Post-heritage Perspectives on British Period Drama Television
Drawing upon the existing scholarship of period drama and emerging research into new media ecologies, instigated by television streaming services such as Netflix, this book establishes a critical framework for understanding the representation of nationhood and cultural identity in television drama.
By formalising the term ‘post-heritage’ the book proposes a methodology which recognises the interplay of traditional and innovative elements within period drama productions. The book applies this critical perspective to popular British period drama productions from the 2010s, with examples including The Crown, the ‘society dramas’ of Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey, Steven Knight’s Dickens adaptations, and Stephen Poliakoff’s recent oeuvre, to demonstrate the benefits of evaluating period drama as part of twenty-first century television’s developments. It challenges the assumptions around characteristics and ideological purpose that period drama discourse often contends with, and offers new perspectives on understanding the past through televisual representations.
This book will be important reading for students and scholars of television studies, film studies and cultural studies.
Will Stanford Abbiss received his doctorate from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, in 2021. His research focuses on representations of nationhood in long-form television drama, including the status of public service television in the twenty-first century. His scholarly research has been published in Television & New Media, the Journal of British Cinema and Television, the Journal of Popular Television and Critical Studies in Television, for which he is also an editorial assistant.