Paul Abbott: Television (Manchester Hardcover)

Primarily, the volume presents an aesthetic analysis of televisual case studies. The case studies explore the technicity or 'grammar' of the televisual, including: colour, sound, diegetic and non-diegetic music, point of view, shot size, shot length, dialogue, the creation of space and place, on-location shooting, temporality, televisual narrative, performance and mise-en-sc ne. The disclosures of the close textual analysis are to be associated with a range of thematic, stylistic and representational motifs across the range of Abbott's work, thereby inaugurating discussions based upon the 'authorial voice', definitions of 'quality' television and the negotiation of generic boundaries. Engaging with thematic and ideological notions of the personal, the autobiographical, the honest, the shameless, the pleasurable and the painful recourse of the specificity of 'ordinary life', the volume seeks to combine close textual analysis of Abbott's work with archival research and specially commissioned interviews with Abbott and other important industry practitioners.