British Television Research Articles

‘I owe it to those women to own it’: Women, Media Production and Intergenerational Dialogue through Oral History

While the academy is faced with increasing calls for its research to be socially relevant, a long-established principle of feminism has been the discovery and use of knowledge produced by, for and about women. Informed by feminist debates, the Histories of Women in the British Film and Television Industries project undertook a number of engagement activities drawing on the oral histories of women who had worked in the British media industries. These included workshops with trade union members and media practitioners which explored continuity and change in women's experiences of the media workplace. This article reflects on this suite of engagement activities, their successes and failures, and the possibilities and limitations of feminist-informed impact in and through the academy.

Climate change, ‘Anthropocene unburials’ and agency on a thawing planet

Three narratives from different historical moments - the US film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), the US/Canadian film The Thaw (2009) and the first season of the British television series Fortitude (2015) - disclose shifts in the imagining of prehistoric creatures emerging from thawing ice, and all three thus intervene in evolving discourses surrounding climate change, nature and agency (both human and nonhuman). Beast was released at what many scientists have declared the very beginning of the ‘Anthropocene’ - that geological era marked by humans as primary shapers of planetary life. An iconic film of the Atomic Age, Beast features a thawed creature from Earth’s prehistory, and the fault-lines are sharply drawn between it and the humans who unknowingly unleashed it. Although the consequences of nuclear testing (along with the notion of the ‘Anthropocene’) were decades in the future, Beast imagines those consequences with startling and destructive clarity. In the twenty-first century, the long-term effects of nuclear energy, and industrial global capitalism more generally, have become strikingly evident. The thawed creatures of both Fortitude and The Thaw have neither the visibility nor the separateness of the ‘Beast’ from 1953, however. Tracing increasingly entangled notions of existence, culpability and responsibility in the Anthropocene era, these twenty-first-century creatures incubate within human hosts, becoming interwoven with the human, and thus complicate familiar notions of agency.

Time for a change: women, work, and gender equality in TV production

This article uses Acker’s concept of inequality regimes to analyze qualitative research findings on work-life balance and gender equality for women in British television production. Female survey respondents, focus group participants, and interviewees spoke of their subjective experience of gendered work practices which disadvantage women as women. These findings build on existing research showing gender disadvantage in the industry, leading to loss of human capital and a narrowing of the range of creative experience. They also show that growing numbers of women are seeking alternative modes of production, at a time of increased awareness of inequality. Such alternatives suggest that change is possible, although it is strongly constrained by organizational logics and subject to continued resistance, in line with Acker’s framework of analysis. Visibility of inequalities is the key to supporting change.

The Flouting of Conversational Maxims by Male and Female Characters in the British TV Series <em>Broadchurch</em>

This research focuses on examining the flouting of the Gricean conversational maxims on the British TV series Broadchurch. It also investigates the use of rhetorical strategies in flouting the maxims by male and female characters in the series. The research data were the utterances that flout the maxims. The data were collected from Season I of the Series, containing 8 episodes. The data were analyzed by applying Grice’s theory of cooperative principle (1975). Moreover, the data were also analyzed in terms of the rhetorical strategies employed by the characters when they flout the maxims. The results show that 97 cases of maxim flouting were found. The characters most frequently flout the maxim of relation (44.33%) and least frequently the maxim of quality (13.40%). Furthermore, in flouting the maxims, male characters tend to use the irrelevant statements as their preferred rhetorical strategy (63.46%), whereas female characters tend to use obscure expressions as their preferred rhetorical strategy (33.33%).

Book Review: Contemporary British Television Drama

Review of: Contemporary British Television Drama James Chapman, Contemporary British Television Drama, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020; 187 pp.: ISBN 9781780765228, £63 (hbk), ISBN 9781526125859, £22.99 (pbk), ISBN 978135015250, £16.55 (EPUB/MOBI)

‘영드’ 에 관한 대중의 인식 및 자기주도적 영어학습 행태: 소셜 빅데이터 분석을 활용하여

This study aims to explore the Korean public’s perceptions of British TV dramas and their self-motivated English learning patterns using social big data analysis. For this purpose, texts containing the phrase ‘British TV drama’ from Twitter and YouTube were extracted and analyzed employing network, frequency, and semantic analyses. The results showed that (1) whereas the public shared information about British TV dramas on Twitter, their opinions and ideas about learning English using British TV dramas were primarily discussed on YouTube; (2) the public seemed to be most interested in improving their British English pronunciation when studying English with British TV dramas; and (3) the public seemed to utilize YouTube as a tool for self-motivated English learning as well as a place for sharing fandom culture. Pedagogical implications are provided.

