Television drama : form, agency, innovation / Trisha Dunleavy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dunleavy, Trisha.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Television plays, American--History and criticism.

Television plays, American.

Television plays, English--History and criticism.

Television plays, English.

Genre:

Television plays, American.

Physical Description:

xi, 278 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Summary:

Television Drama: Form, Agency, Innovation examines developments in American and British TV drama from television's broadcast-only era to its current multi-network, multi-platform age. Rather than attempting a comprehensive history of American or British TV drama through this period, Trisha Dunleavy uses iconic or influential programmes within a variety of genres as vehicles through which to examine broader tendencies in TV drama's creation, form, style and institutional role. Alongside the analysis of individual programmes, she considers key institutional conditions from which TV drama has gained or lost creative opportunities and as a result of which some programme forms have prevailed over others. Recognising the dominance of series and serial programming within all TV drama output, this book profiles the hour-long series, the high-budget serial, primetime soap opera and situation comedy, as dominant generic categories whose unusual allure, popularity and endurance have ensured their continuing centrality to the understanding of TV drama.

Contents:

Introduction 1

TV drama and the evolution of television 2

About this book 6

Agency, form and innovation 7

1 Television Drama: Forms and Contexts 10

Introduction 10

Television 'scarcity' and the emergence of drama 10

Public service and commercialism: Alternative philosophies of broadcasting 13

TV drama's key forms and genres 17

Commercialism, public service and institutional agency in TV drama 23

'Popular', 'serious' and 'quality' approaches to TV drama 28

Potentials for authorship in TV drama 33

Conclusions 36

2 Dominant Narrative Forms: The Series and the Serial 38

Introduction 38

From short-form to long-form drama: The American experience 39

A distinctive narrative aesthetic: Segmentalisation 44

Narrative theory and television 45

Hegemonic forms in TV drama: The series and the serial 50

Resolution and reassurance in the crime drama series 56

Doctor Who: Science fiction narrative from serial to series 61

Conclusions 65

3 Movements in Style: Naturalism, Realism and Modernism 67

Introduction 67

The institutionalisation of naturalism 68

'Nats Go Home' and the burgeoning of British TV drama's 'golden age' 71

Towards a new drama 72

A transitional aesthetic: Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home 74

Competing realisms 79

Progressive realism: Boys from the Blackstuff 82

'Non-naturalism' and Dennis Potter 86

Potter and modernism 88

Modernist TV drama: The Singing Detective 90

Conclusions 94

4 Serial Melodrama: The Soap Opera 97

Introduction 97

Cultural and commercial impacts of soap opera 98

A brief history of American and British soaps 100

Personal yet public: Some key appeals of soap opera 102

Key gratifications and functions of the community construct in soaps 105

Primetime groundbreaker: Coronation Street 108

'Everyone Has a Little Dirty Laundry': Soap opera as commercial product 112

Soap aesthetics: Melodrama and Spectacle in Dallas and Dynasty 117

Desperate Housewives as comedic supersoap 125

Conclusions 129

5 Narrative Complexity in Post-1980: Drama Series and Serials 132

Introduction 132

Multi-channel availability, increasing competition and market fragmentation 133

Falling ratings thresholds for drama and rising creative autonomy 138

'Quality' audiences, serial innovations and yuppie drama 140

'Quality TV' and the influence of Twin Peaks 144

Key 'complex' strategies: The flexi-narrative approach and series/serial blend 149

Categorising 'complex' drama series and serials 152

The creative frontiers of complexity in drama 158

Conclusions 161

6 Tradition and Innovation in Situation Comedy 164

Introduction 164

The institutional roles of American versus British sitcom 165

Commercial attributes of the sitcom's 'family' constructions 170

Situational and narrative stasis 172

Incorrigible characters and sitcom humour 175

Entrapment 176

The sitcom: An ideologically progressive form? 179

Sitcom's subversive edges: Primetime animation on American television 182

Single-camera sitcom 188

Comedy verité - BBC's The Office 190

Conclusions 196

7 Drama and 'TVIII': Innovations at the 'High-End' 198

Introduction 198

The changing business of television 199

'TVIII': A changing political economy for drama 201

American television post-1995: The impacts of deregulation and conglomeration 203

Some specificities of the British paradigm: 205

From TVII to TVIII 205

High-end drama and TVIII: Key characteristics and innovations 211

'Must see' allure 212

A higher profile for 'authorship' 214

'Generic mixing' in drama concept design 215

Narrative complexity 217

Enhanced visual quality and style 219

Case study of The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007) 222

Conclusions 231

Conclusions

Television 'scarcity' and drama's formative decades 233

Multi-channel competition and the 'quality' turn 237

TVIII: Diversification, globalisation and drama as 'first-order' commodity 239.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780230545519

0230545513

OCLC:

295002209