‘Alright, it’s me Joyce Byers fae Stranger Things. Everybody calls me big Jo-B.’ Imagine a different world, a world were stuff was Scottish… Harry Potter , Game of Thrones , Stranger Things , Gwyneth Paltrow, The Handmaid’s Tale —all Scottish. The good news is, you don’t have to imagine this because Ashley Storrie has already done it for you, in a handy set of refreshingly foul-mouthed short videos.
Netflix launched their newest drama Haunting of Hill House on 12th October, just in time for Halloween 2018.
The BBC television programme Eat Well for Less , now entering its sixth round of production, first aired in the United Kingdom in January 2015.
In Television of the Anthropocene Part I (that I wrote exactly a year ago), I introduced the idea of the Television of the Anthropocene, and I suggested that ‘the re-emergence of sci-fi, fantasy, and post-apocalyptic genres and generic hybrids on television that address questions about human and non-human futures was unsurprising and was in line with the social and cultural status of the television as the dominant medium of storytelling’
Earlier this year I blogged about a research project I collaborate on that documents and studies all of Harold Pinter’s drama. Pinter died ten years ago, and as is often the case, the anniversary has prompted a surge of media interest in him and a series of retrospectives of his work. In London’s West End, for example, the Pinter at the Pinter season has featured a host of star actors in new productions of his theatre plays.
Location manager Ulla Malmos knows her way around Aarhus. From the post-industrial landscape down by the harbour to the courthouse on the hill: this is her beat (fig.1). So familiar is she with Denmark’s second largest city that Ulla set a challenging pace for those of us scampering in her wake, as she described in absorbing detail the business of setting the scene for the crime series, Dicte ( Dicte-Crime Reporter , 2013-16).
One of the myths shrouding the realities of US capitalism is that it is a truly private-enterprise system, with Hollywood an exemplar that is entirely sustained by its capacity to tell stories in ways that viewers pay to enjoy. Nothing could be further from the truth, in terms of the nation’s wider economy, and its screen industries in particular. The state is everywhere and nowhere in US capitalism.
The BBC’s audience-pulling Bodyguard (2018) ended with a twist which changed the status and behaviour of the Muslim woman with whom it had started.
For several years, I have watched the development of film and television education in Europe. I have looked at it from different angles, either as a scholar, a researcher or an employer of graduates from different schools.
First things first: what is comfort TV? Well, the etymology of comfort presents a useful starting point. Comfort is about consolation, support and giving strength. Applied to television, comfort refers to those programmes or viewing routines that help to strengthen the position and resilience of the viewer in daily life.