FROM MOCKUMENTARY TO INTERNET MEME: THE BRITISH MEDIA, CELEBRITY, AND PRINCE HARRY’S SECOND MILITARY DEPLOYMENT TO AFGHANISTAN

Media critics of the war in Afghanistan and Prince Harry’s participation in it hoped that his imagined kidnapping by the Taliban portrayed in the British TV mockumentary The Taking of Prince Harry (2010) would prevent his return to Afghanistan. Prince Harry’s first deployment to Afghanistan in 2007-2008 was conducted under a media blackout to protect him from potential Taliban threats. He returned home after news of his service leaked out on the internet. However, his second deployment to Afghanistan after the mockumentary aired was radically different. The British media was now given almost unlimited access to Captain Wales in terms of interviews, television coverage, and video postings on YouTube. Prince Harry’s second 20 weeks serving in Afghanistan from 2012 to 2013 became an effective reality TV show and viral internet sensation, culminating in the propaganda documentary exercise of Prince Harry: Frontline Afghanistan (2013) that the British government and military hoped would erase the public relations disaster associated with his first deployment that prompted the making of The Taking of Prince Harry. But the successful packaging of Prince Harry proved difficult in the Internet Age. In fact, the perceived unfair treatment of Harry by the media prompted such a strong reaction in him that it can be seen as instrumental in the current attempts by Harry and Meghan to establish new identities separate from the monarchy through a newly refashioned celebrity.

Probability Puzzle: Higher or Lower?

Once upon a time, Play Your Cards Right was a popular Australian and British TV game show. For this issue of Significance we're revisiting the game.

Disappearing Bodies, Disappearing Objects: What Years and Years Can Teach Us About Design

British television has recently acquired a reputation for producing challenging dystopian visions of the future. While Black Mirror casts a disenchanted look on our experiences, Years and Years lacks cynicism and, in that regard, holds interesting lessons for designers. While the issues commented on by the British fictional series are also global in scale and scope (nuclear bombing, political tensions in the EU, energy crisis), the series displays a rare creativity in its depiction of future objects and innovations. The inventions depicted can be truly groundbreaking, long awaited or dysfunctional. While the series examines these objects and dispositifs, it never leans towards a set position, be it discouraged Luddism or happy-go-lucky celebration. Because it refuses to embrace or reject technology, it gives space to a rich examination of the possible design products of the future. This essay examines three selected objects (a meal tray, a vocal AI and a drone) which potentially condense a great deal of the current criticism of technology. None of the analysed objects are incredible in form or function; in fact, they have all been the subject of previous fiction matter. These objects will be analysed in terms of dispositifs and usage, but also as temporal devices whose functionality and aesthetics change with or against the tide. The concept of disappearance will be key as all three objects purport to replace jobs and the workers who hold such positions. These technological products all enact an erasure of work and of the working-class body, if they are understood as potential products available in a near future. As narrative devices, however, they also function as potent critical agents, underlying potential modes of resistance in our present.

From In Two Minds to MIND: The circulation of ‘anti-psychiatry’ in British film and television during the long 1960s

