Author: CSTonline

As 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...

On 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...

It 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...

The 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...

Jason 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...

BBC-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...

Who 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...

I knew I’d really made it when the New York Times wanted to speak to me about ‘Monocles’ last week. The inquiry was based, said the Grey Lady’s email, on my work about food on television. That in turn derived from something in...

I’m in a new world[1]. I’ve left secure employment at the University of California for London and returned to the kind of life I led for a decade from my mid-20s, when I was a member of what we now call the...

Having since marked several dozen first year essays, Christmas is fast becoming a distant memory. However, one programme that remains in my mind – perhaps more prominently than I’d like – is Michael McIntyre’s Showtime (BBC,...

Kennedy set so much in motion in such a short period of time that the outcome of each narrative was unclear. Journalist and author Evan Thomas in American Experience’s ‘JFK’ (2013) The Kennedy assassination still marks a shared...

There are only three sports I enjoy watching on television and each has a unique way of handling the articulation of player interiority through sound and vision. First up on the oche, as it were, is darts the bar game where...

In the introduction to their 2006 edited collection, Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley reflect on the decision to name their book Feminism in Popular Culture rather than Feminism and Popular Culture, arguing that ‘the idea of...

So, the first blog of the new year. Perhaps it should be about Christmas and television, a reminiscence of the supposed golden age when the nation was united around the tv set? But to be honest, television was a bit boring over...

Inspired by the countless reviews of 2013 in the New Year press, I started thinking what the best new TV of the last year had been. This is what I came up with. As well as being slightly self-indulgent, it’s also somewhat...