Jonathan Bignell
Biographic Data
| ID | 1154043 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jonathan Bignell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jonathan |
| FAMILY NAME | Bignell |
| SIGNATURE | BIGNELL J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Reading |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4874-1601 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Television Histories
Television Genres and Formats
Television Production
Television Cultures and Globalisation
Television Industries
Television Audiences
Studying Television
Television Representation and Identity
Television Style and Form
Television Narrative
Television and Quality
Television Realities
An Introduction to Television Studies
Introduction Using this Book. Television Studies. The Organisation of Chapters. Further Reading 1. Studying Television Introduction. Broadcast Television. 'Our' Television? Studying Programmes. Television and Society. Television Audiences. Case Study: Television Past and Present. Summary of Key Points. Further Reading 2. Television Histories Introduction. Collecting the Evidence. Inventing Television Technologies. Television Institutions. Profess…
Cringe Histories: Harold Pinter and the Steptoes
This article argues that cringe humour in British television had begun at least by the early 1960s and derived from a theatre history in which conventions of Naturalism were modified by emergent British writers working with European avant-garde motifs. The article makes the case by analysing the importance of cringe to the BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son, tracing its form and themes back to the ‘comedy of menace’ and ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ emblematis…
Postmodern Media Culture
Postmodern Media Culture examines the relationships between theories of the postmodern and contemporary media institutions, products and consumers.It analyses the function of media examples in the work of a number of key theorists including Adorno, Baudrillard, Benjamin, Habermas, Jameson, Lyotard, and McLuhan, and discusses contemporary media production, products and audiences, to test and reorient theoretical models of the postmodern. The book …
Introduction to Television Studies
Introduction: Harold Pinter’s Transmedial Histories
This article introduces the special issue by exploring the transmediality of Harold Pinter's work. By examining Pinter's texts across television, radio and cinema, as well as theatre, this article argues that both Pinter's formal experimentation and development as a cultural figure are intimately connected to his consistent practice of working across a variety of media
Pinter, Authorship and Entrepreneurship In 1960S British Cinema: The Economics of The Quiller Memorandum
This article uses primary sources to evaluate how Harold Pinter’s screenwriting for the film The Quiller Memorandum (1966) operated in the business context of film production in Britain. In the mid-1960s, British cinema both claimed forms of national distinctiveness and also sought internationalization by drawing on financial and creative resources from both continental Europe and the USA. The Pinter ‘brand’, choices of cast and production person…
Performing television history
An expanded conception of performance study can disturb current theoretical and historical assumptions about television's medial identity. The article considers how to write histories of the dominant forms and assumptions about performance in British and American television drama and analyses how acting is situated in relation to the multiple meaning-making components of television. A longitudinal, wide-ranging analysis is briefly sketched to sho…
Docudrama performance: Realism, Recognition and Representation
Popular Television Drama: Critical Perspectives
The Spaces ofThe Wednesday Play(BBC TV 1964-1970): Production, Technology and Style
The BBC television drama anthology The Wednesday Play, broadcast from 1964-70 on the BBC1 channel, was high-profile and often controversial in its time and has since been central to accounts of British television’s ‘golden age’. This article demonstrates that production technologies and methods were more diverse at that time than is now acknowledged, and that The Wednesday Play dramas drew both approving but also very critical responses from cont…
An Introduction to Television Studies
In this comprehensive textbook, now updated for its third edition, Jonathan Bignell provides students with a framework for understanding the key concepts and main approaches to Television Studies, including audience research, television history and broadcasting policy, and the analytical study of individual programmes. Features include: a glossary of key terms key terms defined in margins suggestions for further reading activities/assignments for…
Transatlantic Spaces: Production, location and style in 1960s–1970s action-adventure TV series
This paper argues that transatlantic hybridity connects space, visual style and ideological point of view in British television action-adventure fiction of the 1960s–1970s. It analyses the relationship between the physical location of TV series production at Elstree Studios, UK, the representation of place in programmes, and the international trade in television fiction between the UK and USA. The TV series made at Elstree by the ITC and ABC comp…
