I struggle increasingly to explain to my students the basic difference between a television series and a television serial – which is a worry, because it’s a concept that underpins much of my historical teaching on narrative and genre.
Crime is one of the most prevalent and most-viewed genres on our TV screens and the best-circulating type of fiction content in Europe. Studying the attitudes of television viewers to crime shows, therefore, promises an insight into European tastes and preferences when it comes to the genre of crime, as well as finding out about attitudes towards media cultures from other countries.
‘Why publish a screenplay, when these days the finished film or TV series is so readily available? If one only thinks of them as working documents then perhaps there is little point, beyond the academic. But reading screenplays has always been as interesting to me as reading plays; an activity in its own right.’
And here we are again! And I’m still waiting for the bloody phone to ring to let me know which of the two gigs I’m up for I’ve got – if either of them comes through for me, of course. So, at the time of writing, well, beginning to write this, next week (wk beg 11 th Oct, 2021) is the (in some bits of Scotland) Scottish half term break.
As argued by Anna Potter and Jeanette Steemers in the new Routledge Companion to Media Industries, children are an often overlooked, but very special television audience (2021), both when it comes to thinking of children in relation to traditional and online television viewing.
I’m revisiting a column from 2020 about the issues listed above, in order to keep up with recent developments. But first, paradoxically, some history. Human rights and sports have long been intertwined in complex ways, along with their coverage by the media. The Spanish Republican government declined to participate in Hitler’s 1936 Olympics because of his anti-semitism. Martin Luther King supported a black boycott of Mexico 1968.
You know this, this blogging lark for these lovely people, all began for me last year when I saw a call for contributions to the CSTOnline website which, I think was called, What Are We Watching? This then became a semi-regular portal into the life of me and my family as well as some not bad jokes, a few corny lines and occasional lapses into me talking about female actors and cheese.
The language of Ted Lasso is popular culture. The cheesiest of music, the rommiest of Rom-Coms, the deepest of football fan-based love. This makes sense given that the Richmond Football Club is the show’s real star – its pull so precious that it can bring out the best and the worst in people.
Wow, what a year it’s been. If, before the pandemic, people thought television was dead, now we all know how much we rely on it. Television, as Michael Wolff wrote, is the new Television. And in the UK, the years of 2020 and 2021 came with some astounding television: I May Destroy You (BBC, HBO, 2020), Small Axe (BBC, Amazon, 2020), It’s a Sin (Channel 4, HBO Max, 2021) and many more.
Television’s involvement with a contemporary media terrain shaped by COVID-19 has been increasingly sharpened as critical focus has gradually shifted towards understanding and thinking through our still-evolving relationships with the small-screen in pandemic times.
