Download or read book Inside Little Britain written by Matt Lucas and published by Ebury Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written together with friend and journalist Boyd Hilton, this is a look at a year in the lives of Matt Lucas and David Walliams-the good, the bad, the mundane, and the monumental. The year covered includes a mammoth nine-month Spinal Tap-esque tour where "Little Britain" goes in search of Great Britain. This milestone book offers an unrivaled close-up of a classic British comedy act, as it happens, at the height of its powers. But it is also a journey into their pasts, reflecting on how they achieved their success. It covers their childhoods, family life, and early comedy performances as they found their feet; their complex friendship and working relationship; and the increasingly insane world they now inhabit. Mixing memoir and travelogue to paint an engrossing portrait of fame and comic genius, "Inside Little Britain" is a candid look inside the celebrity bubble in all its glamour and awfulness.

Download or read book Camp David written by David Walliams and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-10-11 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britain's Got Talent is BACK . . . so it's time to get serious with Britain's favourite funny man. Famous comedian and actor, funniest judge on Britain's Got Talent, high-achieving sportsman and BESTSELLING AUTHOR of The World's Worst Children series, David Walliams is a man of many talents . . . Launched to fame with the record-breaking Little Britain, his characters - Lou, Florence, Emily, amongst others - became embedded in our shared popular culture. You couldn't enter a playground for a long while without hearing "eh, eh, eh" or "computer says no". And Walliams is a mystery. Often described as a bundle of contradictions, he is disarming and enigmatic, playing up his campness one minute and hinting about his depression the next. To read Camp David is to be truly shocked, as well as tickled pink: David Walliams bares his soul like never before and reveals a fascinating and complex mind. This searingly honest autobiography is a true roller-coaster ride of emotions, as this nation's sweetheart unlocks closely guarded secrets that until now have remained hidden in his past. 'Will surprise, entertain, and allow fans and newcomers to enter the comic's uniquely brilliant world' GQ Magazine 'Raucously funny and superbly written' Heat 'Hilarious' Telegraph 'A great read. My only criticism is it ended too soon' The Sun 'A fascinating read' Star Magazine 'Brilliantly written' Express 'Fascinating stuff' Closer 'Uproariously great' Guardian

Download or read book Reading Little Britain written by Sharon Lockyer and published by I.B. Tauris. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Little Britain' arrived on British TV in 2003 - and was an instant hit. Matt Lucas and David Walliams wrote and performed, and their sharp satirical genius created this character-based sketch show - Vicky Pollard, Dafydd 'I'm the only gay in the village', Ting Tong Macadangdang are hard to forget. Its huge popularity as cult-comedy on radio, then television, with its success as mainstream award-winning comedy and as a national and international TV phenomenon, have been tempered by criticism. It's pushed the boundaries of taste too far, some have claimed; it's grotesquely un-politically correct, mocks social groups and participates in the 'humour of humiliation' say others. Timely and comprehensive, this must-read book on 'Little Britain' for fans and scholars is the first to provide lively critiques of the show by leading writers, who explore its appeal and dissect its controversies. They look into representations of gender, sexuality, race, disability and class, into sketch-show conventions, the art of the comedy catchphrase, audiences' responses and still more. It provides too a Film, TV and Radio Guide.

Download or read book The Tube Has Spoken written by Julie Taddeo and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-09-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring ordinary people, celebrities, game shows, hidden cameras, everyday situations, and humorous or dramatic situations, reality TV is one of the fastest growing and important popular culture trends of the past decade, with roots reaching back to the days of radio. The Tube Has Spoken provides an analysis of the growing phenomenon of reality TV, its evolution as a genre, and how it has been shaped by cultural history. This collection of essays looks at a wide spectrum of shows airing from the 1950s to the present, addressing some of the most popular programs including Alan Funt’s Candid Camera, Big Brother, Wife Swap, Kid Nation, and The Biggest Loser. It offers both a multidisciplinary approach and a cross-cultural perspective, considering Australian, Canadian, British, and American programs. In addition, the book explores how popular culture shapes modern western values; for example, both An American Family and its British counterpart, The Family, showcase the decline of the nuclear family in response to materialistic pressures and the modern ethos of individualism. This collection highlights how reality TV has altered the tastes and values of audiences in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It analyzes how reality TV programs reflect the tensions between the individual and the community, the transformative power of technology, the creation of the celebrity, and the breakdown of public and private spheres.

Download or read book That s the Way It Is written by Charles L. Ponce de Leon and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-09-09 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since Newton Minow taught us sophisticates to bemoan the descent of television into a vast wasteland, the dyspeptic chorus of jeremiahs who insist that television news in particular has gone from gold to dross gets noisier and noisier. Charles Ponce de Leon says here, in effect, that this is misleading, if not simply fatuous. He argues in this well-paced, lively, readable book that TV news has changed in response to broader changes in the TV industry and American culture. It is pointless to bewail its decline. "That s the Way It Is "gives us the very first history of American television news, spanning more than six decades, from Camel News Caravan to Countdown with Keith Oberman and The Daily Show. Starting in the latter 1940s, television news featured a succession of broadcasters who became household names, even presences: Eric Sevareid, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Peter Jennings, Brian Williams, Katie Couric, and, with cable expansion, people like Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, and Bill O Reilly. But behind the scenes, the parallel story is just as interesting, involving executives, producers, and journalists who were responsible for the field s most important innovations. Included with mainstream network news programs is an engaging treatment of news magazines like "60 Minutes" and "20/20, " as well as morning news shows like "Today" and "Good Morning America." Ponce de Leon gives ample attention to the establishment of cable networks (CNN, and the later competitors, Fox News and MSNBC), mixing in colorful anecdotes about the likes of Roger Ailes and Roone Arledge. Frothy features and other kinds of entertainment have been part and parcel of TV news from the start; viewer preferences have always played a role in the evolution of programming, although the disintegration of a national culture since the 1970s means that most of us no longer follow the news as a civic obligation. Throughout, Ponce de Leon places his history in a broader cultural context, emphasizing tensions between the public service mission of TV news and the quest for profitability and broad appeal."

Download or read book Language and Characterisation in Television Series written by Monika Bednarek and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2023-03-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how language is used to create characters in fictional television series. To do so, it draws on multiple case studies from the United States and Australia. Brought together in this book for the first time, these case studies constitute more than the sum of their parts. They highlight different aspects of televisual characterisation and showcase the use of different data, methods, and approaches in its analysis. Uniquely, the book takes a mixed-method approach and will thus not only appeal to corpus linguists but also researchers in sociolinguistics, stylistics, and pragmatics. All corpus linguistic techniques are clearly introduced and explained, and the book is thus accessible to both experienced researchers as well as novice researchers and students. It will be essential reading in linguistics, literature, stylistics, and media/television studies.

Download or read book The Kaleidoscope British Christmas Television Guide 1937 2013 written by Chris Perry and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-02-03 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Guide to British television programmes shown at Christmas time, throughout the years.

Download or read book Cable Television Prime Time Programming 1990 2010 written by Mitchell E. Shapiro and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reference work is an authoritative chronicle of prime time television programming on 20 major cable networks: A&E, ABC Family, AMC, BET, Bravo, Comedy Central, The Disney Channel, FX, GSN, HBO, Lifetime, MTV, Nickelodeon, Oxygen, Showtime, Spike, TBS, TNT, USA and VH1. These 20 represent the mass-oriented cable networks that have been most involved in airing original programming. From January 1990 through December 2010, a detailed listing for each network includes its prime time scheduling history as well as a brief description of each program and a brief “bio” of each network.

Download or read book Cult British TV comedy written by Leon Hunt and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first sustained critical analysis of Cult British TV comedy from 1990 to the present day. The book examines ‘post-alternative’ comedy as both ‘cult’ and ‘quality’ TV, aimed mostly at niche audiences and often possessing a subcultural aura (comedy was famously declared ‘the new ‘rock’n’roll’ in the early ‘90s). It includes case studies of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer and the sitcom writer Graham Linehan. It examines developments in sketch shows and the emergence of ‘dark’ and ‘cringe’ comedy, and considers the politics of ‘offence’ during a period in which Brass Eye, ‘Sachsgate’ and Frankie Boyle provoked different kinds of media outrage. Programmes discussed include Vic Reeves Big Night Out, Peep Show, Father Ted, The Mighty Boosh, The Fast Show and Psychoville. Cult British TV Comedy will be of interest to both students and fans of modern TV comedy.

Download or read book Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell written by Susanna Clarke and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-06-05 with total page 1162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Hugo-award winning, epic New York Times Bestseller and basis for the BBC miniseries, two men change England's history when they bring magic back into the world. In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, most people believe magic to have long since disappeared from England - until the reclusive Mr. Norrell reveals his powers and becomes an overnight celebrity. Another practicing magician then emerges: the young and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's pupil, and the two join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wild, most perilous forms of magic, and he soon risks sacrificing his partnership with Norrell and everything else he holds dear. Susanna Clarke's brilliant first novel is an utterly compelling epic tale of nineteenth-century England and the two magicians who, first as teacher and pupil and then as rivals, emerge to change its history.

Download or read book Doctor Who Guide 2 3 written by Compiled from Wikipedia pages and published by Dr Googelberg and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost everything about the good doctor, his companions and travels, his enemies and friends. Additionally the actors etc. Part three contains all summaries of all TV episodes.Compiled from Wikipedia pages and published by Dr Googelberg.

