State of Play: Contemporary ‘high-end’ TV Drama

Robin Nelson’s State of Play up-dates and develops the arguments of his influential TV Drama In Transition (1997). It is equally distinctive in setting analysis of the aesthetics and compositional principles of texts within a broad conceptual framework (technologies, institutions, economics, cultural trends). Tracing the great value shift from conduit to content (Todreas, 1999), Nelson is relatively optimistic about the future quality of TV Drama in a global market-place. But, characteristically taking up questions of worth where others have avoided them, Nelson recognizes that certain types of quality are privileged for viewers able to pay, possibly at the expense of viewer preference worldwide for local resonances in television. The mix of arts and cultural studies methodologies makes for an unusual and insightful approach.