WHAT ACTORS DO: ADAM DRIVER IN GIRLS by Gary Cassidy and Simone Knox
Graduating from the Juilliard School as recently as 2009, Adam Driver is currently experiencing a...
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Author: CSTonline
STEREOTYPICAL DEPICTIONS OF IMMIGRANTS – THE CASE OF GERMAN ENTERTAINMENT TELEVISION by Dr. Martin R. Herbers
Stock characters in entertainment television are well known to all of us: the wise old man, the nurturing mother, and the rebellious teenager evoke images in our mind, accompanied by a set of character traits and flaws. They are...
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FOX’S SCREAM QUEENS AND THE POLITICS OF PASTICHE by Jordan Phillips
FOX’s horror-comedy series Scream Queens is the latest addition to the canon of Ryan Murphy and...
Read MoreCROSSING ALL OF TIME, SPACE AND SOUNDSCAPES – THE DOCTOR BREAKS THE DIEGETIC SOUND BARRIER by Liz Giuffre
Doctor Who fans were perhaps expecting a slow 2015. As Steven Moffat said himself in a recent interview with The Radio Times, “This year is not a new Doctor year, it’s not an anniversary, or a new companion year … it’s dangerous...
Read MoreSELF-EXOTICISM, TELEVISION, AND THE TRANSNATIONAL by Kenneth Longden
This paper aims to explore, and expand upon, a theme I recently raised at The Media Across Borders conference, Roehampton University (June, 2015), in relation to global television formats and the transnational. In particular, it...
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PROBLEMS WITH QUALITY by Elke Weissmann
In 1990, Charlotte Brunsdon wrote an article entitled ‘Problems with Quality’. It examined British...
Read MoreFROM TV ONLINE TO ONLINE TV by Cathy Johnson
This time last year I spent a fascinating day at the BBC with my colleague Paul Grainge interviewing members of staff responsible, in various ways, for BBC iPlayer. Whenever I interview TV practitioners the conceptual frameworks...
Read MoreRE-VISITING ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS: RUDE, CRUDE AND TOTALLY SPOT ON by Stefania Marghitu
I’ll always remember my initial reaction the first time I watched Absolutely Fabulous (BBC, 1992-2012). Edina Monsoon (played by co-creator Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy Stone (played by former model and co-star Joanna Lumley)...
Read MoreITV 60 VIEWING NOTES by Billy Smart
Network’s 12-disc collection ITV 60: Celebrating Sixty Years of ITV is a curious exercise. A compilation of 60 ITV programmes to mark the channel’s sixtieth anniversary, its selections derive from three separate sources. The...
Read MoreDÉJÀ VIEW: REMAKES, REBOOTS, AND THE FUTURE OF TELEVISION by Doug Howard
So here’s a list of show titles for you: The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Prison Break, The A-Team, Hart to Hart, Gilmore Girls, Star Trek, Full House, and Magyver. Looking at it, you might think that this was a catalog of DVD box sets...
Read MoreON THE ROAD TO SOMEWHERE by Toby Miller
As I write, I’m on the road in Colombia from Barranquilla (see this impressive citizen journalist seeking to enter Shakira’s home there) to Cartagena de Indias, which Francis Drake briefly captured from the Spanish in 1586....
Read MoreDOCTOR WHO AND THE BBC’S REMIT FOR EDUCATION AND INFORMATION by Carl Wilson
With recent debates and discussions surrounding the government’s Green Paper and the BBC’s Charter review (how the BBC should be funded; whether it distorts the market; if it should be self-regulated; and so on.) I have found it...
Read MoreWHAT’S IN STORE? by Richard Hewett
Providing a certain sense of symmetry, my first blog of the academic year returns to the same theme I examined way back in July, when I looked at options for bringing ‘old’ TV into the digital age. Earlier this month saw the...
Read MoreNASTY NANNIES IN DOCTOR WHO by Marcus Harmes
Beginning with the young single mother Nancy in ‘The Empty Child’ (2005) Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who stories have often included strongly written female characters. His creation of female roles reached new levels of variety and...
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SHERLOCK, AGENCY, AND ALGORITHM CULTURE by Kenneth A Longden
This article is the result of a recent, but brief conversation with Matt Hills on Facebook, where...
Read MoreSETTING THE TELEVISION SET SCENE by Sarah Arnold
I am long overdue a new television set. To my embarrassment, my television set is second hand, occasionally cuts out and sits atop an ugly prefabricated television stand that clashes with the surrounding 1950s-era furniture. I...
Read MoreUNVEILING ‘A’: CRITICAL FAN RESPONSES TO A TRANSGENDER VILLAINESS by W. Patrick Bingham
August 11, 2015 is the day Pretty Little Liars (2010-) unmasked ‘A’, a day five years in the making: (Spoiler) ‘A’ is CeCe Drake (Vanessa Ray) on PLL. I write about this reveal not just from a personal investment in the show or...
Read MoreTV & SOCIAL MEDIA: INSIDE/OUTSIDE TELEVISION PRODUCTION by James Bennett
’ve spent what little time I’ve had recently on the ADAPT TV History project trawling through the BBC Internet blog on topics to do with innovation and social media (I say what little time I have, as for heads of department like...
Read MoreNOT EVERY GIRL WANTS TO BE A PRINCESS: REMEMBERING XENA by Lorna Jowett
As Halloween came and went, various images of costumes circulated on social media. One of my favourites showed a mini-Predator with the caption ‘Not every girl wants to be a princess.’ My first response was to laugh in...
Read MoreSEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE CW by Susan Berridge
A few months ago the LA Times ran a piece entitled ‘Women at the CW work to keep sexual violence off their shows’. It detailed the discussions of the ‘Running the Show: The Women Executive Producers of the CW’ panel held at The...
Read MoreLISTENING, LOOKING AND JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: THE CHANGING METHODS OF THE POLICE DETECTIVE by Christine Geraghty
It was a quiet TV night and New Tricks (2003 – 2015) was coming to an end. In the Cold Case office, the three police detectives, brought out of retirement, and their younger boss were solving the case. They were reporting on the...
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DISAFFECTED DOES NOT EQUAL DEPRESSED: A RESPONSE TO LENA DUNHAM’S DARIA DIAGNOSIS by Jennifer O’Meara
On July 18, 2015, Lena Dunham shared the following diagnosis for the title character from Daria...
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THE RETURN OF THE SURGEON? SOCIAL PATHOLOGY AND MEDICAL NOSTALGIA IN THE KNICK by David Levente Palatinus
Mapping medical television is a complicated task. Not only because of the ubiquity of...
Read MoreWHAT IS A PhD AND WHAT IS IT FOR? by John Ellis
The doctoral thesis is the most problematic aspect of academic endeavour, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. Unlike the sciences, where a doctoral student is typically part of a team attached to a research...
Read MoreTHE RETURN OF THE SURGEON? SOCIAL PATHOLOGY AND MEDICAL NOSTALGIA IN THE KNICK by David Levente Palatinus
Mapping medical television is a complicated task. Not only because of the ubiquity of medically themed programmes, or because of the generic, stylistic and formal hybridity that characterises them, but also because, for some...
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