Moments in Television, the collections: editors’ preface

The Moments in Television collections form a new strand in The Television Series. They exemplify the aims and emphases of the wider series, taking television seriously on artistic and cultural terms. Each volume explores a range of TV fictions, dramatic and comedic, and demonstrates the series’ commitment to close encounters with television: close stylistic analysis, evaluative criticism and the appraisal of TV creators’ achievements.

Every chapter engages closely with one chosen television programme, in a way that captures the work's particular qualities and persuades the reader of its significance in the TV landscape. In keeping with the wider Television Series, we specified that programmes be chosen from TV fictions that are easily and affordably accessible to view by most readers in the British context. Beyond this, we encouraged eclecticism in programme choices, as can be seen from the wide-ranging mix in each volume, covering varied genres, traditions and styles. We encouraged evaluative criticism and keen appreciation of programmes’ achievements.

Each Moments collection is organised around a provocative binary theme, chosen for its engagement with key critical concepts in television studies, and for its potential to inspire impassioned and novel reflections on the usefulness of particular terms/concepts for exploring and appreciating specific TV works. Every chapter undertakes its exploration of its chosen programme via a reflection upon the relevant binary. It is entirely up to individual authors to determine how best, and how reflexively, to utilise the two terms of the binary to enable their exploration of the programme, and assessment of its significance and achievements.

What are ‘moments in television’?

The collections’ umbrella title, ‘Moments in Television’, was chosen for its potentially manifold implications. The word ‘moment’ has two common meanings: a short time, a fleeting instant (in the sense of momentariness) and importance, weight or significance (in the sense of momentousness). In physics, ‘moment’ is the measure of the turning effect of a force: it captures the potential of something to create a turning point. The Moments collections conceive of a ‘moment in television’ as a combination of these meanings: it is a singular instant at which something happened which is of consequence in television's (art) history, and which may even have sparked a change of direction.

Delineating a moment in television in more concrete terms is tricky. Depending on the context, a moment might be defined as a few seconds, a shot or a complete scene. Indeed, when regarding the wider expanse of television across history, an entire programme or series may be considered a mere moment. All three editors of The Television Series have been drawn to the conundrum of the television moment. Jonathan Bignell's interests in television history and pedagogy have led him to engage sustainedly with the question of exemplarity, examining what the object of television criticism has been, is and should be (see Bignell 2007, 2006, 2005). Coming from a tradition of style-based criticism, Lucy Fife Donaldson places the practice of working through a moment in detail at the centre of her writing; she has also reflected explicitly on the difficulty of ‘the moment’ when analysing television performance (see Donaldson 2019, Donaldson and Walters 2018). Sarah Cardwell, working within a perspective inspired by analytic (philosophical) aesthetics, has explored the role and value of moments within aesthetic and art-history approaches to TV (see Cardwell 2021, 2014).

As these examples of our own interest in the television moment suggest, a concern with moments is especially apparent within television aesthetics, which places at its core detailed and sustained close analysis of stylistic and artistic achievements in particular television works. Metacritical, conceptual and analytic work on television aesthetics is still relatively rare, but alongside Cardwell, a number of other scholars have directly addressed how moments function within evaluative criticism: Jason Jacobs's early work on television fragments (2001) was groundbreaking in this regard, and was taken up by Jacobs and Steven Peacock (2013) in their collection on television aesthetics and style. Ted Nannicelli has meticulously and incisively addressed the ontology of the television work, considering the question of exemplarity from the perspective of analytic (philosophical) aesthetics (Nannicelli 2017).

The Moments collections, given their location in The Television Series and the influence of the Editors’ interests, have roots within television aesthetics. But the books broaden from those origins. From the outset, we sought contributions from diverse areas of television studies. We asked only that each contributor should wish to spend extended time attending closely and sustainedly to one, self-chosen programme that he or she deemed significant in the broader TV landscape; that this attention be focused primarily upon specific, selected moments from that programme; and that the author start from a belief that the programme could be usefully examined in terms of the respective binary. Inclusiveness and eclecticism, in terms of programmes studied and different authors’ perspectives, were crucial to the successful exploration of each binary and to the project as whole.

These collections therefore address important moments in the television landscape from a broadly aesthetic perspective, in the sense of foregrounding close analysis, and embracing evaluative criticism, but from varying paradigms and perspectives. They also attempt in some sense to capture moments, to convey the excitement that television can engender. The moments selected may come from any era. They might be frequently acknowledged and critically acclaimed; undervalued or disparaged; or simply overlooked and – until now – forgotten. Whichever category they fall into, they are treated with care by our contributors, and situated thoughtfully within pertinent historical, technological, institutional, cultural and art-historical contexts. This enables evaluative criticism that is sensitive, fair and appreciative. It also, we hope, works as an evocation, generating a sense of what it is to experience a particular moment both as a specific instant and also as significant – as a crystallisation, apogee or turning point in television's artistic landscape.

Sarah Cardwell
Jonathan Bignell
Lucy Fife Donaldson