Scotch Missed

This article explores Scotland's relationship with and contribution to the Play for Today series. In order to quantify these, it proposes a working definition of ‘Scottishness’ based on representational content. This generates a body of 21 Scottish Plays for Today, which the article further breaks down into two sub-sets: seven plays produced outside Scotland and fourteen within. Noting that the externally produced plays are far better remembered and much more easily accessible than their locally produced peers, the article asks: do the external plays alone offer a reliable synecdoche for the terms of Scotland's contribution to Play for Today and the images and understandings of Scotland that Play for Today created and/or confirmed? Through extended comparative textual analysis of two externally produced plays – Just Another Saturday and The Elephants’ Graveyard – and two locally produced ones – Degree of Uncertainty and The Good Time Girls – the article demonstrates that the answer to this question is in the negative. The analyses presented here highlight the extent to which the 1970s work of writer Peter McDougall is far more formally and tonally complex than its contemporary popular and critical reputations might suggest. They also highlight the existence of an extended engagement with feminist gender politics and identities within Scottish screen fiction from an earlier date than conventionally identified within the established scholarly consensus. In these ways, the article addresses multiple aspects of Scottish screen and cultural studies’ long-term neglect of television's position and significance within modern Scottish culture and cultural history

Aesthetics · Art · Linguistics · Media studies · Neglect · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Synecdoche · History · Irish and British Studies · Law · Psychology · Scottish History and National Identity

• Spaces for criticism

  Open Access•Katie Crosson, Tom May•Critical Studies in Television…•2025

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• Scotland

  David Martin-Jones•Scotland•2009

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• Directory of World Cinema

  Bob Nowlan, Zach Finch•Directory of World Cinema•2015

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• Discomfort and Joy

  Jonathan Murray•Discomfort and Joy•2011

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• The Contribution of Scots to the Building of British Film and Television Institutions

  Open Access•Duncan Petrie•Scottish Affairs•2018

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