Seeing It on Television

Max Sexton is a lecturer teaching television and film theory at the University of Surrey, UK. He is interested in the links between aesthetics and narrative, particularly in how they can be used to complicate our sense of visual signification and/or produce mediated realities in television. His second book Secular Magic and the Moving Image (2017) includes debates about aesthetics in TV shows that feature conjuring, escapology, and similar wondrous acts. Dominic Lees is Associate Head of Department: Filmmaking at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. He is an experienced film and television director, with a career that has included directing 40 episodes of drama as well as the award-winning independent feature film, Outlanders (2008). Following a PhD in film at the University of Reading, UK, he has written for the Journal of Media Practice, Critical Studies in Television and Media Practice and Education, as well as leading interdisciplinary practice research into ‘Deep Fakes’ (digital face replacement) in television drama and film.

• IntroductionChapter One: Reconfiguring Televisuality in High-end TelevisionChapter Two: Passionate Realism: Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young PopeChapter Three: Independent Style: Stephen Soderbergh’s The KnickChapter Four: Fargo: Adaptation of a Cinematic TextChapter Five: A Wealth of Allusiveness: Stranger Things, Boardwalk Empire and VinylChapter Six: Performance Modes in Collision: The LeftoversChapter Seven: Televisual Spectacle: MarsConclusionBibliographyIndex

Seeing It on Television offers a masterful critical and theoretical intervention into 21st century television studies. Drilling deeply into the prestige mini-series and media specificity debates, the book shows why aesthetics and close formal analysis remain prerequisites even for scholarship on media institutions and industries. Loaded with teachable case studies on the making of televisual distinction, Seeing It on Television provides abundant insights on the collective, negotiated, nature of TV art, style, and authorship.