Introduction: Television and nostalgia now

Abstract

This introduces the following dossier which, inspired by the roundtable panel ‘Streaming the past: Contemporary television, genre and nostalgia’ from the University of Hertfordshire’s 2021 genre/nostalgia conference, explores contemporary television’s relationship to nostalgia amid multi-platform shifts and the COVID-19 pandemic. While non-linear television has in some ways disrupted linear television’s ties to nostalgia, it has also seen a rise in aesthetically nostalgic programming. The introduction considers how this connects to broader cultural nostalgic trends, themselves fuelled by diversifying media technologies, and complicates meanings traditionally associated with period programming. It explores implications of recycling predominantly western and mediated pasts, and considers how the pandemic has highlighted intersections between linear television, non-linear platforms and differing forms of nostalgia. Finally, it introduces the dossier’s three short essays.