Epic / everyday: Moments in television

By Jonathan Bignell

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. Epic / everyday explores the presence within television of the epic and the everyday. It argues that attention to ideas of the epic and notions of the everyday can illuminate television programmes in new ways.

The book explores an eclectic range of TV fictions, including Game of Thrones, Lost and Dr Who. 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: May 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781526170217

Book preview

Epic / everyday

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

Sound / image SARAH CARDWELL, JONATHAN BIGNELL and LUCY FIFE DONALDSON

Complexity / simplicity SARAH CARDWELL, JONATHAN BIGNELL and LUCY FIFE DONALDSON

Substance / style SARAH CARDWELL, JONATHAN BIGNELL and LUCY FIFE DONALDSON

Editors: Sarah Cardwell, Jonathan Bignell and Lucy Fife Donaldson

Epic / everyday

Moments in television

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2023

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 7022 4 hardback

First published 2023

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: epic/everyday

Sarah Cardwell

1 Configurations of man, monster and hero in The Incredible Hulk

James C. Taylor

2 Game of Thrones’ Epic 9s: a series of epic moments intertwined with the everyday

Louise Coopey

3 ‘I felt the touch of the kings and the breath of the wind’: making the everyday epic in Detectorists

Phil Wickham

4 From the everyday to the epic and back: ‘foreground’ and ‘background’ in Community

Timotheus Vermeulen

5 The epic in the everyday: television and Doctor Who, ‘The Chase’

Jonathan Bignell

6 Storms and teacups: Russell T Davies, the epic and the everyday

James Walters

7 Spies with ties: the marital logic of the Cold War in The Americans

Courtney Hopf and Liam Creighton

8 Columbo: in touch with the ordinary

Alex Clayton and Sarah Moore

9 Lost in the everyday

Zöe Shacklock

Index

List of figures

1.1 The Incredible Hulk (1977–82) Ferrigno showcases his muscles

1.2 The Incredible Hulk (1977–82) The Hulk surrenders to emotion

1.3 The Incredible Hulk (1977–82) David walks away

2.1 Game of Thrones (2011–19) Siege in Slavers’ Bay

2.2 Game of Thrones (2011–19) The epic battlefield

2.3 Game of Thrones (2011–19) Jon struggles for breath

3.1 Detectorists (2014–17, 2022) Lance is overjoyed

3.2 Detectorists (2014–17, 2022) A view from above

3.3 Detectorists (2014–17, 2022) Gazing upon nature

5.1 Doctor Who (1963–89, 2005–) The Daleks inaugurate the chase

5.2 Doctor Who (1963–89, 2005–) The Time-space Visualiser

5.3 Doctor Who (1963–89, 2005–) Ian and Barbara in London

6.1 The Second Coming (2003) Steve, Son of God

6.2 Doctor Who (1963–89, 2005–) The Doctor and Wilf

6.3 Years and Years (2019) Rook

7.1 The Americans (2013–18) Elizabeth grips the dying Javid

7.2 The Americans (2013–18) Discussing the nuclear ‘football’

7.3 The Americans (2013–18) Reading photos of Pastor Tim's diary

8.1 Columbo (1968–78, 1989–2003) ‘Dropped my cigar’

8.2 Columbo (1968–78, 1989–2003) Columbo searches for his notepad

8.3 Columbo (1968–78, 1989–2003) Columbo investigates the bathtub

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 writing includes contributions to the journals Adaptation, Critical Studies in Television, Historical Journal of Film, Radio & 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 Advisor to Critical Studies in Television.

Alex Clayton is Associate Professor in Film and Television at the University of Bristol. He has written widely on film and television style, performance, comedy and criticism. His books include The body in Hollywood slapstick (McFarland, 2007) and Funny how: sketch comedy and the art of humor (SUNY, 2020).

Louise Coopey is a PhD researcher in film and television at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on the visual representation of the twenty-first-century Other in complex television, exploring how identity manifests within character development arcs through the lens of HBO's Game of Thrones (2011–19). Louise's chapter entitled ‘Where the streets have no shame: Queen Cersei Lannister's quest for alternative patriarchy’ is published in the edited collection Antiheroines of contemporary literary media, television and cinema (2020). She has also written a chapter for Amsterdam University Press's forthcoming collection, Epistolary entanglements in film, media and the visual arts.

