Cinematic Digital Television: Negotiating the Nexus of Production, Reception and Aesthetics

Chris Comerford explores cinematic digital television as an artistic classification and an academic object of study, and illuminates the slippage in definitions of previously understood media forms.

The growth of television as an artistic, informative medium has given rise to shifts in the aesthetic style of the programmes we watch, and this book outlines these shifts along with the contemporary debates and critical theory surrounding them. Comerford looks at the forms and aesthetics of television, the production standards influencing streaming television and the agency of audiences, and provides case studies of key TV shows illustrating these shifts, including Twin Peaks: The Return, WandaVision, Hacks and Russian Doll. Navigating the levels of production and reception in cinematic digital television, the book uses film-inspired TV as a lightning rod for understanding our narrative screen media landscape and the classifications we use to negotiate it.

As an essential reading for both scholars and students of media and television studies, this book provides a much-needed consideration of the changing landscape of television.

Chris Comerford is Lecturer of Communication and Media at the University of Wollongong, Australia. His research specialises in screen studies, fan studies and digital media, mapping cinematic television in relation to production, reception and aesthetic aspects of screen studies, and the benefits of emergent media - including social media, video games and streaming television - in leisure and pedagogy.