Introductory description

Television Case Studies extends your engagement with television as a medium and Television Studies as a discipline by focusing in-depth on a small number of focused case studies.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Case studies will change from year-to-year to match the research specialisms of the module leader. In 2020-2021 it is likely that the first half of the term will deal with the question of value and television by examining a range of concepts that have been key to the critical reception and understanding of the medium including: Public Service Broadcasting; ‘quality’; and the notion of ‘the cinematic’. In the second half of the term we will be exploring the diversification and hybridization of factual television forms through an examination of a range of hybrid media forms (docu-soaps; constructed reality programming; the mockumentary).

Case-Study 1: Evaluating Television: Quality and Value
Week One: Public Service Broadcasting in Britain
Screening: Various episodes of Doctor Who from 1963- (BBC)

Week Two: What is ‘Quality Television’? 1: The British Case
Screening: Brideshead Revisited (Granada, 1981)

Week Three: What is ‘Quality Television’? 2: HBO
Screening: The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007), Sex and the City (HBO, 1998-2004); Girls (HBO, 2012-2017)

Week Four: Value and 'Place'
Screening: Happy Valley (Red, 2014-); Sex Education (Netflix, 2019-)

Week Five: ‘Cinematic’ Television
Screening: Lost (ABC, 2004-2010), Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008-2013)

Case Study 2: Television Documentary and Hybridity
Week Seven: Television Documentary
Screening: Seven Up! (Granada Television, UK, 1964); Video Nation Shorts: various (BBC, UK, 1993-); Hospital (BBC, 2017-)

Week Eight: Reality Television
Screening: Driving School (BBC, 1997); Wife Swap (RDF Media, 2003-2009); Made in Chelsea (E4productions / Monkey Kingdom Productions, 2001-)

Week Nine: The Fictionalised Documentary
Screening: Act of God (Thames Television, 1980); Blaired Vision (Alison Jackson, Mentorn, 2007)

Week Ten: The Television Mockumentary
Screening: Ghostwatch (BBC, 1992)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• By the end of the module, you will have a detailed understanding of the theoretical and conceptual issues studied and be able to communicate these clearly and with precision.
• By the end of the module you will be able to confidently test and apply your knowledge of a range of specific areas of television history, theory and analysis.
• By the end of the module you will be developing an ability to identify and define research questions.
• By the end of the module you will have a confident understanding of a range of different television genres, concepts and debates.
• By the end of the module you will be able to offer critical, evaluative textual analyses of a range of different forms of television that is not limited to programmes studied on the module.

Indicative reading list

• Shawn Shimpach, Television in Transition: The Life and Afterlife of the Narrative Action Hero (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). Chapter 7, ‘Doctor Who: Regeneration through Time and (Relative Dimensions in) Space’, pp. 152-178
• Paddy Scannell, ‘Public Service Broadcasting: The History of a Concept’, in Edward Buscombe (ed.), British Television: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 45-62
• Charlotte Brunsdon, ‘Problems with Quality’, Screen 31(1), pp. 67-90
• Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, ‘Sex, Swearing and Respectability: Courting Controversy, HBO’s Original Programming and Producing Quality TV’, in Kim Akass and Janet McCabe (eds.), Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), pp. 62-76
• Sarah Cardwell, 'Is Quality Television Any Good? Generic Distinctions, Evaluations and the Troubling Matter of Critical Judgement', in Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (eds), Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (London: IB Tauris, 2007), pp. 19-34.
• Helen Piper, 'Broadcast drama and the problem of television aesthetics: home, nation, universe', Screen, 57(2), pp. 163-183.
• John Thornton Caldwell, Televisuality : style, crisis, and authority in American television (New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c1995.)
• John Corner, ‘Civic visions: forms of documentary’, in Television Form and Public Address (London: Arnold, 1995), pp. 77-104.
• Faye Woods, British Youth Television: Transnational Teens, Industry, Genre (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Richard Wallace, Mockumentary Comedy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
• Tom Steward and James Zborowski, ‘(G)hosting Television: Ghostwatch and its Medium’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 11(2–3), pp. 189-212

Subject specific skills

This module develops skills of audio-visual literacy, through close textual and/or contextual analysis in relation to the moving image and sound with particular relevance to television and televisual media. It may also develops understandings of historical, theoretical and conceptual frameworks relevant to screen arts and cultures.

Transferable skills

• audio-visual literacy
• critical and analytical thinking in relation
• independent research skills
• team work
• clarity and effectiveness of communication, oral and written
• accurate, concise and persuasive writing
• audio-visual literacy