spirit of historical enquiry to figure out a sense of context - to take your word on trust. I would suggest that you have to know all of a series to be able to really understand what might be representative or exceptional about any one episode of it, and to really teach that programme. So, yes, I have seen all eighty-eight episodes of Juliet Bravo , and its only through doing so that I think that I really understand how Juliet Bravo worked: the attempts to change the mood of the programme each series through attempting or avoiding romantic story arcs for the lead, or decisions to add more social-realist or comic episodes as the show's perception of itself shifted, or how the particular abilities and aptitudes of various performers, writers and directors became recognized and supported over time. Of course, the process of watching all of Juliet Bravo has taught me more than just an acute understanding of Juliet Bravo itself. Through my rigorous methodology of watching all of it, I now have a much better understanding about BBC, the form of television drama itself, even changing social attitudes towards the purpose and value of policing in the 1980s. And I wouldn't have got that without taking a fortnight to watch all of it. Billy Smart is a postdoctoral researcher on the AHRC-funded ' Spaces of Televsion ' project at the University of Reading. For what its worth, he can tell you that if you only see one episode