Complexity / simplicity: Moments in television

By Manchester University Press

An exciting new strand in The Television Series, the ‘Moments in Television’ collections celebrate the power and artistry of television, whilst interrogating key critical concepts in television scholarship.

Each ‘Moments’ book is organised around a provocative binary theme. Complexity / simplicity addresses the idea of complex TV, examining its potential, limitations and impact upon creative and interpretative practices. It also reassesses simplicity as an alternative criterion for evaluation. Complexity and simplicity persuasively illuminate the book’s chosen programmes in new ways.

The book explores an eclectic range of TV fictions, dramatic and comedic. Contributors from diverse perspectives come together to expand and enrich the kind of close analysis most commonly found in television aesthetics. Sustained, detailed programme analyses are sensitively framed within historical, technological, institutional, cultural, creative and art-historical contexts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Apr 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781526148742

Book preview

Complexity / simplicity

ffirs01-fig-5001.jpgffirs02-fig-5001.jpg

series editors

JONATHAN BIGNELL

SARAH CARDWELL

LUCY FIFE DONALDSON

already published

Paul Abbott BETH LOUISE JOHNSON

Alan Bennett KARA MCKECHNIE

Alan Clarke DAVE ROLINSON

Jimmy McGovern STEVE BLANDFORD

Andrew Davies SARAH CARDWELL

Tony Garnett STEPHEN LACEY

Trevor Griffiths JOHN TULLOCH

Troy Kennedy Martin LEZ COOKE

David Milch JASON JACOBS

Terry Nation JONATHAN BIGNELL and ANDREW O’DAY

Jimmy Perry and David Croft SIMON MORGAN-RUSSELL

Lynda La Plante JULIA HALLAM

Jack Rosenthal SUE VICE

Joss Whedon MATTHEW PATEMAN

TV antiquity SYLVIE MAGERSTÄDT

You're nicked BEN LAMB

Complexity / simplicity

Moments in television

Edited by Sarah Cardwell, Jonathan Bignell and Lucy Fife Donaldson

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2022

While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher.

Published by Manchester University Press

Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 4875 9 hardback

First published 2022

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

List of figures

Notes on contributors

The Television Series: general editors’ preface

Moments in Television, the collections: editors’ preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: complexity / simplicity

Sarah Cardwell, Jonathan Bignell and Lucy Fife Donaldson

1 ‘WTF June?’: The Handmaid's Tale and the significance of unexpected choice

Trisha Dunleavy

2 Being Frank? Breaking the ‘fourth wall’ in Netflix's House of Cards

Christa van Raalte and Maike Helmers

3 ‘You've got to expect this kind of thing in the priesthood’: simplicity and complexity in Father Ted

Karen Quigley

4 Depth in two dimensions: complex/simple moments in Rick and Morty

James Walters

5 Simplicity and complexity in the costuming of Killing Eve

Josette Wolthuis

6 Complexity and clear-sightedness in The Wire

James Zborowski

7 Such schadenfreude: unpacking the political satire in Veep

Michael P. Young

8 Queer adventures in time and space: complicating simplicity in Doctor Who

Benedict Morrison

9 Vanity Fair and the contradictions of colour

Jonathan Bignell

10 The value of simplicity: The Long Wait

Sarah Cardwell

Index

List of figures

1.1 The Handmaid's Tale (2017–present) Offred/June prepares to return to Gilead.

2.1 House of Cards (2013–18) Manufacturing consent? Frank keeps his co-conspirators on board.

2.2 House of Cards (2013–18) The operational aesthetic: Frank sharpens the blade of martyrdom.

2.3 House of Cards (2013–18) Metanarrative and metaphor: Frank stalks the corridors of power.

3.1 Father Ted (1995–98) Ted and the nuns.

3.2 Father Ted (1995–98) Lost in the lingerie section.

5.1 Killing Eve (2018–present) Villanelle confronts Niko in Oxford.

5.2 Killing Eve (2018–present) Eve has put a hit out on herself for Villanelle to kill her.

5.3 Killing Eve (2018–present) Villanelle has a moment of introspection in Amsterdam.

5.4 Killing Eve (2018–present) Villanelle/Oksana's mother gives her a denim jumpsuit in Russia.

7.1 Veep (2012–19) Helsinki.

7.2 Veep (2012–19) Special relationship – and that hat.

7.3 Veep (2012–19) Selina makes it to the Oval Office.

8.1 Doctor Who (1963–89) Genre signifiers in ‘The Gunfighters’.

8.2 Doctor Who (1963–89) Widescreen television spectacle in ‘The Gunfighters’.

8.3 Doctor Who (1963–89) A tight frame in ‘The Gunfighters’.

9.1 Vanity Fair (1967) ‘The Famous Little Becky Puppet’.

9.2 Vanity Fair (1967) Tight two-shot in a set representing Amelia's carriage.

9.3 Vanity Fair (1967) The filmed set-piece of the Duchess of Richmond's ball.

10.1 The Long Wait (2011) Triangles and swings.

10.2 The Long Wait (2011) Making magic.

10.3 The Long Wait (2011) The time has come.

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Bignell is Professor of Television and Film at the University of Reading. He is a General Editor (with Sarah Cardwell and Lucy Fife Donaldson) of Manchester University Press's ‘The Television Series’, which he co-founded with Cardwell, and co-editor of the ‘Moments in Television’ collections. Jonathan's writing often combines historiographic work with analysis of the audiovisual forms and style of TV programmes and films. His most recent monograph was Beckett on screen: the television plays (Manchester University Press, 2009) and he is the author of over fifty articles and chapters, including contributions to the journals Adaptation, Critical Studies in Television, the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Media History and Screen.

Sarah Cardwell is Honorary Fellow in the School of Arts at the University of Kent. She is a General Editor (with Jonathan Bignell and Lucy Fife Donaldson) of Manchester University Press's ‘The Television Series’, which she co-founded with Bignell, and co-editor of the ‘Moments in Television’ collections. Sarah's research within television aesthetics and adaptation studies is characteristically inspired by analytic philosophical aesthetics. She is the author of Adaptation revisited (2002) and Andrew Davies (2005) (both Manchester University Press), as well as numerous articles and papers on literary adaptation, contemporary British literature and television aesthetics, and she is an Editorial Adviser to Critical Studies in Television.

Lucy Fife Donaldson is Senior Lecturer at the University of St Andrews. She is a General Editor (with founding editors Sarah Cardwell and Jonathan Bignell) of Manchester University Press's ‘The Television Series’ and co-editor of the ‘Moments in Television’ collections. Lucy's research focuses on the materiality of style and the body in popular film and television. She is the author of Texture in film (Palgrave, 2014), co-editor of Television performance (Red Globe Press, 2019) and a member of the editorial boards of Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism and MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture.

Trisha Dunleavy is Associate Professor in Media Studies, at Te Rerenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research interests centre on television, in which the focal areas are high-end TV drama and related forms, television institutions and industries, and both transnational and national screen production cultures. Her major publications are Ourselves in primetime: a history of New Zealand television drama (Auckland University Press, 2005), Television drama: form, agency, innovation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), New Zealand film and television: institution, industry and cultural change, with Hester Joyce (Intellect, 2011) and Complex serial drama and multiplatform television (Routledge, 2018).

Maike Helmers trained as an Assistant Film Editor and Sound Editor with the Film Department of the British Broadcasting Corporation, where she contributed to a number of award-winning documentaries, drama series and features. Subsequently, Maike became a Senior Lecturer at Bournemouth University, teaching Editing and Sound Design to MA students for over two decades. Her research interest in sound, cinema and aesthetics informed her PhD thesis: New narrative frame – sound design and conceptual storytelling in German film 1930–1933. Maike is now an independent researcher, focusing on the confluence of editing and sound in shaping filmic narrative.

Benedict Morrison is Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Exeter. His research is particularly focused on theories and histories of queer film and television. His book Complicating articulation in art cinema was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. He is currently working on a reading of queer eccentricity in postwar British comedy. He is also a member of an eco-queer collective which explores the intersections of queer theory and ecology.

Karen Quigley is Senior Lecturer in Theatre at the University of York, UK. Her research on a range of subjects including unstageable stage directions, site-specific performance pedagogy and solo spectatorship has been published in European Drama and Performance Studies, Journal of Contemporary Drama in English and Theatre, Dance and Performance Training. Her first monograph, Performing the unstageable: success, imagination, failure was published by Bloomsbury in February 2020.

