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International Journal of Cultural

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DOI: 10.1177/13678779030060010022003 6: 25International Journal of Cultural Studies

Christine GeraghtyAesthetics and Quality in Popular Television Drama

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A R T I C L E

INTERNATIONALjournal o f

CULTURAL studies

Copyrig ht 2003 SAGE Publica tion sLon do n, Tho usan d Oa ks,

CA a nd New DelhiVolume 6(1): 2545

[1367-8779(200303)6:1; 2545; 031101]

Aesthetics and quality in populartelevision drama

Christine Ge rag ht y

University of G lasgow, Scotland

A B S T R A C T This a rticle seeks to extend t he d eba te a bo ut e valuating

te levision by f ocusing specifi cally on t elevision dra ma . It review s som e o f t he

reasons w hy such evaluat ion ha s been diffi cult in cultura l stud ies but sugg eststha t by refusing evaluat ion in relat ion to television cultura l stud ies acad emics are

opting out of a key deba te in broa dcast ing and fa iling s tudents w ho in their ow n

view ing a nd practical w ork are ma king evaluative judg ement s. The a rticle

sug ge sts tha t rat her th a n looking fo r one set of television a esthet ics, a s Willia ms,

Ellis a nd o thers ha ve done, a more precise a pproa ch might a tt end t o pa rticula r

te levision ca te g ories, in th is case te levision d ram a . The a rticle com pa res the

position in fi lm a nd in television, sugg esting t ha t o ne of the pro blems is tha t

t elevision la cks a critica l cult ure in w hich evalua t ion is o pen ly discussed . It o ff ers a

fra mew ork for a ssessing individua l prog rammes an d, th roug h a n a na lysis of some

textb oo ks on t ea ching television, indica tes how this ta ctic w ould open up the

rather na rrow approa ches to evaluat ion t hat currently concentrat e ma inly on

ideo log ica l questions of represent a tion.

K E Y W O R D S evaluation media education teaching television

aesthetics te levision d ram a television studies qual i ty

Sunday night is drama night on British television and one evening in May2002 I was faced with a dilemma at 9pm: BBC1 was showing Auf W ieder-

sehen, Pet, an updated comedy drama based on a previously successful

series; ITV, the main commercial channel, was showing a new version of

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2 6

the classic The For syte Sagaand Channel 4 had an episode of NBCs The

West W ing. This set me thinking not only about how to juggle view ing and

video to best effect on the night but also about issues of quality on tele-

vision. All three programmes by a variety of indicators could be judged asquality t elevision on the basis of their provenance, their production source,

their relations to other programmes and possibly their politics. But could I

choose what to watch on the basis of their aesthetics and, if so, could I

articulate that?

The question of quality and aesthetics in television drama still persists, as

the special issue of this journal recently indicated (Volume 4, number 4), and

it remains an important indicator fo r public broa dcasting systems and others

affected by regulatory standards. Yet definitions of what counts as quality

television remain as elusive as ever in cultural studies. In this article, I want

to suggest that quality is an important issue not only in terms of the study

of television but also in terms of how it is taught. John Hartley (1999) has

argued that television itself is a pedagogic medium but in much teaching of

television in higher education questions of aesthetics are being neglected in

ways that can only be detrimental to future programming and audiences. In

cultural studies, it has been argued that televisions main functions lie else-

w here: in the use audiences make of television as a leisure activity, a domestic

w eapon and a means of cultural forma tion. N evertheless, w hile agreeing that

evaluation is not the only issue, it would seem that the content of television

still matters to viewers (hence the common complaint that there is nothingworth watching) and that the quality of content is an important factor in

debates about policy and provision in which television professionals are

engaged. Television stud ies academics should be part of the public process

in which television programming is discussed, pa rticularly a s we are teaching

current audiences and future makers. Instead, questions of evaluation are

handled through concepts of representation and ideology even in teaching

situations in which aesthetic criteria are being applied and assessed in

practice courses elsewhere on the curriculum. I am seeking therefore to

develop a grounded approach to a discussion of aesthetics, in this case intelevision drama, which would work within broader discussions of tele-

visions cultura l and economic role. While this discussion is based on British

television, debates about the concept of quality in a particular context are

part of a wider set of concerns about how television works internationally

and how we teach about it in television or cultural studies.

This article is ba sed on tw o q uestions. First, how can w e articulate judge-

ments about the aesthetics of television dra ma? I should stress that I a m not

seeking to develop standards to be imposed but a framework that offers the

possibility of a debate about what is good and what is bad in televisiondra ma. While recognizing the social dimensions of any d iscussion of evalu-

ation, I want to argue the importance of a textual dimension to this

question. Second, I w ant to ask how deba tes about evaluat ion of t elevision

INTERNATIO NAL journa l o fCULTURAL studies 6(1)

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content might be generated in order to have an effect on what audiences

might demand of television drama . I a pproach it in this wa y because of the

difficulty of addressing aesthetic evaluations through regulation; hence my

emphasis on the critical context as a means of keeping aesthetic quality asan issue for public scrutiny. It is this emphasis tha t leads me into questions

about how television drama is taught and how academics, as teachers as

w ell as researchers, develop skills of evaluat ion in deba tes about it.

