This thesis examines the way in which four British female performers, Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Lulu, forged a relationship between pop music, television and fashion at a key moment in time, the period 1963-75. The intention is to discover what was new about the image for British women popular musicians that they constructed and the means by which they did so. The period studied was important for the convergence in Britain ofpop music with television and fashion. The thesis considers the women's role in this convergence in tenns both ofshaping and exploiting it The investigation was pursued through a range of primary source data, principally the viewing of the rare surviving recording of a programme from each of the four women's BBC television series. The use of the four programmes as case studies provides the main focus. Archival research using the two television listings publications of the period, the Radio Times and the TVTimes, provided the majority of the information locating the four programmes within the 1963-75 British television context; as well as demonstrating the way in which each was promoted for television and the range of television genres with which the four women were involved. Interviews with television cameramen associated with the programmes provided personal recollections uskd to complement and supplement the research. Popular music, television and fashion literature enabled the study of the interrelations between the three areas as evidenced in the four programmes. The findings demonstrate the active agency ofeach of the four women in the creation of her individual persona around which her eponymous BBC television series was constructed as a 'star vehicle', utilizing the convergence ofpop music, television and fashion. The findings reveal a fonnerly 'hidden history' of four British female pop music performers who brought their music perfonnance, with its key fashion component, to the pre-existing systems of British television light entertainment. In so doing each formulated for herself a new kind of career which transcended pop single achievement, at a particularly significant moment in time for British pop music, television and fashion. Dusty Springfield, CilIa Black, Sandie Shaw and Lulu, each in her own way changed, strengthened and enhanced the status of the British female pop perfonner according to the results of this research. The four women did so through fusing their awareness of British pop music and British fashion with an awareness of the audience for their British television performance. This thesis has thus investigated, evaluated and presented the evidence for this hitherto undocumented achievement.

Ceontextualising subjective documentary in relation to the cultural and political shifts during the 1980s and 1990s, this thesis examines how the three case studies discussed explore issues of gender, race and sexuality in terms of affect. The thesis's theoretical framework draws on cultural theories of affect and scholarship in the area of documentary film studies to investigate how intervals, waves and rhythms prompt viewers to think about the ways in which affect shapes subjectivity as a process of becoming. The study includes detailed case studies of the films Tongues Untied (1989) , Sink or Swim (1990) and Obsessive Becoming (1995) that employ a method of close audio-visual analysis. It is suggested that the formal organisation of the films encourages subjectivity to be conceptualised as a process of becoming. In arguing that these films require viewers to approach the intervals, waves and rhythms as relations, this thesis examines how these works critically examine the relationship between subjectivity and culture.

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This thesis consists of a sequence of five scripts for a television series that seeks to articulate the history of mathematics through key events and figures. Programme One examines the idea of zero, while Programme Two looks at how much of geometry was developed by mathematicians who examined the stars and led on to Einstein's work on relativity. Programme Three explores the history of codes and Programme Four complements this by examining how understanding triangles in different contexts was used to solve contemporary problems. Finally, Programme Five looks at an area of mathematics that many people find counter-intuitive, the measurement of chance events. Behind the series lies the desire both to entertain and educate the audience, but also to demonstrate how the art of the documentary can be applied to science topics in a dramatic and imaginative way. The question of the documentary and its nature is discussed in the initial critical chapters that chart the development of the programmes and discuss the creative and technical issues they raise, together with a reflection on the learning process involved in their writing.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, reality television has been one of the most prolific spaces of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) visibility in British popular culture. Yet, in almost two decades of scholarship on reality TV, very little academic work has addressed the representation of LGBT identities within this medium, outside of a small set of makeover programmes. Where LGBT visibility in non-makeover reality shows has been analyzed, these representations have been approached as largely indistinguishable from fiction texts, their status as reality TV passing largely unaddressed. This thesis critically interrogates the relationship between reality television as a form, and the representations of LGBT identity found within reality programmes. Focusing on British reality shows broadcast between 2000 and 2014, this study explores how the generic specificities of reality television have shaped the ways in which LGBT identities have become visible within reality formats. This thesis argues that, in the figures of LGBT reality TV participants, tropes of authenticity, self-realization, celebrity and democracy bound to reality television itself have functioned as the discursive frameworks through which a series of normative scripts of LGBT subjectivity and LGBT life have been produced and circulated through British popular culture. This thesis examines the representations of LGBT identity in a range of different reality formats, including Big Brother, The X Factor and The Only Way is Essex, amongst others, alongside the discussions and depictions of LGBT participants in extra-textual media like magazines, newspapers and blogs. Through these materials, this study interrogates how different reality formats enable LGBT subjectivities to become visible in different ways, the divergent ways in which British reality television has represented different kinds of queer identities, and how British reality shows have mobilized the conventions of reality TV to construct and delineate cultural hierarchies of “acceptable” and “unacceptable” formations of queer subjectivity.