Christa van Raalte is Associate Professor in Film and Television, and Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University. She gained her BA in English from Oxford and her MA in Cultural and Textual Studies from Sunderland, where she also completed her PhD: Women and guns in the post-war Hollywood western. Current research interests include constructions of gender in science fiction and action films, narrative strategies in complex TV, and workforce diversity in the media industries.

James Walters is Reader in Film and Television Studies at the University of Birmingham. His books include Alternative worlds in Hollywood cinema (Intellect, 2008), Fantasy film (Bloomsbury, 2011), the BFI TV Classic on The Thick of It (2016) Film moments (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) (with Tom Brown) and Television performance (Red Globe Press, 2019) (with Lucy Fife Donaldson).

Josette Wolthuis is Lecturer in Television and Cross-media Culture at the University of Amsterdam. She received her PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of Warwick in 2020. Her research focuses on costume and fashion in serial television drama, alongside other matters of television history, style and aesthetics.

Michael P. Young is a native New Yorker with an insatiable wanderlust who has finally completed his PhD in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television at University of Reading. His research interests include television aesthetics, German Romanticism, analytic philosophy, film studies and meandering around foreign locales looking for beautiful things. He is currently working on contemporary models of the feminine in American television thrillers in-between naps and figuring out which plants attract butterflies.

James Zborowski is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Hull. He is the author of Classical Hollywood cinema: point of view and communication (Manchester University Press, 2016). In the field of television studies he has published work on Coronation Street, Ghostwatch, The Royle Family, The Simpsons, The Wire, property programmes and the work of Sally Wainwright.

The Television Series:

general editors’ preface

Television is part of our everyday experience and is one of the most significant features of our cultural lives today. Yet its practitioners and its artistic and cultural achievements remain relatively unacknowledged. The books in this series aim to remedy this via three distinct strands.

The first and largest strand addresses the work of major television writers and creators. The second addresses key television genres. Each book provides an authoritative and accessible guide that focuses on a particular practitioner's output, or a body of related works, and assesses the significance of its contribution to television over the years. Close textual analysis stands at the heart of every volume in the series; this is contextualised by and integrated with other materials. Many of the volumes draw on original sources, such as archive material and specially conducted interviews, and all of them list relevant bibliographic sources. The Television Series focuses on British television programmes, including those from other countries that are shown in the UK, and that are easily and affordably accessible for viewing by most readers.

Finally, there are the ‘Moments in Television’ collections. These edited volumes explore a range of TV fictions, dramatic and comedic, and demonstrate a commitment to close encounters with television: close stylistic analysis, evaluative criticism and the appraisal of TV creators’ achievements. Every Moments collection is organised around a provocative binary theme, chosen for its engagement with key critical concepts in television studies. Each chapter appraises a particular programme, via selected moments, in relation to the theme, and makes a case for its significance within the television landscape.

The Television Series provides resources for critical thinking about television. Whilst maintaining a clear focus on writers, creators and programmes, and placing close textual analysis at their core, the books in this series also reflect upon key critical concepts and developments in television studies. They are written from a wide range of critical and theoretical perspectives, and each author explicitly outlines the reasons for his or her particular focus, methodology or perspective. Readers are invited to think critically about the subject matter and approach covered in each book.

Although the series is addressed primarily to students and scholars of television, the books will also appeal to the many people who are interested in how television programmes have been commissioned, made and enjoyed. Since television has been so much a part of personal and public life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we hope that the series will engage with, and sometimes challenge, a broad and diverse readership.

Jonathan Bignell (co-founder)

Sarah Cardwell (co-founder)

Lucy Fife Donaldson

Moments in Television, the collections:

editors’ preface

The Moments in Television collections form a new strand in The Television Series. They exemplify the aims and emphases of the wider series, taking television seriously on artistic and cultural terms. Each volume explores a range of TV fictions, dramatic and comedic, and demonstrates the series’ commitment to close encounters with television: close stylistic analysis, evaluative criticism and the appraisal of TV creators’ achievements.

Every chapter engages closely with one chosen television programme, in a way that captures the work's particular qualities and persuades the reader of its significance in the TV landscape. In keeping with the wider Television Series, we specified that programmes be chosen from TV fictions that are easily and affordably accessible to view by most readers in the British context. Beyond this, we encouraged eclecticism in programme choices, as can be seen from the wide-ranging mix in each volume, covering varied genres, traditions and styles. We encouraged evaluative criticism and keen appreciation of programmes’ achievements.

