Hardy, Justin St Clair;
(2022)
Performing the documented past: industrial context and evolving characteristics of dramatised history documentary on British television at the turn of the millennium.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Abstract
In the first decade of the new millennium, amidst a commonly accepted “history boom”, over 400 dramatisations of the past were commissioned by the documentary departments at the BBC and Channel 4. Not to be confused with the hitherto more-studied dramas based on true stories (commissioned by the drama departments), these dramatised documentaries have never been examined as a body of work. This is surprising given that it contains such well-known televisual works as Simon Schama’s A History of Britain (BBC, 2000-2002) and the Oscar-winning Man on Wire (BBC, 2008). This thesis intends to redress the oversight, re-evaluating the reputation of a body of work of national and international importance – the significance of which, it argues, has been neglected by public historians and television scholars. This thesis further argues that the distinctive mode of dramatised documentary enabled innovation, creative ambition and value-for-money television-making in a way that was uniquely of its time. What follows is a qualitative as well as quantitative, analysis of this corpus, testing it against media theories that surround drama documentary, auteurism and genre in order to determine if and how the material has characteristics that can be shown to be consistent. This media excavation will also reach back to the inspirational dramatised documentaries of the 1960s, such as Culloden (BBC, 1964) and look forward to more recent factual drama inheritors, such as Chernobyl (HBO, 2019) to highlight a golden thread that links drama documentaries across more than 50 years of British television. It is argued that this dramatised history corpus must be recognised as a distinct genre, and that its roots and descendants have carved out for themselves an important place within both the drama and the documentary modes, but especially in the hybrid space between.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Performing the documented past: industrial context and evolving characteristics of dramatised history documentary on British television at the turn of the millennium |
| Language: | English |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Culture, Communication and Media UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10155419 |
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