In what Patricia Clough has described as ‘the affective turn’1 questions of affect, embodiment and emotion have gained increasing currency in recent theory and criticism. Interest has been generated around a diverse range of theorists whose work is concerned less with what texts signify than with how they exert an affective impact on the readers and viewers who encounter them. With theories of affect well developed in film studies,2 it is surprising that television, a medium long associated with intimacy and emotional excess, has so long been left on the sidelines of debates on affect in visual media. The books under review here present provocative attempts to develop theoretical work on emotion and affect for television studies.