For his portrayal of Jack Donaghy, GE Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming, in NBC sitcom 30 Rock (2006-2013), Alec Baldwin has won a (to use the technical term) smorgasbord of accolades, including two Primetime Emmys, three Golden Globes and seven Screen Actors Guild Awards. In our view, he would pretty much deserve this acclaim on the strength of his work in the episode ‘Jack-Tor’ (1.5) alone.

I’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 one of my main sources.

My PhD research examines how television is viewed in the family context, with a particular focus on technology and parenting.

It’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: MediaCityUK. No, that’s not a typo; there is no space between ‘Media’ and ‘City’, and if you think there should be you are simply displaying your ignorance. We who operate at the heart of the media know best.

Several 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 more length, and was prompted to finally do so by some recent work I’ve been doing on older female characters and actors, and by several news items in the last few months about aging female actors.

After 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 the past year or so, like some slow but inevitable illness. It seemed to vary in its severity but on particularly bad days it had become difficult if not impossible to decipher what was happening in that area of the image.

In the current febrile atmosphere of the debate about whether the UK should be “in” or “out” of Europe, it is interesting to look back at how TV has shown and shaped our relationships with other countries.

Channel 4’s recent foray into foreign-language television drama, Deutschland 83 , highlights a preoccupation of contemporary culture, and of contemporary television, with identity. The mediation of this theme/meme through popular television in particular has taken many dramatic and representational forms.

I 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 series was coming back for a 6 episode event season was met with a combination of excitement and consternation by fans (me included). Would Season 10 pick up where I Want to Believe (2008) left off?

Cast your minds back, if you will, to the year 2010, when the BBC was poised to launch a brand new detective on our screens. Dark and tousle-haired, his deductive powers would prove a constant source of amazement to his more grounded partner (and the viewing audience), while causing the local constabulary no small amount of irritation.