Television, quality and taste

Although quality a nd how one evaluates it is a diffi cult issue, it ha s not been

entirely neglected in academic w ork on television. R egulato ry deba tes often

hinge on the q uality element of both public service provision and commer-

cial licences. In this context, quality is often a regulatory criterion but it

tends to be judged by indicators that are not directly aesthetic. Such indi-

cators include the range of programmes screened, the place of certain kinds

of programmes in the schedules, the address to and access for minority

groups, and the question of national origin, particularly in relation to US

programmes. Such debates tend to be nationally orienta ted and tw o British

examples would be the intensive arguments that accompanied the legis-

lation that created Channel 4 as a second commercial channel in 1982 and

the response to the publication of the Conservative governments Broad-casting White Paper in 1988, which proposed opening up the British tele-

vision market. Both debates involved a wide range of people, including but

not exclusively academics, and produced a body of work on quality and

television that should not be forgotten. Geoff Mulgan and Charlotte

Brunsdons contributions in the early 1990s are examples of work on

quality television that have not been sufficiently built on. Indeed, in my

discussion of aesthetic judgements, I am taking for granted certain criteria

that Mulgan (1990) proposed, such as the importance, for instance, of

diversity of programming and a udience access. Elsew here, important contri-butions by, for instance, Jostein G ripsrud (1995) and Kim Schroder (1992)

have suggested approaches that have not been systematically taken up.

There are a number of reasons why making judgements about aesthetics

has proved to be a diffi cult ta sk in television studies and in the broa der areas

of media or cultura l studies. They w ould include the impact o f semiot ics on

the genesis of media studies with its pseudo-scientific claims about objec-

tivity; the impact of postmodernism with its emphasis on diversity, decen-

tring and play; the need to establish popular culture and television, in

particular, a s w orthy of study tha t involved refusing the traditional modesof judgement; the impact of feminist work, with its demand that certain

kinds of denigrated fictions should be treated seriously; the notion, coming

rather differently from Foucault and Bourdieu, that to make aesthetic

Geraghty Aesthet ics a nd q ua lity 2 7



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judgements w as to impose the cultura l norms o f the pow erful. We might

a lso include, if Simon Frith (2000) is right, a lack of confi dence about tele-

vision studies as a defining and working discipline. In this framework, tele-

vision is placed at the popular end o f the high/low binary that hasunderpinned much cultural studies w ork, and judgements a re then made on

the basis of ideological readings. Somew hat tautologically, programmes tha t

aspire to a different kind of cultural value, such as a classic serial or some

arts or history programmes, a re criticized for precisely tha t. Indeed, I w ould

suggest that middlebrow programmes, which actually characterize quite a

lot of television, have been difficult to deal with in media studies which,

following Fiske among others, has been more comfortable with the popular

appeal of q uiz show s and soaps. G raeme Turner has indeed suggested that

in recent discussions of television there has been a growing silence about

the content of television (2001: 377). Certainly, as he suggests, quality is

proving to be a thorn in the side (2001: 379) and is a word that is

frequently used with scare quotes in academic writing. It is not an accident

that a recent textbook, Television Studi es: The Key Concepts(Casey et al.,

2002), has no entry for quality but an extensive one for taste. The entry

dra w s on Bourdieu and Fiske to suggest tha t a postmod ern cultura l aesthetic

has blurred distinctions about the value of different t exts; citing MTV, w ith

its mix of aesthetic techniques and varied flow of programming (2002:

242), as a beneficial product of a widening range of channels and lighter

regulation, the authors conclude that

it is much harder to confidently categorise texts in terms of value and quality

. . . or to discriminate betw een different social groups in terms of their ta ste

or lack of it. G iven the social inequa lities that have tra ditiona lly been legiti-

mated by distinctions of taste, we might see this as a thoroughly welcome

change. (2423)

This apparent refusal to make a judgment, while privileging a certain kind

of aesthetics embodied in this case in MTV, is a highly problematic position

w hich actually cuts students off from contributing to debates about contem-pora ry television.

Such an approach, written into a textbook, ignores the persistent call for

the possibility of evaluation from a number of television scholars. More

recent interventions include John Caughie (2000) in his discussion of

serious drama and Simon Frith who, among other things, asks the

aesthetic question; what is good television? (2000: 124). There has also

been some recognition that textual work could contribute to work on

aesthetics, although this is still debatable. N ick Couldry, for instance, recog-

nizes that his emphasis on the sociological context to explain textualpleasures has something left over which sociology on its own has difficulty

explaining: the realm of aesthetics but believes that this has to be left on

one side in order to clarify what else has to be in place before textual




6/22

analysis and questions of value and aesthetics can be pursued on a satis-

fa ctory basis (2000: 87). To continue to leave the question to one side,

though, means that important audience concerns about quality go unac-

knowledged and make our contribution to public debate more difficult.Where television aesthetics have been of concern is in relation to the

medium itself. Definitive work in the field has addressed the topic with a

part icular emphasis on modes of view ing. The approa ch, how ever, ha s been

to try to develop an aesthetic that w ould cover a ragbag (Frith, 2000: 110)

medium and there has been a problem in trying to construct an aesthetic

that would cover the whole extraordinary range of programmes on tele-

vision from cooking to football, from soap opera to quiz shows, as well as

the intervening adverts and continuity announcements. Examples of this

kind of work are well known and would include Williams highly influen-

tial insights into television flow, subsequently reworked by, for instance,

Ellis (1982) and G ripsrud (1998); Ellis in Visible Fictions(1982) with his

notion of the distracted viewers glance in opposition to the film spectators

gaze; and, more recently, Ellis Seeing Things(2000) with its a ccount o f tele-

vision as form of working through, providing a relatively safe area in

which uncertainty can be entertained, and can be entertaining (2000: 82).

More narrowly, Caldwells account of the development of televisuality

(1995) in a digital age covers a range of programmes including advertise-

ments and reality programmes.

