Aesthetics and Quality in Popular Television Drama

Abstract

This article seeks to extend the debate about evaluating television by focusing specifically on television drama. It reviews some of the reasons why such evaluation has been difficult in cultural studies but suggests that by refusing evaluation in relation to television cultural studies academics are opting out of a key debate in broadcasting and failing students who in their own viewing and practical work are making evaluative judgements. The article suggests that rather than looking for one set of television aesthetics, as Williams, Ellis and others have done, a more precise approach might attend to particular television categories, in this case television drama. The article compares the position in film and in television, suggesting that one of the problems is that television lacks a critical culture in which evaluation is openly discussed. It offers a framework for assessing individual programmes and, through an analysis of some textbooks on teaching television, indicates how this tactic would open up the rather narrow approaches to evaluation that currently concentrate mainly on ideological questions of representation.