Provides insight into the many forces that shaped Masterpiece Theatre, the popular British-made series: its sponsor (Mobil Oil Company), its American broadcast affiliate (television station WGBH in Boston), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), its host (Alistair Cooke), and the Nixon Administration.

Between Emma Peel and tire Ministry of Silly Walks British television had a significant impact on American popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s. In Something Completely Different, Jeffrey Miller offers the first comprehensive study of British programming on American television, discussing why the American networks imported such series as The Avengers and Monty Python's Flying Circus; how American audiences received these uniquely British shows; and how the shows' success reshaped American television. Miller's lively analysis covers three genres: spy shows, costume dramas, and sketch comedies. In addition to his close readings of the series themselves, Miller considers the networks' packaging of the programs for American viewers and the influences that led to their acceptance, including the American television industry's search for new advertising revenue and the creation of PBS.

In his seminal book "Television's Second Golden Age", Robert Thompson described quality TV as 'best defined by what it is not': 'it is not "regular" TV'. Audacious maybe, but his statement renewed debate on the meaning of this highly contentious term. Dealing primarily with the post-1996 era shaped by digital technologies and defined by consumer choice and brand marketing, this book brings together leading scholars, established journalists and experienced broadcasters working in the field of contemporary television to debate what we currently mean by quality TV. They go deep into contemporary American television fictions, from "The Sopranos" and "The West Wing", to "CSI" and "Lost" - innovative, sometimes controversial, always compelling dramas, which one scholar has described as 'now better than the movies!' But how do we understand the emergence of these kinds of fiction? Are they genuinely new? What does quality TV have to tell us about the state of today's television market? And is this a new Golden Age of quality TV? Original, often polemic, each chapter proposes new ways of thinking about and defining quality TV. There is a foreword from Robert Thompson, and heated dialogue between British and US television critics. Also included - and a great coup - are interviews with W. Snuffy Walden (scored "The West Wing" among others) and with David Chase ("The Sopranos" creator). "Quality TV" provides throughout groundbreaking and innovative theoretical and critical approaches to studying television and for understanding the current - and future - TV landscape.

A critique of American public broadcasting explores how its mission has been eroded from public-supported educational and cultural programming to corporate sponsorship of mainstream entertainment.

From a cultural studies perspective, Ouellette looks at public television in terms of five principal ideals: excellence, cultivation, citizenship, pluralism, and advocacy, united by her focus on tensions among progressive promises, classifying tendencies, and governmental aims. The study is revised from her doctoral dissertation for the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

"Great authors" are increasingly being encountered by general audiences and critics thanks to films and television programs that have been adapted from their best-known works. Thomas Hardy is one of those authors. His work has inspired filmmakers from the silent age and modern times. This book is the first book-length study in what has become a growing field of interest in film adaptations of Hardy's novels. Part One of this book analyzes the popular image of Hardy and his work, the reproduction of this image in film adaptations, and critical stereotypes about him and his fiction. Part Two juxtaposes Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd and Schlesinger's adaptation, Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Polanski's adaptation, and Hardy's Jude the Obscure and Winterbottom's adaptation. Each discussion of the novel and adaptation in question considers the novel itself, the critical history of the novel, how it has been adapted to film, and how the individual filmmakers have struggled with problems inherent in Hardy's novels. Part Three analyzes adaptations of The Woodlanders, The Scarlet Tunic, and The Claim, all of which have scarcely been seen in the United States or which were not distributed in the United States, and four television movies and miniseries that were based on Hardy's work.