Jonathan Bignell | University of Reading (original) (raw)

Full text papers by Jonathan Bignell

Beckett’s Afterlives: Adaptation, Remediation, Appropriation, 2023

The Beckett on Film project (2000) adapted all nineteen of Beckett’s theatre works, creating scre... more The Beckett on Film project (2000) adapted all nineteen of Beckett’s theatre works, creating screen versions that were shown at film festivals, as television broadcasts, sold as a DVD box set and distributed via online video streaming. This chapter argues that these evolutions of the project are more significant than simply repackaging the content produced in one medium for distribution in another. Rather, they work with and reflect on the borders between mediums, and the ways that creative works fit into new medial environments. Beckett on Film can be seen not as a fixed text (or collection of texts), but as a mobile and mutable work that changes in relation to medium and audience, with different spatial and temporal specificities across the history of these adaptation processes. The chapter traces the British and Irish stories of how the Blue Angel production company, the Irish broadcaster RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) and the British Channel 4 television channel framed Beckett on Film in its various manifestations. The chapter addresses the project’s genesis, production, scheduling for cinema and its television screenings addressed to specialist, general and then educational audiences. It also considers how the project’s adaptation into the ‘new’ media of DVD and online video framed the series as a cultural asset and a prestige collectable, aligning it with discourses of taste and connoisseurship. The chapter makes the case for Beckett on Film’s resilience, and its fit with an emergent culture of media convergence in which medial boundaries are being renegotiated.

Moments in Television: Complexity/simplicity, 2022

In 1967, the first colour TV drama serial in the UK was broadcast: an adaptation of Thackeray’s V... more In 1967, the first colour TV drama serial in the UK was broadcast: an adaptation of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. This chapter evaluates the colour in Vanity Fair using analysis of the programme, archival documentation and public discourses at the time. The significance of colour in this serial relates to the aesthetic frameworks through which literary adaptations were conceptualised, and to what colour meant in the television culture of 1967. The achievement of Vanity Fair depends not only on how it looks today but also how it could have been viewed at the time it was made. As Britain’s first and oldest television institution it might seem simple and obvious that the BBC would take the next technical step in broadcasting. It might also seem simple and obvious that colour would offer greater realism and visual pleasure to viewers. These ways of understanding simplicity depend on an assumption of incremental development, adaptation and extension. But conversely, the engineering challenges of making colour pictures and the production challenges of staging a multi-episode serial in colour were immense. For cultural commentators and BBC executives, there were also concerns about the tastefulness of colour, which was tainted both by an association with Hollywood and the uneven technical quality of US colour television. Introducing colour was fraught with difficulty and risk, and meant finding a way through complexities of technology, institutional policy and cultural politics. It also demanded creative responses to new artistic challenges, making the most of colour while maintaining conformity with established aesthetic norms.

Moments in Television: Sound/image, 2022

This chapter analyses the unusual and expressive uses of both visual style and sound in an episod... more This chapter analyses the unusual and expressive uses of both visual style and sound in an episode of the science fiction TV series The Twilight Zone, ‘The Invaders’ (1961). The episode has no dialogue, though it has some framing narration spoken direct to camera, and it has little music. Nevertheless, this chapter makes the case that the consequent rebalancing of the usual expressive means available to television is both innovative and compelling. The absence of sound becomes an occasion to think more precisely about what sound does, and by removing some of the usual functions of sound the episode allows us to question the customary hierarchy in which sound is a support for the image. Shifts in the viewer’s knowledge of the fictional world depend on how image and sound manipulate our relationship with the female protagonist of ‘The Invaders’ in both conventional and unconventional ways. Sounds produced by her vocally, by her body movement and as a result of actions she initiates, as well as sounds coming from alien invaders and their technologies, carry an extraordinary weight because of the lack of other kinds of audio information. Lack of the speech which would usually convey information, emotion and tone encourages the viewer to attend to images more intensely than usual, reading details of setting, costume, posture and facial expression for example, to make sense of the action.

Moments in Television: Substance/style, 2022

This chapter argues that the US science fiction adventure series The Time Tunnel (1966-7) is abou... more This chapter argues that the US science fiction adventure series The Time Tunnel (1966-7) is about television: about the capabilities of the medium, the experience of watching it and the technological apparatus that television comprises. Visually, the series often adopts a grandiose, excessive visual style, especially in the opening episode focused on here. Key images are characterised by a sense of scale and visual spectacle, and the format seems calculated to advertise the attractions of colour television and the episodic adventure narratives that television offered in the USA in the mid-1960s. The opening episode introduces the viewer to a massive underground base hidden beneath an American desert, in which an extraordinarily costly government project is being secretly carried out. At the heart of this technological facility, a physical apparatus, the massive Time Tunnel itself, acts as a portal for the protagonists to move to any moment in the past or the future, though without control over their destination. This premise is a self-reflexive representation of what television can do, transporting its viewer to real or simulated places and times beyond his or her experience, and engaging the viewer in thrilling narratives of exploration and peril. The style of the series, I suggest, articulates the substance of what television might be.