Each Moments collection is organised around a provocative binary theme, chosen for its engagement with key critical concepts in television studies, and for its potential to inspire impassioned and novel reflections on the usefulness of particular terms or concepts for exploring and appreciating specific TV works. Every chapter undertakes its exploration of its chosen programme via a reflection upon the relevant binary. It is entirely up to individual authors to determine how best, and how reflexively, to utilise the two terms of the binary to enable their exploration of the programme, and assessment of its significance and achievements.

What are ‘moments in television’?

The collections’ umbrella title, ‘Moments in Television’, was chosen for its potentially manifold implications. The word ‘moment’ has two common meanings: a short time, a fleeting instant (in the sense of momentariness) and importance, weight or significance (in the sense of momentousness). In physics, ‘moment’ is the measure of the turning effect of a force: it captures the potential of something to create a turning point. The Moments collections conceive of a ‘moment in television’ as a combination of these meanings: it is a singular instant at which something happened which is of consequence in television's (art) history, and which may even have sparked a change of direction.

Delineating a moment in television in more concrete terms is tricky. Depending on the context, a moment might be defined as a few seconds, a shot or a complete scene. Indeed, when regarding the wider expanse of television across history, an entire programme or series may be considered a mere moment. All three editors of The Television Series have been drawn to the conundrum of the television moment. Jonathan Bignell's interests in television history and pedagogy have led him to engage sustainedly with the question of exemplarity, examining what the object of television criticism has been, is and should be (see Bignell 2007, 2006, 2005). Coming from a tradition of style-based criticism, Lucy Fife Donaldson places the practice of working through a moment in detail at the centre of her writing; she has also reflected explicitly on the difficulty of ‘the moment’ when analysing television performance (see Donaldson 2019, Donaldson and Walters 2018). Sarah Cardwell, working within a perspective inspired by analytic (philosophical) aesthetics, has explored the role and value of moments within aesthetic and art-history approaches to TV (see Cardwell

2021, 2014).

As these examples of our own interest in the television moment suggests, a concern with moments is especially apparent within television aesthetics, which places at its core detailed and sustained close analysis of stylistic and artistic achievements in particular television works. Metacritical, conceptual and analytic work on television aesthetics is still relatively rare, but, alongside Cardwell, a number of other scholars have directly addressed how moments function within evaluative criticism: Jason Jacobs's early work on television fragments (2001) was groundbreaking in this regard, and was taken up by Jacobs and Steven Peacock (2013) in their collection on television aesthetics and style. Ted Nannicelli has meticulously and incisively addressed the ontology of the television work, considering the question of exemplarity from the perspective of analytic (philosophical) aesthetics (Nannicelli

2017).

The Moments collections, given their location in The Television Series and the influence of the Editors’ interests, have roots within television aesthetics. But the books broaden from those origins. From the outset, we sought contributions from diverse areas of television studies. We asked only that each contributor should wish to spend extended time attending closely and sustainedly to one, self-chosen programme that he or she deemed significant in the broader TV landscape; that this attention be focused primarily upon specific, selected moments from that programme; and that the author start from a belief that the programme could be usefully examined in terms of the respective binary. Inclusiveness and eclecticism, in terms of programmes studied and different authors’ perspectives, were crucial to the successful exploration of each binary and to the project as whole.

These collections therefore address important moments in the television landscape from a broadly aesthetic perspective, in the sense of foregrounding close analysis, and embracing evaluative criticism, but from varying paradigms and perspectives. They also attempt in some sense to capture moments, to convey the excitement that television can engender. The moments selected may come from any era. They might be frequently acknowledged and critically acclaimed; undervalued or disparaged; or simply overlooked and – until now – forgotten. Whichever category they fall into, they are treated with care by our contributors, and situated thoughtfully within pertinent historical, technological, institutional, cultural and art-historical contexts. This enables evaluative criticism that is sensitive, fair and appreciative. It also, we hope, works as an evocation, generating a sense of what it is to experience a particular moment both as a specific instant and also as significant – as a crystallisation, apogee or turning point in television's artistic landscape.

Sarah Cardwell

Jonathan Bignell

Lucy Fife Donaldson

References

Bignell, Jonathan (2005) ‘Exemplarity, pedagogy and television history’. New Review of Film and Television Studies 3:1, pp. 15–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/17400300500037324.

Bignell, Jonathan (2006) ‘Programmes and canons’. Critical Studies in Television 1:1, pp. 31–6. https://doi.org/10.7227/CST.1.1.6.

