Television Drama in the 1990s

The 1990s
lecture in DCU course
Social History and TV Drama
taught by Dr Helena Sheehan

What were the distinctive features of the 1990s as a decade ?

What programmes best captured the temper of the times ?

To what extent did the world of news and current affairs come into the world of drama ?

What was the status of the social contract in the 1990s ?

What has survived ?
What has not ?
What was the relationship of law / order/ justice ?
How was this represented in tv drama ?

How to characterise the cops, co-workers and criminals of the 90s ?

Homicide
NYPD Blue
Law & Order
Cracker
The Bill
The Sopranos
Making the Cut / DDU

What changed ?

How were 90s cops different from 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s cops ?

Why ?

Could they cope ?

What made Frank Pembleton, Tim Bayliss, Mike Kellerman, Andy Sipowicz, Fitz so different from Joe Friday ?

What made Kay Howard, Megan Russert, Diane Russell, Anita Van Buren, Moya O'Donnell so different from Charlie’s Angels ?

What about Ally Mc Beal ? Why was she so diiferent from the lawyers in The Practice ?

What new nuances did the 90s bring to television storytelling ?

Northern Exposure

What world views were expressed and explored in characters of

Joel
Maggie
Marilyn
Ed
Maurice
Chris
others ?

To what extent did Cicely symbolise the world of the 1990s ?
What is myth in our times ?

How have coming-of-age stories evolved ?

Which was more honest ?

My So-Called Life or
Beverly Hills 90210

How was university life represented ?

Felicity
Party of 5
BH 90210

How did 1990s families change ?

from Father Knows Best

Party of 5
Roseanne
Married With Children ?

Priests: yesterday and today: What happened along the way ?

from Going My Way
through Assault on a Citadel and The Thorn Birds
to Father Ted

What to make of the controversies surrounding

Priest
Nothing Sacred ?

What about old time religion with new faces ?

Touched By An Angel
7th Heaven

Why the proliferation of programmes such as

The X-Files
Dark Skies
Millenium ?

Why the cognitive confusion ?
Why the political paranoia ?
Was the world so full of malevolent mania and alien abduction ?
How smart were the “smart” sitcoms ?

Seinfeld
Friends
Frasier
Ellen
Caroline in the City
Ink
Almost Perfect
Partners
Mad About You
Dream On ?

What did they convey of contemporary urban life ?
What came into play ?
What didn’t come into play ?
Why the ever escalating reflexivity ?

television about television

The Larry Sanders Show
Murphy Brown
The Newsroom
ENG
Drop the Dead Donkey

What was behind the scenes of behind the scenes ?

Why the ever smarter cartoons ?

The Simpsons
The Critic

Was tv smarting up or dumbing down ?

Which trend predominated ?

What sort of world was it in the high gloss primetime soap operas ?

Baywatch
Beverly Hills 90210
Melrose Place
Central Park West
Savannah
Murder One

From where did the wealth come ?
Who were these people ?
Who were the other people ?

What did Hollywood do to Roseanne Barr and Steven Bochco ?
What was happening in hospitals ?

ER
Chicago Hope
Casualty

medicine & market forces
professional & personal pressures

Could they take the strain ?
Why not let superheroes sort it all out ?

How to explain the meaning & metamorphoses of Superman ?
What were the sharpest tensions and traumas in contemporary british tv drama ?

Holding On
Blood & Peaches
Hearts & Minds
The Lakes
This Life

How competent and confident was its dramatisation of the rest of the world ?

EastEnders, East of EastEnders and West of EastEnders

Why did kazahk writers resist / retreat ?
Why did irish viewers object ?

Shot Through the Heart
Grushko

How was Ireland imagining itself in the 1990s ?

Glenroe
Fair City
Up in the World
Making the Cut

Fr Ted
Precious Blood

What sort of drama should RTE have been making ?
What stories were being told ?

Why ?
How ?

What stories are not being told ?

Why not ?

What were the dominant themes, modes of characterisation and patterns of resolution in international / irish television ?
What is your idea of a script RTE should have produced ?

reading: see bibliography

and The Continuing Story of Irish TV Drama: Tracking the Tiger
by Helena Sheehan 4 Courts Press 2004

viewing: Northern Exposure, Family (John Paul's Story), scenes from Holding On, Homicide, Law & Order, Party of 5, The X-Files, Nothing Sacred, 7th Heaven, Lois & Clark, Ally Mc Beal, The Simpsons, ER, Friends, Seinfeld

multimedia slide show in class
(for thumbnails of slides, click here)

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