This article explores the circulation of ‘anti-psychiatry’ in British film and television during the long 1960s, focusing on the controversial BBC television play In Two Minds (1967) and its cinema remake Family Life (1971). These films were inspired by R. D. Laing's ideas on the aetiology of schizophrenia, and were understood as uniting the personal and political motivations of progressive film-makers (Ken Loach, Tony Garnett, David Mercer) and progressive psychiatrists (Laing, David Cooper, Aaron Esterson). Drawing upon practitioner interviews with producer Garnett and director Loach, and extensive archival research on the production and reception of these films , this article contests previous scholarship on the popular circulation of anti-psychiatry and the movement's perceived polarisation from mainstream British psychiatry. While the reception of In Two Minds and Family Life did intensify an adversarial relationship between ‘rebel’ anti-psychiatrists and hard-line behaviourists such as William Sargant, the wider psychiatric field largely welcomed the films' contributions to mental health awareness and used the publicity to counter the idea of a ‘battle’ within the profession. This included leading UK mental health organisation the National Association for Mental Health looking to Loach and Laing as models for engaging contemporary audiences as it rebranded to MIND in 1972 . This article contributes to historical understandings of the complex interactions between the fields of media and mental health, as well as recent scholarship challenging the idea of a clear split between anti-psychiatry and British medical orthodoxy.

Yorùbá Linguistic Identity of Jẹ́nífà in Fúnkẹ́ Akíndélé’s Jẹ́nífà’s Diary

One of the several ways writers of comedy films amuse the audience by inducing laughter is the use of language. It is against this background that Fúnkẹ́ Akíndélé created a linguistic identity for Jẹ́nífà, the protagonist in Jẹ́nífà's Diary, a popular Nigerian television series created in 2015 still active and ongoing. The most apparent thing that caught the audience’s attention is the grammatical errors in Jẹ́nífà’s English. Little is known about the use of Yorùbá in her speech acts. This paper, therefore, examines the use of Yoruba language in Jenifa’s verbal acts in the English television series. The paper posits that the use of Yorùbá in Jẹ́nífà’s speech is used among their things, to (a) create humour; (b) hurl insults on people; (c) correct the negative language attitude of some educated parents that have forbidden the use of Yorùbá language in their homes and (d) adult language habits die hard.

Ken Loach and the Comedians: The Politics of ‘Acting’

This article explores a gap in the scholarship on Ken Loach's film-making, focusing on his casting of comedians in central roles and the specific impacts of such casting strategies across Loach's work. While the relevance of such casting to Loach's project has been anecdotally acknowledged in criticism, this article recommends a more systematic historical and aesthetic approach. After summarising the theoretical considerations around acting as a practice and its ‘problem’ within Loach's terms, I consequently look at the broader institutional and political contexts of actor preparation training and casting in British television and film since Loach's emergence as a director in the 1960s, and the relevance of comedian casting within these. Drawing on a sample of Loach's films, I then offer a more systematic analysis of how the comedian's body, voice and action signify, examining how such ‘realist’ performances respond to the cultural conventions of ‘trained’ actor practice, as well as the narrative and broader institutional conventions of comedy performance in mainstream film.

Making fun of feminism: British television comedy and the second wave

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the representation of second wave feminism in two mainstream comedy shows starring male comedians. Scott On … (BBC 1964–74) and a sketch narrative which featured in the 1980 season of The Two Ronnies (BBC 1971–1986) brought feminism into family living rooms. While these shows make fun of feminism they also represent key aspects of the second wave, often echoing debates taking place in the women’s liberation movement. Despite their conservative politics Scott On … and The Two Ronnies put feminist ideas on screen in the 1970s and early 1980s; they represent a mainstream resistance and response to the second wave activism which was changing the British social and political landscape. Such shows make fun of feminist politics, yet in doing so they register and refract feminist debates.

Cringe Histories: Harold Pinter and the Steptoes

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 cringe as a comic form, particularly the failure of cringe to impel political activism, and places this in the context of the repeated broadcast of Pinter’s plays and episodes of Steptoe and Son over an extended period.