This thesis examines the emergence of a trend in American post-millennial television often described in journalistic discourses with the term ‘feminist quality TV’. While the strategic reliance on feminist politics is a historically established method in American television to promote certain programming’s cultural value, the cultural specificities of the early 21st century deem this phenomenon unique enough for an in-depth study. The emergence of ‘feminist quality television’ is governed by the rhetorical subversion of two phenomena simultaneously: the much-debated development of the era’s masculine-coded ‘quality television’ culture on the one hand, and the dominance of ‘postfeminist’ popular culture on the other. Post-millennial ‘quality television’ culture cultivates the idea of aesthetic-generic hierarchies among different types of scripted programming. This category’s development has facilitated academic interest in television texts’ evaluative analysis based on aesthetic merit, an approach that other strands of TV scholarship contest for sidestepping the gendered and classed processes of canonisation informing the phenomenon. By the mid-2010s, the debate between aesthetic versus political analysis had intensified in television studies. The thesis intervenes in this by arguing for a synthesis of approaches that does not further foster already prominent processes of canonisation, but interrogates the cultural forces underlying them. Via detailed analyses of four programmes emerging within the ‘feminist quality TV’ trend, namely 30 Rock (2006-2013), Parks and Recreation (2009-2015), The Good Wife (2009-2016), and Orange Is the New Black (2013-), it seeks to understand how they mediate their cultural significance by negotiating formal-aesthetic exceptionalism and a politicised rhetoric around a ‘problematic’ postfeminism, thus linking ideals of political and aesthetic value. The ultimate purpose of this research is to demonstrate the necessity in television analysis of unpacking both the specific genderedness of television’s cultivation of aesthetic value, and the context of aesthetics and form in which the programmes’ political implications emerge.

This thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach in order to explore the social and cultural history of black Britain in 1970s fictional film and television. It draws on rigorous archival research, original interview testimony with practitioners and audience members, and close textual analysis of visual sources, in order to examine relations between black film and television texts and the social, political and institutional contexts of their authorship. The key focus of my study is therefore on black creative agency. Whilst prior studies have addressed black expression and representation in film and television, few have attempted to trace the process of creativity itself. My study uniquely traces the black creative voice in an historical period of emergence and conflict, and endeavours to ‘map’ it in terms of networks of (white and black) practitioners, the spaces of industrial production and the metaphorical, geographical and diasporic spaces of community and socio-political action. The thesis is structured in two parts. In Part 2, my ‘mapping’ encompasses a broad landscape – I ‘map the field’ socio-politically and then provide a survey of the significant range of feature films and television programmes concerned with black Britain in the 1970s. I then present three case studies. These are chosen for their variety of genre and form, for the valuable insights they offer into production and reception histories, and because they demonstrate the usefulness of the imaginative interpretation of archival and interview material in reappraising film and television texts in their historical contexts. In Part 3, I then draw on this methodological approach in order to ‘map’ the creative journey of the poet and playwright Jamal Ali, who worked in radical black theatre, film and television in the 1970s. Ali’s story provides an exemplar for the exploration of black creative agency in this period. Furthermore, the Brixton of Ali’s life and work is explored both as a site of socio-political struggle and as a liminal space in which diasporic community and black identity are imaginatively located.

