When Canadian period crime drama Murdoch Mysteries (CityTV 2008-2012;

While generally marketed as the further adventures of a popular character, spin-offs generally have the industrial function of creating more saleable content for a given studio and/or network.

Written on 12 April, 2023 This…is going to be a very different sort of blog. I’m writing this from a small hotel on a side street in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.  You’ve probably never heard of this city (unless you’ve bothered to look at my author bio;

In a recent CST blog, I discussed some of the negative issues surrounding the use of a fictitious country in the context of a series which also features both actual countries and attempts of sociocultural and/or sociopolitical critique.  For this blog [1], I would like to provide a counterpoint with an example of how the use of a fictitious country can be done in a way that is more nuanced, if not necessarily more positive.

By dint of their genre, medical series often deal with matters of morality and ethics.  This in part lends itself to storylines about playing ‘god(s)’ which can then position the medical personnel as divine entities who are capable of both positive and negative acts (Jacobs 2003). But medical series can also mimic detective series, as House (Fox 2004-2012), an iteration of Sherlock Holmes, most certainly does.

The very first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (BBC, 1969-1974) asked ‘Whither Canada?’, which is an interesting question for a former coloniser to ask of her former colony (and current member of the Commonwealth).

Picture it: Gaborone, Botswana, 2008. An international co-production between the US (HBO), UK (BBC) and South Africa (Film Afrika) is filming an adaptation of Scotsman Alexander McCall Smith’s book series about Tswana ‘lady detective’ Precious Ramotswe (Jill Scott in the adaptation), The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (HBO/BBC/Film Afrika, 2008-2009) .

Is there any term in TV Studies more scrutinised, debated, loved and hated than ‘quality TV?’  Probably, but that’s beside the point. One of the many ways in which quality TV acquires cultural capital is by appropriating it from forms that have gone before, which is what I’ll discuss today.

It’s Monday morning, 10.30am, British Summer Time, just, and the Tories are gifting (read ‘inflicting on’) us another Prime Minister.

Conferences – and not the least thematic pre- and post-conferences – are great ways to bring together scholars with similar interests, discuss common challenges and build networks for potential future collaboration.