Beckett and Media, 2022

This chapter analyses the aesthetics of Beckett’s dramas for TV, in relation to theorisations of ... more This chapter analyses the aesthetics of Beckett’s dramas for TV, in relation to theorisations of the significance of texture in television and film, and histories of television production and reception technologies. It compares Walter Asmus’s 1986 television version of Was Wo [What Where] with his 2013 reworking of the same drama for the screen. The earlier version was broadcast in 625-line video, limiting contrasts between light and dark, whereas the 2013 What Where is in HD digital format, enhancing image clarity but stretching the limits of TV technology for the representation of black. These technical and aesthetic comparisons are placed in the context of Beckett’s earlier screen dramas of the 1960s and 1970s, which also exploited and challenged the video and film technologies used to produce them. By focusing on black, the chapter explores the significance of unlit space and texture in Beckett’s screen work. It argues that Beckett’s TV work uses the apparent nullity of black to draw attention to the representational capabilities of the TV screen, and links visual style to the materiality of television technologies.

Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television, 2022

As a living writer, Samuel Beckett’s personal connections with performers, directors and theatre... more As a living writer, Samuel Beckett’s personal connections with performers, directors and theatre venues could be harnessed by production staff keen to present his work on television. For Beckett’s collaborators, adapting his plays offered other opportunities: small casts, single settings and suitability for shooting in the controlled environment of the television studio. Public service imperatives to disseminate his work underpinned repeated adaptations of Beckett’s plays throughout the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, often drawing on broadcasters’ links with theatre venues, productions and personnel. But television adaptations of Beckett’s theatre work received poor ratings and audience feedback; they looked old-fashioned because they were recorded in a studio, and their long takes with few cuts could make the plays seem ‘theatrical’ rather than ‘televisual’. In Britain adaptations of Krapp’s Last Tape appeared in both the BBC’s Festival and Thirty Minute Theatre series, but it was mainly arts programmes like Arena on BBC2 that transmitted original and co-produced or imported productions of Beckett’s plays. This chapter discusses a range of different kinds of Beckett adaptation, and places three adaptations of Krapp’s Last Tape within that broader context. The three productions use different strategies to direct viewers’ attention to bravura performances in relatively fully-realised sets, and a comparison of the versions offers ways to address questions about what television adaptations of theatre aimed to achieve, and the opportunities and constraints with which they negotiated.

Transatlantic Television Drama: Industries, Programs, and Fans, 2019

The chapter focuses on the comedy drama Episodes (2011-18), made by the British production compan... more The chapter focuses on the comedy drama Episodes (2011-18), made by the British production company Hat Trick for the BBC and Showtime. A British husband and wife duo of screenwriters work on a US network adaptation of their hit UK comedy show, which is “Americanized,” and they fight for their creative authority and their marriage. Episodes has a hybrid identity in terms of form, format and genre, expressed in decisions including setting, casting, and performance style. Each of these can be read as a commentary on the similarities and differences between American and British television cultures, alongside the narrative’s thematization of cultural and national differences. Episodes talks about transatlantic television, and self-consciously performs it, asking whether a program or a person can be transatlantic by making a joke of it. The chapter argues that Episodes is a meta-commentary on deeply embedded myths about the TV of each nation.

The Moving Form of Film: Historicising the Medium through Other Media, 2023

Working on intermediality from a historical and comparative perspective, this chapter analyses co... more Working on intermediality from a historical and comparative perspective, this chapter analyses co-dependency and cross-fertilization between examples drawn from screen culture, the stage and broadcasting. It derives from an intermedial research project, “Pinter Histories and Legacies”, that documented Harold Pinter’s work on the stage, radio, television and in cinema, thus tracing historiographic connections between media, across chronologies, between Pinter’s life and his work, and between Pinter and numerous other creative figures and their output. The chapter uses Pinter as the common thread between Roman Polanski’s film "Cul de Sac", Pinter’s play "The Birthday Party" and the BBC TV sitcom "Steptoe and Son". This investigation leads to a methodological debate about the limits of intermedial methodologies, and the paper argues for historicization in intermedial studies.

CSTonline, 2023

The US science fiction adventure TV series "The Time Tunnel" (1966-7) is about television. It’s a... more The US science fiction adventure TV series "The Time Tunnel" (1966-7) is about television. It’s about the capabilities of the medium, its technologies and the experience of watching it. The Tunnel is a portal through which the protagonists can travel to any moment in the past or the future, and this short blog argues that the Tunnel is therefore a metaphor for television. It can transport us to real or imagined places and times, and engage us in thrilling narratives of exploration and peril such as the sinking of the Titanic. It even looks like a giant television tube and screen. This blog analyses "The Time Tunnel"'s visual style, its TV format and how it was produced, in the context of 1960s TV culture.

