From Dickens to Bridgeton

British influence in mainstream television

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While it is fruitful to understand television as a socio-cultural object and its materiality, it is also important to examine national broadcasting programs to understand the industry in a specific cultural context. When Queen Elizabeth II started her reign in the UK, one of the strategies she used to gain people’s trust and attention was through TV. She televised a Christmas message to the nation in the effort to unify the country, strengthen nationalism, and appear as a modern and accessible monarch. Furthermore, the history of television is tied to the United Kingdom in various ways. Seriality, for example, began in the Victorian Age with authors like Charles Dickens, who published novels as serials, establishing a new popular practice and creating large communities of readers (Goodland, 869). Network television continued the practice of seriality and reinforced a routine for viewers to tune-in at a specific time and day to watch a new episode of a never ending show. History scholar Frank Kelleter attempts to explain the appeal of a series when he writes, “Classically, these two basic impulses of storytelling—the satisfaction of conclusion and the appeal of renewal—are balanced through suspense and resolution. Tension is built up to be released again.” Television shows appeal to the masses by keeping them interested in the multiplot structures of the programs that run for years and years.

By continuing to look at the United Kingdom’s influence in popular television, new forms of TV culture appear, like limited series or media adaptations. Novels by Jane Austin or George Eliot serve as clear examples of successful TV adaptations, specifically limited series by BBC Classics, a section of the BBC entirely focused on period dramas. Books like Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Middlemarch have been made into episodic televisual experiences with various remakes. These romantic dramas have influenced new shows like Downtown Abbey (2010) and Bridgerton (2020); the former spanning six seasons and the latter becoming a worldwide phenomenon (Maas, “Bridgerton Season Two Ranks…”). Bridgerton also demonstrates the shift in the entertainment industry to include diverse actors, once excluded from mainstream television, and present a period drama with racial equality, almost too ideal or concocted for the show to be within the same genre as Downtown Abby. Another genre in popular television quickly became documentary specials aimed to educate the general public through entertainment. Today, many nature documentaries feature a British male narrator, like David Attenborough, whose accent carries a cultural hegemonic role of authority and credibility. Ultimately, the United Kingdom drove the televisual form forward with its use of seriality and by producing popular commercial genres.

Sources:

Goodlad, Lauren M. E. “Seriality.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 46, no. 3-4, 2018, pp.

869–872., doi:10.1017/S1060150318001067.

Kelleter, Frank. “Five Ways of Looking at Popular Seriality”. In Media of Serial Narrative, 7-34.

Ohio State University Press, 2019.

Maas, Jennifer. “'Bridgerton' Season 2 Ranks as Netflix's Third Most Popular Season Ever for an

English Language Show.” Variety, Variety, 12 Apr. 2022, https://variety.com/2022/tv/ratings/bridgerton-season-2-third-most-popular-netflix-series-1235231316/.