Cultural Difference? Not So Different after All
In this article the authors discuss a study on the importation of U.S. television programs in Great Britain and the acquisition of British drama for screening on U.S. television. It notes that the study aims to investigate the impact of the acquisition of U.S. and British television on the debates around the traditions and ideologies of television dramas. It contends that to properly understand transnational television, relationships between nati…
An Introduction to Television Studies
Introduction Using this Book. Television Studies. The Organisation of Chapters. Further Reading 1. Studying Television Introduction. Broadcast Television. 'Our' Television? Studying Programmes. Television and Society. Television Audiences. Case Study: Television Past and Present. Summary of Key Points. Further Reading 2. Television Histories Introduction. Collecting the Evidence. Inventing Television Technologies. Television Institutions. Profess…
Exemplarity, Pedagogy and Television History
This paper addresses some theoretical problems raised by the citation of examples of popular television drama in teaching and writing about British programmes of the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that examples shape theorists' and students' understanding because citing an example relies on a notion of a canon whose constitution, inclusions and exclusions represent a larger context and history. Yet an example must therefore exceed the field it stands…
Familiar aliens: Teletubbies and postmodern childhood
Journal Article Familiar aliens: Teletubbies and postmodern childhood Get access Jonathan Bignell Jonathan Bignell Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 46, Issue 3, Autumn 2005, Pages 373–388, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/46.3.373 Published: 01 October 2005
The Spaces ofThe Wednesday Play(BBC TV 1964-1970): Production, Technology and Style
The BBC television drama anthology The Wednesday Play, broadcast from 1964-70 on the BBC1 channel, was high-profile and often controversial in its time and has since been central to accounts of British television’s ‘golden age’. This article demonstrates that production technologies and methods were more diverse at that time than is now acknowledged, and that The Wednesday Play dramas drew both approving but also very critical responses from cont…
Programmes and Canons
the analysis of programmes, as locations for the understanding and critique of television aesthetics, institutions and audiences. Whether considering concepts of genre, the politics of representations, the activity of audiences, or the diachronic changes in television culture, the force of critical argument rests to an important degree on the citation of programmes as the evidence on which conclusions are based. These citations of programme examp…
Media Semiotics: An Introduction
Part 1 Signs and myths: the semiotic point of view sign systems components of the sign sequences of linguistic signs visual signs connotation and myth wrestling and Julius Caesar myth and social meanings myth and ideology sources and further reading suggestions for further work. Part 2 Advertisements: the advertising business analyzing advertising the semiotic critique of ads ideology in ads the ideology of ads problems in the ideological analysi…
Familiar aliens: Teletubbies and postmodern childhood
Journal Article Familiar aliens: Teletubbies and postmodern childhood Get access Jonathan Bignell Jonathan Bignell Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 46, Issue 3, Autumn 2005, Pages 373–388, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/46.3.373 Published: 01 October 2005
Exemplarity, Pedagogy and Television History
This paper addresses some theoretical problems raised by the citation of examples of popular television drama in teaching and writing about British programmes of the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that examples shape theorists' and students' understanding because citing an example relies on a notion of a canon whose constitution, inclusions and exclusions represent a larger context and history. Yet an example must therefore exceed the field it stands…
Programmes and Canons
the analysis of programmes, as locations for the understanding and critique of television aesthetics, institutions and audiences. Whether considering concepts of genre, the politics of representations, the activity of audiences, or the diachronic changes in television culture, the force of critical argument rests to an important degree on the citation of programmes as the evidence on which conclusions are based. These citations of programme examp…
The Television Handbook
The Television Handbook is a critical introduction to the practice and theory of television. The book examines the state of television today, explains how television is made and how production is organised, and discusses how critical thinking about programmes and genres can illuminate their meanings. This book also explores how developments in technology and the changing structure of the television industry will lead the medium in new directions.…
An Introduction to Television Studies
