Abstract

This book is a social history of Ireland seen through its television drama. It begins with the introduction of indigenous television in Ireland with the launch of RTE in 1962. It traces 25 years of Irish society in a process of social transformation and analyses the role of television drama in a struggle to define the nature of that process. It probes television drama in terms of its deep structures, in the context of the total flow of television and of the larger panorama of social experience. It charts the changing patterns of representation of gender roles, moral codes, class conflict, rural-urban tensions, religious belief, political power, domestic life, emigration, education and republicanism. It is a comprehensive account of plays, series and serials. It scrutinises the assumptions underlying them, the power structures surrounding them and the controversies set off by them.