The ‘War on Terror’: Post-9/11 Television Drama, Docudrama and Documentary(Contemporary Landmark Television)

This book explores the ways in which television has engaged directly and indirectly with the new realities of the post-9/11 world. It offers detailed analysis of a number of key programmes and series that engage with, or are haunted by, the aftermath of the events of September 11 in the USA and what is unavoidably through problematically and contentiously referred to as the resulting ‘war on terror’. The substantive part of the book is a series of independent chapters, each written on a different topic and considering different programmes. It includes series and single dramas representing the invasion of Iraq (The Mark of Cain, Occupation and Generation Kill), comedic representations (Gary, Tank Commander), documentary (the BBC Panorama’s coverage of 9/11), ‘what if’ docudramas (Dirty War), 9/11 in popular series (CSI:NY) and representations of Tony Blair in drama and docudrama. The book concludes with an extended reflection on contemporary docudrama and an interview with filmmaker and docudramatist Peter Kosminsky.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction Stephen Lacey and Derek Paget 2. Ways of Showing, Ways of Telling Derek Paget 3. Embedded dramaturgy – representing the ‘war on terror’ from within: Ten Days to War, The Mark of Cain and Occupation Stephen Lacey 4. Post 9/11 American Television Drama: 24 and Generation Kill as Melodrama Steve Lipkin 5. The comedy of terror: Gary: Tank Commander and the TV sitcom’s ‘discourse of impropriety’. Bruce Bennett 6. The Paranoid Style’s traumatic speculations of suffering Hugh Ortega Breton 7. Mac and Monotheism: Remembering 9/11, Surviving Trauma and Mourning Work in CSI: NY Janet McCabe 8. Britz, Contemporary British National Identity and the ‘War on Terror’ Steve Blandford 9. ‘It Won’t Be Iraq They’ll Remember Me For, Will It?’: Tony Blair and Dramatisations of The War On Terror Stella Bruzzi 10. Panorama's coverage of 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror' David McQueen 11. Interview with Peter Kosminsky Peter Kosminsky and Derek Paget 12. Texts cited 13. Bibliography

About the Author :
Derek Paget is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Reading, and the author of key texts on docudrama; he is an associate editor of Studies in Documentary Film and an editorial board member of Studies in Theatre and Performance. Stephen Lacey is Emeritus Professor of Drama, Film and Television at the University of South Wales, and the author of several books on UK television drama; he is an associate editor of Critical Studies and Television.