Quality Tv

In his seminal book "Television's Second Golden Age", Robert Thompson described quality TV as 'best defined by what it is not': 'it is not "regular" TV'. Audacious maybe, but his statement renewed debate on the meaning of this highly contentious term. Dealing primarily with the post-1996 era shaped by digital technologies and defined by consumer choice and brand marketing, this book brings together leading scholars, established journalists and experienced broadcasters working in the field of contemporary television to debate what we currently mean by quality TV. They go deep into contemporary American television fictions, from "The Sopranos" and "The West Wing", to "CSI" and "Lost" - innovative, sometimes controversial, always compelling dramas, which one scholar has described as 'now better than the movies!' But how do we understand the emergence of these kinds of fiction? Are they genuinely new? What does quality TV have to tell us about the state of today's television market? And is this a new Golden Age of quality TV? Original, often polemic, each chapter proposes new ways of thinking about and defining quality TV. There is a foreword from Robert Thompson, and heated dialogue between British and US television critics. Also included - and a great coup - are interviews with W. Snuffy Walden (scored "The West Wing" among others) and with David Chase ("The Sopranos" creator). "Quality TV" provides throughout groundbreaking and innovative theoretical and critical approaches to studying television and for understanding the current - and future - TV landscape.

Ever since HBO's slogan "It's Not TV, It's HBO" launched in 1996, so-called quality television has reached a new level of marketing, recognition, and indeed quality. With other networks imitating the formula, the "HBO effect" triggered a wave of creative output. This turn to quality set off two shifts: (a) Contemporary television staged an international resurgence of the auteur, and (b) America transformed into an "on-demand nation." The chapters in this volume analyze new television lifestyles including marginalized perspectives, fan participation, and an emerging nostalgia correlated with trash aesthetics.

The television industry is changing, and with it, the small screen's potential to engage in debate and present valuable representations of American history. Founded in 1972, HBO has been at the forefront of these changes, leading the way for many network, cable, and streaming services into the "post-network" era. Despite this, most scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing historical feature films and documentary films, leaving TV and the long-form drama hungry for coverage. In History by HBO: Televising the American Past, Rebecca Weeks fills the gap in this area of media studies and defends the historiographic power of long-form dramas. By focusing on this change and its effects, History by HBO outlines how history is crafted on television and the diverse forms it can take. Weeks examines the capabilities of the long-form serial for engaging with historical stories, insisting that the shift away from the network model and toward narrowcasting has enabled challenging histories to thrive in home settings. As an examination of HBO's unique structure for producing quality historical dramas, Weeks provides four case studies of HBO series set during different periods of United States history: Band of Brothers (2001), Deadwood (2004–2007), Boardwalk Empire (2012–2014), and Treme (2010–2013). In each case, HBO's lack of advertiser influence, commitment to creative freedom, and generous budgets continue to draw and retain talent who want to tell historical stories. Balancing historical and film theories in her assessment of the roles of mise-en–scène, characterization, narrative complexity, and sound in the production of effective historical dramas, Weeks' evaluation acts as an ode to the most recent Golden Age of TV, as well as a critical look at the relationship between entertainment media and collective memory.

A discussion of a truly international range of television programs, this title covers alternative modes of television such as digital and satellite.

Drawing worldwide acclaim from critics and audiences alike, programmes like The Killing, Borgen, The Bridge and The Legacy demonstrate widespread fascination with Danish style, aesthetics and culture as seen through television narratives. This book uses familiar, alongside lesser known, case studies of drama series to demonstrate how the particular features of Danish production - from work cultures, to storytelling techniques and trans-national cooperation - have enhanced contemporary Danish drama's appeal both at home and abroad. The era of globalisation has blurred national and international television cultures and promoted regular cross-fertilisation between film and television industries. Important questions have emerged from this context surrounding, for example, the 'Americanisation' of foreign television formats, the meaning and practice behind the term 'quality television', and the purpose and efficacy of public service broadcasting. Beyond the Bridge tackles these issues in relation to Danish television, by examining the so-called 'scaffolded production processes' behind the making of quality serials and their thought-provoking content. Drawing on popular motifs from these celebrated dramas such as foreign politics, organised crime, global warming, and the impact of multinational corporations, this timely book provides crucial insight into the Danish dramas at the forefront of sophisticated, forward-thinking, fictional television.

What is often termed 'Nordic Noir' has dominated detective fiction, film and television internationally for over two decades. But what are the parameters of this genre, both historically and geographically? What is noirish and what is northern about Nordic noir? The foreword and coda in this volume, by two internationally-bestselling writers of crime fiction in the north, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and Gunnar Staalesen, speak to the social contract undertaken by writers of noir, while the interview with the renowned crime writer Val McDermid adds nuance to our understanding of what it is to write noir in the North. Divided into four sections – Gender and Sexuality, Space and Place, Politics and Crime, and Genre and Genealogy – Noir in the North challenges the traditional critical histories of noir by investigating how it functions transnationally beyond the geographical borders of Scandinavia. The essays in this book deepen our critical understanding of noir more generally by demonstrating, for example, Nordic noir's connection to fin-de-siècle literatures and to mid-century interior design, and by investigating the function of the state in crime fiction.

Approaches to American Cultural Studies provides an accessible yet comprehensive overview of the diverse range of subjects encompassed within American Studies, familiarising students with the history and shape of American Studies as an academic subject as well as its key theories, methods, and concepts. Written and edited by an international team of authors based primarily in Europe, the book is divided into four thematically-organised sections. The first part delineates the evolution of American Studies over the course of the twentieth century, the second elaborates on how American Studies as a field is positioned within the wider humanities, and the third inspects and deconstructs popular tropes such as myths of the West, the self-made man, Manifest Destiny, and representations of the President of the United States. The fourth part introduces theories of society such as structuralism and deconstruction, queer and transgender theories, border and hemispheric studies, and critical race theory that are particularly influential within American Studies. This book is supplemented by a companion website offering further material for study (www.routledge.com/cw/dallmann). Specifically designed for use on courses across Europe, it is a clear and engaging introductory text for students of American culture.

The early years of the twenty-first century have seen dramatic changes within the television industry. The development of the internet and mobile phone as platforms for content directly linked to television programming has offered a challenge to the television set’s status as the sole domestic access point to audio-visual dramatic content. Viewers can engage with ‘television’ without ever turning a television set on. Whilst there has already been some exploration of these changes, little attention has been paid to the audience and the extent to which these technologies are being integrated into their daily lives. Focusing on a particular period of rapid change and using case studies including Spooks, 24 and Doctor Who, Transmedia Television considers how the television industry has exploited emergent technologies and the extent to which audiences have embraced them. How has television content been transformed by shifts towards multiplatform strategies? What is the appeal of using game formats to lose oneself within a narrative world? How can television, with its ever larger screens and association with domesticity, be reconciled with the small portable, public technology of the mobile phone? What does the shift from television schedules to online downloading mean for our understanding of ‘the television audience’? Transmedia Television will consider how the relationship between television and daily life has been altered as a result of the industry’s development of emerging new media technologies, and what ‘television’ now means for its audiences.