From Friends to The Thick Of It, the TV sitcom has evolved – but it’s no longer in rude health. Enter offbeat shows like Stath Lets Flats, bringing joy and potential redemptionThe sitcom has a long history of being dead. According to the former NBC president of entertainment, Warren Littlefield, in the early 1980s many people believed the sitcom was over. In 1999, Entertainment Weekly noted the genre’s demise. In 2005, so did Victoria Wood. The following year, the former ITV director of programmes, David Liddiment, made a programme called Who Killed the Sitcom? In the decade and a half since, similar questions have been posed repeatedly by publications on both sides of the Atlantic. Declaring the sitcom dead now seems more like an annual ritual than a convincing take on the state of comedy. But what if this time it’s actually true?There are a few reasons why the sitcom seems, if not comprehensively deceased, then at least less responsive than it has ever been. In terms of the comedy zeitgeist, the sadcom – a frequently bleak drama hybrid – continues to rule (see: I May Destroy You, Feel Good, This Way Up, Insecure). Streaming giants increasingly shape our viewing habits, and they don’t tend to make sitcoms (their discrete episodic plots mean they are not very bingeworthy, for a start). The newly established National Comedy Awards, meanwhile, doesn’t include a sitcom category, while Bafta dropped its sitcom award in 2015 and replaced it with one for scripted comedy: this... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2021-10-26 14:35:04 UTC ]
The romance genre has all but disappeared from films, so now several cable and streaming outlets have claimed it for themselves. The latest to jump on board is Amazon Prime Video. The streaming service will soon air Modern Love, a new anthology series debuting Oct. 18 that features eight... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2019-07-28 00:59:10 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Book Reviews Amy Lantrip Photo by Ethan Chiang / Flickr Contemporary Taiwanese Women Writers: An Anthology (Cambria Press, 2018) is a collection of short stories in translation featuring contemporary Taiwanese authors.[i] This compilation is diverse... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-07-18 14:13:08 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Flame Tree Publishing has signed a deal with the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) to publish the latest anthology of stories by CWA members. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-07-17 13:07:23 UTC ]
More news stories like this
This excerpt-sampler of work from the anthology ‘Drawing Power: Women's Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival’ Edited by Diane Noomin, includes three stories by artists who survived sexual assault: Lee Mars’ “Got Over It,” Carol Lay’s “A Sampler of Misdeeds,” and Ajuan Mance’s... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-07-16 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Cultural Cross Sections Margaret Randall Children’s choir at the 2014 La Matanza Book Fair / Photo by Mauro Rico / Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación / Flickr When good engineers or scientists emigrate, they are able to continue their work. Novelists... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-07-10 21:07:28 UTC ]
More news stories like this
A new set of five poems goes live on London tubes on July 1st for four weeks. Some deal specifically with the urgent issue of climate change. Others reflect more generally on how human beings take solace and meaning from their living world of earth, sea and sky.The poems:Still Life with Sea... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-06-26 17:36:35 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Riots and parades have made LGBTQ people visible. But a new anthology of writings from before, during, and after Stonewall shows the inward changes as more essential. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2019-06-26 14:29:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
They turned down Ulysses and Animal Farm, but still shaped 20th‑century literatureAll publishing houses have archives, but for anyone interested in 20th-century literature the archive of Faber & Faber is a fabled treasure house. This is the firm that was, as Toby Faber puts it, “midwife at... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-06-20 11:00:08 UTC ]
More news stories like this
An indie publisher has been forced to find a new venue to launch its anti-Brexit poetry anthology Bollocks to Brexit: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction after the church where it was due to be held refused to host the event, citing issues with political balance. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-06-20 07:09:36 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“Is that John Williams?” Startled fans have the same reaction seemingly every time he walks into a gym. At 6 feet 8 and somewhere close to 300 pounds, he’s a giant, literally and figuratively. Those who played high school basketball against him in the early 1980s in Los Angeles or watched him... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-03-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Intan Paramaditha will be appearing alongside Syd Moore to discuss re-writing old stories and myths with a contemporary, feminist slant at the Essex Book Festival on 15 March 2019 at 19.00. Find out more and book tickets here. What’s exciting about Indonesian literature at the moment, and... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-02-21 11:15:36 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Larry Burstein, who has served as publisher of New York magazine for the last 13 years, is leaving that role, he announced in a memo to staff Friday morning.Mr. Burstein was on his third term as a New York magazine employee -- he worked as an account executive in the early 1980s, returned in... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2016-11-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Author Lisa Watts, who helped to teach a generation of children about computers a quarter of a century ago, hopes new books will inspire tomorrow’s programmers“Back in the 1980s, the big question was: what are we going to do with these computers? We were empowered – we had a ZX81 or a BBC Micro... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-10-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
I grew up on a diet of Carry On films, Benny Hill and my parents’ Daily Telegraph. The Spare Rib Reader helped me articulate an unease that I had felt for as long as I could rememberTo be honest, I can’t remember a single thing about the contents of this book. Mind you, that’s true of many books... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2015-07-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Though its headquarters building rises 46 stories over Central Park, and though its biggest magazine franchise, Cosmopolitan, sells more than a million copies on newsstands every month, Hearst Corp. is still, in some ways, little known to the general public. Certainly few people would guess that... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2013-11-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Publication Date: Thu, 15/09/2011 - 08:25 Milo Books is to reissue an out-of-print title about football violence, first published by Penguin in 1984. We Hate Humans by David Robins explores the "murky world' of football hooliganism, the first title to do so according to the publisher. It... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-09-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this