Table of Contents

Table of Contents Introduction - Stacey Abbott Section One - What is Cult TV? • Observations on Cult Television Roberta Pearson • Members Only: Cult TV from Margins to Mainstream Sergio Angelini & Miles Booy • The Aesthetics of Cult TV Rhonda Wilcox • Telefantasy and Beyond: Cult TV and Genre Stacey Abbott • Playing Hard to ‘Get’: How to Write Cult TV Jane Espenson Section Two - the Texts • Mainstream Cult Matt Hills • Gone but not Forgotten: The Cult Sleeper Simon Brown and Stacey Abbott • Transgressive TV Jes Battis • Innovative TV: narrative, style and genre Stacey Abbott • Representation: Exploring issues of sex, gender, and race in Cult TV Lorna Jowett • Music and Cult TV Janet Halfyard • The Cult of Children’s TV Tat Wood Section Three - The Industry • Cult TV and the Television Industry Catherine Johnson • Cult Channels : Showtime, FX and Cult TV Simon Brown • Cult TV and New Media. Denzell Richards • Writing Tie-ins for Cult TV Nancy Holder Section Four - Audiences • Television and the Cult Audience Hillary Robson • Subcultural celebrity Matt Hills • The Cult of Cult TV Dick Fiddy • Doing it for themselves: Fan interpretations of cult TV Roz Kaveney Case Studies Angel (Lorna Jowett) The Avengers/New Avengers (Paul Sutton) Babylon 5 (Sergio Angelini) Battlestar Galactica (Bronwen Calvert) Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Stacey Abbott) Dark Shadows (Stacey Abbott) Dr. Who (Miles Booy) Grey’s Anatomy (Hilary Robson) Masters of Horror (Donato Totaro) The Prisoner (Sergio Angelini) Quatermass (Cathy Johnson) Sapphire and Steel (Sergio Angelini) South Park (David Simmons) The Sopranos (Cathy Johnson) Star Trek/franchise (Lincoln Geraghty) Trailer Park Boys (Sharon Sutherland and Sarah Swan) Twilight Zone (Stan Beeler) Twin Peaks (Miles Booy) The X-Files (Simon Brown) Teleography Bibliography Index

Promotional Information

Cult TV is a very exciting area of contemporary television. This book redefines our understanding of cult TV, with fresh approaches to and case studies on: Cult TV aesthetics, History of cult TV, Cult TV & new media, The 'sub-cultural celebrity', how to write cult TV, Cult TV & the broadcast industry, Music, Innovation, Cult channels, and more.

About the Author

Stacey Abbott is a Reader in Film and Television Studies at Roehampton University. She is the author of 'Celluloid Vampires (2007), and also editor of 'Reading Angel' (2005) and co-editor of 'Investigating Alias' (2007), both from I.B.Tauris. Stacey Abbott is also Series Editor of I.B.Tauris' 'Investigating Cult TV Series'.