State of Play

This book deals with a wide range of 'high-end', expensive and high concept, TV dramas from the UK and the USA and analyses the compositional principles of texts (technologies, institutions, economics, cultrual trends). Drama examined include Oz, Buried Carnivale, Blackpool, The Sopranos, Shameless, and Shooting the Past. Robin Nelson's State of play up-dates and develops the arguments of his influential TV Drama In Transition (1997). It is equally distinctive in setting analusis of the aesethetics and compositional principles of texts within a broad conceptual framework (technologies, institutions, economics, cultural trends). Tracing "the great value shift from conduit to content" (Todreas, 1999), Nelson is relatively optimistic about the future quality of TV Drama in a global market-place. But, characteristically taking up questions of worth where others have avoided them, Nelson recognizes that certain types of "quality" are privileged for viewers able to pay, possibly at the expense of viewer preference worldwide for "local" resonances in television. The mix of arts and cultural studies methodologies makes for an unusual and insightful approach. Robin Nelson's State of play up-dates and develops the arguments of his influential TV Drama In Transition (1997). It is equally distinctive in setting analusis of the aesethetics and compositional principles of texts within a broad conceptual framework (technologies, institutions, economics, cultural trends). Tracing "the great value shift from conduit to content" (Todreas, 1999), Nelson is relatively optimistic about the future quality of TV Drama in a global market-place. But, characteristically taking up questions of worth where others have avoided them, Nelson recognizes that certain types of "quality" are privileged for viewers able to pay, possibly at the expense of viewer preference worldwide for "local" resonances in television. The mix of arts and cultural studies methodologies makes for an unusual and insightful approach.