CSTonline, 2023

The "Beckett on Film" project comprised films of all 19 of Samuel Beckett's plays, adapted for th... more The "Beckett on Film" project comprised films of all 19 of Samuel Beckett's plays, adapted for the screen by renowned directors. This blog details their movement from being art films shown at international festivals, to a season of TV programmes in the evening schedule, then TV broadcasts for schools, a DVD box set and then finally videos uploaded to YouTube. This movement from one medium to another is shown to be a survival strategy that allows the plays to adapt to changing media technologies and environments.

CSTonline, 2022

This week is the 100th anniversary of the BBC. This blog is about some of my own relationships wi... more This week is the 100th anniversary of the BBC. This blog is about some of my own relationships with BBC programmes and people, from my childhood to my role as a lecturer about TV Studies.

Television Performance, 2019

This chapter addresses how critical analysis might describe and evaluate non-human “performances”... more This chapter addresses how critical analysis might describe and evaluate non-human “performances” in television fiction, and how they affect distinctions between actor and role, and between character and narrative function. Across the history and genres of television, there have been very many “objects” that narratives make expressive but that are not human, nor even, in some cases, alive at all. The chapter considers the balloon-like Rovers of "The Prisoner" TV series, the kangaroos in "Skippy The Bush Kangaroo", and the puppets and models in "Thunderbirds", arguing that if they are to play their part in the fictional world, each of these "things" needs to function as an expressive “performer”. It argues that the boundaries between self and other, human and non-human, are thus destabilised and reflect on the labour of creation in television. The chapter draws on theories of performance, political economy and mise-en-scene.

Viewfinder, 2022

Beckett's plays written or adapted for British television during the author's lifetime were rarel... more Beckett's plays written or adapted for British television during the author's lifetime were rarely screened in drama slots but instead in arts series on BBC2. It was under the auspices of Arena in 1982 that BBC's most significant Beckett season was broadcast, in December of that year. Arena had not commissioned any of the productions, drawing instead on recordings previously made for BBC, showing a film acquired from the USA and a Beckett drama made for German television. All but one of the programmes in the season was briefly introduced by the critic and BBC drama producer Martin Esslin, but these were not original arts documentaries of the kind normally made for Arena. The Beckett season offers interesting insights into how the remit of Arena could accommodate different kinds of curation and presentation within the genre of arts programming.

CSTonline, 2022

This is a blog based on a chapter I have published about unusual and expressive uses of sound in ... more This is a blog based on a chapter I have published about unusual and expressive uses of sound in TV. It focuses on an episode of the science fiction series The Twilight Zone: 'The Invaders' (1961). The episode has no dialogue, though it has some narration spoken to camera and some music, and the absence of speech made me think about what sound in TV drama does, in relation to image, performance, genre, narrative and affect.

Popular television drama: critical perspectives, 2005

This chapter connects a study of the commissioning and production processes of the BBC science fi... more This chapter connects a study of the commissioning and production processes of the BBC science fiction drama series Doctor Who with the larger theoretical question of the understandings of 'quality' guiding its production and reception in the 1960s. The chapter is based on many primary source documents from the BBC Written Archives Centre.

From Page to Screen: Adaptations of the Classic Novel, 2000

This chapter gives brief definitions and explanations of the genre of the Gothic in literature, t... more This chapter gives brief definitions and explanations of the genre of the Gothic in literature, then focuses on Dracula and adaptations of Bram Stoker's novel in TV and especially film. This includes the history of adaptations of Dracula into theatre and the impact of Victorian melodrama on film and TV Draculas. The chapter also discusses theoretical and cultural reasons for Dracula’s popularity in the film and TV media, and the fascination with this character and story.

Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film, 2005

This chapter focuses on an overlapping series of journeys. It offers several interpretive journey... more This chapter focuses on an overlapping series of journeys. It offers several interpretive journeys from the detail of brief moments in Badlands to critical frameworks for discussing the meanings of the film as whole. These movements from detail to meaning also entail the linkage of aspects of the film to broader film-theoretical problematics such as genre, narration, gender and familial roles, and the placing of the film in a historical context within the American film culture of the 1970s. While the interpretive discussion of Badlands demonstrates the power of detailed film analysis to open up a vista of theoretical and cultural study, the purpose of the analysis is not only to explore the meanings of this film in particular (an enterprise necessarily restricted by constraints of space), but also to reflect on the discursive process of film criticism.

