Question: What do the popular sci-fi television series’ Farscape (1999-2003) and Orphan Black (2013 – ) have in common? Answer: Neither featured in my undergraduate class ‘Science Fiction on Television’, but I can explain – I think.

One of the games played in the run-up to the BBC Charter renewal process (a process which is likely to be particularly brutal this time) is for critics to identify those programmes which can be used by BBC negotiators to put the Corporation in its best light, for audiences but particularly for politicians.

Entertainment television programmes help shape the public discourse on politics. As American political communication scholar R. Lance Holbert pointed out, these shows can play a vital part for the public understanding of politics and the public discourse on current issues.

The weeks surrounding the launch of the second season of the STARZ drama series Outlander – broadcast in the US on 9 April and released to Amazon Prime UK the day after – saw a spate of online journalism and fans swooning over the images released of Claire Randall/Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) dressed in extravagant period costumes.

Much has been written about the way in which social media has reinvigorated live television, particularly from the perspective of the audience (for example, Liz Evans, Sheryl Wilson, or Inge Sø renson). But much less is known, or written, about how the liveness of social media has affected the production of a range of forms of live television that have made increasing use of platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Periscope, Instagram and

It is quite a joy to discover one of your personal fetishes on the internet. Indeed, I was beginning to feel that I was the only one with a dark, long-term fascination in sitcom studio floorplans, but in recent years there have been one or two articles that have started referencing similar fascinations.

British television fans need no convincing of James Corden’s smiley, shiny, naughty wonderful. From host to writer to actor to bloody nice singer and dancer, he’s annoying good at many showbizzy things (plus, he seems just annoyingly nice generally). Gavin and Stacey was when I really got to know him.

Since 2015 various news outlets have been reporting plans for Steven Spielberg to create a new television adaptation of the 1932 novel Brave New World and since 2013 a film adaptation by Ridley Scott has been in the pipeline. The book by Aldous Huxley was last adapted for TV in 1980 and filmed in 1998.

Somewhat tentatively , I set off for the gigantic 2016 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference in Atlanta in early April.

Two things have made me think about the role of television in the current wave of disaffection from politics.

Back in December, Cathy Johnson wrote a CST blog outlining the differences between TV Online and Online TV. Where TV Online represents the extended distribution of broadcast-first programmes across online platforms, Online TV refers to the way the overall television service uses both internet and television to make and distribute content that cannot be accomplished via traditional broadcasting practices.