In 2013, Carol Vernallis published a brilliant book called Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video and the New Digital Cinema . In it, she eloquently describe the ‘media swirl’ which characterises the contemporary audiovisual landscape: characterised by heightened sonic and visual aesthetics in music and YouTube videos, these forms are impossible to sort into neat generic categories.
As The Good Wife is drawing to a close after seven seasons in the U.K. [Note: As this blog appears in the UK the series has just finished in the US], I found myself wondering why it is that Alicia Florrick has become something of a role model in my life.
A year ago Elke Weissmann wrote about finding time for television, and discussed that when we actually find that limited time in our day to sit down and watch television, we do not actually watch television. Instead we watch a specific programme, whether on DVD or on-demand, and are often prone to binge watching these programmes.
There’s been quite a bit of trending lately on Facebook about saving the BBC. I’ve done my fair bit of sharing a picture of the wonderful David Attenborough leaping to the broadcaster’s defence. Others have shared the BAFTA speeches which this year were full of praise for the corporation. This is perhaps no surprise since several programmes that won were made for or indeed by the BBC.
The death of Prince and the triumph of Leicester City in the English Premier League. One inevitable, the other not so. Each, untimely. No-one really knows as yet why either event occurred. One should become clear in the near future, while the other may remain eternally mysterious.
I have a book coming out. You didn’t know? Well, it’s called The Changing Spaces of Television Acting , and it examines how modern UK television performance has changed – and the various contextualising factors underpinning this – since the days of live, multi-camera studio production.
Question: What do the popular sci-fi television series’ Farscape (1999-2003) and Orphan Black (2013 – ) have in common? Answer: Neither featured in my undergraduate class ‘Science Fiction on Television’, but I can explain – I think.
One of the games played in the run-up to the BBC Charter renewal process (a process which is likely to be particularly brutal this time) is for critics to identify those programmes which can be used by BBC negotiators to put the Corporation in its best light, for audiences but particularly for politicians.
Entertainment television programmes help shape the public discourse on politics. As American political communication scholar R. Lance Holbert pointed out, these shows can play a vital part for the public understanding of politics and the public discourse on current issues.
The weeks surrounding the launch of the second season of the STARZ drama series Outlander – broadcast in the US on 9 April and released to Amazon Prime UK the day after – saw a spate of online journalism and fans swooning over the images released of Claire Randall/Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) dressed in extravagant period costumes.
