British television history

Time Passages: From Upstairs Downstairs to Downton Abbey (2011, 2012,draft; please don't quote without permission)

by Ronald Helfrich, Jnr.

A number of commentators have noted the indebtedness of Julian Fellowes ITV television show Downton Abbey to the... more A number of commentators have noted the indebtedness of Julian Fellowes ITV television show Downton Abbey to the British studio drama, likewise broadcast on ITV, that preceded it, Upstairs Downstairs. My paper “Time Passages: From Upstairs Downstairs to Downton Abbey” explores the history of both shows, similarities between the two shows (structural, generic, narrative), differences between the two shows (focusing on narrative themes of scandal, intrigue, history, and romance), and the cultural impact of the both shows (Up Down and Downton as cultural phenomena). On the theoretical level “Time Passages” argues that we must move beyond notions that Up Down and Downton Abbey are purely nostalgic yearnings or desires of mostly middle class viewers living in changing times for a world, embalmed in history, in which people knew their place and all was right with Great Britain’s imperialistic world and explore the narrative similarities and differences of TV shows that share a genre and subgenres if we are to fully understand them.

Ken Loach Save the Children Film - Commentary

by Leo Enticknap

'Archive Zones', no. 80 (Winter 2011), pp. 12-13.

This article, published in the house journal of the Federation of Commercial Audiovisual Libraries (FOCAL) is aimed at... more This article, published in the house journal of the Federation of Commercial Audiovisual Libraries (FOCAL) is aimed at a primarily non-academic readership of archivists, footage researchers and technicians.  It discusses the ethical issue raised by the preservation and recent screening of a documentary made by Ken Loach in 1969, commissioned by the charity Save the Children (STC) in order to promote its work.  Upon completion, STC believed that the film portrayed them negatively, and the resulting court case ended in the film being preserved by the British Film Institute, but suppressed completely from public access.

The BBC Natural History Unit: Instituting natural history film-making in Britain

by Jean-Baptiste Gouyon

published in 'History of Science', 2011, Vol.49 (4): 425-451.

This paper is a discussion of the way natural history film-making got institutionalised on television as a culture of... more This paper is a discussion of the way natural history film-making got institutionalised on television as a culture of knowledge production, in Great Britain in the post-war period. It is centred on an examination of the establishment and the development of the BBC Natural History Unit (NHU), and how they positioned themselves in relation to the rising discipline of ethology and its practitioners. The paper starts in 1953, when the first natural history television programme was broadcast, and ends in 1979, when Life on Earth, the natural history series still considered a milestone in the NHU history, was aired. The paper highlights the notion of observation, and technologies of visualisation, as pivotal for the process under discussion. Emphasising the mastery of film technol-ogy became central to the fashioning of the natural history film-maker’s identity in contrast to the field researcher’s. The analyses bear on published insiders’ accounts, archival sources retrieved at the BBC written archives centre, and audio-visual material. The study makes use of methodological tools developed in visual anthropology. The visual artefacts produced by natural history film-makers are addressed as tools, with which things are done, and around which social relationship are negotiated. The paper suggests that the development of natural history film-making on British television in the post-war period can be seen as an attempt by naturalists to protect their culture from the threat posed by the development of the science of ethology, the NHU being fashioned as a new haven for natural history.

Review of THE SITCOM by Brett Mills (2010)

by Laurence Raw

Originally published in JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTURE 43, no. 5 (2010): 1140-2.

Sitcom has proved problematic for critics of popular culture. Brett Mills claims that this can be explained by the... more Sitcom has proved problematic for critics of popular culture. Brett Mills claims that this can be explained by the desire to prove that popular culture has “a political dimension” (6). Sitcom as a genre is treated as trivial and of little social consequence.

The Sitcom endeavors to redefine our perception of the genre. Based on extensive research plus interviews with (mostly British) television practitioners – writers, directors, producers –the book examines sitcom in terms of the industry that produces it, the programs which constitute it, and the audiences which consume it.

All My Loving? The Films of Tony Palmer by John C. Tibbetts

by Laurence Raw

Originally published in JOURNAL OF POPULAR CULTURE 43, no. 2 (2010): 428-9

All My Loving contains analyses of all Palmer’s major films, interspersed with comments from the director himself, as... more All My Loving contains analyses of all Palmer’s major films, interspersed with comments from the director himself, as well as those who have worked with him on both sides of the camera. Like Palmer himself, Tibbetts is an enthusiast, celebrating the work of a hitherto little known director (especially in the United States). The book is written in a clear, accessible style that seems particularly appropriate for a director who for decades has striven to bring high cultural subjects to popular audiences.

The Second World War in Colour: The UK History Documentary Boom and Colour Archive

by Dafydd Sills-Jones

The Future of UK Television

by John Oliver

A Tear for Sarah Jane – A Feminist Aca-Obit

by Hannah Hamad

Flow TV, Vol. 13, No. 13 (6th May 2011)

Aliens of London: (Re)reading National Identity in Doctor Who

by Matthew Jones

Published in Christopher Hansen (ed), Ruminations, Peregrinations and Regenerations: A Critical Approach to Doctor Who’ (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010)

Army of Ghosts: Sight, Knowledge and the Invisible Terrorist in Doctor Who

by Matthew Jones

Published in Melissa Beattie, Una McCormack and Ross Garner (eds), Impossible Worlds, Impossible Things: Cultural Perspectives on Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010)

Remembering to Forget: the BBC Abolition Season and Public Memory

by Ross Wilson

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 28(3) (391-403).

