A study of contemporary British drama, including Spooks, Life on Mars and Broadchurch, arguing that it has both been inspired by - and can compete with - the best of the US imports.
The early twenty-first century has seen the emergence of a new style of television drama in Britain. While adopting the professional practices and production values of high-end American television it remains emphatically 'British' in content and outlook. James Chapman analyses eight of these dramas - Spooks, Foyle's War, Hustle, Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, Downton Abbey, Sherlock and Broadchurch - which have all proved popular with audiences.
Chapman locates new British drama in its institutional and economic contexts, considers their critical and popular reception, and analyses their social politics in relation to their representations of class, gender and nationhood. And it concludes that television drama has played an integral role in both the economic and the cultural export of 'Britishness'.
Is British television drama struggling in the face of today's US-dominated streaming and box-set culture, or actually in reinvigorated rude health? That is the question explored in James Chapman's new volume which offers a series of well-researched case studies of eight of the most memorable British productions of the last twenty years in order to wave the flag for the continuing quality and relevance of UK-produced TV drama. [...] Clear and accessible, this volume will appeal to students and scholars alike as well as to the general reader curious to find out more about how British TV drama has reinvented itself in the twenty first century. -- Professor John Cook, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK
