‘The Sunday Times among Them’: Good Afternoon!, and the Gendering of Afternoon Television in the 1970s

Abstract

This article explores the history of Good Afternoon!, a British daytime magazine programme produced by Thames Television between 1971 and 1988. Focusing on its emergence in the 1970s, I consider the ambivalent ways in which it was figured as a programme for women, and the instability of this category in the discursive context of second-wave feminism. Drawing on archival material in the form of programme texts, publicity material, listings guides and media reviews, I also explore the ways in which the progamme's status as an afternoon programme was inscribed with gendered assumptions about class, taste, and labour.