Contemporary media culture seems to suggest that it is unacceptable for a woman to look her age if she is over twenty-five. Apart from the flood of anti-aging products and procedures advertised to ever younger audiences, another key indicator for this trend can be found in the female faces presented to us in popular television programmes.
After the deaths of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher in the last days of 2016, the release of a new documentary about their lives, Bright Lights (HBO, January 2017) feels serendipitous.
Having previously considered the ways in which Alec Baldwin has his character Jack Donaghy run through the gamut of bad actor behaviour and bad acting in the 30 Rock (NBC 2006-2013) episode ‘Jack-Tor’ (1.5), it is now time to address the question previously raised by Martin Esslin: ‘How, in fact, does a good actor act a bad actor?’ (1987: 72) In this follow-up, we will examine the ways in which Baldwin delivers his masterclass on bad
For his portrayal of Jack Donaghy, GE Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming, in NBC sitcom 30 Rock (2006-2013), Alec Baldwin has won a (to use the technical term) smorgasbord of accolades, including two Primetime Emmys, three Golden Globes and seven Screen Actors Guild Awards. In our view, he would pretty much deserve this acclaim on the strength of his work in the episode ‘Jack-Tor’ (1.5) alone.
Episode 4 of the Icelandic drama Trapped (2015), currently showing on BBC 4, finished with a spectacular avalanche. The avalanche had been predicted by one of the characters who then triggered it in the hope of diverting it away from the town. But the event itself generated hardly any suspense about the fate of characters who might be caught in its path.
Graduating from the Juilliard School as recently as 2009, Adam Driver is currently experiencing a seminal phase of his career with his mass exposure to a worldwide audience via Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J. J. Abrams, 2015). His breakthrough part has undoubtedly been Adam Sackler, ‘the sexually debased actor-carpenter-weirdo’ in Girls (HBO, 2012-present); a part for which he has
FOX’s horror-comedy series Scream Queens is the latest addition to the canon of Ryan Murphy and Co.’s anthology television series, alongside FX’s American Horror Story (2011-present), and the upcoming American Crime Story (2016). Scream Queens, named after the sobriquet for a female horror icon, is a hyper-stylised, retro-pastiche of horror and slasher cinema from the 1970s and 1980s.
I’ll always remember my initial reaction the first time I watched Absolutely Fabulous (BBC, 1992-2012). Edina Monsoon (played by co-creator Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy Stone (played by former model and co-star Joanna Lumley) appeared to be the rudest, crudest and strangest women I ever saw on television.
August 11, 2015 is the day Pretty Little Liars (2010-) unmasked ‘A’, a day five years in the making: (Spoiler) ‘A’ is CeCe Drake (Vanessa Ray) on PLL . I write about this reveal not just from a personal investment in the show or because it comprises a part of my PhD dissertation, but because of how the reveal divided the fandom and the popular entertainment news media.
On July 18, 2015, Lena Dunham shared the following diagnosis for the title character from Daria (1997-2002), MTV’s cult animated series, with her two million Instagram followers: ‘I love Daria just as much as the next child of the 90s but I am also concerned not enough of us realized she was rude and almost definitely had clinical depression/could have benefitted from therapy and maybe some medication.