Time and Relative Dissertations in Space: Critical Perspectives on Doctor Who, 2007

This chapter draws on archival research, analysis of programmes and theoretical approaches to chi... more This chapter draws on archival research, analysis of programmes and theoretical approaches to childhood and children’s culture. It discusses three aspects of the mid-1960s Dalek serials in BBC's Doctor Who using these methodologies. First, it presents an analysis of the design of the programme format for children watching with their parents, and locates
the assumptions about children as addressees that this involved. This issue is connected to conceptions of Public Service Broadcasting, the capabilities and interests of children, and relationships with other programme forms. Second, the chapter shows how the figure of Susan Foreman in particular, but also other humanoid characters and the monstrous Daleks, offer patterns of identification and disidentification which construct the place of the child as a valued proto-adult, but also an alien creature. Finally, the chapter discusses the invocation of children as consumers of Doctor Who-related merchandise, especially products relating to Daleks, and how the domestic consumption of television and merchandise remodulates the two other parts of the argument.

Genre and performance: film and television, 2010

The hybrid television form of docudrama, blending documentary and drama conventions and modes of ... more The hybrid television form of docudrama, blending documentary and drama conventions and modes of address, poses interesting methodological problems for an analysis of performance. Its topics, mise-en-scène and performers invite a judgement in relation to the real events and situations, settings and personae represented, and also in relation to the ways the viewer has perceived them in other media representations such as news, current affairs interviews and documentary features. Docudrama’s performance of the real asks the viewer to evaluate it in relation to anterior knowledge. But because of their adoption of conventions from drama, docudramas also draw on performance modes from fictional television forms and invite audiences to invest their emotions and deploy their knowledge of codes used in fictional naturalism or melodrama. These hybrid frameworks for viewing militate against docudrama being able to cultivate the authenticity or sobriety
associated historically with documentary. However, on the other hand, the multiplicity of available interpretive frameworks and routes of access for the audience can also enrich and broaden the pleasures and social purchase of docudrama. This chapter ranges over examples of docudramas on the post-1990 period, mainly made wholly or partly in the UK, to discuss some of the distinctions between kinds of docudrama performance, the implications of their links with related television forms and how docudrama performance exploits the capacities of television as a medium.

CSTonline, 2022

In the light of the imminent publication of three collections of chapters about specific "moments... more In the light of the imminent publication of three collections of chapters about specific "moments" in TV programmes, this short blog reflects on the status of programmes and extracts from them in TV Studies methodologies. It refers to earlier work on the issues at stake in selection, canonisation, close analysis, evidence and aesthetic criticism in the discipline, especially as I have encountered them in my own work. It argues for the approach taken in the "Moments in Television" book series from Manchester University Press, where TV is regarded as an art form and approached from an aesthetic perspective.

Beckett’s Afterlives: Adaptation, Remediation, Appropriation, 2023

Moments in Television: Complexity/simplicity, 2022

Moments in Television: Sound/image, 2022

Moments in Television: Substance/style, 2022

Beckett and Media, 2022

Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television, 2022

Transatlantic Television Drama: Industries, Programs, and Fans, 2019

The Moving Form of Film: Historicising the Medium through Other Media, 2023

CSTonline, 2023

CSTonline, 2022

Television Performance, 2019

Viewfinder, 2022

CSTonline, 2022

Popular television drama: critical perspectives, 2005

From Page to Screen: Adaptations of the Classic Novel, 2000

Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film, 2005

Time and Relative Dissertations in Space: Critical Perspectives on Doctor Who, 2007

Genre and performance: film and television, 2010

CSTonline, 2022

An Introduction to Television Studies, first edition, 2004

In this comprehensive textbook, Jonathan Bignell provides students with a framework for understan... more In this comprehensive textbook, Jonathan Bignell provides students with a framework for understanding the key concepts and main approaches to Television Studies, including audience research, television history and broadcasting policy, and the analytical study of individual programmes. Features include a glossary of key terms, key terms defined in margins, suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, activities for use in class or as assignments, and case studies discussing advertisements such as the Guinness 'Surfer' ad, approaches to news reporting, and programmes such as Big Brother, The West Wing, America's Most Wanted and The Cosby Show. Individual chapters address: studying television, television histories, television cultures, television texts and narratives, television and genre, television production, postmodern television, television realities, television representation, television you can't see, shaping audiences, television in everyday life.

