This post has originally been published on the Women’s Film and Television History Network blog. Katarzyna Paszkiewicz gives an exclusive insight into the evolution of her new publication, co-edited with Mary Harrod, which develops key theoretical questions in relation to women and genre.
The Wentworth is the New Prisoner Conference was held on April 5th and 6th at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
Harold Pinter died ten years ago, and the anniversary is being recognised this summer by a season of screenings of his TV and film work at the British Film Institute’s BFI South Bank cinemas in London. As most people know, Pinter’s output spanned theatre, film, television and radio drama, poetry, prose and political essays.
Last year I had the opportunity to spend time researching the women involved in the development of early BBC television, from the experimental years of 1936-1939 and from the relaunch of the service following the end of the war, to the professionalization of the service by the 1950s.
When that estimable curator of classic British television, the Drama channel, began repeating Jersey-based detective series Bergerac (BBC, 1981-91) earlier this year, the Radio Times was less than laudatory, claiming the first episode showed ‘every one’ of its thirty-seven years.
“The judgement of quality is always situated. That is to say, somebody makes the judgement from some aesthetic or political or moral position.” (Feuer, 2007: 145) This latest contribution to CST has been inspired by the viewing choices of most of my students, and their predilection for what has variously been described as popular television and mass entertainment.
With deep-felt thanks to the respondents. There is a wonderful video on YouTube that shows David Morley being interviewed about his time at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) and his and Charlotte Brunsdon’s work on Nationwide . The video looks like it might be from the late 1980s, early 1990s, and Morley is in quite a reflective mood/mode, explaining how he came to the CCCS and how he came to do the work he
As someone who was fairly vocal about the need for long-running BBC flagship series Doctor Who to seriously address its gender problems, I was pleased, but not overjoyed, when it was announced that the thirteenth Doctor would be played by Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to take on the role.
I started my career studying and writing about television and children by watching my own children watch television and becoming very intrigued about the views of the world they were being shown in the preschool programmes they saw. I wasn’t alarmed or disapproving – just intrigued, also very entertained.
It’s all happening around Sky at the moment. The first was an unexpected bid from the US giant Comcast, disrupting the cosy deal that the Murdoch and Disney groups had planned. The second was Sky’s own doing: to offer Netflix subscriptions on the Sky and Now TV platforms… which now incorporate voice recognition. One is a fascinating business saga that will impact on user choice in the long term.