These grand narrative accounts of television are both valuable andnecessary but they are trying to construct aesthetics out of a very unwieldy

object and find a specificity that actually may not be helpful. I would like

to think more broadlyabout aesthetics, in particular making connections

between film and television rather than defining them against each other,

and a lso to think more narrow lyabout the object w e are trying to ana lyse,

to think about television drama without trying to fit quiz shows and sport,

for instance, into a single account. In this, however, I would want to

consider the whole range of drama, not just what might be deemed

examples of quality dra ma such a s the single play o r the classic serial. Thisseems an important task because of the sheer quantity of drama that still

persists on television. Raymond Williams point about television enabling

dra ma to be a habitua l experience (1989: 4) is still valid; or, a s Da vid Hare,

a leading British playwright, put it more recently, the daily manufacture of

fictionalised versions of our lives has unnoticeably become the essential

background against which we conduct our own (2002: 3)

Critical contexts in film and television studies

Work on television developed in the broa der context of media a nd cultura l

studies. In the process, the rather different t ra jectory of fi lm studies w as set




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aside as the development of a methodology appropriate for a different form

or, more polemically, was seen as an awful warning. Although cinematic

and television drama clearly exist in different cultural contexts, it is never-

theless worthwhile making comparisons between them on the question ofhow evaluation is approached. Examining more closely this context in each

case is helpful in establishing w hy it is much more possible to have a deba te

about a esthetic judgements in dealing w ith fi lm. Film culture is marked by,

for instance:

1. the notion of a canon that often involves the endless draw ing up of lists of

best fi lms but tha t a lso provides the context for a debate about w hich fi lms,

directors or film movements stand out as examples of fine film-making that

those who claim to know about cinema should see;

2. a critical forum for debate about current films on radio and in the press(though, rather typically, less so on television);

3. publishers that d efi ne/help to create the canon by producing small books

for genera l use about part icular fi lms. An example of this would be the BFI

Film Classics and Modern Film Classics series in which the author gives a

personal a ccount of an engagement w ith a fi lm already pre-defined as being

worthy of that attention, a model that has been adopted by other publish-

ers;

4. a fra mew ork for describing and evaluating visual style editing, shot

movement and composition, special effects, mise-en-scne which is wellestablished in teaching about film but not confined there;

5. a sense w ithin and outside the industry of cinema a nd its history as being

importa nt. Exa mples of this w ould be the know ledge and reflexivity o f the

movie brat genera tion a nd mo re recent d irectors such as Tarantino, the

enthusiasm of genre aficionados and the use of Hollywood classics in

contemporary modern art;

6. the passionate desire to make fi lms among young students, many of whom

are doing courses in cultural or media studies.

Through these means, film has a cultural context marked by both the

means of making aesthetic judgements and a forum in which it is possible

to debate doing so. If w e compare that w ith the treatment of television, w e

see something ra ther different. Television is marked by :

1. the lack of an a greed canon about w hat is good television. We can see

glimpses of one here and there but it is treated differently in public debates

and a cademic study and is very prone to emphasize the contempora ry. Tele-

vision itself uses repeat s in terms of cheap ava ilability w hile aca demic study

tends to privilege programmes associated with certain debates D ays ofHopefor the McCab e/M cArthur cont roversy about realism, Boys from the

Blackstufffor television in the Thatcher years, Absolut ely Fabulousor

Roseannefor feminist accounts of transgression;




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2. no established critical review ing of television. R aymond Williams da ys of

working out a television aesthetic through reviewing are long gone, and

television reviewing is generally a matter of humour and condescension.

Associat ed w ith this is much less commitment , even fro m specialist publish-ers, to produce serious books on specific television programmes;

3. no basis for judging television aesthetics in terms beyond the sociological

discussions of taste;

4. televisions tendency to treat its ow n history as camp nostalgia, using its

archive as a source of programmes on the top 100 television moments or

the top 10 soap queens;

5. a passiona te desire among young people to be on television or in television

rather than to make good television.

Of course, the kind of film culture that exists is not unproblematic or

neutral; it is often underpinned by an exaggerated respect for authorship,

for instance, and perhaps popular Hollywood is still treated more dismis-

sively than it deserves. Certainly many academics in film studies find this

evaluative context problematic and are distrustful of what is produced in

and for that general fi lm culture. But I w ould still argue tha t this context is

important for film studies and that the lack of a general public television

culture to which academics make a contribution makes it more difficult to

develop an argument for good-quality television hence my interest in

media education, which I will develop at the end of the article.

Evaluating television drama

But first to the central point where I want to suggest what we might use to

form the basis of an aesthetics to judge television drama. I want to start

with an example, a very honourable example, of how I dont think it can

be done Robin Nelson (1997) and O ur Friends in the N orth. Nelson is

writing out of drama studies and hence is perhaps more willing to take onevaluative questions. His book TV D rama in Transitiongives an account

of recent television drama largely in a postmodern framework, but in the

final chapters he pulls back to argue that as a matter of practical politics

and ethics (1997: 219) it is necessary to make evaluative judgements.