Book edited by Sarah Cardwell, Jonathan Bignell and Lucy Fife Donaldson. , 2022

Substance and style have been attended to separately in different strands of television studies, ... more Substance and style have been attended to separately in different strands of television studies, from those who have sought to establish the discipline as serious and worthy of study, to the work of television aesthetics which has taken stylistic achievement as a primary focus. This collection interrogates and overturns the typical relationships between the terms, instead setting them alongside one another and renegotiating their relationship through new perspectives and with reference to a range of television programming. Contributors draw attention to the ways substance and style inform one another, placing value on their integration and highlighting the potential for new meanings to form through their combination. In this way, the binary is used to re-evaluate television that has been deemed a failure, or to highlight the achievements of programming or creative personnel who are less celebrated. Chapters present style as a matter of substance, in terms of it being both part of the material constitution of television and an aspect of television that rewards detailed attention. Substance is developed through a range of interpretations which invite discussion of television’s essential qualities and capabilities as well as its meaningfulness, in conjunction with its stylistic achievements.
Programmes studied comprise The Americans, Call the Midwife, Les Revenants, The Good Wife, Friends, The Simpsons, John From Cincinnati, Police Squad!, and The Time Tunnel. Substance and style are evaluated across these examples from a wide range of television forms, formats and genres, which include series and serial dramas, sitcoms, science-fiction, animation, horror, thrillers and period dramas.

Book edited by Sarah Cardwell, Jonathan Bignell and Lucy Fife Donaldson. , 2022

In television scholarship, sound and image have been attended to in different ways, but image has... more In television scholarship, sound and image have been attended to in different ways, but image has historically dominated. The chapters gathered here attend to both: they weigh the impact and significance of specific choices of sound and image, explore their interactions, and assess their roles in establishing meaning and style. The contributors address a wide range of technical and stylistic elements relating to the television image. They consider production design choices, the spatial organisation of the television frame, and how camera movements position and reposition parts of the visible world. They explore mise-en-scène, landscapes and backgrounds, settings and scenery, and costumes and props. They attend to details of actors’ performances, as well as lighting design and patterns of colour and scale. As regards sound, each chapter distinguishes different components on a soundtrack, delineating diegetic from non-diegetic sound, and evaluating the roles of elements such as music, dialogue, voice-over, bodily sounds, performed and non-performed sounds. Attending to sound design, contributors address motifs, repetition and rhythm in both music and non-musical sound. Consideration is also given to the significance of quietness, the absence of sounds, and silence.
Programmes studied comprise The Twilight Zone, Inspector Morse, Children of the Stones, Dancing on the Edge, Road, Twin Peaks: The Return, Bodyguard, The Walking Dead and Mad Men. Sound and image are evaluated across these examples from a wide range of television forms, formats and genres, which includes series, serial and one-off dramas, children’s programmes, science fiction, thrillers and detective shows.

Book edited by Sarah Cardwell, Jonathan Bignell and Lucy Fife Donaldson., 2022

This collection appraises an eclectic selection of programmes, exploring and weighing their parti... more This collection appraises an eclectic selection of programmes, exploring and weighing their particular achievements and their contribution to the television landscape. It does so via a simultaneous engagement with the concepts of complexity and simplicity. This book considers how complexity, which is currently attracting much interest in TV studies, impacts upon the practice of critical and evaluative interpretation. It engages reflectively and critically with a range of recent work on televisual complexity, expands existing conceptions of complex TV and directs attention to neglected sources and types of complexity. It also reassesses simplicity, a relatively neglected category in TV criticism, as a helpful criterion for evaluation. It seeks out and reappraises the importance of simple qualities to particular TV works, and explores how simplicity might be revalued as a potentially positive and valuable aesthetic feature. Finally, the book illuminates the creative achievements that arise from balancing simplicity with complexity.
The contributors to this collection come from diverse areas of TV studies, bringing with them myriad interests, expertise and perspectives. All chapters undertake close analysis of selected moments in television, considering a wide range of stylistic elements including mise-en-scène, spatial organisation and composition, scripting, costuming, characterisation, performance, lighting and sound design, colour and patterning. The range of television works addressed is similarly broad, covering UK and US drama, comedy-drama, sitcom, animation, science fiction, adaptation and advertisement. Programmes comprise The Handmaid’s Tale, House of Cards, Father Ted, Rick and Morty, Killing Eve, The Wire, Veep, Doctor Who, Vanity Fair and The Long Wait.

Book edited by Sarah Cardwell, Jonathan Bignell and Lucy Fife Donaldson, 2023

This collection appraises an eclectic selection of programmes, exploring and weighing their parti... more This collection appraises an eclectic selection of programmes, exploring and weighing their particular achievements and their contribution to the television landscape. It does so via a simultaneous engagement with the concepts of the epic and the everyday. The book explores how both the epic and the everyday inform television’s creative practice as well as critical and scholarly responses to TV. It argues that a fuller consideration of these two modes can revitalise TV criticism and interpretation, enabling fresh perspectives on the value of television, its essential qualities and aesthetic significance.
The contributors to this collection come from diverse areas of TV studies, bringing with them myriad interests, expertise and perspectives. All chapters undertake close analysis of selected moments in television, considering a wide range of stylistic elements including mise-en-scène, spatial organisation and composition, scripting, costuming, characterisation, performance, lighting and sound design, colour and patterning. The range of television works addressed is similarly broad, covering UK and US drama, comedy-drama, sitcom, science fiction and detective shows. Programmes comprise The Incredible Hulk, Game of Thrones, Detectorists, Community, Doctor Who, The Second Coming, Years and Years, The Americans, Columbo and Lost.
Epic /everyday is essential reading for those interested in how closer attention to the presence of the epic and the everyday might enhance our critical appreciation and enjoyment of television.

