Television Aesthetics and Style

Although Film Studies has successfully (re)turned attention to matters of style and interpretation, its sibling discipline has left the territory uncharted - until now. The question of how television operates on a stylistic level has been critically underexplored, despite being fundamental to our viewing experience. This significant new work redresses a vital gap in Television Studies by engaging with the stylistic dynamics of TV; exploring the aesthetic properties and values of both the medium and particular types of output (specific programmes); and raising important questions about the way we judge television as both cultural artifact and art form.

Television Aesthetics and Style provides a unique and vital intervention in the field, raising key questions about television’s artistic properties and possibilities. Through a series of case-studies by internationally renowned scholars, the collection takes a radical step forward in understanding TV’s stylistic achievements.

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.