Reflection iii: Transnationalisation, Television Formats and the Universal

This reflection argues that, despite various good reasons for approaching the notion of the ‘universal’ with caution, cultural theorists should give up their resistance to the universal. The prominence of formats in today’s television suggests that the time is ripe to do. Intentionally or not, accounts of difference implicitly also often reveal sameness; the more we probe heterogeneity, the more likely we are to encounter something that remains consistent and similar. Thus, it is time to collaborate with scholars from the numerous disciplines for which the universal has long had validity and pertinence.

Chaos, culture and fantasy: The television plays of Howard Schuman

The single plays of American ex-pat playwright Howard Schuman produced for British television between 1973 and 1983 have received little critical attention. Written in a distinctly un-British madcap, non-naturalistic and often pulpy 'B movie' style, they centre around caricatured, hysterical and/or camp characters and make frequent references to popular culture. This article provides a general survey of Schuman's plays and analyses his sensibility as a screenwriter, drawing extensively on material from interviews with the writer. The article's particular focus is how and why different cultural forms including music, film and theatre are used and referred to in Schuman's plays, and how this conditions the plays' narrative content and visual and aural form. It also considers the reception of Schuman's plays and their status as non-naturalistic dramas that engage heavily with American pop culture, within the context of British drama. Finally, it explores the writer's relationship to style and aesthetics, and considers how his written works have been enhanced through creative design decisions, comparing his directions (in one of his scripts) with the realized play to reflect on the use of key devices.

The transatlantic dimensions of the time lord: Doctor Who and the relationships between British and North American television

This chapter explores some of the textual specificity of the Steven Moffat/Matt Smith Doctor Who, in relation to its positioning within the current transatlantic television landscape. The chapter develops further the existing scholarship on Doctor Who, by both offering a critical assessment of the transatlantic dimensions of the Moffat/Smith-era Doctor Who, and by challenging some of the existing critical arguments about Doctor Who's transatlantic dimensions. Particular attention is paid to the casting, physicality and costuming of actor Matt Smith as the Doctor in relation to notions of Britishness.

British television drama: past, present and future. 2nd edition

British Television Drama provides resources for critical thinking about key aspects of television drama in Britain since 1960, including institutional, textual, cultural, economic and audience-centred modes of study. It presents and contests significant strands of critical work in the field, and comprises essays by TV professionals and academics plus editors' introductions to each section that contextualise the chapters. The new edition includes a revised chapter by acclaimed TV producer Tony Garnett reflecting on his work since Cathy Come Home in the 1960s, new chapters by Phil Redmond, the creator of Brookside and Hollyoaks, and Cameron Roach, Head of Drama Commissioning at Sky TV and former executive producer of Waterloo Road. New academic analyses include work on Downton Abbey, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Ashes to Ashes, adaptations of Persuasion, and the changing production methods on Coronation Street.

Effects of the brief viewing of emotional stimuli on understanding of insight solutions

In the present study, we examined whether and how brief viewing of positive and negative images influences subsequent understanding of solutions to insight problems. For each trial, participants were first presented with an insight problem and then briefly viewed a task-irrelevant positive, negative, or neutral image (660 ms), which was followed by the solution to the problem. In our behavioral study (Study 1), participants were faster to report that they understood the solutions following positive images, and were slower to report it following negative images. A subsequent fMRI study (Study 2) revealed enhanced activity in the angular gyrus and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) while viewing solutions following positive, as compared with negative, images. In addition, greater activation of the angular gyrus was associated with more rapid understanding of the solutions. These results suggest that brief viewing of positive images enhances activity in the angular gyrus and MPFC, which results in facilitation of understanding solutions to insight problems.

