- Seeks to bridge the divide between scholarly work on critical aesthetics vs. audience expectations in relation to film and television studies. - Draws on a comprehensive and original data-set from a national survey that examined audience perceptions of film genres and television formats, associated viewing patterns, and the current usage of streaming and other newer moving image adjuncts. - Reflects on how the pandemic has impacted viewing patterns and genre and format expectations moving forward.

First Published in 1989, this work is based around a monthly TV column which Raymond Williams wrote for The Listener between 1968 and 1972. Those were the years of the Prague Spring, of anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, of fighting in Cambodia and Northern Ireland, of hope for McGovern in the United States and attacks on the Wilson Labour Government in Britain. In The Listener articles Williams comments on all of these events, providing a rare glimpse not only into the events of his daily life but also into the continuing development of a personal sociology of culture. The articles also discuss such television forms as detective series, science programmes and sports, travelogue, education, gardening, and children's programming. The book also includes Williams' key lecture "Drama in a Dramatised Society", which sets a framework for his analysis; a London Review of Books piece on the Falklands/Malvinas adventure as a "tele-war"; and an interview with Williams on television and teaching. Cited by The Guardian as "The foremost political thinker of his generation", Williams' writing amounts to a primer on ways of watching television and of critiquing its profound social and political impact.

This Brief Guide is a comprehensive guide to P.G.Wodehouse's two best-loved comic characters, Bertram ("Bertie")Wooster and his valet Reggie "Jeeves," Bertie's many friends and relatives, and their life of country houses and champagne. Cawthorne offers fascinating insights into Wodehouse's world, his Jeeves and Wooster stories, and the many adaptations for stage and screen.

Television had, until recently, a social and cultural purpose. In Britain, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, were committed to develop and maintain these purposes. With the enlargement of the range of choices for viewers by digital television and the provision of access to cable and satellite TV and the Internet, the role of the terrestrial television channels is being diluted. The authors examine these effects and consider what can be done to maintain the standards and quality of television at a time of unlimited competition.

Gather your friends on your favorite couch and prepare over 50 recipes inspired by the iconic Central Perk cafe from the beloved hit sitcom Friends. Friends: The Official Central Perk Cookbook offers a variety of recipes for chefs of all levels. From appetizers and small bites to drinks and desserts, each chapter includes iconic treats from the show and cafe. The latest in Insight Editions' best-selling line of Friends products has more than 50 recipes and beautiful full-color photography, as well as classic stills and iconic quotes from the show. This will be the year's best home cooking companion for fans of the show that has always been there for you.

Political Pathologies from The Sopranos to Succession argues that highly praised prestige TV shows reveal the underlying fantasies and contradictions of upper-middle class political centrists. Through a psychoanalytic interpretation of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, House of Cards, Dexter, Game of Thrones, and Succession, Robert Samuels reveals how moderate "liberals" have helped to produce and maintain the libertarian Right. Samuels' analysis explores the difference between contemporary centrists and the foundations of liberal democracy, exposing the myth of the "liberal media" and considers the consequences of these celebrated series, including the undermining of trust in modern liberal democratic institutions. Political Pathologies from The Sopranos to Succession contributes to a greater understanding of the ways media and political ideology can circulate on a global level through the psychopathology of class consciousness. This book will be of great interest to academics and scholars considering intersections of psychoanalytic studies, television studies and politics.

Music in Television is a collection of essays examining television's production of meaning through music in terms of historical contexts, institutional frameworks, broadcast practices, technologies, and aesthetics. It presents the reader with overviews of major genres and issues, as well as specific case studies of important television programs and events. With contributions from a wide range of scholars, the essays range from historical-analytical surveys of TV sound and genre designations to studies of the music in individual programs, including South Park and Dr. Who.

Television Personalities offers an exciting, engaging approach to studying and understanding the most prominent and popular performers in television and celebrity culture. It is an original, indispensable guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students of media, television and celebrity studies, as well as those interested in digital culture more widely.

For decades after its invention, television was considered by many to be culturally deficient when compared to cinema, as analyses rooted in communication studies and the social sciences tended to focus primarily on television's negative impact on consumers. More recently, however, denigration has largely been replaced by serious critical consideration of what television represents in the post-network era. Once derided as a media wasteland, TV is now praised for its visual density and complexity. In the last two decades, media scholars have often suggested that television has become cinematic. Serial dramas, in particular, are acclaimed for their imitations of cinema's formally innovative and narratively challenging conventions. But what exactly does "cinematic TV" mean? In Cinematic TV, author Rashna Wadia Richards takes up this question comprehensively, arguing that TV dramas quote, copy, and appropriate (primarily) American cinema in multiple ways and toward multiple ends. Constructing an innovative theoretical framework by combining intertextuality and memory studies, Cinematic TV focuses on four modalities of intermedial borrowings: homage, evocation, genre, and parody. Through close readings of such exemplary shows as Stranger Things, Mad Men, Damages, and Dear White People, the book demonstrates how serial dramas reproduce and rework, undermine and idolize, and, in some cases, compete with and outdo cinema.

Television Studies: The Basics is a lively introduction to the study of a powerful medium. It examines the major theories and debates surrounding production and reception over the years and considers both the role and future of television.

Topics covered include:

• broadcasting history and technology
• institutions and ownership
• genre and content
• audiences

Complete with global case studies, questions for discussion, and suggestions for further reading, this is an invaluable and engaging resource for those interested in how to study television.

