“Son of Man /You cannot say, or guess, for you know only/A heap of broken images” T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland Matt Weiner’s The Romanoffs offers American television a unique modernist vision of history as a collision of histories, not the more familiar media monolithic account of one linear progression, or even the rarer media version of cyclical history.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. For the full interview:

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch arrived just after Christmas (December 28th 2018), billed as a “Netflix event”. A choose-your-own-adventure about the troubled creation of a fictional 1980s videogame ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’, and (at least in one branch of its narrative) a Netflix release about Netflix as a brand, it has already been reviewed in the UK […]

I’ve never held an honest job in my entire life.  I’ve never done any hard labor.  I’ve never worked 9 to 5.  I’ve never worked five days a week until right now.  I don’t like it. (laughter) I’ve never seen the inside of a factory but it’s all I’ve ever written about.  Standing before you is a man who has become wildly and absurdly successful writing about something he has had absolutely no personal experience.

Apologies for not sending you a Christmas card this year. So, let me do it via this blog;

Anyone who’s interested in documentary – whether on TV, cinema or online – must inevitably face questions about war. Ignoring documentaries that deal with war would mean discounting some of the most important moments of documentary history, as well as missing a continuing effort to understand, as well as represent, the appalling phenomenon of war itself.

RTÉ recognises that it is in the privileged position of reflecting and shaping our understanding of our society and culture. Few organisations are as influential in Ireland or require greater trust than RTÉ.” (RTÉ spokesperson, 2017) In 2018 the Irish state broadcaster issued its 2018-2020 diversity and inclusion strategy.

With the Christmas period well and truly upon us, it seems only fitting to consider the time-honoured, festive tradition of bingeing. For better or for worse, Christmas has become synonymous with the act of bingeing – not just because of the copious amounts of mince pies and mulled wine that we might consume, but also because of the increased amount of television that we typically view during the festive period.

This second blog offers some thoughts on how aesthetic complexity in drama has been developed for television followed by the possibility of an evaluative method for a medium (unlike film) which has been difficult to judge. Due to its long association with cultural studies, television has been analysed primarily as a form of communication rather than as a textual system which is capable of criticism.

With Haunting of Hill House plugging the hole left by Stranger Things this Halloween[1], I started thinking about Netflix’s other original horror dramas and whether or not there is method to a Netflix TV horror. Is there anything common to a Netflix horror series or are they all totally and unequivocally different?