Representations on British television and radio of the transatlantic slave trade have been minimal over the past 50... more Representations on British television and radio of the transatlantic slave trade have been minimal over the past 50 years. From occasional references in documentaries or period dramas, the media memory of the history and legacy of the British enslavement of Africans has been one of a distant, detached perspective; it occurred in another place and another time. The transmission of Roots in 1977 has seemed to provide the definitive account of the slave trade as several years followed the series before the subject was again considered as a subject worthy of note. Over the past decade,however, there have emerged a number of documentaries that sought to place the history and legacy of the transatlantic slave trade firmly within a British context. These programmes have highlighted the complicity of British institutions and the enormous wealth that was generated by the enslavement of Africans. The bicentenary of the 1807 Act passed by the British Parliament to abolish the slave trade gave a new focus for broadcasters to return to the topic. In response to efforts by the British Government in 2007 to make the bicentenary into an event to be marked, the BBC created what was termed ‘The Abolition Season’; a series of programmes on television and radio to mark the passing of the act. This output continued in some respects the revisionism of previous pieces but, significantly, it offered viewers a new memory of the transatlantic slave trade. This was a post-Roots memory, which admitted the involvement of Britain in the enslavement of Africans but which,however, still sought to emphasise the positive role of British abolitionists and the apparently more enlightened times we live in today. This was a media-memory for a multicultural Britain. This laudable objective, however, failed as it served to further distance the nation from its past and lull its viewers into a state of selective amnesia. What was promoted in these programmes was not recognition and reconciliation but a remembering to forget.

The Rise of the Unreal Real: Realism and Science Fiction on British Television 1936-1950

by Derek Johnston

Proceedings of the Film and History Conference, Chicago, 30 October - 2 November 2008

Experimental Moments: R.U.R. and the Birth of British Television Science Fiction

by Derek Johnston

Science Fiction Film and Television, 2.2, 2009, pp.251-268

Drawing on material from the BBC Written Archive Centre, this article examines the earliest sf dramas broadcast by the... more Drawing on material from the BBC Written Archive Centre, this article examines the earliest sf dramas broadcast by the BBC Television Service: two adaptations of Karel Čapek's "R.U.R." ("Rossum's Universal Robots") from 1938 and 1948. These productions are used as sites of formal experimentation with the possibilities of the new medium, representing one aspect of contemporary debates about the purpose of television and the style it would assume.

The BBC versus Science Fiction! The collision of transnational genre and national identity in British television in the early 1950s

by Derek Johnston

published in British Science Fiction Film and Television: Critical Essays, eds. James Leggott and Tobias Hochscherf (McFarland, 2011)

This chapter examines the way that the term "science fiction" was imported into Britain from the USA and the... more This chapter examines the way that the term "science fiction" was imported into Britain from the USA and the BBC's initial reticence at using this term due to its associations with a particular type of product. However, as production documents make clear, "The Quatermass Experiment" and other programmes at the time were made with an awareness of a growing interest in and market for the kinds of materials associated with the term "science fiction". Furthermore, this awareness of the term's associations did start to shape the productions themselves. This paper will therefore analyse the process of genrification in the 1950s and the ways in which it was related to tensions between different media (pulp fiction and comics on the one hand and public service television on the other) and different national contexts between the USA and Britain.

'A 'Whoniverse' of Runaway Brides'

by Hannah Hamad

Flow TV, Vol 13, No. 4, December 3rd 2010

A Broken Tradition: British Telefantasy and Children's Television In the 1980s and 1990s

by Alison Peirse

A Broken Tradition? British Telefantasy and Children’s Television in the 1980s and 1990s’, Visual Culture in Britain 11.1 (2010): 109 - 124.


This is a single-authored original article published in a double peer-reviewed journal, published by Routledge. It is abstracted/indexed in Art Index; ARTbibliographies Modern; British Humanities Index; International Index to Performing Arts; Current Abstracts; International Index to the Performing Arts; OCLC, and available to access online via Informaworld.

This article examines a hitherto unexplored area of British television history: the relationship between telefantasy... more This article examines a hitherto unexplored area of British television history: the relationship between telefantasy (a term that encompasses fantasy, science fiction and horror on television) and British television drama for children during the 1980s and early 1990s. It suggests that British telefantasy can be conceptualized as a broken tradition, with peaks marked not only in the family- and adult-orientated productions of the 1970s and late 1990s, but in children's drama from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Analysing the BBC serials The Box of Delights (1984), Dark Season (1991) and Century Falls (1993) in relation to their aesthetic, economic and generic contexts, this article explores a lost history of British telefantasy, not only adding to the existing literature on telefantasy, but also transforming it.

Five's Finest: The Import of CSI to British Television'

by Simone Knox

published in: Allen, M. (ed.). Reading CSI: Crime TV Under the Microscope, London: I.B. Tauris, 2007, 183-197.

‘The last studio system: a case for British television films’

by David Rolinson

Paul Newland (ed), Don't Look Now: British Cinema of the 1970s, Intellect, 2010.

'Small Screens and Big Voices: Televisual Social Realism and the Popular'.

by David Rolinson

David Tucker (ed.), British Social Realism in the Arts 1945-2010, Palgrave, 2011.