the TV challenge format to breaking point.  This six-part series pits nine contestant pairs against each other each week in three contests: growing a prize specimen; arranging a bouquet;...

TV has traditionally been seen as domestic, and often as social: stereotypical images of families gathered around the television readily come to mind. While we may think such images nostalgic in an era where many households and...

Ten years is not very long in the immortal life of a vampire – with or without a soul – but in the life, or afterlife, of a television series, it feels like an eternity.  It is therefore with heavy heart that I note that it has...

In a moment of frustration a few weeks ago I posted the following status update to Facebook: ‘Today’s teaching has felt like dealing with school children with half of my second years turning up to seminars without having...

Fifty years ago this weekend, BBC2 began, with a technological fiasco. Everything that could go wrong, did, from power supply to headline reading. These were the days when signals were routinely interrupted, aerials regularly...

WARNING – THIS BLOG CONTAINS SPOILERS. I was pleased to see Anthony Smith and CST finally engage with what I’ve described elsewhere (slightly hyperbolically) as the televisual equivalent of Manet’s Le déjeuner sur...

Before sitting down to write, I decided to cast an eye over this week’s television schedule, alighting almost immediately on two examples of a genre which has long confounded and intrigued me: the celebrity documentary. By this...

For those not familiar with EastEnders, the last few months may nevertheless have yielded glimpses of Dot Cotton (Branning) via the actress, June Brown, who has played her since July 1985 and who has been publicising her...

I have taken a strange interest in ratings in the last year or so, an interest that admittedly developed not long after I started watching the first season of Hannibal.  For all of its critical acclaim—here’s a recent example...

It is ten years since the final episode of HBO’s hugely popular series, Sex and the City (1998 – 2004) aired. This anniversary is being marked by a conference held at the University of Roehampton next week on the 4th of April,...

On 5 March, the BBC announced that BBC3 would become an online-only channel, subject to  approval by the BBC Trust. It would be replaced on the digital broadcast spectrum by a new BBC1+1 service, following the success of ‘plus...