When I went with a friend to Plockton in the Scottish Highlands, admittedly over a decade ago, despite the fact that it was one of the main filming locations, memorabilia for Hammer Horror’s The Wicker Man (1973, dir. Hardy) were really nowhere to be seen. Instead, the tourist information centre had a number of Hamish MacBeth (BBC Scotland 1995-1997)[1] items on display.
For our readers outside the UK, I may have to let you know that something quite extraordinary has happened in the UK this week. A TV drama – a TV DRAMA – made, no less, by an, albeit commercial, but nevertheless PUBLIC SERVICE broadcaster, has thoroughly and utterly rattled the political establishment INTO ACTION. I am sorry for all the caps. But I feel it needs to be emphasised.
‘Nostalgia is always suspect’ (Atia and Davies 2010: 181). The trope of a hero who looks for a ‘normal’ life and then finds it unrewarding is common enough in the superhero and similar genres.
In 1983, the Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature was already noting Gothic’s altered eroticism from Byronic villainous figures in the works of Anne Rice; albeit still evil and dangerous and consumed by tormented doubt. Since then, the indefiniteness of the Gothic genre in its latest iteration, AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, (2022) provides pictorial scope for the bold attractions of the male body.
“Isn’t that the book that you were writing 30 years ago?” asked my dear friend Hilary. We were discussing a new volume about Blake’s 7 (1978-1981), the BBC science-fiction adventure series that ran between the dates that I just put in that bracket after its name and which was now being chronicled in a rather superb and brilliant and lavish new book – Blake’s 7 – Production Diary: Series A
Irish TV needs a strong female detective or crime sleuth in the vein of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple or Anne Cleeves’ wonderful character Vera on ITV1, starring Brenda Blethyn as Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumbria Police. It gets even better with Sally Wainwright’s creation, Happy Valley, set and filmed in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire.
August 17th 2023 and the Guardian ran an article entitled ‘How did Suits become America’s most-watched TV show of the summer?’ Good question.
Among the notable TV finales from this year, the curtain dropped on Barry , the dark dramedy that, for four seasons, absurdly examined the criminal world of hitman Barry Berkman and his bizarre attempt to give up murder for acting.
As part of my current master degree programme in media studies at the Film University Babelsberg, Germany, I had the opportunity to learn about research in television and the television industry at the conference Redefining Televisuality: Programmes, Practices, Methods . I was particularly interested in the panel on Netflix global strategies.
As Dhoest and Mertens (2013) note, when glocalising a text, dialect and accent are key elements of that form of adaptation. Though they were referring to the Flemish version of Ugly Betty, the glocalised telenovela par excellence, accent can be used and/or recognised even outside of glocalised adaptations.
