Popular Drama and Realism: The Case of Television

Abstract

Undoubtedly one of the most important debates in twentieth-century literary criticism has been the contest between defenders and opponents of realism. Whilst this debate is central to the understanding of narrative forms in general, it is probably correct to argue that the realism/Modernism controversy has found its most coherent expression in the theory and practice of drama. From the Brecht/Lukàcs debate on expressionist theatre in the thirties, through to the debates of the seventies, in Screen and elsewhere, about the ‘radical’ conventions of a TV series such as Days of Hope, there has been a longstanding concern with the relationship between drama and that disputed terrain commonly labelled as ‘reality’. This chapter will begin by reexamining the realism/Modernism debate before moving on to an examination of four examples of television drama in the light of our conclusions about: (a) the strengths and weaknesses of these opposing theoretical positions; (b) the efficacy of posing the questions facing contemporary television drama in terms of such a seemingly fixed dichotomy.