Television for Women

Rachel Moseley is Director of the Centre for Television History, Heritage and Memory Research in the Department of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick. She has published widely on popular television and film, with a particular interest in questions of history, address and representation. She is the author of Hand-Made Television: Stop-Frame Animation for Children in Britain, 1961-1974 (2016). Helen Wheatley is Associate Professor (Reader) in Film and Television at the University of Warwick, UK, and co-founder of the Centre for Television History, Heritage and Memory Research. She has published widely on television history and aesthetics and is the author of Gothic Television (2006) and Spectacular Television: Exploring Televisual Pleasure (2016). She is also editor of Re-viewing Television History: Critical Issues in Television Historiography (2007). Helen Wood is Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Leicester and has published widely on television, audiences, class, and gender. She is author of Talking with Television (2009) and with Beverley Skeggs, Reacting to Reality Television (2012); she has also edited Reality Television and Class with Beverley Skeggs (2011) and is editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies.

List of Figures

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Contributors

Introduction: Television for Women - what new directions?

Rachel Moseley, Helen Wheatley, Helen Wood

Part I: Women and Work

Chapter 1: Women’s History, Women’s Work: Popular Television as Feminine Historiography

Moya Luckett

Chapter 2: The Feminization of Contemporary British Television Drama: Sally Wainwright and Red Productions

Ruth McElroy

Chapter 3: "Women pushed their way forward and became quite a force within the BBC": Women’s roles in television production and the production of programmes for women

Vanessa Jackson

Part II: Women and Identity

Chapter 4: Catfight! Camp and Queer Visibility in Orange is the New Black

Dana A. Heller

Chapter 5: Brown Girls Who Don’t Need Saving: Social Media and the Role of ‘Possessive Investment’ in The Mindy Project and The Good Wife

Sujata Moorti

Chapter 6: Watching One Born Every Minute: Negotiating the terms of the ‘good birth’

Sara De Benedictis

Chapter 7: Sex, Class and Consumerism: British Sitcom’s Negotiation of the Single Girl

Vicky Ball

Part III: Formations of Women's Television

Chapter 8: Feminist Television or Television for Women? Revisiting the Launch of Canada’s Women’s Television Network

Sarah A. Matheson

Chapter 9: Tradition and Innovation: Italian Women’s Channels, Factual Entertainment and the Significance of Generation in Women’s Viewing Preferences

Cecilia Penati and Anna Sfardini

Chapter 10: Producing Domestic Abuse in Pakistani Television: Between Commerce, Ratings and Social Responsibility

Munira Cheema

Part IV: Women and the Home

Chapter 11: Television in the Ideal Home

Helen Wheatley

Chapter 12: "I’ve Been Having Fantasies about Regan and Carter Three Times a Week": Television, Women and Desire

Hazel Collie

Chapter 13: Dreaming of the ‘Good Life’: Gender, Mobility and Anxiety in Wanted Down Under

Jilly Boyce Kay and Helen Wood

Index