Christine Becker continues her reports on British TV with a look at the prominence of documentaries in primetime.
Read more »
Archive for May, 2011
Report From London: Documentary
Could The Good Wife Be More Prescient?
When it comes to misbehaving male politicos, troubled marriages, and suffering wives, it seems a reasonable question to ask whether the writers/creators of The Good Wife are either clairvoyant, or just darned lucky.
Read more »
Keepin’ it Real on Treme
The producers/writers on Treme are under tremendous pressure: they ache to do right by New Orleans, they have to make a television show that people will continue watching, and they want to tell the truth about the city putting itself back together after the storm.
Read more »
The Rapture of New Network Shows
What happened at last week's network upfronts, and what does it say about American television?
Read more »
Matthew Graham’s Doctor Who: Fear Him?
The obvious critical question is this: which Matthew Graham do we get here? The Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes scribe? Or the 'Fear Her' and Bonekickers doppelganger?
Read more »
Report From London: Scheduling
Christine Becker offers her first dispatch from London, taking a glance at British scheduling practices.
Read more »
The Productive, the Constructive, the Bizarre: Adventures in Student Evaluations
A recent article about Yelp! in The Atlantic has me thinking about student evaluations. 'Tis the season, after all...
Read more »
MIT7 Media In Transition: unstable platforms
A look back at the highlights of last weekend's Media in Transition conference.
Read more »
F.ix E.verything M.y A.ss
Living here in New Orleans, one of the most striking conundrums about this series is that while its heartbeat lies with the culture of Black inhabitants, it seems their larger lives cannot be the focus –perhaps due to its audience of largely white and affluent viewers.
Read more »
Glee: The Countertenor and The Crooner, Part 3
Just as Chris Colfer provides a model for queer kids who have not yet been represented, so Darren Criss provides an equally significant alternative model for queer straightness.
Read more »
Neil Gaiman’s Doctor Who: Fan Service Meets the Junkyard Look
There's an illusion of transformative work here – although this seems to alter the rules of the Whoniverse, in fact it leaves all the game pieces in play as they were.
Read more »
What Are You Missing? May 1-14
Ten (or more) media industry news items you might have missed recently, plus a programming note.
Read more »
The Rhythm of a City Out of Sync: The Disrupted Spaces of Treme
While season one seemed to chart the resiliency of New Orleans as a place, defined by its people and its culture, season two is digging into localized spaces and demonstrating their continued vulnerability in the wake of the storm.
Read more »
Glee: The Countertenor and the Crooner, Part 2
Chris Colfer’s is the first solo voice in recent memory to break into the mainstream as gender-queer, and as such, has become the site of both euphoria and anxiety.
Read more »
Steve Thompson’s Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who: A Pirate Copy?
'The Curse of the Black Spot' serves up warmed-over intertextualities with gusto. But such manic repetition of generic fare seems to over-ride considerations of authorial distinction.
Read more »
