A Broken Tradition? British Telefantasy and Children’s Television in the 1980s and 1990s

Alison Peirse

doi:10.1080/14714780903509888

A Broken Tradition? British Telefantasy and Children’s Television in the 1980s and 1990s

Alison Peirse

Theatre, Film, TV and Interactive Media

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This article examines a hitherto unexplored area of British television history: the relationship between telefantasy (a term that encompasses fantasy, science fiction and horror on television) and British television drama for children during the 1980s and early 1990s. It suggests that British telefantasy can be conceptualized as a broken tradition, with peaks marked not only in the family- and adult-orientated productions of the 1970s and late 1990s, but in children's drama from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Analysing the BBC serials The Box of Delights (1984), Dark Season (1991) and Century Falls (1993) in relation to their aesthetic, economic and generic contexts, this article explores a lost history of British telefantasy, not only adding to the existing literature on telefantasy, but also transforming it.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	109 - 124
Number of pages	17
Journal	Visual Culture in Britain
Volume	11
Issue number	1
Early online date	10 Feb 2010
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/14714780903509888
Publication status	Published - 2010

Keywords

British television
Television studies
Telefantasy
Russell T. Davies
cult television
BBC

Access to Document

10.1080/14714780903509888

Cite this

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