The death of Prince and the triumph of Leicester City in the English Premier League. One inevitable, the other not so. Each, untimely. No-one really knows as yet why either event occurred. One should become clear in the near...
Read MoreI have a book coming out. You didn’t know? Well, it’s called The Changing Spaces of Television Acting, and it examines how modern UK television performance has changed – and the various contextualising factors underpinning this...
Read MoreQuestion: What do the popular sci-fi television series’ Farscape (1999-2003) and Orphan Black (2013 – ) have in common? Answer: Neither featured in my undergraduate class ‘Science Fiction on Television’, but I can explain...
Read MoreOne of the games played in the run-up to the BBC Charter renewal process (a process which is likely to be particularly brutal this time) is for critics to identify those programmes which can be used by BBC negotiators to put the...
Read MoreEntertainment television programmes help shape the public discourse on politics. As American political communication scholar R. Lance Holbert pointed out, these shows can play a vital part for the public understanding of...
Read MoreThe weeks surrounding the launch of the second season of the STARZ drama series Outlander – broadcast in the US on 9 April and released to Amazon Prime UK the day after – saw a spate of online journalism and fans swooning over...
Read MoreMuch has been written about the way in which social media has reinvigorated live television, particularly from the perspective of the audience (for example, Liz Evans, Sheryl Wilson, or Inge Sø renson). But much less is known,...
Read MoreIt is quite a joy to discover one of your personal fetishes on the internet. Indeed, I was beginning to feel that I was the only one with a dark, long-term fascination in sitcom studio floorplans, but in recent years there have...
Read MoreBritish television fans need no convincing of James Corden’s smiley, shiny, naughty wonderful. From host to writer to actor to bloody nice singer and dancer, he’s annoying good at many showbizzy things (plus, he seems just...
Read MoreSince 2015 various news outlets have been reporting plans for Steven Spielberg to create a new television adaptation of the 1932 novel Brave New World and since 2013 a film adaptation by Ridley Scott has been in the pipeline....
Read MoreSomewhat tentatively , I set off for the gigantic 2016 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference in Atlanta in early April. It was my first SCMS and the prospect of five full-on days and more than 1900...
Read MoreTwo things have made me think about the role of television in the current wave of disaffection from politics. One was a satirical song from Mitch Benn on a recent Radio 4 Now Show with the refrain “I don’t want to see the news...
Read MoreBack in December, Cathy Johnson wrote a CST blog outlining the differences between TV Online and Online TV. Where TV Online represents the extended distribution of broadcast-first programmes across online platforms, Online TV...
Read MoreSo what was special about Monday 15th February (apart from being the day after Valentines day)? Answer: it was the last day that BBC 3 was on air. From Tuesday 16th the channel was only available online. (Why this happened...
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For his portrayal of Jack Donaghy, GE Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven...
Read MoreNetflix’s Jessica Jones and the BBC’s Happy Valley, on the surface, may seem to provide different viewing experiences, yet they share certain distinctions beyond the obvious element of both series depicting leading female...
Read MoreI’ve spent the last year or so researching how television was domesticated in Britain from 1946 until 1976. Following Lynn Spigel’s approach (in a U.S. context) in Make Room for TV (1992), I’ve been using domestic magazines as...
Read MoreMy PhD research examines how television is viewed in the family context, with a particular focus on technology and parenting. The study is based on a survey, in which 152 participants took part, and 12 qualitative...
Read MoreIt’s been over a year since I took up my post as Lecturer in Media Theory at the University of Salford, so I thought that this week I might say a little something about the gleaming edifice in which I now live and work:...
Read MoreSeveral of my previous blogs have dealt with female villains on television, and have mentioned the phenomena (by no means exclusive to TV) of ‘evil cleavage’. For some time I have promised myself I will write on this topic at...
Read MoreI’m enjoying watching the Women’s Twenty20 World Cup on television in Australia, where I spend seven weeks a year mentoring junior faculty and giving guest lectures when professors want to escape Perth, elude the responsibility...
Read MoreAfter many happy years basking in its warm, electronic glow, my once-reliable television set recently emitted its final diodes of light. An ominous dark patch in the upper left corner of the screen had been growing larger over...
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It’s been one of those days. The Christmas holidays had been lurking around the corner, and...
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Mad Men [is] arguably the dominant TV drama of its time. — Time critic James Poniewozik, 24 June...
Read MoreEpisode 4 of the Icelandic drama Trapped (2015), currently showing on BBC 4, finished with a spectacular avalanche. The avalanche had been predicted by one of the characters who then triggered it in the hope of diverting it away...
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