Two 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...
Read MoreJenji Kohan’s Orange is the New Black (OITNB) (2013 –) has gained a reputation for unabashedly screening female faces and body-types that centric media often overlooks. From its opening sequence, OITNB spotlights a vast array of...
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In our ‘post-television’ age when the appearance of television drama and film, both shot on...
Read MoreAt some point during the first episode of Judd Apatow’s new Netflix series Love – co-written and co-produced with Paul Rust and Lesley Arfin – the show lost me: or rather, to be more precise, it irritatedme, because in fact, it...
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Is VHS essential to the study of television? This is a debate I’m currently engaged in with the...
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In the current febrile atmosphere of the debate about whether the UK should be “in” or “out” of...
Read More@james_a_bennett Television production is often thought of as taking place either in the studio, on location or in the edit suite. Todd Gitlen’s book Inside Primetime and Nick Couldry’s work has encouraged us to think about this...
Read MoreWhen it comes to television, I have always been a ‘glancer’ rather than a ‘gazer’. Born somewhere between Generation X and Generation Y, I grew up with what is now commonly referred to as ‘traditional’ television. As a child,...
Read MoreReleased in its entirety on Netflix on December 18th, 2015, the 10-episode long crime documentary, Making a Murderer – directed by Columbia University film graduates Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos – quickly became the ‘must...
Read MoreIt might still seem strange, after all these years, to say that Horace and Pete is television, since it is not available, at the moment, from any network, cable provider or software application. To see it one has to pay for each...
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Channel 4’s recent foray into foreign-language television drama, Deutschland 83, highlights a...
Read MoreI feel I should start this blog with an admission: I am a lifelong X-Files fan. I first watched it at the age of 12, and over 20 years later I’m as obsessed with Mulder and Scully as I was then. The news last year that the...
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