History & Criticism

During the worst years of apartheid, the most popular show on television in South Africa - among both blacks and whites - was "The Cosby Show". Why did people living under a system built on the idea that blacks were inferior and threatening flock to a...

A rich account that combines media-industry history and cultural studies, Their Own Best Creations looks at women writers' contributions to some of the most popular genres of postwar TV: comedy-variety, family sitcom, daytime soap, and suspense anthology...

Yoga gurus on lifestyle cable channels targeting time-pressured Indian urbanites; Chinese dating shows promoting competitive individualism; Taiwanese domestic makeover formats combining feng shui with life planning advice: Asian TV screens are...

Soul! was where Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind & Fire got funky, where Toni Morrison read from her debut novel, where James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni discussed gender and power, and where Amiri Baraka and Stokely Carmichael enjoyed a sympathetic...

Tracing the history of television as a therapeutic device, Joy V. Fuqua describes how TVs came to make hospitals seem more like home and, later, "medicalized" the modern home. She examines the introduction of television into the private hospital room in...

Professional football is one of the most popular television 'genres' worldwide, attracting the support of millions of fans, and the sponsorship of powerful companies. In A Game of Two Halves, Sandvoss considers football's relationship with television,...

When "24" exploded onto TV screens in 2001, "Time" magazine called it one of the 'Best Television Events of the Decade'. "24" has gone on to establish itself as groundbreaking and controversial entertainment that has changed the face of television. Each...

Since its 2013 premiere, Orange Is the New Black has become Netflix's most watched series, garnering critical praise and numerous awards and advancing the cultural phenomenon of binge-watching. Academic conferences now routinely feature panels discussing...

The birth and development of commercial television in Cuba in the 1950s occurred alongside political and social turmoil. In this period of dramatic swings encompassing democracy, a coup, a dictatorship, and a revolution, television functioned as a beacon...

Soap opera speaks a universal language, presenting characters and plots that resonate far beyond the culture that creates them. Latin American soap operas-telenovelas-have found enthusiastic audiences throughout the Americas and Europe, as well as in...

In Media in Postapartheid South Africa, author Sean Jacobs turns to media politics and the consumption of media as a way to understand recent political developments in South Africa and their relations with the African continent and the world. Jacobs...

Contrasting strong women and multiculturalism with portrayals of a heroic white male leading the nation into battle, The Prime-Time Presidency explores the NBC drama The West Wing, paying particular attention to its role in promoting cultural meaning...

Sitcoms of the 1950s and 1960s are widely considered conformist in their depictions of gender roles and sexual attitudes. In Camp TV Quinlan Miller offers a new account of the history of American television that explains what campy meant in practical...

Throughout its history, British television has found a place, if only in its margins, for programmes that consciously worked to expand the boundaries of television aesthetics. Even in the present climate of increased academic interest in television...

This book is about the processes of globalization, demonstrated through a comparative study of three television case histories in Asia. Also illustrated are different approaches to providing television services in the world: public service (NHK in...

Already in the late nineteenth century, electricians, physicists, and telegraph technicians dreamed of inventing televisual communication apparatuses that would "see" by electricity as a means of extending human perception. In Seeing by Electricity Doron...

Many contemporary television series from Modern Family to How to Get Away with Murder open an episode or season with a conflict and then go back in time to show how that conflict came to be. In Figures of Time Toni Pape examines these narratives, showing...

Is reality TV a coherent genre? This book addresses this question by examining the characteristics, contexts and breadth of reality TV through a history of its programming trends. Paying attention to stylistic connections as well as key concepts, this...

This book assesses Joss Whedon's contribution to US television and popular culture. Examining everything from his earliest work to his most recent tweets and activist videos, it explores his complex and contradictory roles as both cult outsider and...

The first in the Routledge Television Guidebooks series, Science Fiction TV offers an introduction to the versatile and evolving genre of science fiction television, combining historical overview with textual readings to analyze its development and...

