Television

In just a few years, what used to be an immobile piece of living room furniture, which one had to sit in front of at appointed times in order to watch sponsored programming on a finite number of channels, morphed into a glowing cloud...

An engaging exploration of the relationship between avant-garde art and American network television from the 1940s through the 1970s. The aesthetics and concepts of modern art have influenced American television ever since its inception in the 1930s. In return, early television introduced the public to...

One of the most innovative comedic programs to air on television, Monty Python’s Flying Circus was a mix of the carnivalesque and the critical. The show has become famous for eschewing many of the conventions of situation comedy, the fully formed and coherent script,...

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company's network television series Disneyland/The Wonderful World of Color. The series, part of Walt Disney's quest to re-create American entertainment, premiered October 27, 1954 on ABC and was the longest-lived program in television history....

The classic situation comedy Bewitched chronicled the everyday lives of Samantha, a witch, and Darrin Stephens, her mortal husband, dramatising the often humorous troubles caused by their "mixed marriage." For much of its eight-year run, Bewitched enjoyed strong popularity because of its broad appeal....

This book covers a dramatic decade in the fortunes of Britains quirkiest broadcaster. It opens in 2009, with the realisation that Channel 4s biggest money spinner, Big Brother, had become a toxic asset and would have to be discarded, at the same time as advertising...

Documentary films are the rock and roll of our times. Why are they made? Who are in the tribe of documentary film-makers? Do their films really change the world?In 1997 Nick Fraser created BBC Storyville, producing films that won Oscars, BAFTAs, and Peabody Awards....

Sir Lenny Henry rang up the Office for National Statistics to confirm something he'd been thinking about for a long time. They told him that only 29.5% of the United Kingdom's population is made up of white, heterosexual, able-bodied men; so, he wonders, why...

Noir as a style, movement, or sensibility has its roots in hardboiled detective fiction by writers like Chandler and Hammett, and films adapted from their novels were among the first called film noir by French cinéastes. But film isn't the only medium with a...

TV Geek recounts the fascinating stories of cult-classic series, reveals the nerdy Easter eggs hidden in TV show sets, and demonstrates the awe-inspiring power of fandom, which has even been known to raise TV series from the dead. TV series are now as big as...

Everything and the Kitchen Sink analyses 'kitchen sink realism' and the birth of 'pop cinema' in the context of contemporaneous debates surrounding politics, civil liberties, sexuality, race, immigration and urbanisation. Covering the lives and careers of well-known figures such as Alan Sillitoe, Shelagh Delaney,...