Beyond Dixon of Dock Green

Beyond Dixon of Dock Green PDF Author: Susan Sydney-Smith
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857710850
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
In 1955 a brand new television series, "Dixon of Dock Green", came to Britain's screens, whose eponymous hero had featured in "The Blue Lamp" (1950). Although it has traditionally been assumed that the uniform police series begins with the Ealing film, this book, based on original archive research, challenges this assumption, proposing that in fact these series were shaped by changes in television's social role from the relaying of news to the replaying of stories. Susan Sydney-Smith demonstrates how the development of the British television police drama - and indeed British television in general - was more complex than accepted accounts allow. She traces numerous lineages, from inter-war public service films, live studio crime reconstructions and story documentaries such as 1942's "Target for Tonight" through to the mix of public service and entertainment values embodied by the BBC Television Light Entertainment's "Dixon of Dock Green". Showing how the genre mapped new social and regional geographies, from Dixon's metropolitan policeman to the gritty northern realism of "Jacks and Knaves" and "Z Cars" with its irascible "Barlow", the author follows the increasing commercialization of television in the sixties, investigating how the BBC set about restoring the values of southern England in the 1966 "Z Cars" spin-off "Softly, Softly", with its more palatable protagonist. The book also offers insights not only into the relationship between early British television and its cinematic forebears but also early radio.

Beyond Dixon of Dock Green

Beyond Dixon of Dock Green PDF Author: Susan Sydney-Smith
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857710850
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1955 a brand new television series, "Dixon of Dock Green", came to Britain's screens, whose eponymous hero had featured in "The Blue Lamp" (1950). Although it has traditionally been assumed that the uniform police series begins with the Ealing film, this book, based on original archive research, challenges this assumption, proposing that in fact these series were shaped by changes in television's social role from the relaying of news to the replaying of stories. Susan Sydney-Smith demonstrates how the development of the British television police drama - and indeed British television in general - was more complex than accepted accounts allow. She traces numerous lineages, from inter-war public service films, live studio crime reconstructions and story documentaries such as 1942's "Target for Tonight" through to the mix of public service and entertainment values embodied by the BBC Television Light Entertainment's "Dixon of Dock Green". Showing how the genre mapped new social and regional geographies, from Dixon's metropolitan policeman to the gritty northern realism of "Jacks and Knaves" and "Z Cars" with its irascible "Barlow", the author follows the increasing commercialization of television in the sixties, investigating how the BBC set about restoring the values of southern England in the 1966 "Z Cars" spin-off "Softly, Softly", with its more palatable protagonist. The book also offers insights not only into the relationship between early British television and its cinematic forebears but also early radio.

Beyond The Bridge

Beyond The Bridge PDF Author: Tobias Hochscherf
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786731452
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Drawing worldwide acclaim from critics and audiences alike, programmes like The Killing, Borgen, The Bridge and The Legacy demonstrate widespread fascination with Danish style, aesthetics and culture as seen through television narratives. This book uses familiar, alongside lesser known, case studies of drama series to demonstrate how the particular features of Danish production - from work cultures, to storytelling techniques and trans-national cooperation - have enhanced contemporary Danish drama's appeal both at home and abroad. The era of globalisation has blurred national and international television cultures and promoted regular cross-fertilisation between film and television industries. Important questions have emerged from this context surrounding, for example, the 'Americanisation' of foreign television formats, the meaning and practice behind the term 'quality television', and the purpose and efficacy of public service broadcasting. Beyond the Bridge tackles these issues in relation to Danish television, by examining the so-called 'scaffolded production processes' behind the making of quality serials and their thought-provoking content. Drawing on popular motifs from these celebrated dramas such as foreign politics, organised crime, global warming, and the impact of multinational corporations, this timely book provides crucial insight into the Danish dramas at the forefront of sophisticated, forward-thinking, fictional television.

Beyond Law and Order

Beyond Law and Order PDF Author: Robert Reiner
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349212822
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Part of a series which explores contemporary sociological issues, this volume examines criminal justice policy and politics in the UK, looking to their development into the 1990s.

Relocating Britishness

Relocating Britishness PDF Author: Stephen Caunce
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719070266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Offering a range of original perspectives on how Britishness might be constructed at the turn of the millennium and where it might be going, this volume pulls together various disciplines and a variety of geographical perspectives to offer a distinctive set of views for the understanding of Britishness and how it is expressed.

Paving the Empire Road

Paving the Empire Road PDF Author: Darrell M. Newton
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1847797679
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Beginning in the 1930s and moving into the post millennium, Newton provides a historical analysis of policies invoked, and practices undertaken as the Service attempted to assist white Britons in understanding the impact of African-Caribbeans, and their assimilation into constructs of Britishness. Management soon approved talks and scientific studies as a means of examining racial tensions, as ITV challenged the discourses of British broadcasting. Soon, BBC2 began broadcasting; and more issues of race appeared on the screens, each reflecting sometimes comedic, somewhat dystopic, often problematic circumstances of integration. In the years that followed however, social tensions such as the Nottingham and Notting Hill riots led to transmissions that included a series of news specials on Britain’s Colour Bar, and docudramas such as A Man From the Sun that attempted to frame the immigrant experience for British television audiences, but from the African-Caribbean point of view. Subsequent chapters include an extensive analysis of television programming, along with personal interviews. Topics include current representations of race, the future of British television, and its impact upon multiethnic audiences. Also detailed are the efforts of black Britons working within the British media as employees of the BBC, writers, producers and actors.

