Jack Rosenthal Vice, Sue
2013., 20130719, 2009, 2012-05-01
eBook
This is the first-ever critical work on Jack Rosenthal, the award-winning British television dramatist. His career began with Coronation Street in the 1960s and he became famous for his popular ...sitcoms, including The Lovers and The Dustbinmen. During what is often known as the golden age' of British television drama, Rosenthal wrote such plays as The Knowledge, The Chain, Spend, Spend, Spend and P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang, as well as the pilot for the series London's Burning. This study offers a close analysis of all Rosenthal's best-known works, drawing on archival material as well as interviews with his collaborators and cast members. It traces the events that informed his writing, ranging from his comic take on the permissive society' of the 1960s, through to recession in the 1970s and Thatcherism in the 1980s. Rosenthal's distinctive brand of humour and its everyday surrealism is contrasted throughout with the work of his contemporaries, including Dennis Potter, Alan Bleasdale and Johnny Speight, and his influence on contemporary television and film is analysed. Rosenthal is not usually placed in the canon of Anglo-Jewish writing but the book argues this case by focusing on his prize-winning Plays for Today The Evacuees and Bar Mitzvah Boy. This book will appeal to students and researchers in Television, Film and Cultural Studies, as well as those interested in contemporary drama and Jewish Studies.
A sense of place Cooke, Lez
2017., 20171001, 2017, 2012, 2018-02-28
eBook
This pioneering study examines regional British television drama from its beginnings on the BBC and ITV in the 1950s to the arrival of Channel Four in 1982. It discusses the ways in which ...regionalism, regional culture, and regional identity have been defined, outlines the history of regional broadcasting in the UK, and includes two detailed case studies -- of Granada Television and BBC English Regions Drama -- representing contrasting examples of regional television drama during what is often described as the "golden age" of British television. The conclusion brings the study up to date by discussing recent developments in regional drama production, and by considering future possibilities. Written in a scholarly but accessible style, the book uncovers a forgotten history of British television drama that will be of interest to lecturers and students of media and cultural studies, as well as the general reader with an interest in the history of British television.
The last 20 years have witnessed an unprecedented flourishing of cultural expression in Scotland, regarded by some as a response to a growing sense of political disenfranchisement. Contemporary ...Scottish Fictions explores some of the major figures, works, themes and aesthetics of this cultural renaissance in the high-profile areas of film, television drama and the novel. The first half of the book focuses on the aesthetic response to the political, economic and social transformations of the '80s and '90s; from the impotent howl of the Scottish 'hard man', through the innovations of Alasdair Gray and James Kelman in literature, Bill Forsyth in cinema and John Byrne in television drama; to the much-needed engagement with female experience and subjectivity and with the new realities of Scottish post-industrial society. The second half examines high-profile generic trends such as Gothic and Detective fiction and interrogates recurring themes in Scottish film and literature such as the figure of the Child and the Travelling Scot. A wide range of novelists are discussed, including Ian Rankin, Janice Galloway, Andrew O'Hagan, Alan Spence, Candia McWilliam, Alan Warner, Iain Banks and Irvine Welsh. Filmmakers covered include Bill Douglas, Danny Boyle, Peter Mullan, Lynne Ramsay, David Mackenzie and non-Scottish directors such as Ken Loach and Lars von Trier.Features:*The first comparative study of contemporary Scottish film, television drama and the novel*The only serious consideration of the distinctive field of Scottish TV drama*Aimed at a wide readership of students and academics in Scottish Studies, Literary Studies, Film and TV Studies, as well as the general reader with an interest in contemporary Scottish culture.
Beyond representation poses the question as to whether over the last thirty years there have been signs of ‘progress’ or ’progressiveness’ in the representation of ‘marginalised’ or subaltern ...identity categories within television drama in Britain and the US. In doing so it interrogates some of the key assumptions concerning the relationship between aesthetics and the politics of identity that have influenced and informed television drama criticism during this period. This book can function as a textbook because it provides students with a clear and coherent pathway through complex, wide-reaching and highly influential interdisciplinary terrain. Yet its rigorous and incisive re-evaluation of some of the key concepts that dominated academic thought in the twentieth century also make it of interest to scholars and specialists. Chapters examine ideas around politics and aesthetics emerging from Marxist-socialism and postmodernism, feminism and postmodern feminism, anti-racism and postcolonialism, queer theory and theories of globalisation, so as to evaluates their impact on television criticism and on television as an institution. These discussions are consolidated through case studies that offer analyses of a range of television drama texts including Big Women, Ally McBeal, Supply and Demand, The Bill, Second Generation, Star Trek (Enterprise), Queer as Folk, Metrosexuality and The Murder of Stephen Lawrence. This book is aimed at students and scholars of Television Drama, Media and Communication, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies and those concerned with questions of politics and aesthetics in other disciplines.
