TV Horror Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen

by Jowett, Lorna; Abbott, Stacey

• ISBN13: 9781848856172
• ISBN10: 1848856172
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-03-19
• Publisher: Atlas Books

Summary

Horror is a universally popular, pervasive TV genre, with shows like True Blood, Being Human, The Walking Dead and American Horror Story making a bloody splash across our television screens. This complete, utterly accessible, sometimes scary new book is the definitive work on TV horror. It shows how this most adaptable of genres has continued to be a part of the broadcast landscape, unsettling audiences and pushing the boundaries of acceptability. The authors demonstrate how TV Horror continues to provoke and terrify audiences by bringing the monstrous and the supernatural into the home, whether through adaptations of Stephen King and classic horror novels, or by reworking the gothic and surrealism in Twin Peaks and Carnivale. They uncover horror in mainstream television from procedural dramas to children's television and, through close analysis of landmark TV auteurs including Rod Serling, Nigel Kneale, Dan Curtis and Stephen Moffat, together with case studies of such shows as Dark Shadows, Dexter, Pushing Daisies, Torchwood, and Supernatural, they explore its evolution on television. This book is a must-have for those studying TV Genre as well as for anyone with a taste for the gruesome and the macabre.

Author Biography

Lorna Jowett is Reader in Television Studies at the University of Northampton, where she teaches some of her favourite things, including horror, science fiction and television. She is the author of Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan (2005) and recent publications cover Angel, Supernatural, Pushing Daisies and representation in cult television. Stacey Abbott is Reader in Film and Television Studies at the University of Roehampton and is the author of Celluloid Vampires (2007) and the editor of The Cult TV Book (I.B. Tauris, 2010). Recent publications cover Angel, Alias, Supernatural, Dexter, True Blood and Torchwood. She is General Editor of the Investigating Cult TV Series at I.B. Tauris.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments * List of Illustrations * Introduction: Horror Begins at Home * The TV in TV Horror: Production and Broadcast Contexts * Mainstreaming Horror * Shaping Horror: From Single Play to Serial Drama * Adaptation: Translating Horror Tales * The Horror Auteur * Revising the Gothic * The Visual Excess of Horror * Horror, Art and the Surreal * TV as Horror * From Barnabus Collins to Dexter Morgan: How Fans Relate to TV Monsters * Conclusion: The Road So Far * Work Cited * Notes * TV and Filmography * Index