Part of Praeger's Media and Society Series, this volume breaks new ground in television studies as the first booklength study of an individual television producer. Robert J. Thompson examines the work of Stephen J. Cannell, one of television's most prolific and successful producers. Thompson uses theories of film authorship revised for application to television texts and provides close analysis of Cannell's programs, including individual episodes of The Rockford Files, The A-Team, and The Greatest American Hero. Moving away from the notion that a television series is the creation of an individual author, the book begins with a look at the televisionmaker. Thompson probes the polyauthorial nature of the medium and introduces a new method of studying television authorship. The book then turns to Cannell and a study of his career, focusing on how he developed the formula for his many highly rated television series. Students and teachers of television and television criticism will find Adventures on Prime Time a source of stimulating ideas about the nature of the medium.

The past decade has seen an explosion of lifestyle makeover TV shows. Audiences around the world are being urged to 'renovate' everything from their homes to their pets and children while lifestyle experts on TV now tell us what not to eat and what not to wear. Makeover television and makeover culture is now ubiquitous and yet, compared with reality TV shows like Big Brother and Survivor, there has been relatively little critical attention paid to this format. This exciting collection of essays written by leading media scholars from the UK, US and Australia aims to reveal the reasons for the huge popularity and influence of the makeover show. Written in a lively and accessible manner, the essays brought together here will help readers 'make sense' of makeover TV by offering a range of different approaches to understanding the emergence of this popular cultural phenomenon. Looking at a range of shows from The Biggest Loser to Trinny and Susannah Undress, essays include an analysis of how and why makeover TV shows have migrated across such a range of TV cultures, the social significance of the rise of home renovation shows, the different ways in which British versus American audiences identify with makeover shows, and the growing role of lifestyle TV in the context of neo-liberalism in educating us to be 'good' citizens. This book was published as a special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies.

In this riveting and surprising personal history, John Lithgow shares a backstage view of his own struggle, crisis, and discovery, revealing the early life and career that took place out of the public eye and before he became a nationally known star. Above all, Lithgow's memoir is a tribute to his most important influence: his father, Arthur Lithgow, who, as an actor, director, producer, and great lover of Shakespeare, brought theater to John's boyhood. From bedtime stories to Arthur's illustrious productions, performance and storytelling were constant and cherished parts of family life. "Drama" tells of the Lithgows' countless moves between Arthur's gigs-John attended eight secondary schools before flourishing onstage at Harvard - and details with poignancy and sharp recollection the moments that introduced a budding young actor to the undeniable power of theater. Before Lithgow gained fame with the film "The World According to Garp" and the television show "3rd Rock from the Sun", his early years were full of scenes both hilarious and bittersweet. A shrewd acting performance saved him from duty in Vietnam. His involvement with a Broadway costar brought an end to his early first marriage. The theater worlds of New York and London come alive as Lithgow relives his collaborations with renowned performers and directors, including Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse, Liv Ullmann, and Meryl Streep. His ruminations on the nature of theater, film acting, and storytelling cut to the heart of why actors are driven to perform, and why people are driven to watch them do it. Lithgow's memory is clear and his wit sharp, and much of the humor that runs throughout "Drama" comes at his own expense. But he also chronicles the harrowing moments of his past, reflecting with moving candor on friends made and lost, mistakes large and small, and the powerful love of a father who set him on the road to a life onstage. Illuminating, funny, affecting, and thoroughly engrossing, "Drama" raises the curtain on the making of one of our most beloved actors.

This volume brings together perspectives from multimodal stylistics and adaptation studies for a unified theoretical analysis of adaptations of the work of Alice Munro, demonstrating the affordances of the approach in furthering interdisciplinary research at the intersection of these fields The book considers films and television programmes as complex multimodal stylistic systems in and of themselves in order to pave the way for a clearer understanding of screen adaptations as expressions of modal, medial, and aesthetic change. In focusing on Munro, Francesconi draws attention to a writer whose body of work has been adapted widely across television and film for an international market over several decades, offering a diachronic overview and insights into the confluence of socio-cultural contexts, audiences, and dynamics of production and distribution across adaptations. The volume complements this perspective with a microanalysis of the adaptations themselves, exploring the varied creative use of audio-visual dimensions, including sound, light, and movement. The book seeks to overcome simplified fidelity-based understandings of screen adaptations more broadly, showcasing creative multi-layered approaches to a creator's oeuvre to effect true transformation across media and modes. The volume will be of interest to scholars in multimodality, adaptation studies, film studies, and comparative literature.

In this timely examination of television and American identity, Cummins and Gordon take readers on an informed walk through the changes that TV has already wrought-and those still likely to confront us. Commercial television in America is less than 60 years old, yet it has had an enormous impact on what we like, what we do, what we know, and how we think. A family transplanted from the 1940s to the present day would certainly be stunned by a fundamentally different world: instead of gathering in the living room for a shared evening of radio, they would be scattered around the house to indulge their individual interests on one of a hundred cable channels; instead of a society with rigid racial and ethnic divisions, they would see people of different ethnicities in passionate embraces; and certainly they would see a very different set of values reflected across the board. They would, in sum, find themselves in an unrecognizable America, one both reflected in and shaped by television, a medium that has been shown to have an unprecedented influence on our lives both for better and for worse. By focusing on the development of television within the cultural context that surrounds it, and drawing on such phenomena as quiz shows, comedy hours, the Kennedy assassination, the Olympics, sitcoms, presidential ads, political debates, MTV, embedded journalism, and reality TV, the authors reveal television's impact on essential characteristics of American life. They cover topics as diverse as politics, crime, medicine, sports, our perceptions, our values, our assumptions about privacy, and our unquenchable need for more "things." In addition, they consider the future of the medium in the light of theproliferation of programming options, the prevalence of cameras and receivers in our lives, the growing links between TV and computers, and the crossed boundaries of television throughout the world.