A New Genre for Television?

The book presents the dramatised history documentaries aired by British public service broadcasters in the 2000s constitute a televisual genre in their own right, offering insights from key BBC and Channel 4 personnel. A new genre for television? challenges the notion that the dramatised history documentaries aired by British public service broadcasters in the 2000s were mere hybrids or experimental outliers and instead demonstrates that they formed a televisual genre in their own right.Grounded in genre theory, Hardy charts the genre’s meteoric rise, creative peak and eventual decline, all the while revealing the institutional dynamics that shaped its development. Offering a fresh and essential distinction between docudramas and drama documentaries, the book contributes to television history with exclusive interviews from key BBC and Channel 4 figures, many of whom have never been publicly interviewed before.Analysing landmark programs, this book illustrates how these New History Drama Documentaries reshaped historical storytelling on screen by way of the new analytical framework of ‘sense’ and ‘sensuousness’, and imagines a model for how national histories might be told compellingly through screen in the future. In A New Genre for Television?, filmmaker Justin Hardy argues the dramatised history documentaries broadcast by British public service channels in the 2000s constituted a distinct television genre. Offering a vital distinction between docudramas and drama documentaries, Hardy contributes to the field of television history through exclusive interviews with key figures from BBC and Channel 4 – many of whom have never been publicly interviewed before – and envisions a future model for the portrayal of national histories on screen.