Rewriting Television

By Alison Peirse

Rutgers University Press

Rewriting Television suggests that it is time for a radical overhaul of television studies. If we don’t want to merely recycle the same old methods, approaches, and tropes for another twenty years, we need to consider major changes in why and how we do our work. This book offers a new model for doing television (or film or media) studies that can be taken up around the world. It synthesizes ideas from production studies, screenwriting studies, and the idea of “writing otherwise” to create a new way of studying television. It presents an entirely original approach to working with practitioner interviews that has never been seen before in film, television, or media studies. It then offers a series of original reflections on form, story, and voice and considers how these reflections could shape future writing in our discipline(s). Ultimately, this is a book of ideas. This book asks “what if?” This book is an opportunity to imagine differently.

'Rewriting Television is a feminist intervention in which Alison Peirse takes us into the hidden abodes of television production, including the essential contributions of women to the industry. In so doing, Peirse pursues a timely shift in focus from the question of 'complex TV' to the complexities of making television. Lively and even joyful, her book tussles with issues of form, voice, and story not only in commissioning and developing television but also in writing about how it is made. It is a wonderful case study of the British series Bedlam, an experiment in academic form, and a canny polemic that will inspire readers to think and write differently.' Joel Burges, author of Out of Sync and Out of Work: History and the Obsolescence of Labor in Contemporary Culture

In Rewriting Television, Alison Peirse not only provides a rich and unique insight into the making of a television drama series but in its warmth and humor presents us with a reimagining of what academic writing could be. It is one of the most inspiring books on media that I have ever read.'
Anamik Saha, author of Race, Culture, and Media

ALISON PEIRSE is a professor in film and media at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research focuses on illuminating women’s invisible or overlooked contributions to the production of genre film and television. Her books include the multi-award-winning Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre (Rutgers University Press, 2020).

1 The One-Long-Slow-Idea Book

2 Methods

3 Cast of Characters and Dialogue Key

4 Commissioning

5 Form

6 “That’s TV, It Isn’t Like Writing a Poem”

7 Development

8 Story

9 “It Is Horrible, It Is Necessary”

10 Voice

11 Glorious

Coda: “How Are We Going to Get Out of This?”