This is Chapter 1 of my book, Bignell, J., Big Brother: Reality TV in the Twenty- first Century (... more This is Chapter 1 of my book, Bignell, J., Big Brother: Reality TV in the Twenty- first Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 8-32. The book is available to buy from http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781403916846.

This is the accepted version of Bignell, J., 'The Police Series' in J. Gibbs and D. Pye (eds), Cl... more This is the accepted version of Bignell, J., 'The Police Series' in J. Gibbs and D. Pye (eds), Close Ups 03 London: Wallflower, 2009), pp. 1-66. There are chapters about Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, NYPD Blue, Homicide Life on the Street, and CSI Crime Scene Investigation. A scanned PDF of the full published text is also available at https://reading.academia.edu/JonathanBignell but this version is easier to read on a screen and has colour pictures.

European Television History brings together television historians and media scholars to chart the... more European Television History brings together television historians and media scholars to chart the development of television in Europe since its inception. The volume interrogates the history of the medium in divergent political, economic, cultural and ideological national contexts.

Taking a comparative approach to the topic, the volume is organized around a set of common questions, themes, and methodological reflections. It deals with European television in the context of television historiography and transnational traditions. Case study chapters written by scholars from different European countries to reflect their specific areas of expertise

This document describes a research project that was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Coun... more This document describes a research project that was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (grant RG/14351) and ran from September 2002 until June 2005. It combined analytical and archival study of British TV drama programmes with generic, institutional and cultural study of the professional context of British TV drama output. Research addressed the theoretical and methodological questions arising from the study of 'popular' television drama forms and established how distinctions between 'popular' British TV drama and flagship 'serious' drama were dependent on institutional forces and conflicts within and between television institutions, including the regional organisation of TV production, changes in policy and regulation, and the detail of production practices. In the course of this work, the project team analysed how a body of canonical texts and received histories have been established in previous studies of British Television Drama, evaluating this process and questioning its methods, theoretical assumptions, and inclusions and exclusions. Results of the research were disseminated by means of publication for academic audiences in the form of journal articles, book chapters, monographs and an edited collection of essays. In addition, four one-day symposia were held at which members of the project team, academic speakers and television producers and directors presented new academic research and (in the case of TV professionals) reflected on their working practices and experience in the television industry.

This document describes a research project that ran from 1996-2000 and was a collaboration betwee... more This document describes a research project that ran from 1996-2000 and was a collaboration between the Department of Film, Theatre & Television and colleagues in English at the University of Reading. It was funded by the Humanities Research Board of the British Academy. The project was led by Jonathan Bignell and Stephen Lacey, working with the research fellow Madeleine Macmurraugh-Kavanagh. The topic of research was the BBC's series of television plays broadcast between 1964 and 1970 under the collective title 'The Wednesday Play'. The series was investigated and evaluated in terms of its place within the BBC as a broadcasting institution, and in relation to wider aspects of British cultural and political life. This involved exploring the commissioning and production process, the development of the series over time, the reception of the plays by television viewers, and the aesthetic and ideological factors which affected the series from both inside and outside the BBC. The research understood the Wednesday Play series in its dialogue with British theatre plays and with other kinds of television broadcasting and cinema. The project involved original archival research into the resources at the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham, Reading, as well as textual criticism, cultural study, methodological and theoretical work. Activities As well as publications, the project initiated symposia and conferences where speakers included television executives, producers, writers, directors and performers, as well as academics. Some of the conference presentations, including those by television professionals, were published in the book British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future and in a revised, augmented book British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future second edition.

This document describes a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (gr... more This document describes a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant AH/H018662/1) that ran from July 2010 to March 2015. The project was led by Prof. Jonathan Bignell in the department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading, who worked with two Postdoctoral Researchers, Dr Leah Panos and Dr Billy Smart, and subsequently Dr Lucy Donaldson. Co-Investigators Prof. Stephen Lacey (Glamorgan) and Prof. James Chapman (Leicester) respectively supervised PhDs for the project by Ben Lamb and Victoria Byard. We studied a broad range of television fiction produced in the UK from 1955-94 and found that spaces of production (in TV studios designed for multi-camera shooting, in enclosed sound stages and on location) conditioned the form and visual style of programmes in a range of ways affecting scenic design, performance and shot composition, for example. The fictional spaces represented on screen used the opportunities and constraints of studio and exterior space, film and video technologies, and liveness and recording creatively, exploiting professional competences that we explored in particular case studies. The genres of programme we studied included the police and adventure series, science fiction, soap opera and period costume drama. We showed how changing television technology affected the different roles of professional workers such as producers, directors, designers and performers, reflecting on how they dealt with physical space in their work.

