Heroic affect and structures of national feeling on British television: 1990s Sharpe vs. 2010s The Last Kingdom

Abstract

This article uses the affective and affecting concept of the hero to trace the structures of national feeling in two British television series: Sharpe (ITV 1993–97) and The Last Kingdom (BBC 2015–17). Both series are adaptations of military historical fiction by the bestselling author Bernard Cornwell but were created in and for two different periods in the United Kingdom. Television drama articulates the anxieties, hopes and needs of the time when it is produced. Its multimodal medium enables complex affective arrangements of (heroic) character, plot, genre conventions and televisual style. The article shows that Sharpe and The Last Kingdom present occasions for the viewers to perceive their hero characters as affective constructs, and it asks whether the hero affect is linked to an equally affective conception of nationhood. When viewed through the lens of the heroic, the series indicate a shift in structures of national feeling between the 1990s and the 2010s. Sharpe invited its contemporary viewers to perceive the titular character as heroic, but the aesthetic arrangement in which the character predominantly appears is that of the swashbuckler genre with a focus on stirring adventure; the hero affect is dissociated from an affective concept of nationhood. By contrast, The Last Kingdom links its hero to the nation in a highly affective and affecting manner, and its aesthetic arrangement draws considerably on the conventions of epic, a genre of national significance and the aesthetics of the sublime.