Television Drama in the 1980s

The 1980s
lecture in DCU course
Social History and TV Drama
taught by Dr Helena Sheehan

What were the distinctive features of the 1980s as a decade ?

How did the rise of the new right impact on tv drama ?

What were the prototypical productions of the 1980s ?

In what ways did different programmes reflect different, even opposite, responses to the temper of the times ?

What sort of world / world view was portrayed in the primetime soap operas ?

To what extent did sitcoms give expression to the ideological conflicts of the era ?

What paths were pursued in the crime genre ?

What role did vietnam vets and memories of the vietnam war play ?

How prevalent was the Rambo motif ?

Were the parameters of television drama being pushed out in other genre ?

To what extent were social problems aired ?

What patterns of resolution were brought into play ?

How were the 60s conceptualised in the 80s ?

What part did tv drama play in conveying and constructing folk memory ?

How were gender, race and class represented ?
What was happening in RTE in the 1980s ?
How much of irish life in the 80s was effectively dramatised ?
What controversies surrounded irish tv drama in this decade ?
What were the dominant themes, modes of characterisation and patterns of resolution in international / irish television ?

reading: The 80s in Irish Television Drama text (HS) on Hill Street Blues Inside Prime Time (Gitlin) The Dynasty Years(Gripsrud) see bibliography
viewing: Campaign and Spring Cleaning
scenes from Dallas, Family Ties, Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Miami Vice, Glenroe, The Price

multimedia slide show in class

links

Social History and TV Drama
Story / Myth / Dream / Drama
Interrogating TV Drama
Hill Street Blues
Irish Television Drama: A Society and Its Stories
Soap Opera and Social Order: