In 1969 Alan Lovell wrote a seminar paper on ‘British Cinema: The Unknown Cinema’, ‘unknown’ because of the paucity of scholarly work on British Cinema at the time – a situation which, in 1997, Lovell noted was no longer the...
Read MoreOn 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...
Read MoreA great deal of hand-wringing has taken place since the decision to cut BBC3 as a terrestrial television channel, particularly on the pages of The Guardian – where everyone from Steve Hewlett to Boyd Hilton to Mark Jackson has...
Read MoreHey there marshmallows! Veronica Mars is back. I’ve been thinking about Veronica Mars. On the 12 April 2013, I blogged about the exciting news of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign, in which TV creator Rob Thomas and actor...
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Stylistic Excess and the Aesthetics of Violence in Spartacus In her book Now a Major Motion...
Read MoreWhen thinking about TV in relation to horror/SF/fantasy I tend to think in quite simple terms. Its modern incarnation starts with the arrival of Twin Peaks in 1990. There’s not much more than needs to be said about Twin Peaks,...
Read MoreRake is an Australian television series that airs on ABC1 on Sunday nights. Now into its third series, it centrally features Richard Roxburgh as Rake Cleaver Greene, a charismatic but anti-establishment, criminal defence...
Read MoreAt a time when a growing number of older persons in the United States are living with their adult children (between 2000 and 2011, this figure rose from 2.2 million to 4.6 million[1]), the U.S. broadcast networks Fox and CBS...
Read MoreDanny Dyer is best known for low-budget, critically reviled films and has a reputation (whether deserved or otherwise) for a particularly misogynistic style of laddism. He is also known for his expletive laden outbursts and...
Read MoreEvery now and then, I get the proverbial swarm flying around my headgear as people announce, predict, or incarnate the end of television. This generally takes the form of remarks such as ‘My children don’t watch television,’...
Read MoreWhy the parentheses? Well, the established argument is that television’s very domesticity and ‘ordinariness’ militates against any capacity to produce ‘stars’ in the sense that cinema is traditionally perceived to have done....
Read MoreAs a TV scholar and a science fiction fan, I enjoyed watching An Adventure in Space and Time, a drama documentary about the early years of Doctor Who when it was broadcast in November of last year as part of the series’ fiftieth...
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Popular music’s relationship with TV is an uneasy one. Pop on TV, particularly in the age of...
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Since October 2012 New Scotland Yard’s future has become increasingly uncertain. Following...
Read MoreOn 1 January 2014, Greece assumed the rotating presidency of the EU Council. Although it is the fifth time for the county to be in charge of the European Union, holding the presidency comes at a crucial point, a critical...
Read MoreIt may seem odd to suggest that the second series Bron/Broen (The Bridge 2011-) had a purity of narrative line. This was after all a series that began with a crewless tanker with its hidden plague-ridden cargo drifting into the...
Read MoreBenefits Britain: The live debate was broadcast this week. Reality television meets explosive talk show as Channel 4 use Question Time producers Mentorn to capture the reaction to their ratings hit Benefit Street. It was...
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On 1 January 2014, Greece assumed the rotating presidency of the EU Council. Although it is the...
Read MoreThe key won’t quite turn in the front door, my hand unsteady in its intoxicated disenchantment. My loose change has already fallen from my pocket, splashing gold and silver into the rusty wide-open drain. I fall in, switch on...
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One of the most common questions I get asked when I am at a conference abroad is what television...
Read MoreThe first question that I necessarily ask myself when deciding upon case studies for the ‘Forgotten Television Drama’ project is, “Can I accurately call this programme forgotten?” Thinking about this too hard is often an...
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In his 1990 autobiography, Days of Vision (London: Methuen) the late television director and...
Read MoreJason Jacobs and Stephen Peacock recently published a book on TV Aesthetics – Television Aesthetics and Style – in which they argue that discourses surrounding style and aesthetics are ‘curiously absent from many critical...
Read MoreBBC-bashing is of course a venerable and well-cherished sport for the British press. A recent example was the ‘furore’ over the Corporation’s overly-enthusiastic use of Gary Barlow, particularly in his performance in Gary...
Read MoreWho would have thought that the company behind the cuddly Great British Bake Off format would be embroiled in one of the biggest documentary ethics blow-ups of recent years? Love Productions is indeed behind both Bake...
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