Coast and Spooks: On the permeable national boundaries of British television

Abstract

Two contrasting BBC series – a geography/leisure programme and a spy drama – are examined to establish the strategies used to construct national discourses. It is suggested that the articulation of such discourses includes a necessary openness, corresponding both to an intensified BBC policy to represent social diversity and the implications arising from the specific genre or television format. For Coast, initial claims for the coast as a defensible national boundary line have been undermined. The programme has come to recognize the coast as a permeable location of exchange and migration. It has shifted towards a version of the coast in terms of diversity rather than as a symbol of national integrity. Spooks, by contrast has moved away from an initial scepticism concerning the elitist role of MI5 in defending the nation as anxieties about terrorism grew during the last decade. Nevertheless, like Coast, there has been a necessary transnational dialogue as much as there has been a concern to defend national boundaries.