Download or read book Popular Culture Political Economy and the Death of Feminism written by Penny Griffin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While some have argued that we live in a ‘postfeminist’ era that renders feminism irrelevant to people’s contemporary lives this book takes ‘feminism’, the source of eternal debate, contestation and ambivalence, and situates the term within the popular, cultural practices of everyday life. It explores the intimate connections between the politics of feminism and the representational practices of contemporary popular culture, examining how feminism is ‘made sensible’ through visual imagery and popular culture representations. It investigates how popular culture is produced, represented and consumed to reproduce the conditions in which feminism is valued or dismissed, and asks whether antifeminism exists in commodity form and is commercially viable. Written in an accessible style and analysing a broad range of popular culture artefacts (including commercial advertising, printed and digital news-related journalism and commentary, music, film, television programming, websites and social media), this book will be of use to students, researchers and practitioners of International Relations, International Political Economy and gender, cultural and media studies.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies written by Matthew Freeman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the globe, people now engage with media content across multiple platforms, following stories, characters, worlds, brands and other information across a spectrum of media channels. This transmedia phenomenon has led to the burgeoning of transmedia studies in media, cultural studies and communication departments across the academy. The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies is the definitive volume for scholars and students interested in comprehending all the various aspects of transmediality. This collection, which gathers together original articles by a global roster of contributors from a variety of disciplines, sets out to contextualize, problematize and scrutinize the current status and future directions of transmediality, exploring the industries, arts, practices, cultures, and methodologies of studying convergent media across multiple platforms.

Download or read book Comedy and the Politics of Representation written by Helen Davies and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-27 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection explores the representations of identity in comedy and interrogates the ways in which “humorous” constructions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, class and disability raise serious issues about privilege, agency and oppression in popular culture. Should there be limits to free speech when humour is aimed at marginalised social groups? What are the limits of free speech when comedy pokes fun at those who hold social power? Can taboo joking be used towards politically progressive ends? Can stereotypes be mocked through their re-invocation? Comedy and the Politics of Representation: Mocking the Weak breaks new theoretical ground by demonstrating how the way people are represented mediates the triadic relationship set up in comedy between teller, audience and butt of the joke. By bringing together a selection of essays from international scholars, this study unpacks and examines the dynamic role that humour plays in making and remaking identity and power relations in culture and society.

Download or read book The Illusion of Control written by Jón Daníelsson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A challenge to the conventional wisdom surrounding financial risk, providing insight into why easy solutions to control the financial system are doomed to fail Finance plays a key role in the prosperity of the modern world, but it also brings grave dangers. We seek to manage those threats with a vast array of sophisticated mathematical tools and techniques of financial risk management. Too often, though, we fail to address the greatest risk--the peril posed by our own behavior. Jón Daníelsson argues that critical risk is generated from within, through the interactions of individuals and perpetuated by their beliefs, objectives, abilities, and prejudices. He asserts that the widespread belief that risk originates outside the financial system frustrates our ability to measure and manage it, and the likely consequences of new regulations will help alleviate small-scale risks but, perversely, encourage excessive risk taking. Daníelsson uses lessons from past and recent crises to show that diversity is the best way to safeguard our financial system.

Download or read book Scroungers written by James Morrison and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scroungers, spongers, parasites ... These are just are some of the terms that are typically used, with increasing frequency, to describe the most vulnerable in our society, whether they be the sick, the disabled, or the unemployed. Long a popular scapegoat for all manner of social ills, under austerity we’ve seen hostility towards benefit claimants reach new levels of hysteria, with the ‘undeserving poor’ blamed for everything from crime to even rising levels of child abuse. While the tabloid press has played its role in fuelling this hysteria, the proliferation of social media has added a disturbing new dimension to this process, spreading and reinforcing scare stories, while normalising the perception of poverty as a form of ‘deviancy’ that runs contrary to the neoliberal agenda. Provocative and illuminating, Scroungers explores and analyses the ways in which the poor are portrayed both in print and online, placing these attitudes in a wider breakdown of social trust and community cohesion.

Download or read book The Comic Event written by Judith Roof and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Comic Event approaches comedy as dynamic phenomenon that involves the gathering of elements of performance, signifiers, timings, tones, gestures, previous comic bits, and other self-conscious structures into an “event” that triggers, by virtue of a “cut,” an expected/unexpected resolution. Using examples from mainstream comedy, The Comic Event progresses from the smallest comic moment-jokes, bits-to the more complex-caricatures, sketches, sit-coms, parody films, and stand-up routines. Judith Roof builds on side comments from Henri Bergson's short treatise “Laughter,” Sigmund Freud's Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, and various observations from Aristotle to establish comedy as a complex, multifaceted practice. In seeing comedy as a gathering event that resolves with a “cut,” Roof characterizes comedy not only by a predictable unpredictability occasioned by a sudden expected/unexpected insight, but also by repetition, seriality, self-consciousness, self-referentiality, and an ourobouric return to a previous cut. This theory of comedy offers a way to understand the operation of a broad array of distinct comic occasions and aspects of performance in multiple contexts.