Studying the British Crime Film

Studying the British Crime Film PDF Author: Paul Elliott
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 0993071775
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Ever since its inception, British cinema has been obsessed with crime and the criminal. One of the first narrative films to be produced in Britain, the Hepworth's 1905 short Rescued by Rover, was a fast-paced, quick-edited tale of abduction and kidnap, and the first British sound film, Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1930), centered on murder and criminal guilt. For a genre seemingly so important to the British cinematic character, there is little direct theoretical or historical work focused on it. The Britain of British cinema is often written about in terms of national history, ethnic diversity, or cultural tradition, yet very rarely in terms of its criminal tendencies and dark underbelly. This volume assumes that, to know how British cinema truly works, it is necessary to pull back the veneer of the costume piece, the historical drama, and the rom-com and glimpse at what is underneath. For every Brief Encounter (1945) there is a Brighton Rock (2010), for every Notting Hill (1999) there is a Long Good Friday (1980).

The Metropolitan Police and the British Film Industry, 1919-1956

The Metropolitan Police and the British Film Industry, 1919-1956 PDF Author: Alex Rock
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350295108
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
This groundbreaking book investigates the murky relationship between the Metropolitan Police Press Bureau and the British film industry, shedding new light on police-media relations. Beginning with the culture of suppression during the interwar period, when retired police inspectors were threatened with loss of pension should they become involved with the film industry, the relationship shifted when a forgotten pioneer of public relations, Percy Fearnley, was appointed to the role of Metropolitan Police Public Information Officer in 1945. Fearnley was the first-ever journalist to take up this role and, through him, the Metropolitan Police embarked on a series of collaborations with the highest echelons of postwar British cinema, including J. Arthur Rank, Ealing Studios and Gainsborough Studios. Using newly-declassified internal Metropolitan Police and Home Office correspondence, Alexander Charles Rock tells the story of the Metropolitan Police's project to manipulate the British film industry into producing propaganda under the guise of mainstream entertainment cinema. In doing so he offers a radical re-reading of the context of production of a number of canonical British films such as The Blue Lamp (1950), I Believe In You (1952) and Street Corner (1953).

Transnational Television History

Transnational Television History PDF Author: Andreas Fickers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113576039X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Although television has developed into a major agent of the transnational and global flow of information and entertainment, television historiography and scholarship largely remains a national endeavour, partly due to the fact that television has been understood as a tool for the creation of national identity. But the breaking of the quasi-monopoly of public service broadcasters all over Europe in the 1980s has changed the television landscape, and cross-border television channels - with the help of satellite and the Internet - have catapulted the relatively closed television nations into the universe of globalized media channels. At least, this is the picture painted by the popular meta-narratives of European television history. Transnational Television History asks us to re-evaluate the function of television as a medium of nation-building in its formative years and to reassess the historical narrative that insists that European television only became transnational with the emergence of more commercial services and new technologies from the 1980s. It also questions some common assumptions in television historiography by offering some alternative perspectives on the complex processes of transnational circulation of television technology, professionals, programmes and aesthetics. This book was originally published as a special issue of Media History.

Shakespeare and Sexuality in the Comedy of Morecambe & Wise

Shakespeare and Sexuality in the Comedy of Morecambe & Wise PDF Author: Stephen Hamrick
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030339580
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Contextualizing the duo’s work within British comedy, Shakespeare criticism, the history of sexuality, and their own historical moment, this book offers the first sustained analysis of the 20th Century’s most successful double-act. Over the course of a forty-four-year career (1940-1984), Eric Morecambe & Ernie Wise appropriated snippets of verse, scenes, and other elements from seventeen of Shakespeare’s plays more than one-hundred-and-fifty times. Fashioning a kinder, more inclusive world, they deployed a vast array of elements connected to Shakespeare, his life, and institutions. Rejecting claims that they offer only nostalgic escapism, Hamrick analyses their work within contemporary contexts, including their engagement with many forms and genres, including Variety, the heritage industry, journalism, and more. ‘The Boys’ deploy Shakespeare to work through issues of class, sexuality, and violence. Lesbianism, drag, gay marriage, and a queer aesthetics emerge, helping to normalize homosexuality and complicate masculinity in the ‘permissive’ 1960s.

Music Hall Mimesis in British Film, 1895-1960

Music Hall Mimesis in British Film, 1895-1960 PDF Author: Paul Matthew St. Pierre
Publisher: Associated University Presse
ISBN: 9780838641910
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
In Music Hall Mimesis in British Film, 1895-1960, Dr. St. Pierre examines strategies of representing British music hall performance (1854-1919) and the performance of the body in British cinema in the silent era (1895-1927) and the sound era (1927-60). The focus is on films of Fred and Joe Evans, Frank Randle, Will Hay, George Formby, Arthur Lucan and Kitty McShane, Cicely Courtneidge, Jessie Matthews, Norman Evans, Max Miller, Stanley Holloway, Jack Warner, Gracie Fields, and Charles Chaplin. Consideration is given to themes such as war propaganda and gender impersonation.