Bignell, Jonathan (2007) ‘Citing the classics: constructing British television drama history in publishing and pedagogy’. In Helen Wheatley (ed.) Re-viewing television history: critical issues in television historiography. London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 27–39.

Cardwell, Sarah (2014) ‘Television amongst friends: medium, art, media’. Critical Studies in Television 9:3, pp. 6–21. https://doi.org/10.7227/CST.9.3.2.

Cardwell, Sarah (2021) ‘A sense of moment: appreciating television serials from aesthetic and cognitive perspectives’. In Ted Nannicelli and Héctor J. Pérez (eds) Contemporary serial television: cognition, emotion, appreciation. London and New York: Routledge.

Donaldson, Lucy Fife (2019) ‘The same, but different: adjustment and accumulation in television performance’. In Lucy Fife Donaldson and James Walters (eds) Television performance. London: Red Globe Press, pp. 188–208.

Donaldson, Lucy Fife and James Walters (eds) (2018) ‘Inter(acting): television performance and synthesis’. Critical Studies in Television 13:3, pp. 352–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749602018781465.

Jacobs, Jason (2001) ‘Issues of judgement and value in television studies’. International Journal of Cultural Studies 4:4, pp. 427–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/136787790100400404.

Jacobs, Jason and Steven Peacock (eds) (2013) Television aesthetics and style. London and New York: Bloomsbury.

Nannicelli, Ted (2017) Appreciating the art of television: a philosophical perspective. New York and Abingdon: Routledge.

Acknowledgements

When we first discussed the idea of the Moments in Television collections, we rather rashly agreed to bring out the first three volumes (Substance/style, Complexity/simplicity and Sound/image) simultaneously. Just as the first chapters were being written, and the books were in their earliest stages, the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing series of lockdowns hit. Everyone involved in the project was in some way affected. It is thanks to the perseverance, generosity and teamwork of a large number of people that you now hold this book in your hands. We cannot mention every name, but we wish to extend some particular thanks to a small number of individuals.

We would like to acknowledge and thank Steven Peacock, former co-editor of The Television Series, who helped conceive the Moments in Television collections, and whose editorial input in the earlier stages of the project was very much valued. His departure meant that Lucy Fife Donaldson could join us as a General Editor of The Television Series; she stepped in in medias res with characteristic calmness, confidence and capability for which the other Editors, Jonathan and Sarah, are incredibly grateful. Matthew Frost, at Manchester University Press, has encouraged and supported these new Moments in Television collections from the outset, with his customary vivacity, enthusiasm, thoughtfulness and unflappability. We're thankful to him, and to MUP, for their confidence in these new volumes. We also extend appreciative gratitude to our superb copyeditor for MUP, John Banks, for his exceptional attentiveness and expertise.

Our thanks as Editors go above all to all our contributors for their keenness, commitment, patience and resolute support for the Moments collections. Throughout the process, and under the unprecedented pressures of a global pandemic, our authors sustained their enthusiasm for this project and created, developed and honed their chapters. We are proud of the quality, breadth and eclecticism of the work published in these first three books. We have also been touched by the generosity, understanding and friendship shown by so many of our contributors, towards us and towards each other, during some difficult times.

Finally, Lucy would like to thank Jonathan and Sarah for their generosity and unfailingly convivial support, as well as for the trust they have shown in welcoming her to the editorial team. Jonathan would like to thank his parents for letting him spend so much time watching television earlier in his life. Both his mother and father have been keen TV viewers, but his father, also an MUP author, died during the planning of the Moments collections. Sarah would like to thank her father, who died mid-way through the creation of these volumes, but who in life looked forward always to the next moment; her mother, for her precious gift of the ‘found’ moment; and Jon Cardwell Davies, who can be relied upon to see, in the very transience of every moment, the hopeful promise of the next one.

Introduction: complexity / simplicity

Sarah Cardwell, Jonathan Bignell and Lucy Fife Donaldson

This collection appraises an eclectic selection of programmes, exploring and weighing their particular achievements and their contribution to the TV landscape. It does this via a simultaneous engagement with a ‘binary’: in this case, complexity/simplicity. Our aim is to explore further the notion of complexity, with particular consideration of how it impacts upon the practice of critical and evaluative interpretation. We also wish to reweigh and reassess simplicity as a potential, relatively neglected, criterion for evaluation in television studies. This volume advocates that both complexity and simplicity, when used in appropriately reflective and nuanced ways, can contribute valuably to TV scholars’ and critics’ practices.

