It all started with Traumschiff (ZDF, since 1981). Traumschiff is the German version of Love Boat (CBS, 1977-1986). It is less humorous and more melodramatic, but there is an element of self-deprecation about it: the main stars engage in a lot of winking and eye-twinkling.
I was talking to my colleague Robin Ellis the other day (not the Robin Ellis who used to be in Poldark ; we couldn’t afford him): ‘Do you remember The Adventure Game , Robin?’ I asked. He looked at me blankly, as is his wont. ‘Early 80s, puzzle-based game, set on the planet Arg?’ Not a sausage. ‘The characters were really alien dragons in disguise, and all their names were anagrams of the word ‘dragon’? Silence deep as death.
Maybe it’s a sign of true equality in television when a woman writer gets a truly terrible drama screened on prime time, mainstream tv. But it’s a bit galling when the woman is one of British television’s most esteemed writers, Kay Mellor, and I am one of the target audience.
Ever since Feud aired in the U.K., just in advance of the main revelations concerning Harvey Weinstein and the collective activities of the #METOO movement in Hollywood, I have been wondering about the status of that classical narrative, the female celebrity catfight, in modern times.
Too often the joys of binge watching are only attributed to two types of people; those who are embracing a moment of solitary extreme laziness, or who are watching the new entire season of the newest thing RIGHT NOW AND TO THE EXCLUSION OF ALL OTHERS so as to talk to their friends about it. Recently I’ve discovered a third type of binge watcher – the breastfeeder.
Steal a little and they throw you in jail, Steal a lot and they make you king. — Bob Dylan, ‘Sweetheart Like You’ from Infidels (1983) Saturday, 20 January 2018, marked the one-year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Americans woke up to a federal government in shutdown mode. Hard core Trump supporters had voted for him to defibrillate the body politic.
This is a follow up to my last post for CST . Given that this is a blog about television it seems only fitting to begin with a brief recap: Previously On Quantitative Studies in Television… In my previous post I described some of my early attempts to analyse television at scale using some widely-available software and a few simple lines of code.
In a world of increased professional mobility, which often transplants scholars internationally for various lengths of stay, I have always felt myself at home with television. No matter where I moved – access being less of a problem today than ever before, I found a way to reconnect with what I loved, explore what is new, and understand the culture (and its misrepresentations) with a little help of my screen friends.
As we have reached the end of 2017, I thought it would be a good idea to do a recap on the programmes that were broadcast by Greek television, a detailed review of the typology and quality of the televised product that was “served” to the Greek audience. As I was thinking what kind of entertainment programmes, TV series, reality shows, talent shows etc.
Nurse Jackie began in 2009 as an original, fascinating show about a nurse addicted to oxycontin, created by Liz Brixius, Linda Wallem, and Evan Dunsky. Dunsky left the team after the second year of the seven season show, but Brixius and Wallem, who were a couple off-screen, continued to be partnered showrunners until the beginning of the fourth season.