In this pathfinding book, based on original archival research, Marsha F. Cassidy offers the first thorough analysis of daytime television's earliest and most significant women's genres, appraising from a feminist perspective what women watched before...

When critics decry the current state of our public discourse, one reliably easy target is television news. It's too dumbed-down, they say; it's no longer news but entertainment, celebrity-obsessed and vapid. The critics may be right. But, as Charles L...

"Since when is Fran Drescher Jewish?" This was Chiara Francesca Ferrari's reaction when she learned that Drescher's character on the television sitcom The Nanny was meant to be a portrayal of a stereotypical Jewish-American princess. Ferrari...

This is what we know, this is the truth: CSI is a global television phenomenon. It began in 2000 with "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation", a dark procedural drama about forensic science set within the neon escapism of Las Vegas, in which Grissom and his...

Never before has period drama offered viewers such an assortment of complex male characters, from transported felons and syphilitic detectives to shell shocked soldiers and gangland criminals. Neo-Victorian Gothic fictions like Penny Dreadful represent...

Already acknowledged by Metacritic and the Guinness World Records as the highest-rated series in the history of television, Breaking Bad has elicited an unprecedented amount of criticism. Writers both popular and academic, columnists as well as eager...

Anyone who was not in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of the city experienced the disaster as a media event, a flood of images pouring across television and computer screens. The twenty-four-hour news cycle created a...

Prestige Television explores how a growing array of 21st century US programming is produced and received in ways that elevate select series above the competition in a saturated market. Contributing authors demonstrate that these shows are positioned and...

"If it bleeds, it leads." The phrase captures television news directors' famed preference for opening newscasts with the most violent stories they can find. And what is true for news is often true for entertainment programming, where violence...

Alan Schroeder's big-picture history recounts the phenomenon of American televised presidential debates and its evolution over the past half century. From pundits to political operatives, from debate moderators to the viewing public, Presidential Debates...

"TV FAQ" will make you a fully informed and knowledgable, entertained and argumentative TV expert. "TV FAQ" does what it says on the cover: it answers just about everything you've always wanted to know about Television, in witty and highly informative...

TV antiquity explores representations of ancient Greece and Rome throughout television history. The first comprehensive overview of the 'swords and sandals' genre on the small screen, it argues that these shows offer a distinct perspective on the ancient...

Premiering in 2006,Ugly Betty, the award-winning US hit show about unglamorous but kind-hearted Betty Suarez (America Ferrera),is the latest incarnation of a worldwide phenomenon that started life as a Colombian telenovela,Yo soy Betty,la fea, back in...

You're nicked is the first comprehensive study of television police series in the UK. It shows how British television's most popular genre has developed stylistically, politically and philosophically from 1955 to the present. Each chapter focuses on a...

Television conveys powerful messages about sexual identities, and popular shows such as Will & Grace, Ellen, Glee, Modern Family, and The Fosters are often credited with building support for gay rights, including marriage equality. At the same time,...

Since the debut of These Are My Children in 1949, the daytime television soap opera has been foundational to the history of the medium as an economic, creative, technological, social, and cultural institution. In Her Stories, Elana Levine draws on...

Gladiator, rebel slave leader, revolutionary: a collection of essays dissecting four seasons of STARZ Spartacus The figure of Spartacus often serves as an icon of resistance against oppression in modern political movements, while his legend has inspired...

From Mrs Peel to the first female Doctor Who, this book offers a timely focus on the popular phenomenon of the cult TV heroine. The enduring phenomenon of cult TV itself is carefully explored through questions of genre, the role of the audience and the...

This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the changing ideas about children and childhood in the United States. Each chapter connects relevant events, attitudes, or anxieties in American culture to an analysis of children or...

A history of prestige television through the rise of the "black-market melodrama." In Second Lives, Michael Szalay defines a new television genre that has driven the breathtaking ascent of TV as a cultural force over the last two decades: the...