Melodrama and the Classic Television Serial

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the operation of the melodramatic mode within the classic television serial. It argues that the melodramatic mode is central to the narrative organization and emotional effect of a number of BBC adaptations of the works of Charles Dickens and Elisabeth Gaskell broadcast between 1999 and 2008, and that melodrama is something those programs productively engage with rather than something they oc casionally lapse into or avoid. This challenges the frequent categorization of the classic television serial as a homogenous group of texts lacking either the distinctiveness or artistic merit of their literary sources