Introduction: theories of myth, agency and audience Part One Popular TV drama: ideology and myth 1 ‘Soft’ news: the space of TV drama 2 Genre and myth: ‘a half-formed picture’ Part Two Authored drama: agency as ‘strategic penetration’ 3 ‘Reperceiving the world’: making history 4 ‘Serious drama’: the dangerous mesh of empathy 5 TV drama as social event: text and inter-text 6 Authored drama: ‘not just naturalism’ 7 Industry/performance: drama as ‘strategic penetration’ Part Three Reading drama: audience use, exchange and play 8 ‘Use and exchange’: delivering audiences 9 Sub-culture and reading formation: regimes of watching Conclusion: comedies of ‘myth’ and ‘resistance’ 10 Comic order and disorder: residual and emergent ultures 11 ‘Marauding behaviour’: parody, carnival and the grotesque
Biography
Professor John Tulloch (Charles Sturt University, Australia & Cardiff University, Wales) He has written widely on film history and theory, audience analysis and theories of textual criticism, and has published books on the British science fiction series, Doctor Who, and the Australian soap opera, A Country Practice.