The SPARC Data Initiative: Comparison of upper troposphere/lower stratosphere ozone climatologies from limb-viewing instruments and the nadir-viewing Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer

We present the first comprehensive intercomparison of currently available satellite ozone climatologies in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere (UTLS) (300–70 hPa) as part of the Stratosphere-troposphere Processes and their Role in Climate (SPARC) Data Initiative. The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument is the only nadir-viewing instrument in this initiative, as well as the only instrument with a focus on tropospheric composition. We apply the TES observational operator to ozone climatologies from the more highly vertically resolved limb-viewing instruments. This minimizes the impact of differences in vertical resolution among the instruments and allows identification of systematic differences in the large-scale structure and variability of UTLS ozone. We find that the climatologies from most of the limb-viewing instruments show positive differences (ranging from 5 to 75%) with respect to TES in the tropical UTLS, and comparison to a “zonal mean” ozonesonde climatology indicates that these differences likely represent a positive bias for p ≤ 100 hPa. In the extratropics, there is good agreement among the climatologies regarding the timing and magnitude of the ozone seasonal cycle (differences in the peak-to-peak amplitude of <15%) when the TES observational operator is applied, as well as very consistent midlatitude interannual variability. The discrepancies in ozone temporal variability are larger in the tropics, with differences between the data sets of up to 55% in the seasonal cycle amplitude. However, the differences among the climatologies are everywhere much smaller than the range produced by current chemistry-climate models, indicating that the multiple-instrument ensemble is useful for quantitatively evaluating these models.

Performing right: legal constraints and Beckett’s plays on BBC television

Drawing on BBC archival documentation, this article outlines how BBC television versions of Beckett’s plays were affected by copyright. Rights to record and broadcast original drama for the screen differ from those governing adaptations of existing theatre plays. Rights can be assigned for specific territories and periods of time, and are negotiated and traded via complex contractual agreements. Examining how Beckett’s agents and the BBC dealt with rights sheds new light on the history of his work on television.

How to watch television? Pedagogy and paedocracy in Beckett’s television plays

This article responds to scholarship on Beckett’s television plays that regards them as positive interventions which encourage the viewer to reconsider the conventions of the medium, and that raise the cultural standards of television drama. In making claims about how the plays address and educate their viewers, critical approaches shift between conceptions of audience. This analysis of Beckett’s plays on British television reconsiders their aesthetic strategies, their relationship with television culture, and the dominant assumptions of critical writing about them by examining the parallel between conceptions of the audience and conceptions of the child in writing about television and Beckett’s television plays.

My generation(s): cycles, branding and renewal in E4’s 'Skins'

In an era of fragmenting audience and diversified viewing platforms, youth television needs to move fast and make a lot of noise in order to capture and maintain the attention of the teenage viewer. British ensemble youth drama Skins (E4, 2007-2013) calls attention to itself with its high doses of drugs, chaotic parties and casual attitudes towards sexuality. It also moves quickly, shedding its cast every two seasons as they graduate from school, then renewing itself with a fresh generation of 16 year old characters - three cycles in total. This essay will explore the challenges of maintaining audience connections whilst resetting the narrative clock with each cycle. I suggest that the development of the Skins brand was key to the programme’s success. Branding is particularly important for an audience demographic who increasingly consume their television outside of broadcast flow and essential for a programme which renews its cast every two years. The Skins brand operate as a framework, as the central audience draw, have the strength to maintain audience connections when it ‘graduates’ those characters they identify with at the close of each cycle and starts again from scratch. This essay will explore how the Skins brand constructs a cohesive identity across its multiple generations, yet also consider how the cyclic form poses challenges for the programme’s representations and narratives. This cyclic form allows Skins to repeatedly reach out to a new audience who comes of age alongside each new generation and to reflect shifts in British youth culture. Thus Skins remains ever-youthful, seeking to maintain an at times painfully hip identity. Yet the programme has a somewhat schizophrenic identity, torn between its roots in British realist drama and surrealist comedy and an escapist aspirational glamour that shows the influence of US Teen TV. This combination results in a tendency towards a heightened melodrama at odds with Skins claims for authenticity - its much vaunted teenage advisors and young writers - with the cyclic structure serving to amplify the programme’s excessive tendencies. Each cycle wrestles with a need for continuity and familiarity - partly maintained through brand, aesthetic and setting - yet a desire for freshness and originality, to assert difference from what has gone before. I suggest that the inevitable need for each cycle to ‘top’ what has gone before results in a move away from character-based intimacy and the everyday to high-stakes drama and violence which sits uncomfortably within British youth television.