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Television

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The ABR Podcast 

Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.

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Neil Thomas

The red thread: Xi Jinping’s ideology of power

by Neil Thomas

This week on The ABR Podcast, Neil Thomas reviews On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is shaping China and the world by Kevin Rudd. Thomas explains that even China watchers find it hard to be clear on the thoughts and plans of the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. They disagree, he tells us, on basic, critical questions, such as for how long Xi will rule. ‘Enter Kevin Rudd’, Thomas writes. ‘In his latest book, former prime minister Kevin Rudd adds a worthy new chapter to his life of public service, digesting thousands of pages of “Xi Jinping Thought” so that you do not have to’. Neil Thomas is a Fellow on Chinese Politics at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis in Washington DC. Here is Neil Thomas with 'The red thread: Xi Jinping's ideology of power' by Neil Thomas, published in the December issue of ABR.

 

Recent episodes:

Netflicks: Conceptual television in the streaming era by Tony Hughes-d'Aeth

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June 2024, no. 465
Clare Monagle reviews ‘Netflicks: Conceptual television in the streaming era’ by Tony Hughes-d'Aeth

Netflicks is the first book in UWAP’s ‘Vignettes’ series. The series’ brief is to introduce readers to contemporary scholarly thinking about pressing issues of modern life in the format of short, lucid books. Judging from the first iteration, ‘Vignettes’ promises to offer complex and coherent readings of the world we live in now, informed by deep knowledge but wearing its learning lightly. Netflicks is written in accessible prose that invites the reader into the scholarly analysis of television, should they be new to it, with clear and uncomplicated language. When technical concepts are introduced, the author makes sure to provide a definition and to justify his deployment of what might seem to be jargon.

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Bookends | June 1979

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June 1980, no. 21

The federal government’s proposal for a multicultural television network has sparked off once more a row about the nature of the Australian national identity.

The opponents of the network seem to fear that it will cause all kinds of divisions in our community by emphasising the different places and cultures to which we owe our origins. They would like to restore the myth of a single nation, bounded and defended by a single shoreline (plus, of course, Tasmania), giving allegiance to a single flag and monarch and united by a single tongue. The myth is glorious in its simplicity, and marred only by the fact that it corresponds to no historical truth.

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Creating Australian Television Drama: A screenwriting history by Susan Lever

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October 2020, no. 425
Moya Costello reviews 'Creating Australian Television Drama: A screenwriting history' by Susan Lever

‘It is necessary in each situation,’ Jacques Derrida stated in 2007, in one of many instances of writing on writing, ‘to create an appropriate mode of exposition … to take into account the presumed or desired addressee.’ This was the phenomenon I sought while reading Susan Lever’s book on screenwriting for Australian television drama.

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'Forced marriage: MAFS and reality television’s chamber of horrors' by Alecia Simmonds

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April 2019, no. 410
'Forced marriage: MAFS and reality television’s chamber of horrors' by Alecia Simmonds

Perched on the precipice of the Blue Mountains, Leura is both quiet and wild, a place of misty romance, sylvan charm, and middle-class entitlement. I am here because some friends have offered me their house as a writing retreat for ten days so that I can pen a chapter on the history of marriage (1788 to marriage equality) for ...

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'The drama of it: Television comedy's new aesthetic' by James McNamara

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June-July 2018, no. 402

Since I wrote about the golden age of television for ABR’s first film and television issue in 2015, the medium has evolved. Streaming has roared to prominence, with online services like Netflix disrupting television’s form and market as dramatically as cable did to broadcast television in the early 2000s ...

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Television: A Biography by David Thomson

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March 2017, no. 389
James McNamara reviews 'Television: A Biography' by David Thomson

Great books have been written on television. David Thomson’s Television: A biography is not among them. This surprises me, because Thomson is one of America’s most lauded film critics. To have his thoughts on television over the sweep of its history, viewed through his decades of experience, seemed a boon to me – a critic born in 1982. But Televis ...

The Day the Music Died: A life lived behind the lens by Tony Garnett

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December 2016, no. 387
Michael Shmith reviews 'The Day the Music Died: A life lived behind the lens' by Tony Garnett

Tony Garnett, one of the most respected figures in British television drama, is also one of its most reclusive. Most people these days have almost certainly never heard of him, or, if they have, probably think he is a distant relation of Alf Garnett, of Till Death Us Do Part fame.

Even though the cantankerous Alf was a fictional character (played by ...

Play All: A bingewatcher’s notebook by Clive James

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November 2016, no. 386
Peter Goldsworthy reviews 'Play All: A bingewatcher's notebook' by Clive James

‘You might ask how a man who spent his days with the major poems of Browning could wish to spend his evenings with the minor movies of Chow Yun-fat,’ Clive James asks ...

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#2: James McNamara reads 'The Golden Age of Television'

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The ABR Podcast

In 2015 we published James McNamara's Ian Potter Foundation Fellowship essay 'The Golden Age of Television', that considers the ascendancy of television drama and its cultural significance. The article was the main feature in our inaugural Film and Television issue in April 2015. The ABR Podcast is available from iTunes and SoundCloud. You can also listen to episodes on our website.

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That's The Way It Is: A History of Television News in America by Charles L. Ponce de Leon

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November 2015, no. 376
John Henningham reviews 'That's The Way It Is' by Charles L. Ponce de Leon

The notion of a golden age of television news followed by a relentless decline in standards and values is challenged by Charles L. Ponce de Leon, who argues that television news has always catered to public preferences. Ponce de Leon gives a solid overview and interpretation of the half century or so in which television news was the dominant information medium for A ...

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