This thesis explores the inter-Asian operations of Taiwanese “idol drama” – star-centred TV drama set in the twenty-first-century Taiwan, targeting female audiences. It examines how the industry has developed international, multilateral co-operation relationships after the neo-liberal deregulation in its domestic market. Theoretically, it accounts for the cultural politics (of regional and Taiwanese representation) in the production aspect by examining different regional production strategies in the industry. I propose to view idol drama as a medium subject to three dominant, pedagogical and oppressive value systems (post-colonial nationalist, patriarchal, and capitalist/commercial) in Taiwan and other East Asian countries. The scattered dominant value systems, which resemble, yet contradict each other in different aspects, form the context where idol drama operates. To analyse these operations and their imaginations, I modify Stuart Hall’s concept of (mediated) articulation into the Taiwanese context. I contextualise idol drama from the perspective of Taiwan’s political economy and its TV market, especially political democratisation, yet with polemic contestation of Sino-centrism and Taiwan-centrism, media deregulation within a fragmented domestic market in a time of globalisation. Regionalised viewing of TV drama in East Asian markets will also be assessed. The initial section looks into how different Taiwanese idol drama producers “package” different East Asian elements to appeal to both domestic and international markets. The second part analyses four inter-Asian packaging strategies in terms of their struggles for legitimacy and contestations surrounding the productions. The last part examines the mediated articulations of Taiwanese subjectivity with the patriarchal nationalist forces of its stronger neighbours in East Asia. Different articulations about Taiwanese identity, with social and gender values in the forefront and national relations in the background, have been mediated in this inter-Asian packaging to form a multi-faceted system of images that together represent the Taiwanese economic and cultural relations with other East Asian countries.

Discourse is a giant field of research and gender related rights are still a disputed area of thinking. Thus, when Arab transnational satellite televisions produce dialogues, images, stories and narratives about the disputed “universal” gender rights in the Middle East, the big questions remain how and why. According to De Beauvoir (1949), one becomes woman and to Butler (1990) one is not born a gender at all but is “done” and “undone” to become one via discourse. Islamic feminism speaks of a cultural/religious specificity in defending women rights and even gender diversity based on new Quranic interpretations. The gender, “Al-Naw’u”, remains synonym to sex “Al Jins” as gender and queer theories never developed in Arabic in tandem with the European institutions or the theories of the19th century– especially those ideas emerging from studies of the mental asylum. This research tries to understand gender related “rights” and “wrongs” as manifest in the discursive institutions owned by media mogul Prince Al Waleed Ben Talal Al Saud. The trouble of such a study is lexical, ideological and institutional at the same time. Since we lack a critique of the discourses and narratives addressed in the pan-Arab satellite channels, in general it is difficult to understand their significance and influence in everyday life practices. What language is used to speak of gender rights or wrongs? Which ideology is favoured in this practice of legitimisation and/or policing? Using case studies, CDA of social and religious talk shows, narrative analysis of Arabic cinemas, this research adapted triangulation to show the complexity of conversing and narrating gender related content at the micro and macro levels within an institution of power. Using semi-structured interviews from fieldwork in Egypt (2009) and Lebanon (2011), archive research and online ethnography, the research exposes the power structure under which gender discourses evolve. It emerges that gender content is abundant on the Pan Arab satellite space, “manufactured” on talk shows and plotted tactfully in the cinematic “creative-act”. The result is a complex discourse of gender content that scratches the surface calling for interpretation. So how and why do gender rights and wrongs find place on Prince Al Waleed’s Media Empire?

Television production’s ‘hidden labour’ lies concealed behind what we see on our screens. This thesis investigates the creation of The League of Gentlemen, a show that is considered a ‘special moment in television’, unpacking the end product and mapping the critical elements within the show’s creation process, to make this ‘hidden labour’ visible. It examines the The League’s production ecology to understand how this cultural breakthrough came to be, and contributes to broader discussions about the BBC’s broadcasting environment and comedy production in the 1990s. This thesis is the first study of The League that combines a detailed textual analysis with production studies, media history and media anthropology. Through its multi-method approach this study yields new insights into the creation process of The League. Through a very detailed analysis, this case study illuminates how the initial idea and the key textual devices (location, character and narrative) developed through various media and creation stages, revealing who and what shaped this process. Through original interviews it gives a voice to various contributors, including the costume designer and the producers, who are often overlooked because of the strong authorial signature of the writers/performers. Therefore, the study sheds light onto some of the ‘hidden professions of television’ and updates our understanding of the creation process and the final product in the light of these new insights. The study of The League’s creation process illustrates that each production is unique and faces different challenges. It reveals that despite major structural and cultural changes at the BBC in the 1990s, which some considered a crisis inimical to creativity, innovation and craftsmanship, there was still room for innovation and creative freedom. The 1990s were not simply a period of crisis in BBC programme making, as some commentators suggested at the time, but an exemplar of how the production ecology was changing. As this study shows, while comedy production is clearly constrained by larger organisational structures and strategies, it also depends crucially on the individuals involved in making comedy, and how they work together. This study highlights that culture production is the sum of all the small moments that happen on the ground - in the corridors of media organisations, in TV studios, during phone conversations - and during the many little decisions made by thinking, feeling and interacting individuals. It is the coming together of these small moments that shape what we see on our screens.