In this comprehensive textbook, newly updated for its second edition, Jonathan Bignell provides students with a framework for understanding the key concepts and main approaches to Television Studies, including audience research, television history and broadcasting policy, and the analytical study of individual programmes. Features for the second ed
Cultural Difference? Not So Different after All
In this article the authors discuss a study on the importation of U.S. television programs in Great Britain and the acquisition of British drama for screening on U.S. television. It notes that the study aims to investigate the impact of the acquisition of U.S. and British television on the debates around the traditions and ideologies of television dramas. It contends that to properly understand transnational television, relationships between nati…
Transatlantic Spaces: Production, location and style in 1960s–1970s action-adventure TV series
This paper argues that transatlantic hybridity connects space, visual style and ideological point of view in British television action-adventure fiction of the 1960s–1970s. It analyses the relationship between the physical location of TV series production at Elstree Studios, UK, the representation of place in programmes, and the international trade in television fiction between the UK and USA. The TV series made at Elstree by the ITC and ABC comp…
An Introduction to Television Studies
In this comprehensive textbook, now updated for its third edition, Jonathan Bignell provides students with a framework for understanding the key concepts and main approaches to Television Studies, including audience research, television history and broadcasting policy, and the analytical study of individual programmes. Features include: a glossary of key terms key terms defined in margins suggestions for further reading activities/assignments for…
The Spaces ofThe Wednesday Play(BBC TV 1964-1970): Production, Technology and Style
The BBC television drama anthology The Wednesday Play, broadcast from 1964-70 on the BBC1 channel, was high-profile and often controversial in its time and has since been central to accounts of British television’s ‘golden age’. This article demonstrates that production technologies and methods were more diverse at that time than is now acknowledged, and that The Wednesday Play dramas drew both approving but also very critical responses from cont…
Docudrama performance: Realism, Recognition and Representation
Popular Television Drama: Critical Perspectives
Performing television history
An expanded conception of performance study can disturb current theoretical and historical assumptions about television's medial identity. The article considers how to write histories of the dominant forms and assumptions about performance in British and American television drama and analyses how acting is situated in relation to the multiple meaning-making components of television. A longitudinal, wide-ranging analysis is briefly sketched to sho…
Introduction: Harold Pinter’s Transmedial Histories
This article introduces the special issue by exploring the transmediality of Harold Pinter's work. By examining Pinter's texts across television, radio and cinema, as well as theatre, this article argues that both Pinter's formal experimentation and development as a cultural figure are intimately connected to his consistent practice of working across a variety of media
Pinter, Authorship and Entrepreneurship In 1960S British Cinema: The Economics of The Quiller Memorandum
This article uses primary sources to evaluate how Harold Pinter’s screenwriting for the film The Quiller Memorandum (1966) operated in the business context of film production in Britain. In the mid-1960s, British cinema both claimed forms of national distinctiveness and also sought internationalization by drawing on financial and creative resources from both continental Europe and the USA. The Pinter ‘brand’, choices of cast and production person…
Cringe Histories: Harold Pinter and the Steptoes
This article argues that cringe humour in British television had begun at least by the early 1960s and derived from a theatre history in which conventions of Naturalism were modified by emergent British writers working with European avant-garde motifs. The article makes the case by analysing the importance of cringe to the BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son, tracing its form and themes back to the ‘comedy of menace’ and ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ emblematis…
Postmodern Media Culture
Postmodern Media Culture examines the relationships between theories of the postmodern and contemporary media institutions, products and consumers.It analyses the function of media examples in the work of a number of key theorists including Adorno, Baudrillard, Benjamin, Habermas, Jameson, Lyotard, and McLuhan, and discusses contemporary media production, products and audiences, to test and reorient theoretical models of the postmodern. The book …
Introduction to Television Studies
Television Histories
Television Genres and Formats
Television Production
Television Cultures and Globalisation
Television Industries
Television Audiences
Studying Television
Art (17 works) · Media Studies and Communication (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · History (10 works) · Literature (10 works) · Media studies (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Visual arts (8 works)