In August 2022, I secured a slot at the BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC) in Caversham to look at the archives for Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan (BBC1, 1968-1982). This was a groundbreaking programme produced for the British Asian diaspora.
Imagine, if you will, the following scene playing out on a television screen: A trial is underway in a courtroom. The defendant is being cross-examined by a sharp-dressed lawyer, who lists the felonies and misdemeanours the defendant has been charged with in the past.
In a book chapter I recently had published (Beattie 2025) I discuss how seminal British sitcom Desmond’s (1989-1994, Channel 4) illustrates how barbershops function as both community anchors and as sites of cultural education for Black communities.
Warning: This article is divided into two parts but both have detailed descriptions of sexual violence in the book and TV series, Rivals. In episode one of the 2024 television period drama Rivals, middle-aged Lizzie Vereker (Katherine Parkinson) tells her new 20-year-old neighbor, Taggie O’Hara (Bella Maclean), “It’s 1986.
This past March, Fox News personality Jesse Watters, who first came to fame as the pundit Bill O’Reilly’s ambush interview man, earned considerable mockery when he introduced his “rules for men” on the weekday roundtable show, The Five.
When the creation of the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham was agreed, at a meeting of the Board of Management on 17 November 1969, it was done so with a view to history.
How might we illustrate, explore, and begin to define the ‘state of the nation’ film and television text? This edited collection, in collaboration with Intellect, invites consideration of these questions.
After Invincible ’s fifteen-year run as a comics series (Image Comics/Skybound, 2003-18), creator Robert Kirkman and TV writer Simon Racioppa pitched an adaptation to Amazon Prime Video. Their ongoing animated superhero drama series, which has run for three seasons so far (2021, 2023-25), is an undeniable success. Rotten Tomatoes rates the seasons at or near 100% approval.
The European audiovisual landscape is complex, with a huge variety of content providers and a traditionally strong public service.
Figure 1: Sexological Bodyworker, Thomas, with participant, Emma, on Virgin Island “It’s like putting two insects together in a jar and seeing what happens…” (Hill, 2014: 3). When we are asked to define reality television this is often the analogy that comes to mind;
Edward G Robinson’s gangster Johnny Rocco in Key Largo (John Huston, 1948) seems uncertain when asked by Humphrey Bogart and Lionel Barrymore’s sequestered characters what he wants. But after some prompting, he comes up with ‘That’s it. I want more.’ Mindless acquisitiveness matches his mendacity and violence.