Liam Creighton is a doctoral researcher in the School of Arts at the University of Kent, and his research focuses on space and place in British film. He teaches film studies and film production at New York University London and Ravensbourne University. He previously received an MA in Filmmaking from the London Film School and has directed and produced for a variety of media, including feature documentaries, short films, music videos and video games.

Lucy Fife Donaldson is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies 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’ collection. 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.

Courtney Hopf is Lecturer and Programme Manager for Liberal Studies and Creative Arts at New York University London. Her research focuses on narrative theory and contemporary literature and film. She has published articles on serial internet narratives, social media and memory, and the novels Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green by the author David Mitchell. She is the co-editor of David Mitchell: contemporary critical perspectives (with Wendy Knepper, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).

Sarah Moore is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath. A criminologist and sociologist by training, she is the author of Crime and the media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Detecting the social: order and disorder in post-1970s detective fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 International Crime Fiction Association Prize for scholarly contribution to the field.

Zoë Shacklock is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on the body in contemporary television, with particular interests in movement, queerness and empathy. Her monograph Television and the moving body is under contract with Edinburgh University Press.

James C. Taylor is a teaching fellow at the University of Warwick's Department of Film and Television Studies. His forthcoming book, The superhero blockbuster: adaptation, style, and meaning, is under contract with the University Press of Mississippi.

Timotheus Vermeulen is Professor of media, culture and society at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is co-founder of the now defunct webzine Notes on metamodernism and a regular contributor to frieze. He has published extensively in the disciplines of ‘screen studies’ and ‘critical and cultural theory’, but he also frequently writes and talks about art. He is currently preparing a manuscript entitled Gestures of time: screen performance as temporal form for SUNY.

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).

Phil Wickham is the Curator of The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter and was formerly a TV Curator at the BFI. He writes and teaches extensively on British film and television and has published Understanding television texts (BFI, 2007), The Likely Lads in the BFI TV Classics series (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and chapters in Social class and television drama in contemporary Britain (eds Forrest and Johnson, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and British art cinema (eds Newland and Hoyle, Manchester University Press, 2019). He is co-editor of the forthcoming Bill Douglas: a film artist (University of Exeter Press, 2022) (with Amelia Watts).

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/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 2005, 2006, 2007). 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

2014, 2021).

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’ 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 (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 & New York: Routledge, pp. 285–307.

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

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 and Steven Peacock (eds) (2013) Television aesthetics and style. London: Bloomsbury.

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

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

Acknowledgements

As with the first three volumes in the Moments in Television collection (Complexity/simplicity, Substance/style and Sound/image), this book was written during the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns. 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 would like to thank the team at Manchester University Press, who have looked after our Moments books from conception to publication. In particular we must mention Lianne Slavin's keen eye and attention to detail, Alun Richards’ wonderful work on our book covers, and Matthew Frost's unwavering support and enthusiasm for the Moments in Television strand and The Television Series as a whole. We are pleased and grateful to be published by MUP, whose care, professionalism and commitment we value deeply. We also appreciate the thoughtful, constructive and encouraging feedback given by the anonymous reporters on all four Moments proposals.

As Editors, our thanks go, above all, to our contributors. 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 have been excited by their contributions, and are proud of the quality, breadth and eclecticism of the work now published in these four 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 Sarah and Jonathan for their continued modelling of editorial care and brilliance alongside good humour and endless support, making this book just as much a pleasure to work on as the others. 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 especially Jon Cardwell Davies. At times, the creation of four edited books in rapid succession has felt like an epic endeavour; it could not have been achieved without the enduring presence and support of someone who knows the importance of those quiet but essential matters of the everyday, and can be trusted always to take care of them.