Nelson carefully a rgues tha t such judgements should be based on the possi-

bilities of communication, on our commonality of being in the world

(1997: 228) and on the role that drama can play in bridging the gap

between subjectivities . . . on the contested ground of w hat it means to be

human (1997: 229). N elsons key criterion is tha t drama should encourageaudiences to t hink more reflectively and feel more profoundly about huma n

life and drama (1997: 230). This leads him away from the popular serials

and series he has been discussing to a realist drama, O ur Friends in the




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3 2

Nor th(BBC, 1997). There is not space to go into the detailed reasons he

gives for that but it seems to me not accidental that, by using criteria that

are largely rational and political but not aesthetic, he has indeed ended up

with a version of the difficult, male-orientated, naturalist drama of anearlier television studies. H is criteria, then, ha ve not helped him to ta ke into

account the range of drama o n television except by being worried that more

popular formats are pushing out the drama he really values.1

I suggest that a different approach is needed which can propose judge-

ments about quality through a clear evaluative method. This would involve

a number of processes to build up an ana lytic description tha t w ould in turn

provide the basis for a discussion about evaluative judgements.2 The first

step in this w ould be to estab lish categories inside the broad generic distinc-

tions. Otherwise, quality is only associated with and indeed demanded of

certa in genres, a s Brunsdon has suggested in her argument that the generic

diversity of television must be taken into account in discussions of quality,

but not in ways w hich make quality genre-specifi c , creat ing certa in

sink or trash genres of w hich demands are not made (1997: 134).

Noel Carroll (2000), writing about film, offers an interesting instance here

of the confi dence w ith w hich some film scholars operate in this area. C arro ll

suggests that differences in evaluation can be adjudicated rationally if the

disputed film is allocated to the correct specific category. Thus, he proposes

that questions of quality are really questions of generic definition; rather

than comparing all fi lms w ith each other in the grand ca tegory o f narra tivefi lm, he argues that the process of a ssigning a fi lm to a more limited category

in w hich like is compared w ith like w ill solve the problem. I ha ve some

sympathy with this logic but if it works it is only because of films under-

lying confi dence about ha ving aesthetic and other too ls for making that like

w ith like comparison. In television studies, a s I have suggested, w e need to

do further work in order to be able to make aesthetic judgements within

categories. But it is helpful, I think, to have a discussion in which EastEn-

dersis not a utomatically put up aga inst O ur Friends in the N orthor indeed

where the criteria used for drama are not the same as those for quiz showsor sport.

In addition, further analysis is needed of the two major modes that still

shape much television drama melodrama and realism. One of the crucial

questions relates to melodrama and what to do about it in terms of

aesthetics. At the moment, the term melodrama tends to be used more

pejoratively in television stud ies than in film studies; thus, G ripsrud is

critical of D ynastyand other soaps because in such drama melodramatic

devices are reduced to pure instruments for stirring up emot ions (1995:

248). But condemning melodramatic aesthetics in an evaluative processwould rule out much of popular television drama. It is surely preferable to

accept that melodrama has a place in popular culture, as has happened in

fi lm study and a s various theorists have argued in relat ion to television, a nd




10/22

to ascribe value to certa in kinds of a cting, visual style, w riting style or narra -

tive formulations which can broadly be defined as melodramatic. An

academic reassessment of soa ps has recognized their importa nce as a na rra-

tive space in which emot ion fi nds expression. But the discussion of how tha tis done does not a s yet a llow us to make fi ner distinctions betw een different

uses of melodramatic conventions. Such distinctions would allow for more

nuanced accounts of the problems of melodrama the over-sensationalism

of soap storylines, for instance, or the didactic qualities of many US series

as well as of its dramatic possibilities.

The aesthetics of naturalism and realism pose a rather different problem

in relation to television drama. Here, debate has been extensive, drawing

on the contributions of some practitioners as well as the founding work of

Williams. However, the textual tradition in television studies for dealing

w ith realism w as to a marked extent formed by C olin McC abes arguments

in Screen in the 1970s about the classic realist text (see, for example,

Pawling and Perkins (1992) article on realism and popular television

drama), although Angs (1985) concept of emotional realism arising out

of her D allaswork has provided a useful, if sometimes confusing, counter-

point. Categorization may again be a helpful way of unpicking a notori-

ously difficult term. Thus, we can consider the complex ways in which

realism is drawn on, which would include generic realism, in the sense of

plausibility to the traditions and expectations of particular genres; realism

as a mode of pushing against boundaries of what has been done, anapproach particularly pertinent to police and hospital genres such as Cops

and ER; and realism as w ay of introducing the w orld to the text a s Nelson

and others wa nt, w hat G ripsrud ca lls the delivery o f strong, many-sided,

meaningful experiential relations to [viewers] own lives and conditions

(1995: 104). An approach that categorized programmes in this way would

mean that realism can be retained as a term that is used by makers and

viewers alike but is not set up as a test of quality which certain kinds of

programmes almost automa tically fa il.

It is clear therefore that there are formal dimensions that need to beexamined more systematically. Most textual analysis of television pays

attention to na rra tive as an organizing system but devotes less space to other

elements such a s the audio and visual organization. Televisions audio/visual

pleasures are often deemed to be limited by size of screen and poor-quality

image. At various points, critics have argued that televisions visual

resources are too limited for aesthetic pleasures. It is not necessary to accept

Caldwells particular definition of televisuality to recognize that there are

numerous examples of television dramas that use sound and image in

complex and demanding w ays, and even soaps, w ith their relentless produc-tion schedules, try to incorporate expressive or interesting images.

Traditiona lly, analysis of visual orga nizat ion and the rela tionship betw een

image and sound has been confi ned to certa in genres such a s the single play




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and the classic serial whereas others such as soaps are deemed to be domi-

nated by narrative. It seems to me that all categories of television can be

interrogated in this area. Jason Jacobs, for instance, has offered an illumi-

nating comparison between the opening credit sequences of ER andCasualtyin order to show how the expressive dimensions of television ca n

be discussed in relation to even the apparently incidental aspects of tele-

vision drama (2001: 453). It is not clear to me why he protests that this is

not intended to generate aesthetic criteria or a ranking of good or bad title

sequences (2001: 453) since his judgement seems clear from the account.

