‘Winter is coming’, ‘Valar Morghulis’ and ‘You know nothing Jon Snow’ are widely-known expressions attesting to the global visibility of Game of Thrones ; each expression offering a reminder of the power of television to resonate through casual forms of oral culture.

At most screen and media studies conferences television scholarship is too often relegated to a single session or superficially dealt with as a contributory example when discussing broader industrial developments. However, the University of Westminster’s recent TRANS-TV conference focused solely on the specific and yet expansive notion of “transformations” in television.

Last Sunday, faced with a disappointing episode of Philip K.Dick’s Electric Dreams ( Sony Pictures TV for Channel 4, 2017 – ) on Channel 4 and the blandness, not to say offensiveness of watching episode 3 of The Last Post (BonafideFilms for BBC, 2017- ), we turned to a repeat of The Monocled Mutineer (BBC, 1986) on the Yesterday channel.

Local television outlets are essential places for the development and dissemination of local content. However, if you’re in a market that is anything other than America, the capitalist side of the industry has long fought against this – with commercial broadcasters in particular looking at cheap and reliable imports rather than necessarily investing in local productions. Cue another repeat of The Big Bang Theory.

Have you been watching Doctor Foster? Or Rellik? Or Strike? No? Me neither. Doctor Foster apparently drew over 8 million viewers to one of its episodes, but judging from my facebook feed, they were not impressed. Rellik scrapes around the 4 million mark, whilst Strike managed around 5 million.

… don’t worry; you’re still doing better than most modern undergraduates. Welcome back everyone – and what better way to start the academic year than with a good read? After what seems (to me) like an eternity, my first book – The Changing Spaces of Television Acting – was at last published at the end of August, and I have since been busily promoting it via whatever means possible.

Some of you may have read my previous blog on Comfort Telly, where I pondered if in the end the value of this type of TV Drama is in its actors and performances. (Granted, that the writing is central as well.) Last year ITV resurrected or rebooted their nineties success series Cold Feet (ITV, 1996 -) and with its return this week, I’ve been thinking back on series 6 or series 1 of the reboot.

At the end of the year BBC4 will be screening the third and final series of Detectorists (BBC/Channel X 2013 -), the sitcom written, directed by and starring Mackenzie Crook about a group of metal detector enthusiasts (‘detectorists’) in East Anglia.

Since its debut in 2010, HBO’s Game of Thrones has attracted a significant amount of criticism and celebration.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster (Nietzsche) For docudrama lovers like me, a new Peter Kosminsky production is always eagerly anticipated and the unfolding of The State over four consecutive evenings on Channel 4 last week made for a particularly intense viewing experience.