Introduction: epic/everyday

Sarah Cardwell

This book appraises an eclectic selection of programmes, exploring and weighing their particular achievements and their contribution to the landscape of television fiction.¹ It does this via a simultaneous engagement with a ‘binary’ pair of terms that are often considered to be opposites: epic/everyday. Our aim is to explore further the two distinct notions of the epic and the everyday, and the ways they might interact, and to consider particularly how they might impact upon the practice of critical and evaluative interpretation.

Both ‘epic’ and ‘everyday’ have been employed explicitly and implicitly in critiques of television programmes and indeed the art (or medium) of television itself.² This Introduction draws out some of the ways in which the two terms have been used. In the case of epic, it notes that there is a generic form, ‘epic television’, and explores its roots in and associations with older epic narrative forms such as classical myth and legend, its original poetic instantiations and cinematic versions; a number of later chapters develop these connections with reference to specific programmes. However, the conventional genre of ‘epic television’, tales of heroic endeavour characterised by ambition, scale and narrative sweep, is not the focus of this collection; rather, the word ‘epic’ is proffered as a concept, an idea which chimes helpfully against that of the ‘everyday’ with its implications of ordinariness, the smaller-scale and the familiar. In keeping with a looser, broader understanding of epic, the Introduction also proposes that notions of epic have wider resonance within television scholarship than might often be acknowledged, underlying a range of current conceptions of TV, and contributing to the ways in which the medium is being refigured and re-evaluated today within history, criticism and scholarship. It explicitly addresses the unacknowledged ways in which conceptions of the epic may shape perceptions and evaluations of modern television, and could open up promising new avenues for exploration.

Television has been more overtly and sustainedly correlated with the everyday – in practice, in criticism and in scholarship – and the Introduction offers a concise overview of established accounts of television's integration within our lives, observing that in these accounts, the ‘everyday’ is almost always defined in terms of everyday life. It goes on to reveal that nascent work on everyday aesthetics, currently being undertaken within philosophical aesthetics, shares a surprising number of concerns with those that underlie television studies. Therefore, attending to the aesthetics of the everyday might helpfully enable television scholars to develop further work on everyday life, and potentially expand existing interests beyond the social and political spheres.

Overt references to the everyday and implicit references to ideas of epic have long shaped the characterisation of television – sometimes to TV's benefit, sometimes to its detriment, rarely with neutrality. Television has been, at various times, derogated and dismissed for its quotidian, domestic ordinariness, and celebrated for its egalitarian accessibility. It has been disparaged for its lack of ambition and scale, then lauded (with rather back-handed praise) for attaining newly cinematic greatness. The ideas of epic and everyday have proved valuable tools, but they have also too often been crudely employed. This volume advocates that notions of epic and everyday, when used in appropriately reflective and nuanced ways, can contribute valuably to TV scholars’ and critics’ practices – but first, both terms would benefit from closer interrogation and meta-critical reflection. The chapters in this book engage constructively and reflectively with ideas of the epic and the everyday, considering to what extent they can be of value when assessing television works.

‘Epic’ and ‘everyday’ were chosen, in keeping with the practice of the Moments in Television collections, as two parts of a binary in which they act as counterpoints and ostensible opposites. Both words are commonly used as nouns and also as adjectives. In their adjectival, descriptive roles, they point to different, often conflicting, features and qualities. Colloquially, ‘epic’ and ‘everyday’, if not quite antonyms, contrast distinctly in meaning; indeed, as the chapters included here reveal, it is sometimes constructive to juxtapose the two. But this book's contributors wish also to reconfigure the relationship between epic and everyday. As noted below, the epic and the everyday have always been curiously, intimately connected. This book suggests there is much to be gained by a deeper appreciation of their interdependence.

Epic television: the shaping of a genre

There is a relatively small but distinct group of television programmes which can be classified generically as ‘epic’. Sylvie Magerstädt (2019) and Djoymi Baker (2006) have delineated the broad parameters of the genre across British and US contexts, tracing its TV history from the 1950s to the present day. Magerstädt focuses on fictional representations of ancient Greece and Rome, whilst Baker considers mythological stories, including Homeric fiction. Both writers observe that the television epic has been unmistakeably shaped by its counterparts and predecessors in cinema. Famous films such as Ben Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) played crucial roles in expanding Hollywood's power and influence