Nevertheless, the work stands as a clear example of how work on the

audio/visual text ca n be used effectively to tease out evaluation criteria.

In this context, relatively little attention has been paid to writing and

dia logue. Authorship in television drama is traditiona lly associat ed w ith the

single play a nd in British television studies w ith a ttention to the playw right.

But it is surprising in a medium that is strongly associated in a variety of

ways with talk, with overheard conversations (Mepham, 1990: 66), that

the tone and delivery of dialogue is often overlooked in favour of narrative

progression. Again there are different modes to be assessed the wide range

of dialogue use in soa ps, for instance, ta king into account the use of regiona l

accents, demotic references, emotional explosions and expository narrative

statements. In addition, individual writers could be recognized and their

w ork analysed even w hen it is obscured by the seria l/series forma t. British

exa mples would include Ca roline Aherne, Pa ul Abbo tt , Tony Jordan,D ebbie Horsfi eld and Ka y M ellor. Such ana lysis could help to support such

writers in the face of the industry demands being put on them and could

also make for more precise discussion of differences in national practices

around writing for television.

A further element to be laid out in an analytic description would be

performance and chara cteriza tion. Television is oft en deemed to be chara c-

ter driven and a cting is a t rad itiona l indicator of quality for a udiences, and

yet little work has been done on what good acting for television might look

like. Frith has commented on the role of key television performers in ra isingaudiences expectations about drama. Analysis would need to look, for

instance, at different modes of acting for particular categories, the use of

star performers and the transfer of soap performers into other forms of

drama. In terms of characterization, the range and type of characters, the

relationship between characters and storylines, the possibilities (taken or

not) for chara cter development and the sacrifice of chara cter plausibility fo r

storylines or issues might all be addressed.

Finally, given televisions propensity for repetition, perhaps we do need

to seek out and praise innovation. C erta inly, the w ay in w hich a drama triesto fit a genre but also to present itself as interestingly different from its

competitors should be brought into the analysis, and this criterion is as

readily applicable to the soaps and series that form the basis of television




12/22

drama as to the one-off play or fi lm, although a gain the different ca tegories

of drama would need to be taken into account.

There are a number of points to be made about this approach. First, it

may seem that these categories are drawn entirely from traditional modesof analysis associated with film studies (and ultimately, in a British context,

English literature). That is obviously partly true. Nevertheless, the kind of

analytic description generated by such accounts would also serve to enable

us to talk better about what television audiences (on limited evidence) seem

to value. Frith, dra w ing on M orrison (1986), describes television view ers as

making judgements in terms of the technical (good acting, sets, camera

w ork), the believable, the interesting, the specta cular, the sat isfying terms

that echo but dont exactly match the professional concern for originality,

authenticity and innovation (Frith, 2000: 126); the approaches I have

described here w ould be a w ay of incorpora ting and exploring these criteria.

Much work on audiences has indeed underestimated the aesthetic value-

judgements being made in television viewing in favour of more macro

accounts of t elevision in its socia l context. In addit ion, research on a udience

preferences has tended to focus on how audiences use television in identity

w ork, as a recent ar ticle exploring childrens television t astes puts it; t hus,

childrens expressions of their tastes and preferences are analysed as self-

evidently social a cts in relation to their preferred social identities (Da vies

et al., 2000). Although undoubtedly pertinent to the topic of that research,

such conclusions about ta ste and identity do no t necessarily help us to thinkabout how television is best evaluated aesthetically.

It could be argued, as Schroder does, that it would be better if criteria for

evaluation were generated by audience research. While I would welcome

such work, there are problems in relying solely on such an approach.

M orrison commented on the diffi culty that a udience members have in artic-

ulating why a programme is enjoyable or of good quality and, in reaching

for words to describe what they value, they are of course themselves

dra w ing on the contested terms of the high/popular culture deba te. Pa rt o f

our task as academics in this field should be to help to articulate termsbeyond this parad igm.

It may also be that what is proposed here is deemed too formalist, not

engaging early enough with the ethics or politics of aesthetic judgement

(Mepham, 1990; Street, 2000). I am not arguing for the establishment of

fixed norms against which all drama is tested but for a way of providing a

ba sis for evaluative discussion. Textual a na lysis tha t systemat ically incor-

pora ted the kind of a reas I have indicated above could provide such a broa d

description, recognizable as the terrain on which the programme(s) was

w orking. There are then further sets of judgements involved in the processof evaluation relating to what counts as innovation or plausibility, what

counts as good acting, w riting or visual organization. What is most import-

ant here is to be transparent in the questions being asked of a programme




13/22

3 6

or a category of programmes. My questions relate to Schroders criteria for

the ra ther different ta sk of a ssessing audience readings. In this case, I w ould

ask of the different elements of the text: are they used a ppropriately for the

category, a re they used expressively in terms of meaning, are they used plea-surably in terms of form? The answer would not be definitive and yes

would not be the only correct answer!

Textual w ork used in this way is not simply a question of interpreta tion,

a matter for the individual reader, but a way of entering into policy debates

about why television matters in a culture. Such accounts could also make

specific links with work on production and with audiences while retaining

its attention to aesthetic detail as a contribution to a debate about making

qualita tive judgements. Working on an analytic description a nd engaging in

a subsequent systematic discussion about evaluation would allow us to

judge the claims to high quality made on behalf of series such as The West

Wingor The Sopr anosor to articulate why something as quirky and prob-

lematic in terms of its representa tion of its w orking-class characters as The

Royle Fami lyis nevertheless a breakthrough in terms of situation comedy.

