Overview

This collection is a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary British television drama and its representations of social class. Through early studio-set plays, soap operas and period drama, the volume demonstrates how class provides a bridge across multiple genres and traditions of television drama. The authors trace this thematic emphasis into the present day, offering fascinating new insights into the national conversation around class and identity in Britain today. The chapters engage with a range of topics including authorial explorations of Stephen Poliakoff and Jimmy McGovern, case studies of television performers Maxine Peake and Jimmy Nail, and discussions of the sitcom genre and animation form. This book offers new perspectives on popular British television shows such as Goodnight Sweetheart and Footballers’ Wives, and analysis of more recent series such as Peaky Blinders and This is England. 

Full Product Details

Author:   David Forrest ,  Beth Johnson
Publisher:   Palgrave Macmillan
Imprint:   Palgrave Macmillan
Edition:   2017 ed.
Weight:   4.804kg
ISBN:  

9781137555052

ISBN 10:   113755505
Pages:   271
Publication Date:   29 June 2017
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

1. Introduction (David Forrest and Beth Johnson).- Part I: Authorship and Class - 2. Beth Johnson (The University of Leeds) – This is England: Authorship, Critical Contexts and Class Telly.- 3. David Forrest (The University of Sheffield) – Jimmy McGovern’s The Street and the Politics of Everyday Life.- 4. Stephen Harper (The University of Portsmouth) - High-flyers, Hooligans and Helpmates: Images of Social Class in the Television Dramas of Stephen Poliakoff.- Part II: Institutions and Structures of Class - 5. Paul Elliott (University of Worcester) - Through Class Darkly: Class in the British TV Noir.- 6. Felicity Colman and David James (Manchester Metropolitan University) - Military Class: Hearts and Minds on the Domestic Screen.- 7. Gill Jamieson (University of the West of Scotland) - Creating a Level Playing Field: ‘Honest Endeavour Together!’: Social Mobility, Entrepreneurialism and Class in Mr Selfridge.- 8. James Dalby (Universityof Gloucestershire) - Social Class and Television Audiences in the 1990s.- 9. HollyGale Millette (The University of Southampton) - Searching for Hugh Gaitskell in a Neoliberal Landscape – Masculinities and Class Mobility in Goodnight Sweetheart.- Part III: Place and Class - 10. James Leggott (Northumbria University) - From Newcastle to Nashville:  The Northern Soul of Jimmy Nail.- 11. Het Phillips (University of Birmingham) - ‘A Woman Like That Is Not A Woman, Quite. I Have Been Her Kind’: Maxine Peake and the Gothic Excess of Northern Femininity.- 12. Paul Long (Birmingham City University) – Class, Place and History in the Imaginative Landscapes of Peaky Blinders.- 13. Helen Piper (University of Bristol) - Happy Valley: Compassion, evil and exploitation in an ordinary ‘trouble town’.- Part IV: Taste and Class - 14. Phil Wickham (University of Exeter) - 21st Century British Sitcom and “the Hidden Injuries of Class”.- 15. Chris Pallant and James Newton (Canterbury Christchurch University) - Animating Class in Contemporary British Television.- 16. Antony Mullen (Durham University) - Public Property: Celebrity and the Politics of New Labour in Footballers’ Wives.- 17. Sue Vice (The University of Sheffield) - Grandma’s House and the Charms of the Petit-Bourgeoisie. 

Reviews

The authors here adopt a variety of critical approaches that, while alive to the importance in itself of class visibility in contemporary television, are also alert to the problematic discourses it sometimes generates. ... This is an indispensable book for anyone wanting to know more about recent British television drama, and why it remains an important subject of study. (Neil Archer, cercles.com, July)

Rather than homogenise class's meaning, the editors open the collection up to considering how television constructs its own images of class. Class is approached as a dynamic issue, present as an overt object of representation as well as a set of ideological positions which shape television's visual address. (Daniel Martin, Critical Studies in Television, Vol. 14 (4), September, 2019) The authors here adopt a variety of critical approaches that, while alive to the importance in itself of class visibility in contemporary television, are also alert to the problematic discourses it sometimes generates. ... This is an indispensable book for anyone wanting to know more about recent British television drama, and why it remains an important subject of study. (Neil Archer, cercles.com, July)

Author Information

David Forrest is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK. He is the author of Social Realism: Art, Nationhood and Politics (2013), co-editor of Filmurbia: Screening The Suburbs (2017) with Graeme Harper and Jonathan Rayner, and is currently at work on a book entitled New Realisms: Contemporary British Cinema. Beth Johnson is Associate Professor of Film and Media at the University of Leeds, UK. Her publications include Paul Abbott (2013) and alongside David Forrest she recently co-edited a dossier on ‘Northern English Stardom’ in The Journal of Popular Television (4/2, 2016). 

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