The Persistence of Television

Jason Jacobs is Head of School, School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland, Australia. He has an international reputation as a historian of television drama, its institutions, technology and aesthetics. His books include The Intimate Screen (2000), Body Trauma TV (2003), Deadwood (2012) and a forthcoming study of David Milch. Frances Bonner is Honorary Research Associate Professor at the School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland, Australia. Her research focuses on non-fiction television, celebrity and adaptation. Her books include Fame Games (with Graeme Turner and P. David Marshall, 2000), Ordinary Television (2003) and Personality Presenters: Television’s Intermediaries with Viewers (2011).

Introduction

Section A: The set-up

1. What Television Means

2. Familiarity and Liveness
a. Familiarity
b. Mundane liveness
c. Special event liveness

3. The faces on screen
a. Analyzing the face
b. Different professions
c. The ageing face
d. The voice

Section B: Non-fictional persistence

4. Light Entertainment
a. Game and panel shows
b. Talk shows

5. Natural History
a. The development of the genre
b. Discovery and other global channels
c. David Attenborough
d. Springwatch

Section C: Fictional persistence

6. Reboots, Remakes and Revivals
a. The significance of the different terms
b. Sitcoms
c. Twin Peaks
d. Doctor Who

7. Adaptation
a. P.G. Wodehouse
b. John le Carre

8. Crime
a. Dennis Franz: becoming Sipowicz
b. New Tricks: the culmination of long careers
c. Gerard Kennedy: an Australian variant.

9. Conclusion

Bibliography
Index