It is worth noting that such work does already exist in television studies,

so this is not an entirely theoretical proposal. Examples of such use of

textual detail in an evaluative context can be found, for instance, in

Gripsruds work on D ynasty, Brunsdons on British television crime fiction

(1998) and Jacobs quoted above on hospital drama. One small example

illustrates what this kind of textual work can bring to the study of tele-vision. In an Open University book on representation (which is produced

in part for a course, C ulture, M edia , Identities) C hristine G ledhill provides

a comprehensive and considered section on soap opera. Tucked a w ay in an

illustrative box in the Fiction as entertainment section is an analysis of an

episode of EastEnders. G ledhill comments on the strong elements of fa rce

being drawn on in the episode and then comments:

Suddenly, the farcical tone shifts, as a series of tight reverse-shots focus an

exchange of intense looks between the two brothers, for a moment lifting the

story into a different register altogether. . . . Everything else that has been

going on in this episode has been comically predictable. . . . But for this

moment w e encounter the unexpected a s camera and dialogue switch. . . .

(G ledhill, 1997: 342)

In some w ays, G ledhill here has a lso done something unexpected in tele-

vision studies by commenting precisely on a single shot set-up in a soap and

making us feel the nature of the pleasure generated by this shift in tone. As

with Jacobs though, the evaluation involved in this account is understated.

A further outcome of shifting the emphasis somewhat in our work ontelevision dra ma is tha t it w ould be possible to enter more fully into debates

about quality tha t are conducted outside the academy. G ripsrud has given

an interesting account of media interest in his research into D ynasty. Like




14/22

him, I have found that being a soap opera expert leads to calls from jour-

nalists when things happen in the world of television soaps. I have found it

diffi cult to develop an approach tha t is not framed by the high culture/low

culture binary and I am liable therefore to find myself being defensive ofsoaps and their viewers. The more nuanced approach developed here could

be properly critical and demanding of individual programmes without

condemning the genre.

Teach Yourself critical evaluation as a pedagogic issue

More important, though, is generating work on evaluation with our own

students. The interest in media studies in higher education and elsewhere is

an opportunity to encourage a critical audience tha t might demand quality

television in w hatever its forms. So I turn fi na lly to the question o f how tele-

vision drama is taught in media and cultural studies. In this, I am again in

line with Brunsdon, whose concerns in her paper Problems with Quality 3

she described as mainly pedagogic (1997: 109). It seems particularly

important to do such work with our students since consumer choice is

driving progra mme production in public service television a s w ell as in more

fra nkly commercial systems.

One of the signs of the expansion of media studies in education is the

current emphasis that publishers put on textbooks and the explosion of suchbooks aimed at post-16 education, including the first year of an under-

graduate degree. A study of some of these indicates how the parameters of

teaching television drama are being laid down. An illuminating contrast is

provided by a comparison o f three Teach Yourselfbooks, a ll from the same

publisher and in a series tha t a ddresses the self-driven learner as well as the

formal student. I have chosen to look at these books because they allow for

some direct comparison across their different topics Film Studies, Media

Studies and Cultural Studies. It is of course significant, in terms of the

cultura l context I discussed earlier, tha t there is no Teach Yourself TelevisionStudies.

The first point to note is the different address to potential readers indi-

cated by the blurb on the back cover. Teach Your self M edia Studi esseems

to be the most firmly tied to the student in education. It provides a clear

introduction for those embarking on a course of study and then, second,

for those who wish to have an overview of current debates about the

media . The w ide teaching experience of the authors is stressed and they a re

described as currently producing educational material in a variety of

media. With a rather different nuance, Teach Yourself Cult ural Studi espoints to the academic position of the author, Will Brooker (currently

researching and teaching at the University of Wales), but again the value

of the book in formal education is stressed in that it is suitable for both




15/22

3 8

beginners and first-level students. By contrast, the promotion on the Film

Studiesbook gives more detail of the academic status of author Warren

Buckland (Lecturer in Screen Studies at Liverpool John M oores University)

and goes further by listing his areas of research as fi lm theory, criticism andcontemporary Hollywood cinema. The back cover of this title does not

mention students or forma l education. Instead it offers an introduction to

the exciting world of film and suggests a rather different outcome for the

reader than passing an introductory course: whatever your interest in film,

this book will provide the necessary information and critical skills to turn

you into a w ell-informed fi lm critic. O nce aga in w e have an exa mple of the

ra ther different crit ical culture in w hich Film Studies is positioned.

It is not perhaps surprising but it is illuminating to reflect on the very

different positions that the three books take in terms of how they treat

textual analysis and aesthetic evaluation. Teach Yourself Cult ural Studi esin

fact eschew s any such approach. The introduction describes cultura l studies

as being concerned with the living detail of the everyday, the popular and

sometimes the underside of culture, the kind of culture which is always

fluid and vibrant (Brooker, 1998: 1). It warns its readers that this means

engaging with material that might be deemed unworthy of academic

account but reminds them that judgments of ta ste and q uality . . . [are]

not fi xed standa rds but temporary constructs of a particular period (1998:

2). It then goes on to organize its interesting and lively account around a

number of key figures in the development of cultural studies so thatconcepts of the popular, taste or quality are dealt with insofar as they relate

to the work of, for instance, Bourdieu or Fiske.

