• the nature of narrative: from ancient myths to current mini-series
• storytelling and social order
• television as a medium of drama
• criteria for criticism of tv drama

• cowboys, cops, courts and the cold war world
• spies, space and the liberal-conservative spectrum
• sit-coms, soap operas and the social / sexual division of labour
• metamorphoses of superman and the social role of superheroes
• satire and social unrest: registering oppositional currents
• tv plays / movies: dynamics of disruption and resolution
• confusion, contradiction, co-optation: negating the new left
• class consciousness and the construction of history
• RTE’s days of daring, the spiking of The Spike and the limitations of liberalism
• images of the 50s in the 70s, of the 60s in the 80s
• rise of the new right: Dallas, Dynasty and dramas of denial
• Hill St Blues, sisypusian struggles and the social contract: the underside of the 80s
• Drums Along Balmoral Drive, A Very British Coup: political drama from above and below
• Northern Exposure and the nuances of the 90s
• Homicide, Law & Order, NYPD Blue, The Bill, Cracker: cops, co-workers and criminals of the 90s
• Priest, Fr Ted, Nothing Sacred any more
• Imagining Ireland in the 1990s: Glenroe, Fair City and Making the Cut
• Seinfeld and the "smart" sitcoms
• Baywatch and "dumming down"
• The X-Files: epistemological crisis and political paranoia
• Reflexivity: television about television

Story / Myth / Dream / Drama    Lectures  Interrogating TV Drama
Irish Television Drama: A Society and Its Stories      Helena Sheehan
Soap Opera and Social Order: Glenroe, Fair City and Contemporary Ireland
Hill Street Blues: A Critical Analysis
Social History and TV Drama     School of Communications      DCU
 

E-mail:helena.sheehan@dcu.ie