Actors of East Asian descent have traditionally not received much screen time in Anglophone television drama: high-profile roles for such actors in British television drama have been, and continue to be, elusive (Knox forthcoming). Across the Atlantic, as Darrell Hamamoto established in 1994, ‘Asian Americans on network television programs exist primarily for the convenience and benefit of the Euro-American lead players.’ (206). And still today,
In our last blog post, we examined the acting by a female performer in a strong ensemble cast – Jennifer Aniston in Friends (NBC, 1994-2004) – and today we will do the same again.
So far in our blog strand, we have been looking at moments of performance that are quite noticeably (if not obviously) about performance in some way, where the actor demonstrates an impressive level of skill via their use of their own body (Robert Lindsay’s twitch in G.B.H. (Channel 4, 1991)) or an unusual prop (Charles Dance’s skinning of a deer stag in Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-present)). Today, we wish to pay
‘You Win or You Die’, the seventh episode from the first season of Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-present), contains a scene that has deservedly gathered attention and acclaim.
After my last blog on academic work culture almost brought the CST site down I was going to resort to less fraught ground today and write about the brilliance of Claudia Winkleman.
As Robert Lindsay notes in his autobiography Letting Go , by the late 1980s, things weren’t looking so well for his career: following an difficult stint in the USA, where he had worked on the film Bert Rigby, You’re a Fool (1989), the actor who was known for roles such as Wolfie Smith in Citizen Smith (BBC1, 1977-1980) and had enjoyed success both in the West End and on Broadway, returned to Britain with little of that
In police drama, the protagonists’ surveillance and investigation of the fictional world, and their ability to enforce the law, depend on being able to move in and between places and spaces. A few years ago I wrote about ideas around seeing and knowing in relation to US police series, and working on the current AHRC-funded research project ‘Spaces of Television’ has got me thinking about space and movement in British police shows.
THE DARK SIDE OF KELLEY David E.Kelley’s new primetime series on NBC, Harry’s Law, has just turned bleak. Fans of Ally McBealwere initially delighted by the idea of a sacked patents lawyer (‘Harriet Korn’/Kathy Bates) setting up a storefront law firm in an abandoned shoe shop.
