Beyond representation poses the question as to whether over the last thirty years there have been signs of ‘progress’ or ’progressiveness’ in the representation of ‘marginalised’ or subaltern identity categories within television drama in Britain and the US. In doing so, it interrogates some of the key assumptions concerning the relationship between aesthetics and the politics of identity that have influenced and informed television drama criticism during this period.

This book can function as an introduction because it provides students with a clear and coherent pathway through complex, wide-reaching and highly influential interdisciplinary terrain. Chapters examine ideas circling around politics and aesthetics, which emerge from such theories as Marxist-socialism and postmodernism, feminism and postmodern feminism, anti-racism and postcolonialism, queer theory and theories of globalisation, and evaluates their impact on television criticism and on television as an institution. These discussions are consolidated through a number of case studies that offer analyses of a range of television drama texts including Ally McBeal, Supply and Demand, The Bill, Second Generation, Star Trek: Enterprise, Queer as Folk, Metrosexuality and The Murder of Stephen Lawrence.