2006/05/01 by Greg Smith · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Cinema and Media Studies #Media Studies and Communication #Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
paper · doi:10.3366/jbctv.2006.3.1.82
openalex publication_date 2006/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/23
One of the challenges when writing about the aesthetics of ‘good television’ is to capture both what is extraordinary about the text and what is ordinary practice. Most good television doesn’t flaunt its utter difference from television conventions in the way that, say, gallery exhibitions of video art can do. Such television shows instead participate within the norms of normal TV, tweaking those just enough to trumpet a particular programme as ‘quality television’.1 While we have a growing body of work on the socio-cultural and economic aspects of television, we are only in the early stages of talking about television aesthetics,2 and so any work that talks about narration and ‘good television’ must proceed on two fronts. In order to give a sense of what’s ‘good’ about the text, we must simultaneously begin to invent a language to articulate the standard conventions that good television manipulates. In this way we do not radically distance ‘good television’ from more ‘ordinary television’, always a temptation when dealing with a denigrated medium. We do not need to shove ordinary television downward in order to elevate and appreciate the elegant construction of certain programmes. We need to maintain the continuities between the two, because good television comes out of and extends the practice of more conventional television. We have inherited from film studies a language for discussing the aesthetics of shots and for analysing the narrative structure of a featurelength film, but there are still many mysteries about distinctive aspects of television’s particular forms. We recognise and refer to ‘character arcs’ in serial television, but what does that mean? How does serial television juggle multiple arcs in an episode? By what principles does it parcel out its story information across multiple episodes? There is no single answer for these questions. I suggest that the best way to investigate them is through close analysis of how particular texts handle these concerns. Over time we can build a solid understanding of tele-