[Apologies for cross-posting]

Dear all,

Please find below an outline of the papers and panels at the Cultures of
British Television Drama conference, University of Reading, 13-15
September, 2005. More details and a booking form can be found at:

www.rdg.ac.uk/fd/research/cbtdconference.htm

Please email me ([log in to unmask]) or Leah Panos, conference
administrator ([log in to unmask]) with any queries.

Best wishes,

Helen Wheatley

___________________________________________________________________________

Cultures of British Television Drama, 13-15 September, 2005

Opening keynote panel - ‘Cultures of British Television Drama: Histories’ -
Dr. Jason Jacobs (Griffith) & Prof. John Caughie (University of Glasgow)

Closing keynote panel – ‘Cultures of British Television Drama: Drama
Today’ - Prof. Robin Nelson (Manchester Metropolitan University) & Prof.
Christine Geraghty (University of Glasgow)

Plenary – Industrial change and TV drama aesthetics

John Ellis (Royal Holloway, University of London): The cost of TV drama
and production values

Mark Fremaux (Edge Hill College): The Interaction between the film and
television industries and the use of film for television production

Julia Hallam (University of Liverpool): Equal Opportunists: The rise of
the writer producer in the 1990s


Plenary – New approaches to social realism

Karen Shepherdson (Canterbury Christ Church University College):
Dramatisation and Appropriation of the Demotic Voice.

Stephen Lacey (Manchester Metropolitan University/University of Glamorgan)

Lez Cooke (Manchester Metropolitan University): ‘New Wave’ in British
Television Drama


Panel 1a: Genres of fantasy, 1960-82

Jonathan Bignell (University of Reading): Transatlantic Style: Television
and Mise-en-Scene in Filmed UK Action Series

Helen Wheatley (University of Reading/University of Warwick): The house
that bled to death: domestic horror in the 1970s

Nickianne Moody (Liverpool John Moores University): Quatermass and the
Representation of Social Malaise for a Popular Audience


Panel 1b: Questions of Authorship

Andy Willis (University of Salford): Beyond Days of Hope: Jim Allen and
the history of television drama

Kara McKechnie (University of Leeds): Hopeless in Halifax, helpless in
Hartlepool: The Writer in Disguise - Alan Bennett’s and Stephen Frears’
collaborations for LWT

Peter Billingham (University of Portsmouth): ‘I ‘ad Popular Audience
Ratings in the back of my cab, yer know!’ Reflections upon the issues of
concepts of the ‘Popular’, the ‘Serious’ and the ‘Single Author’ in
British television drama in the context of Tony Marchant’s Take Me Home.
(BBC 1, 1989)


Panel 2a: Producing children’s drama

Karen Lury (University of Glasgow): Shoebox Zoo (BBC Scotland/Shoebox
Production Co-production, 2004-)

Val Williamson (Edge Hill College): Starting from Scratch: Watching The
Tribe evolve with Channel Five, 1999-2003


Panel 2b: Feminist approaches to the medical drama

Sara Steinke (University of Reading): How I learned to stop worrying and
love television medical drama: online fandom and television medical drama

Christina Adamou (University of Reading): No Angels, no heroes:
Undermining gender stereotypes


Panel 3a: Experimental television drama

Jamie Sexton (University of Wales, Aberyswyth): Experimental Television,
Talking to a Stranger and Multi-Perspective Narration

Paul Long (University of Central England): ‘A radical departure for the
BBC’? ‘Gangsters’: The meanings, possibilities and memory of regional drama

Pawe³ Schreiber (Kazimierz Wielki Academy Bydgoszcz, Poland): The Truth
Beyond Words and Pictures?: Historical representation in Tom Stoppard’s
Squaring the Circle


Panel 3b: Representing cultural identity

Darrell Newton (Salisbury University, MD): Undue Drama: British Television
and the Taboo of Sexual Miscegenation

Andrew Hill (University of Ulster, Coleraine): Northern Ireland and Pre-
Troubles Television Drama

Marcus Free (University of Limerick): The Problematics of Space, Class,
and Gender in Roddy Doyle’s Writing for Television and Film


Panel 4a - Shameless and the new social realism

Glen Creeber (University of Wales, Aberystwyth): ‘The Truth is Out There –
Not!’: morality, politics and contemporary social realism in Shameless
(C4, 2004-).

Helen Piper (University of Bristol): ‘Figurability’ and the expression of
class-hybridity in recent British television drama

Amy McNulty (University of Salford): Postmodern style, realist intent: The
internal contradictions of Shameless


Panel 4b - British Science Fiction Television

James Chapman (Open University): Quatermass and the origins of British
television science fiction

John R. Cook (Glasgow Caledonian University): 'The Age of Aquarius: Utopia
and Anti-Utopia in British Science Fiction Television of the Late 1960s
and Early 1970s'

Peter Wright (Edge Hill College of Higher Education): Echoes of
Discontent: Conservative Politics and Sapphire and Steel

'Cultures of British Television Drama: 1960-82' is directed by Dr Jonathan
Bignell (University of Reading), Stephen Lacey (Manchester Metropolitan
University), and Prof John Ellis (Royal Holloway, University of London)
and combines analytical and archival study of British television drama
programming between these years. The project focuses in particular on
popular generic television drama in the period (based on postdoctoral
research undertaken by Dr. Helen Wheatley at the University of Reading),
institutional cultures and practices, and the regional drama output of
Granada and BBC Pebble Mill (through doctoral research conducted by Lez
Cooke at Manchester Metropolitan University). This conference is the
culmination of a series of symposia organised in conjunction with the
Centre for Television Drama Studies at Reading and the Department of
Contemporary Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University.