Tom Cantrell is Senior Lecturer and Head of Theatre at the University of York, UK. He has published widely on screen and stage acting, including Playing for Real: Actors on Playing Real People (Palgrave, 2010, co-edited with Mary Luckhurst) and Acting in Documentary Theatre (Palgrave, 2013).Christopher Hogg is Senior Lecturer in Television Theory at the University of Westminster, UK. His research interests lie primarily in British television drama but he has also published work in such areas as television adaptation and translation, and screen representations of the past.

• 1. General Introduction2. Soap Opera3. Police and Medical Drama4. Comedy5. Period Drama6. General Conclusion

At the core of this book are the testimonies of actors themselves, rendered as lightly edited transcripts of semi-structured interviews. Each chapter focuses on a specific genre and features interviews with established actors from some of the most critically regarded and popular of contemporary UK drama series.