Title: TV horror : investigating the darker side of the small screen /
Authors: Jowett, Lorna, 1971-; Abbott, Stacey.
Publisher: I.B. Tauris,
Year: 2013
Subjects: Horror television programs History and criticism.
Abstract: Horror is a universally popular, pervasive TV genre, with shows like True Blood, Being Human, The Walking Dead and American Horror Story making a bloody splash across our television screens. This book shows how this most adaptable of genres has continued to be a part of the broadcast landscape, unsettling audiences and pushing the boundaries of acceptability. The authors demonstrate how TV Horror continues to provoke and terrify audiences by bringing the monstrous and the supernatural into the home, whether through adaptations of Stephen King and classic horror novels, or by reworking the gothic and surrealism in Twin Peaks and Carnivale. They uncover horror in mainstream television from procedural dramas to children's television and, through close analysis of landmark TV auteurs including Rod Serling, Nigel Kneale, Dan Curtis and Stephen Moffat, together with case studies of such shows as Dark Shadows, Dexter, Pushing Daisies, Torchwood, and Supernatural, they explore its evolution on television.
Contents: Introduction : Horror begins at home -- The TV in TV horror : production and broadcast contexts -- Mainstreaming horror -- Shaping horror : from single play to serial drama -- Adaptation : translating horror tales -- The horror auteur -- Revising the gothic -- The excess of TV horror -- Horror, art and disruption -- TV as horror -- The monster in our living room : from Barnabas Collins to Dexter Morgan -- Conclusion : The road so far.