Teach Your self Film Studi es, on the other hand, while sharing an interest

in the popular, argues that the sta rting point for studying a fi lm is to analyse

the w ay it ha s been constructed (Buckland, 1998: 1) and refers quite openly

to drawing on film aesthetics (1998: 2) for this task. So the first chapter

outlines ways of thinking about mise-en-scne, mise-en-shot, sound and

editing before going on to chapters on narra tive, authorship and genre. This

w ork is woven into a historical context but is clearly a lso meant to providethe reader with the methods of formal film analysis, and a final chapter on

fi lm review ing provides an interesting w ay of thinking about w hat is at stake

in such evaluation.

Teach Yourself M edia Studi esalso includes an account of mise-en-scne,

lighting and editing, but in a different context. This material is included in

a chapter on narrative which takes its place after chapters on institutions,

ideology and media and language (semiotics) and before a chapter on

representation and reality. It is very much concerned with norms; in the

section on mise-en-scne we are told that audiences expect the place theysee to bear a resemblance to real life (Dow nes and M iller, 1998: 55) and a

similar emphasis is placed on clarity in discussing editing: the purpose of

editing is to assemble individual shots in a sequence which audiences can




16/22

read as a coherent narrative (Downes and Miller, 1998: 61). There is also

the assumption tha t the student w ill be interested in the practica lities of how

to produce their own media work; hence Chapter 8, which gives detailed

practical accounts of television production case studies, and Chapter 9,which suggests practical projects and tips for how to carry them out tele-

vision is a close-up medium (1998: 130).

These are only three examples from a single series and clearly the indi-

vidual authors have made decisions about organization and inclusion that

appear differently in other textbooks. Media studies textbooks in particu-

lar might not always include such a heavy concern with practical work.

Nevertheless, I think we can see some important emphases in this example,

particularly in relation to how questions of analysis are treated. In media

studies, in particular, we can note: how television is one example of the

media to be studied which also includes photography, advertisements,

magazines, newspapers and sometimes popular films; that the tools of

textual analysis are largely contained in a broader unit on narrative; that

semiotics and representation are at least as important for textual work as

methods of analysing an image in terms of visual organization 4 and that

judgement is framed in terms of either professional norms or ideological

judgements about representa tion.

I would suggest that these kinds of emphases can be found in more

specialist or sophisticated accounts. In particular, the difference between

making judgements on the basis of representation (in terms of diversity,range, stereotyping) and aesthetics is marked. It could be argued that one

of the achievements of media studies has been to raise awareness of how

gender and ethnicity are deployed in representation; students arriving to

study at undergraduate level are often familiar with the topic, if not with

its complexity. But aesthetics is a different matter. If I look critically at

Women and Soap O pera(G eraghty, 1991) in this context, I am conscious

of my own unease about making (or not making) evaluative judgements

about particular soaps that were almost literally unexpressible in the

context of feminist writing at that time. Thus, I do discuss aesthetics andthe formal pleasures of soaps in Chapter 2 but the grounds for my judge-

ments elsew here are largely to do w ith feminist politics and media represen-

tation. Crossroads, for insta nce, is criticized in t erms of representat ion a nd

the detrimental changes when in the storyline a man took over the running

of the motel. To have criticized the progra mme on a esthetic grounds,

though, would have been to concede too much to those who felt that the

study of such a programme could only be a ludicrous exercise. Now,

though, when the role of soaps on television and in academic debate has

changed, the decision to withhold judgement looks much more problem-atic.

I am suggesting therefore that the teaching of media studies and television

studies in particular would benefit from paying more attention to the visual




17/22

4 0

and performative aspects of drama than now seems to be the case, at least

in the teaching ma teria l currently being produced. This could open up w ork

on television drama which has, in terms of textual accounts, come to be

dominated by questions of narrative, representation and, in certain cases, aparticular account of realism. One of the tasks of narrative analysis is to

make a very common, everyday process stra nge, and an emphasis on expres-

sion as well as meaning, on agency as well as representation, might provide

different ways of looking at familiar material. Such work would equip

students to enter into aesthetic debates about evaluation (rather than just

dismissing them as elitist) and experience them as part of a process that

helps to establish the norms against which new work is judged.

Television and canonical work

In addition, television studies would, I think, benefit from academics being

more explicit a bout the evaluative judgements tha t w e inevitably ma ke. An

example of problems with this can be seen in the comparison of another

(this time ra ther different) set of recent textbooks Key Film Tex ts(Roberts

and Wallis, 2002) and The Television Genre Book(Creeber, 2001). The

former is specifically a canonical exercise (to be read in conjunction with

ano ther book tha t looks at different concepts and a pproa ches to fi lm study).

Key Film Text soffers an analysis of 50 films that the authors deem to beboth importa nt and good, a nd in the Introduction the authors confronts the

question of choice:

Someone decides which is best. What are the criteria? What va lues do w e use

to decide? Who gets to make the decisions. The reader is entitled to ask how

wechose the films for this book. We have chosen films that everyone who

claims to know anything about the history and the theory of cinema will be

expected to know . . . even people w ho oppose the canon w ill expect you to

have the basic film knowledge that includes these films. It is a grounding, a

common pool of references . . . Secondly, it is importa nt to know the films

that have been influential [for] contempora ry fi lm-makers . . . (Roberts and

Wallis, 2002: 2; emphasis in original)

