Keith Selby – författare

The classic serial, invented by BBC Radio Drama sixty years ago, survived and adapted itself to television, the arrival of colour and the global market in what has become a flood of classics with all channels competing for ratings and overseas sales. This richly detailed book traces these developments and analyses the genre's response to social, economic, technical and cultural changes, which have re-shaped it into the form we recognise today. The book contains considerable interview material with performers and media professionals.

The book takes as its theme the relationship between literature and the contemporary means of production and distribution collectively termed 'the media' - in particular, film and television. The intention of the book is to explore and evaluate the mutual opportunities and restrictions in this relationship. In the grammar of our culture there seems to be an accepted opinion that print is superior in terms of cultural production to film, radio or television, that to read a book is somehow a 'higher' cultural activity than seeing a play on television or seeing a film. By the same token, a novel is a 'superior' work of art to film or television. The longer perspective reveals that traditionally there always is a greater respect paid to the previous mode of literary production - poetry was superior to drama, poetic drama was superior to the novel, and film attained cult and classic status initially over television.

This book provides a clear method of study which encourages students to construct their own interpretation of any of Dicken's novels. It helps students to identify a novel's major thematic concerns and interests and to argue a case purely from the evidence of the text. But it also moves beyond a straighforwardly thematic analysis to consider how a novel is put together and how it works. This in turn provides students with a way of identifying the distinctiveness of Dickens's fiction and with a way of structuring an intelligent critical response to any of his novels.

We can all say whether or not we like this or that TV programme, but how can you set about analysing it and formulating an informed critical response to it? What sort of things do you need to know? How can you discuss practical topics like lighting, camera work and editing, together with your insights into class, gender and politics? This invaluable book will tell you how. There are chapters on each of the major forms of TV output, as well as advice on researching, preparing and presenting a project, suggestions to help students expand their reading and knowledge of the subject, a detailed glossary of technical terms and phrases and a short, useful index.

The classic serial, invented by BBC Radio Drama sixty years ago, survived and adapted itself to television, the arrival of colour and the global market in what has become a flood of classics with all channels competing for ratings and overseas sales.