Television Aesthetics and Style

Jason Jacobs is Associate Professor of Film and Television and Reader in Cultural History in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland, Australia. He has written extensively on television history and aesthetics and is the author of The Intimate Screen (2000), Body Trauma TV (2003), Deadwood (2012), and David Milch (forthcoming in 2014). He is currently researching the history of the BBC's commercial arm.Steven Peacock is Reader in Film and Television Aesthetics at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. He is the author of Swedish Crime Fiction: Novel, Film, Television (2013), Hollywood and Intimacy (2011), Colour (2010) and editor/author of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy (2012) and Reading 24: TV against the Clock (2007). He is also co-editor of The Television Series for Manchester University Press. He has written extensively on the subject of television aesthetics, with a particular interest in the US serial drama.

This important collection marks the 'coming out' of television aesthetics and style in a medium often regarded as devoid of both. Building on nascent work aiming to re-value textual criticism in television, it directly takes on those who condemn such activity as 'pre-structuralist'. With well-worked illustrations from comedy as well as narrative fiction, it boldly celebrates television's visual pleasures whilst unpacking contested terms such as 'cinematic', 'complexity' and 'quality'. It acknowledges that aesthetic judgments are situated but posits that they are neither necessarily 'elitist' nor canonical. In sum, this volume sets the tone of a rigorous conversation in a new phase in Television Studies.

• Acknowledgements Contributors Introduction, Jason Jacobs and Steven Peacock Part One: Conceptual Debates 1. Television Aesthetics: Stylistic Analysis and Beyond, Sarah Cardwell 2. The Qualities of Complexity: Vast versus Dense Seriality in Contemporary Television, Jason Mittell 3. What Does it Mean to Call Television 'Cinematic'?, Brett Mills 4. Rescuing Television from “The Cinematic”: The Perils of Dismissing Television Style, Deborah L. Jaramillo Part Two: Aesthetics and Style of Television Comedy 5. Why Comedy is at Home on Television, Alex Clayton 6. Situating Comedy: Inhabitation and Duration in Classical American Sitcoms, Sérgio Dias Branco 7. Arrested Developments: Towards an Aesthetic of the Contemporary US Sitcom, Timotheus Vermuelen and James Whitfield 8. Better or Differently: Style and Repetition in The Trip, James Walters 9. The Presentation of Detail and the Organization of Time in The Royle Family, James Zborowski 10. The Man From ISIS: Archer and the Animated Aesthetics of Adult Cartoons, Holly Randell-Moon and Arthur J. Randell Part Three: Critical Analyses of Television Drama 11. Don Draper and the Promises of Life, George Toles 12. Justifying Justified, William Rothman 13. HBO Aesthetics, Quality TV and Boardwalk Empire, Janet McCabe 14. Storytelling in Song: Television Music, Narrative and Allusion in The O.C., Faye Woods 15. Camera and Performer: Energetic Engagement with The Shield, Lucy Fife Donaldson 16. Flashforwards in Breaking Bad: Openness, Closure and Possibility, Elliott Logan 17. The Fantastic Style of Shameless, Beth Johnson Part Four: Non-Fiction and History 18. 'Let's Just Watch it for a Few Minutes': This is Your Life in 1958, Charles Barr 19. Gaudy Nights: Dance and Reality Television's Display of Talent, Frances Bonner 20. Television Sublime: The Experimental Television of Lithuanian CAC TV, Linus Andersson 21. Closer to the Action: Post-War American Television and the Zoom Shot, Nick Hall 22. Think-Tape: The Aesthetics of Montage in the Post-War TV Documentary, Ieuan Franklin 23. What FUIs Can Do: The Promises of Computing in Contemporary TV Series, Cormac Deane Index