Manipulative Influences as Manifestations of the Modern Socio-Cultural Crisis

This review analyzes the research of a British journalist, writer, and TV producer Peter Pomerantsev “This Is Not Propaganda. Adventures in the War Against Reality”. This work was published in Ukrainian in 2020 and reveals the industry of mind manipulation and disinformation tools in the modern world. The author, who is one of the most well-known researchers of post-truth and the latest technologies of information influence, draws attention to the fact that modern man lives in a reality distorted by information-psychological attacks, fake news, targeted advertising, surrounded by a huge amount of information that does not provide any significant benefits. But what it does is misinforms and misleads and eventually exacerbates a deep cultural crisis. Social media and information technology lead covert information campaigns that can destabilize the economy of any country or wreak chaos by interfering in political processes, both in democratic and authoritarian regimes. The modern world has filled reality with information chaos, in which the value of truth and facts disappears, moreover, the researcher notes that there is a fundamental difference between the concept of propaganda in the post-truth era. After all, the purpose of classical propaganda at all times was to convince people of something, to force them to act in a certain way, or to intensify certain activities. In modern reality, propaganda does not work to persuade, but simply to undermine trust, increase passive moods, apathy, anxiety, and sow despair among people. The book is filled with factual material and interesting examples, it increases the interest and the fact that by analyzing the current reality, the author reveals the memoirs of his family, thus making a comparative analysis of the past twentieth century and builds his vision of the future.

Hybrid TV Comedy Genres-The Case of Comedy Panel Shows

As a hybrid genre, comedy panel shows satisfy both the audience’s need for continuity and their desire for innovation by combining two established genres – the panel quiz show and comedy – in novel ways. This article investigates the relationship between game and comedy elements in panel shows on British television. Four general types of constellations and some sub-types are identified and discussed: 1) game show without humour, 2 a) a sequential combination of game show and humour patterns, 2 b) game show and comedy patterns running simultaneously, but independently, 3) a blend of game show and comedy, and 4) comedy appropriating the game show patterns.

Book Review - Producing British Television Drama: Local Production in a Global Era

Book Review - Producing British Television Drama: Local Production in a Global Era

Sacha Levy’s unorthodox kindness: Holby City’s medicine and pedagogy

Holby City (1999–present) is a stalwart of British television media. Since its conception in 1999, the show has continued to attract contemporary audiences who tune in to passively, and passionately, experience turbulent battles between life and death. However, the locus of interest is not on the patients within Holby’s wings, but rather the staff themselves; it is their emotional, psychological and pedagogical development which spurs the plot forward and grips viewer attention. Through the use of medical pedagogy, Holby City becomes a drama of perpetual Bildungsromane, where relationships between peers, mentors and mentees are under consistent pressure. Furthermore, this pedagogy does not merely ensure Holby City’s series continuation but becomes a site of transformation, challenging preconceived ideologies of toxic masculinity. This is never more apparent than in the character of Sacha Levy (Bob Barrett), whose emotional availability, vulnerability and religious spirituality directly challenge concepts of the self-destructive ‘burnt-out’ male medic. This article explores the character of Sacha Levy in Holby City, demonstrating how the show’s writers engage actively in research to directly confront stereotypes of toxic masculinity and Jewish underrepresentation in the contemporary medical drama.

“We are not amused”. The appreciation of British humour by British and American English L1 users

This empirical study investigates the differences in the appreciation of British humour by 128 British and 95 American English L1 users (with 18 having experiences in the UK). Participants rated the funniness of two short extracts from two British television series and answered an open question on their perceptions. Results indicated that American English L1 users perceived British humour as less funny and were less able to “get” the ironic and sarcastic aspect of British humour than British English L1 users. This study highlights the role of emotion, as both a reaction during humour processing and a prerequisite prior to it. Moreover, length of residence is not related to the appreciation of humour in another dialect in this study.

“I am against Americanizing England. Ordinary TV does not seem to have an elevating influence”: class, gender, public anxiety, and the responses to the arrival of commercial television in the Mass Observation Archive, UK

ABSTRACT This article analyses (broadly lower middle-class) women’s responses to the arrival of commercial television in the UK in the 1950s, and seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of British women’s relationship to television, consumer capitalism, and modernity in the mid-twentieth century. While women are dominantly figured as especially prone to being seduced by commercial culture at this time, our analysis of material from the Mass Observation archives shows that women in this context were more likely than men to be resistant and hostile to the idea of “sponsored programming”. We also show how women’s responses reflected and reproduced elitist discourses about “Americanization” as well as the susceptibility of the working classes to the vagaries of commercial culture. We therefore call for a more nuanced and transnational conceptualisation of the historically shifting relationship between women and television.