This may not be entirely satisfactory but it does at least put the question

of choice and judgement up front. By contrast, The Television Genre Book

presents its choices rather differently. In part, this is because it is doing

different work, aiming to be an introduction to the study of television, in

particular to the study of genre (Creeber, 2001: vii). The preface does

indicate that the choice of genres is open to debate and interpretation(2001: vii) and gives a rationale for its decisions about how to treat soap

operas or reality TV, for instance; Neale and Turner reinfo rce this in the

introduction with useful accounts of the complexity of the term as applied




18/22

to television. But the decisions about w hy specific progra mmes, particularly

those highlighted in the gray boxes, were chosen for discussion are less

clearly marked.5 But clearly choices have been made and if the book is

successful it could well be a factor in establishing a television studies canon.In the section on television drama, these choices seem to have been made

for a variety of reasons, including unusual longevity (A li as Smi th and

Jones), the first of a type (The M an from U .N .C.L.E.), rule breaking (Hi l l

Street Blues) or status as a classic (Cathy Come H ome). Sometimes aesthetic

qualities are a specific issue, as in Jason Jacobs description of the stylish

pace and fluidity of ERs camerawork (2001: 24) or John Corners

comment on the sheer cumulative force of The D ay A fters combination

of melodrama and social exploration (2001: 34). In the more extended

sections, indeed, editor G len C reeber goes further in terms of evaluation and

suggests tha t w ha t he ca lls the mini-series might be the exemplary television

form, being less formulaic than the never-ending serial and citing examples

such as The Singing D etecti veand Twin Peaks, w hich have given the genre

a reputation for producing innovative, challenging and hugely popular

drama (2001: 36). But, although referred to in these various ways, the

notion o f w hat being good t elevision drama might mean in terms of pa rticu-

lar genres or particular programmes is largely unexplicated and what could

have been a useful discussion is rather lost.

Conclusion

That Sunda y evening, my view ing problems w ere caused by scheduling

decisions that had deemed all three programmes to be quality drama and

screened them against each other. This is still standard practice, as was

evidenced in the announcement of the autumn 2002 schedules when ITV

drew ridicule from many practitioners for urging the BBC to reschedule its

classic serial, D aniel D eronda, so that it did not clash with ITVs new

version of D r Z hivago. I solved my viewing problems by watching oneprogramme, recording another and w aiting for the third to be repeated a nd,

for many, this kind of technological solution renders the kind of questions

I have been asking redundant. In a multi-channel environment, quality

drama becomes a product targeted at a niche audience and judgement is a

matter of taste and social context.

To a ccept this is to miss, a s I have argued, an importa nt cha llenge both

as teachers and view ers. O ur students are future makers and view ers of tele-

vision who are making decisions all the time about what kind of

programmes they want to watch and make. I am not suggesting thataesthetic or quality norms should be imposed without discussion of their

provenance but that textual work provides the possibility of engagement

with such issues through an approach that emphasizes analytic description




19/22

4 2

and evaluative discussion across a range of programmes.6 Work on the

processes of evaluation in different disciplines has addressed three areas: a

concern with particular texts and how they might be described and judged;

a concern with the cultural context in which that judgement takes place;and a concern with how audiences are created for whom evaluation is an

issue. Cultural studies has tended to privilege the second of these areas in

its research and its teaching. I a m suggesting tha t by a ttending more closely

to the first area we might also help to create the third, critical television

audiences.

Notes

The original version o f this article w as w ritten for a European Science Foundat ion

Exploratory Workshop through the Standing Committee for Social Sciences on

The Changing Meanings of Popular Culture for Public Broadcasting, Amster-

dam, 1315 June, 2002. I am very grateful for that support and part icularly thank

all the participants, Liesbet Van Zoonen who organized the workshop and the

Amsterdam School of Communications Research which hosted it.

This article is dedicated to the memory of my father, who died on 13 Septem-

ber 2002.

1 There is a further problem with w hat Nelson proposes because it w ould seem

to me to involve audience research to test out whether a drama had been

effective in these terms. In that sense, it might involve the kind of reception

perspective that Schroder proposes. For an account of O ur Friends in the

Nor thin the context of contemporary British cinema, see Pa ul Marris (2001).

2 Although I came to the term by a different route, there are connections here

with Barkers use of a similar approach, using the same term (Barker with

Austin, 2000: 58), in his work on film theory and popular cinema.

3 Brunsdons paper w as originally written as a contribution to the debate aboutquality generated by the 1988 government discussion document on Broad-

casting in the 90s: competition, choice and quality (HMSO Cmd. 517).

4 Some textbooks, how ever, focus only on the former. See, for instance, the

popular and useful M edia Studies: A Reader, edited by P. Marris and S.

Thornha m, in w hich the Text section is sub-headed codes and structure,

or Tools for Cult ural Studies, edited by Tony Thw aites et a l., w ith its

emphasis on signs and systems.

5 Creeber cites The Cinema Book(Cook, 1985) as a model, but, of course, the

examples that book was built around had been subject to a pre-existingprocess of selection (in the da ys before video) because they w ere ba sed on the

BFIs film extract holdings.




20/22

6 I have focused on dra ma here, but there is no reason w hy ana lytic terms for

evaluating other kinds of television could not be developed.

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CHRISTINE GERA GHTY is Prof esso r o f Film a nd Television Stu d ies

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th e New Look(Ro ut ledg e, 2000). She co-ed ited The Television St ud ies

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Beaut i fu l Laundret t ef o r I.B. Ta uris. Address: Depa rtment of Thea tre,Film a nd TV Stu d ies, University o f G lasg o w , Gilmore hill Cent re, 9

University Avenu e, G lasg o w G12 8QQ, UK. [em a il:

[email protected]]


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