The notion of complexity is enjoying considerable keen attention within current television studies, where its value has been recognised by a range of scholars interested in narrative, seriality, style, aesthetics, broadcasting practices, audience, fan and viewer studies and more. Overt references to complexity and ‘complex TV’ have burgeoned in recent years, and these terms typically bear positive evaluative connotations: complexity is invariably regarded as an attribute, or even a defining feature, of good television. The promotion of complexity has accordingly given a welcome boost, in particular, to what might be termed ‘aesthetic’ approaches to television: closely detailed and explicitly evaluative critical appreciations of specific television programmes. In a sense, then, recent interest in complex TV has helpfully encouraged more of the kind of scholarship upon which this series of books depends. Indeed, many of the authors in this volume build explicitly and fruitfully upon prevailing accounts of complexity as they undertake appraisals of their chosen programmes, acknowledging and showcasing the ways in which the concept enables their critical practice.

From the beginning, however, we have encouraged authors to engage reflectively and critically with the notion of complexity and the way in which it is commonly applied as a criterion for value. Several oft-repeated assertions about ‘complex TV’ have been insufficiently examined, clarified or questioned. A number of contributors to this volume recognise and engage with concerns about the extent to which ‘complexity’ has overshadowed other possible qualities, the particular types of complexity that have been foregrounded and the way in which complexity is sometimes depicted as uniquely present in only certain kinds or eras of television. Chapters herein expand common conceptions of complex TV, direct attention to neglected sources of complexity and illuminate the creative achievements that arise from balancing simplicity with complexity. Our hope is that the kind of appreciative, constructive and reflective work to be found in this volume will contribute to the development of ideas around complex television and help refine the role that complexity plays within scholarly and critical writing about television.

Given the current prominence of ‘complexity’ in television studies, we were not surprised that by far the largest portion of chapter proposals we received were heavily orientated to that half of the binary. Simplicity is a rather different kettle of fish. Only a very small number of proposals chose to foreground it. This reflects the wider field: the word ‘simplicity’ is rarely seen in current television criticism and scholarship, and, when it appears, it is often used as a counterpoint, couched in negative terms compared with complexity, associated with unfashionable and critically slighted TV, rather than as an alternative criterion for value. And yet several contributors have taken up the challenge to engage explicitly with the opportunities presented by simplicity. Some seek out and reconsider the positive impact of simple qualities within particular television works. Others choose to look beyond studies of television to find inspiration and models for how simplicity might be revalued as a potentially positive and valuable aesthetic feature. Their explorations offer promising starting points for future work that, we hope, will embrace simplicity with the same keen appreciation as that which complexity currently garners.

Evaluation and making distinctions

In keeping with the broader aims and remits of The Television Series and the Moments strand, this volume embraces evaluative criticism. Each chapter proffers a case for a certain programme's significance within the wider television landscape; this task of critical evaluation is carried out making use of the notions of complexity and/or simplicity as the author sees fit. That is, the terms complexity and simplicity are used descriptively and also evaluatively. Furthermore, each chapter moves to reflect, explicitly or implicitly, upon the very terms of its practice, asking to what extent notions of complexity and/or simplicity, when employed as potential criteria for value, help or hinder the kind of evaluative criticism being undertaken.

Care must be taken when writing evaluatively. With an eye on the metacritical aims of the volume, we have encouraged authors to be frank and reflective about their chosen approaches, and to use language as precisely as possible, especially when making evaluative distinctions. In relation to the key terms of our binary, for example, it is important to distinguish the complex from the complicated, and the simple from the simplistic. The latter term in each pair describes unnecessary, excessive or inappropriate complication (or complexification) or simplification, respectively. Such distinctions are fundamental. Alongside reflective metacriticism, a careful and precise use of language is crucial to the project of further developing sound, evaluative critical practices within a loosely ‘television aesthetics’ approach.

A tale of complex TV: narrative complexity

Complexity implies richness, depth, scope, intensity. It also suggests something of the quality of the viewer's responsive experience: a complex work of art is one, perhaps, that makes demands, that stretches its audience intellectually, emotionally or even morally. The concept is broad enough to enable a wide range of approaches and emphases. One might begin by