'Wayne's study offers an impressive range of readings and critical methodologies within a collection of exceptional coherence... Dissident Voices is consistently compulsive reading and a must for all students and specialists in the field of recent and contemporary television culture.' Professor Madeleine MacMurraugh-Kavanagh, University of Reading
Two decades of institutional and structural changes in television broadcasting have both informed and reflected profound shifts in British culture. How have programme makers themselves approached the tensions and anxieties of the last twenty years?

Dissident Voices examines the ways in which certain forms and genres have registered a period of cultural upheaval and to what extent they have developed a more reflexive and a more critical television culture. This collection covers a broad range of issues including class, gender and sexuality, the monarchy, identity and nationhood. It examines their representation in a variety of dramas and genres, including police procedurals, documentaries, game shows, sitcoms and satire. The contributors challenge the notion of television as a bland purveyor of the status quo, presenting it as a complex and potentially subversive medium. Television culture is portrayed here as still resistant to the total control of either markets or ideologies. In an age of political consensus, it is an important and popular site where anxiety about and dissent from current social trends frequently surface.

Notes on Contributors



Introduction



Mike Wayne



1. 'Reality or Nothing'?: Dennis Potter's Cold Lazarus

Glen Creeber (University of East Anglia)



2. Counter-Hegemonic Strategies in Between The Lines

Mike Wayne (Brunel University)



3. Crisis and Opportunity: class, gender and allegory in The Grand

Mike Wayne



4. Bare Necessities and Naked Luxuries: The 1990s Male as Erotic Object

Kenneth MacKinnon (University of North London)



5. 'The Fierce Light': The Royal Romance with Television

Deborah Philips ( Brunel University) and Garry Whannel (Roehampton Institute)



6. 'Progressive' Television Documentary and Northern Ireland - The Films of Michael Grigsby in a 'Post-Colonial' Context

David Butler (University of Ulster)



7. The Exquisite Corpse of Rab (Elais) C (opernicus) Nesbitt

Colin McArthur (Freelance writer and lecturer)



8. The Politics of Ridicule: Satire and Television

Peter Keighron (Journalist)



9. Not a Lot of Laughs: Documentary and Public Service

Brian Winston (University of Westminster)



10. Dissidence and Authenticity in Dyke Porn and Actuality TV

Tanya Krzywinska (Brunel University)



11. Downloading the Documentary

David Chapman (University of East London)



Index