This is the first full-length study of the screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, whose work for film and television includes Z Cars, The Italian Job, Kelly’s Heroes, The Sweeney, Reilly – Ace of Spies ...and Edge of Darkness. With a career spanning six decades Troy Kennedy Martin has seen the rise and fall of the television dramatist, making his debut in the era of studio-based television drama in the late 1950s prior to the transition to filmed drama (for which he argued in a famous manifesto) as the television play was gradually replaced by popular series and serials, for which Kennedy Martin did some of his best work. Drawing on original interviews with Kennedy Martin and his collaborators, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of the film and television career of one of Britain’s leading screenwriters. Also included is a chapter examining Kennedy Martin’s significant contribution to innovative and experimental television drama - his 1964 ‘Nats Go Home’ polemic and the six-part serial, Diary of a Young Man, plus his 1986 MacTaggart Lecture which anticipated recent developments in television style and technology. Written in an easily accessible style, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in television drama, screenwriting, and the history of British television over the last fifty years.
Beyond representation explores whether the last thirty years witnessed signs of 'progress' or 'progressiveness' in the representation of 'marginalised' or subaltern identity categories within ...television drama in Britain and the US. In doing so, it interrogates some of the key assumptions concerning the relationship between aesthetics and the politics of identity that have influenced and informed television drama criticism during this period. This book examines ideas around politics and aesthetics, which emerge from such theories as Marxist-socialism and postmodernism, feminism and postmodern feminism, anti-racism and postcolonialism, queer theory and theories of globalisation, and evaluates their impact on television criticism and on television as an institution. These discussions are consolidated through a number of case studies that offer analyses of a range of television drama texts including 'Ally McBeal', 'Supply and Demand', 'The Bill', 'Second Generation', 'Star Trek: Enterprise', 'Queer as Folk', 'Metrosexuality' and 'The Murder of Stephen Lawrence'.
State of play Nelson, Robin
2007., 20130719, 2007, 2007-11-01, 2013-07-19
eBook
Robin Nelson's State of play up-dates and develops the arguments of his influential TV Drama In Transition (1997). It is equally distinctive in setting analusis of the aesethetics and compositional ...principles of texts within a broad conceptual framework (technologies, institutions, economics, cultural trends). Tracing "the great value shift from conduit to content" (Todreas, 1999), Nelson is relatively optimistic about the future quality of TV Drama in a global market-place. But, characteristically taking up questions of worth where others have avoided them, Nelson recognizes that certain types of "quality" are privileged for viewers able to pay, possibly at the expense of viewer preference worldwide for "local" resonances in television. The mix of arts and cultural studies methodologies makes for an unusual and insightful approach.
Tony Garnett Lacey, Stephen
2013., 20130719, 2007, 2012-05-01, 2013-07-19
eBook
Tony Garnett is the first book-length study of one of the most respected and prolific producers working in British television. From ground-breaking dramas from the 1960s such as Up the Junction and ...Cathy Come Home to the 'must see' series in the 1990s and 2000s such as This Life and The Cops, Garnett has produced some of the most important and influential British television drama. This book charts Garnett's career from his early days as an actor to his position as executive producer and head of World Productions. Drawing on personal interviews, archival research, contextual analysis and selected case studies, Tony Garnett examines the ways in which Garnett has helped to define the role of the producer in British television drama. Arguing that Garnett was both a key creative and political influence on the work he produced and an enabler of the work of others, the book traces his often combative relationships with broadcasting institutions (especially the BBC). Additionally, the study discusses the films he made for the cinema and considers some of the ways in which Garnett's experiments in film technology 16 mm in the 1960s, digital video in the 1990s have shaped his creative output. Tony Garnett will be of interest to all levels of researchers and students of British television drama, media and film.
Beckett on screen Bignell, Jonathan
2013., 20130719, 2009, 2013-07-19
eBook
This ground-breaking study analyses Beckett’s television plays in relation to the history and theory of television. It argues that they are in dialogue with innovative television traditions connected ...to Modernism in television, film, radio, theatre, literature and the visual arts. Using original research from BBC archives and manuscript sources, the book provides new perspectives on the relationships between Beckett’s television dramas and the wider television culture of Britain and Europe. It also compares and contrasts the plays for television with Beckett’s Film and broadcasts of his theatre work including the recent Beckett on Film season. Chapters deal with the production process of the plays, the broadcasting contexts in which they were screened, institutions and authorship, the plays’ relationships with comparable programmes and films and reaction to Beckett’s screen work by audiences and critics. This book is a major contribution to Beckett scholarship and to studies of television drama. It will be essential reading in literature and drama studies, television historiography and for devotees of Beckett’s work.
