Period Drama

by Faye Woods

Overview

Period drama is a genre of prestige and pleasure, realism and fantasy, spectacle and intimacy. It is embedded in national pasts but speaks to the present, tracing connections, continuities, and change. It reconstructs and reimagines the spaces and places of the past and considers how lives were shaped by the classed, raced and gendered structures of society. Period drama is invested in the bodily and emotional experience of the past, it delights in the intricacies and textures of clothing, the erotics of the gaze and moments of touch. It is often viewed as a genre of escape, nostalgia and traditionalism. Yet it has the potential to challenge dominant cultural narratives and explore under-represented histories, helping to reshape our understandings of our own histories.  This book maps out the dominant debates surrounding television period drama. Through a series of themed programme case studies it charts the genre’s investments and preoccupations, considering its place within television industries and contemporary culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474462815
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	03/14/2022
Series:	TV Genres
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Faye Woods is Associate Professor in Film and Television at the University of Reading

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

1: Introduction

2: Race and Nation

3: Class and Politics

4: Space and Place

5: Gender and Sexuality

6: Costume and Body

7: Conclusion

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Serves as an excellent guide to the genre whilst also signalling the need to move to a more nuanced definition of it, one which allows for its ‘continuities and divergences in its approaches to the past’ (p. 159).

Critical Studies in Television - Shelley Anne Galpin

With this lively and wide-ranging book, Woods blasts period drama into the 21st century. Organised thematically from 1980s to 2010s, Period Drama emphasises the genre’s hybridity and its capacity for spectacle and intimacy. Shoulder to Shoulder jostles with Mrs America, Underground with Outlander, Peaky Blinders with Pose in this vivid account.

Christine Geraghty