{"title":"Placing the diaspora in the frame: A case study of Zee TV’s Raj Britannia documentary series","authors":"Gurvinder Aujla-Sidhu","doi":"10.1177/17496020251374473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251374473","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the archives of current affairs programme <jats:italic>Raj Britannia,</jats:italic> produced by British journalists for transnational satellite broadcaster Zee TV, to better understand historic television journalism practice in the United Kingdom. The article evaluates the role journalists at Zee TV played in advocating, empowering and educating the British Asian diaspora in the run up to the General Election in 1997. The analysis reveals that while Zee TV journalists applied advocacy practices to encourage the viewer to be politically strategic in voting, the tone of programmes mimic mainstream media deficit discourses. This suggests ethnic media may on occasions perform contradictory roles, advocate for their audience and also apply deficit models in a reflection of dominant news ideologies.","PeriodicalId":51917,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Television","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145017487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interface real estate: Amazon Prime and visibility politics","authors":"Karin van Es, Catalina Iordache","doi":"10.1177/17496020251375211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251375211","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates how Amazon Prime Video’s interface design affects content visibility, specifically analysing the prioritisation of Prime-included versus third-party content. Using the Vignette tool on French accounts, we conducted a mixed-methods analysis of homepage structures, including row hierarchies and title heatmaps across multiple user profiles. We find that while Prime Video shares common strategies with other services (e.g. own content prioritisation and burying the continue watching button), it distinguishes itself with a uniquely dense landing page layout featuring a large number of thumbnails and content rows. This design reveals deeper commercial logics shaped by Amazon’s integrated retail model.","PeriodicalId":51917,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Television","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145002851","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: German Crime Dramas from Network Television to Netflix SimonSunka, German Crime Dramas from Network Television to Netflix, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023; 361 pp. ISBN 9781501368707 £95 (hbk), 9781501370496 £28.99 (pbk), 9781501368707 £26.09 (ebk (PDF))","authors":"Eckart Voigts","doi":"10.1177/17496020251363032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251363032","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51917,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Television","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145002846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"EastEnders at 40: Production, text, and audiences","authors":"Rebecca Williams","doi":"10.1177/17496020251348846","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251348846","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51917,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Television","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145002844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The platformisation of modern family life: Young children’s television practices","authors":"Ulrika Sjöberg, Ebba Sundin, Helena Sandberg","doi":"10.1177/17496020251374881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251374881","url":null,"abstract":"The article examines the platformisation of everyday life and children’s television use by exploring how 0–3-year-olds’ television viewing on screen media is embedded into the daily social practices of families in Sweden. It addresses the following research questions: (1) What social practices are organised around young children’s television viewing on screen media? (2) How can these television practices be understood through the domestic processes of appropriation, objectification and incorporation? Using the ‘A Day in the Life’ research design, the analysis explores the practices of play, togetherness, meals and daily routine management.","PeriodicalId":51917,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Television","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144930314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Worthy female victims’? The rape of a white woman as metaphor for colonialism in two miniseries by Hugo Blick","authors":"Eve Bennett","doi":"10.1177/17496020251372030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251372030","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on two miniseries written, directed and produced by Hugo Blick, <jats:italic>The Honourable Woman</jats:italic> (2014) and <jats:italic>The English</jats:italic> (2022). Both series are partially set in colonised regions – present-day Palestine and the nineteenth-century United States, respectively – and have upper-class white heroines who are citizens of colonising countries: they are British-Israeli and British, respectively. In both cases, a key plot point is that the heroine has been raped and, as this article seeks to show, that rape is made to serve as a metaphor for colonialism. This manoeuvre, which can also be found in some colonial and postcolonial literature, represents a problematic displacement of the sexual violence often endured by colonised women at the hands of the colonisers. Although both series allude to this violence, neither addresses it directly, and colonised women play minor roles. Those that do appear are treacherous and/or sacrifice their lives saving the white heroines from danger, thereby paving the way for their children to be raised by white people. The focus of both programmes thus remains fixed on the white heroines and the trauma and other negative repercussions they have suffered as a result of their rapes. Consequently, neither series constitutes an effective critique of colonialism.","PeriodicalId":51917,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Television","volume":"127 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144905773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Binge TV: The rise and impact of the viewing revolution SteinerEmil, Binge TV: The Rise and Impact of the Viewing Revolution. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2023; 245 pp. ISBN 978-1-4766-8407-9 $39.95 (hbk), ISBN 978-1-4766-4749-4 $25.99 (ebk)","authors":"Enes Akdağ","doi":"10.1177/17496020251363039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251363039","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51917,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Television","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144905767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Time lords and star cops: British science fiction television in the 1970s–1980s BraithwaitePhilip, Time Lords and Star Cops: British science fiction television in the 1970s-1980s. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023; vi + 237pp: ISBN 978-1-5261-6337-0 £85 (hbk)StackMike, Doctor Who and Gay Male Fandom: A Queer(ed) Transmedia Franchise. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024; pp + 2 illustrations: ISBN 978-94-6372-757-0 £118 (hbk)","authors":"Tom May","doi":"10.1177/17496020251363037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251363037","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51917,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Television","volume":"289 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144796706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Deconstruction of the superhero subgenre in The Boys : A social satire through characters with mental disorders","authors":"Alfonso Freire-Sánchez, Marta Lopera-Mármol","doi":"10.1177/17496020251360014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251360014","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the deconstruction of the superhero film subgenre by examining the demystification of the idealised hero figure and exploring their darker sides. Using Friedrich Schleiermacher’s hermeneutic circle and Jacques Derrida’s deconstructionism applied to the analysis of <jats:italic>The Boys</jats:italic> (2019–present), the study reveals that the series’ superheroes, portrayed as villains, display behaviours aligning with DSM-5 (2013) mental disorders, breaking traditional heroism narratives. The series employs parody and satire to critique contemporary social movements, using mental health as a narrative tool. Nevertheless, it risks reinforcing stigma by linking mental disorders to violence through unrealistic and exclusionary representations, complicating its intended social commentary.","PeriodicalId":51917,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Television","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144748175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}