Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • David Forrest, Beth Johnson

   Pages 1-9

3. Authorship and Class

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 11-11

      PDF

   2. This Is England: Authorship, Emotion and Class Telly

      • Beth Johnson

      Pages 13-28

   3. Jimmy McGovern’s The Street and the Politics of Everyday Life

      • David Forrest

      Pages 29-43

   4. High-flyers, Hooligans and Helpmates: Images of Social Class in the Television Dramas of Stephen Poliakoff

      • Stephen Harper

      Pages 45-58

4. Institutions and Structures of Class

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 59-59

      PDF

   2. Through Class Darkly: Class in the British TV Noir

      • Paul Elliott

      Pages 61-73

   3. Military Class: Hearts and Minds on the Domestic Screen

      • Felicity Colman, David James

      Pages 75-88

   4. ‘Honest Endeavour Together!’: Social Mobility, Entrepreneurialism and Class in Mr Selfridge

      • Gill Jamieson

      Pages 89-102

   5. Social Class and Television Audiences in the 1990s

      • James Dalby

      Pages 103-118

   6. Searching for Hugh Gaitskell in a Neoliberal Landscape – Masculinities and Class Mobility in Goodnight Sweetheart

      • Holly-Gale Millette

      Pages 119-132

5. Place and Class

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 133-133

      PDF

   2. From Newcastle to Nashville: the Northern Soul of Jimmy Nail

      • James Leggott

      Pages 135-148

   3. ‘A Woman Like That Is Not A Woman, Quite. I Have Been Her Kind’: Maxine Peake and the Gothic Excess of Northern Femininity

      • Het Phillips

      Pages 149-164

   4. Class, Place and History in the Imaginative Landscapes of Peaky Blinders

      • Paul Long

      Pages 165-179

   5. Happy Valley: Compassion, Evil and Exploitation in an Ordinary ‘Trouble Town’

      • Helen Piper

      Pages 181-197

6. Taste and Class

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 199-199

      PDF

   2. Twenty-First Century British Sitcom and ‘the Hidden Injuries of Class’

      • Phil Wickham

      Pages 201-213

   3. Animating Class in Contemporary British Television

      • Chris Pallant, James Newton

      Pages 215-230

This collection is a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary British television drama and its representations of social class. Through early studio-set plays, soap operas and period drama, the volume demonstrates how class provides a bridge across multiple genres and traditions of television drama. The authors trace this thematic emphasis into the present day, offering fascinating new insights into the national conversation around class and identity in Britain today. The chapters engage with a range of topics including authorial explorations of Stephen Poliakoff and Jimmy McGovern, case studies of television performers Maxine Peake and Jimmy Nail, and discussions of the sitcom genre and animation form. This book offers new perspectives on popular British television shows such as Goodnight Sweetheart and Footballers’ Wives, and analysis of more recent series such as Peaky Blinders and This is England. 

• Class
• Television
• British
• English
• Drama
• Contemporary

“Rather than homogenise class’s meaning, the editors open the collection up to considering how television constructs its own images of class. Class is approached as a dynamic issue, present as an overt object of representation as well as a set of ideological positions which shape television’s visual address.” (Daniel Martin, Critical Studies in Television, Vol. 14 (4), September, 2019)

“The authors here adopt a variety of critical approaches that, while alive to the importance in itself of class visibility in contemporary television, are also alert to the problematic discourses it sometimes generates. … This is an indispensable book for anyone wanting to know more about recent British television drama, and why it remains an important subject of study.” (Neil Archer, cercles.com, July)
“A rich and nuanced approach to class and its mediation through contemporary British television drama, this collection responds to the precarity that circulates and constricts in ‘Austerity Britain’, pre- and post-Brexit. The book self-consciously eschews obvious class-bound texts such as Shameless and Downton Abbey, offering fresh perspectives and insights on popular programmes such as This is England and Happy Valley. Although class is a central theme, the contributors also draw on theoretical work on emotion, gender and ethnicity.” (Kristyn Gorton, University of York, UK) “This is the book that researchers and teachers of contemporary British TV Drama have been waiting for. With insight and sensitivity, this collection abandons the overworked realism/heritage debates to explore class in relation to a fascinating range of 21C British TV texts. From Peaky Blinders and Happy Valley to Grandma’s House and Footballers Wives, scholarly debates around class and British telly are reworked,refined, and completely re-energised. Buy this book. Right now.” (Alison Peirse, Lecturer in Writing for Screen and Stage, University of York, UK)

• School of English, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

  David Forrest

• University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom

  Beth Johnson

David Forrest is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK. He is the author of Social Realism: Art, Nationhood and Politics (2013), co-editor of Filmurbia: Screening The Suburbs (2017) with Graeme Harper and Jonathan Rayner, and is currently at work on a book entitled New Realisms: Contemporary British Cinema.



Beth Johnson is Associate Professor of Film and Media at the University of Leeds, UK. Her publications include Paul Abbott (2013) and alongside David Forrest she recently co-edited a dossier on ‘Northern English Stardom’ in The Journal of Popular Television (4/2, 2016). 

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