This document describes a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (gr... more This document describes a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant AH/E509592/1) that ran from October 2007 until September 2010. It was based in the department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading. Dr Derek Paget led the research, assisted by Professor Jonathan Bignell and Professor Lib Taylor, with Dr Heather Sutherland as the project’s Postdoctoral Researcher. The project set out to examine the premise that political change domestically and internationally since 1990 has contributed to a greater prominence in British stage and screen culture for the docudrama. We chose to interview actors who had performed in docudrama in order to assess their contribution. In theatre, we researched Documentary Theatre's substantial revival in the forms of the 'Verbatim' and 'Tribunal' theatre plays produced at (for example) the Royal Court and the Tricycle Theatres. The accent on testimony and witness statement evident in theatre forms has also manifested itself in television, where blending of genres has reshaped conventions of documentary and drama forms and created new hybrids that emphasise the personal (e.g. docusoap, Reality TV, documusical). The 'Historical-Event' TV docudrama also provided a focus for study. In film, synergy between the film and television industries has led to an increased presence of docudramatic forms. Films have been 'dual purposed' for release to both small and large screens, and workers in both industries (including actors) routinely move between them. Film form has gone beyond the 'biopic', with films that owe much to television docudrama (incorporating, for example, more archive footage and graphical information). On stage and screen, the use of facts in drama has been an important part of a general media response to political and social change. Docudrama has become part of a cultural response to greater national and global uncertainty.

This document describes a research project that was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Co... more This document describes a research project that was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant no.19295) and ran from May 2005 until August 2008. It was led by Prof. Jonathan Bignell in the Department of Film Theatre & Television at the University of Reading, working with Postdoctoral Researchers Simone Knox and subsequently Elke Weissmann. The project studied how the import and export exchanges of television fiction between the USA and Britain in the 1970-2000 period affected the ways that television drama was planned, made and received. It combined a critical overview of this issue with case studies that analysed specific programmes or debates such as questions of quality, genre and audience address. The research examined how acquired programmes change aesthetically when screened outside their originating country, including changes to the texts themselves, and their distribution and reception contexts. This included work on scheduling, programme flow, regulation, advertisement breaks, public discourses of reception in the press, and programmes' relations with the brand identity of the channels on which acquired British and US programmes were screened. The document lists the events and publications created by the project team.

This document describes a research project that ran from October 2006 to September 2009, funded b... more This document describes a research project that ran from October 2006 to September 2009, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, which focused on the spontaneous drawings – ‘doodles’ – that the writer Samuel Beckett made in his manuscripts and notebooks. The project’s objectives were to catalogue Beckett’s spontaneous drawings, and to examine them through artistic practice and theoretical work. More broadly, the research evaluated the philosophical and aesthetic significance of spontaneous drawing for Beckett’s oeuvre and contributed to the theorisation of doodles in relation to psychopathology and the phenomenology of perception. The document also lists publications and exhibitions produced by the project Senior Research Fellow, Dr Bill Prosser.

This chapter addresses how critical analysis might describe and evaluate non-human “performances”... more This chapter addresses how critical analysis might describe and evaluate non-human “performances” in television fiction, and how they affect distinctions between actor and role, and between character and narrative function. Across the history and genres of television, there have been very many “objects” that narratives make expressive but that are not human, nor even, in some cases, alive at all. The chapter considers the balloon-like Rovers of "The Prisoner" TV series, the kangaroos in "Skippy", and the puppets and models in "Thunderbirds", arguing that if they are to play their part in the fictional world, each of these things needs to function as an expressive “performer”. It argues that the boundaries between self and other, human and non-human, are thus destabilised and reflect on the work of creation in television.

James Bond Uncovered, 2018

Beckett and nothing, 2020

Pop Beckett, Dec 11, 2019

This chapter analyses the neglected story of James Bond’s early life in television. There were nu... more This chapter analyses the neglected story of James Bond’s early life in television. There were numerous approaches to Fleming about adapting his Bond novels for television. In 1954 the American CBS network broadcast Casino Royale as a live TV drama, the first screen Bond, but for decades afterwards it remained a ‘lost’ programme. The novel Dr. No, leading to the first Bond film adaptation, derived from a pilot episode for a Bond television series that was never made. A cycle of 1960s British and American television series such as The Avengers, Danger Man and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. drew on Bondian iconography and narrative tropes. These were echoes of an absent television Bond, whose remediations illuminate questions of medium specificity, adaptation and genre.

Humanities research, 2021

This article argues that cringe humour in British television had begun at least by the early 1960... more This article argues that cringe humour in British television had begun at least by the early 1960s and derived from a theatre history in which conventions of Naturalism were modified by emergent British writers working with European avant-garde motifs. The article makes the case by analysing the importance of cringe to the BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son, tracing its form and themes back to the ‘comedy of menace’ and ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ emblematised by the early work of playwright Harold Pinter. The article links the play that made Pinter’s reputation, The Birthday Party, to dramatic tropes and social commentary identified in Steptoe and Son and in other British sitcoms with cringe elements. The analysis not only discusses relationships between the different dramatic works on stage and screen but also pursues some of the other connections between sitcom and Pinter’s drama via networks of actors and contemporaneous discourses of critical commentary. It assesses the political stakes of...

Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui, 2020

This article analyses tensions between medium specificity and intermediality in Beckett’s first o... more This article analyses tensions between medium specificity and intermediality in Beckett’s first original drama for television, Eh Joe (1966), which exploits features of the medium such as the spatiality of the studio, monochrome images and close-up. But its visual motifs also echo Beckett’s cinema debut, Film (1964), and uses of sound and voice from his radio plays. The public promotion of Eh Joe centred on its relationships with Beckett’s theatre plays, while Eh Joe’s first audiences adduced frames of reference from both theatre and television. Eh Joe works with the porosity of media boundaries and performatively renegotiates them.

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2020

Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies, 2018

An expanded conception of performance study can disturb current theoretical and historical assump... more An expanded conception of performance study can disturb current theoretical and historical assumptions about television’s medial identity. The article considers how to write histories of the dominant forms and assumptions about performance in British and American television drama and analyses how acting is situated in relation to the multiple meaning-making components of television. A longitudinal, wide-ranging analysis is briefly sketched to show that the concept of performance, from acting to the display of television’s mediating capability, can extend to the analysis of how the television medium ‘performed’ its own identity to shape its distinctiveness in specific historical circumstances.

InFormation - Nordic Journal of Art and Research, 2017

Broadcasting children’s music on television and radio is motivated by, and aims to serve, adults’... more Broadcasting children’s music on television and radio is motivated by, and aims to serve, adults’ perceptions of children’s wants and needs. Children’s music in general is shaped by the understanding of what ‘childhood’ means and, in turn, supports adults’ assumptions about childhood. This article develops these ideas in an analysis of examples from the history of British radio and television, beginning in the 1920s and continuing until the growing penetration of online interactive media challenged the status of broadcasting in the early 21st century. The article discusses examples of different kinds of children’s music in a broadcast context, including the broadcast of commercial recordings of music for children, such as versions of traditional songs and nursery rhymes as well as pop music aimed at children. It also considers the significance of signature tunes and repeated musical sequences from long-lived and well-loved children’s programmes, because they play key roles in differ...

Children in Culture, Revisited, 2011

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2014

Humanities, 2021

Since the premiere of Ricky Gervais’ and Stephen Merchant’s show The Office (2001–2003), cringe c... more Since the premiere of Ricky Gervais’ and Stephen Merchant’s show The Office (2001–2003), cringe comedy has turned into a global brand. Cringing involves the inability to extricate yourself from unpleasant situations, resulting in feelings of vicarious shame. Cringe humour often results in “unstable jokes” (Jason Middleton) that involve protected groups like ethnic minorities and disabled people. It prospers not just in traditional genres (like the sitcom), but also in more interactive formats like reaction videos, where viewers are challenged to watch unbearable content.
The success of cringe comics like Sacha Baron Cohen, Larry David, and Julia Davis coincides with a cultural paradigm shift that has been linked to a resurgence of shaming/humiliation rituals and to what Adam Kotsko and Melissa Dahl identify as the “age of awkwardness”. Cringe articulates a deeply-felt discomfort and a degree of uncertainty when it comes to adopting to political correctness and changing attitudes in the cultural climate.
This special issue of "Humanities" discusses the inclusivity of cringe humour, whether it affirms or violates norms and values, and addresses a variety of cringe comics and shows, including Larry David, 'BoJack Horseman', 'Flowers', and 'Veep'.

A Companion to the Biopic, Nov 25, 2019

Semiotics originates mainly in the work of two people, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Charles Peirce.... more Semiotics originates mainly in the work of two people, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Charles Peirce. Their ideas are quite closely related, but exhibit some differences. [ ... ] Saussure showed that language is made up of signs (like words) which communicate meanings, and he expected that all kinds of other things which communicate meanings could potentially be studied in the same way as linguistic signs, using the same methods of analysis. Semiotics or semiology, then, is the study of signs in society, and while the study of linguistic signs is one branch of it, it encompasses every use of a system where something (the sign) carries a meaning for someone. [ ... ] Since language is the most fundamental and pervasive medium for human communication, semiotics takes the way that language works as the model for all other media of communication, all other sign systems. [ ... ]