Abstract

This thesis describes the general character of the children's television drama transmitted on Telefis Eireann/RTE from 1962 to 1987, reviews the programming context of the provision, and evaluates the drama transmitted to dramatic, developmental and cultural criteria. The thesis identifies and analyses a representative selection of the home-originated and imported children’s television drama in the schedules over the period under review. Details of the identified drama transmissions are provided in the Appendices. The Appendices also Include details of home produced children's programmes and of relevant home-originated adult drama. Chapter One outlines some dramatic criteria for classification and evaluation of the schedule content, constructs a developmental perspective of children as users of television drama, and examines the cultural contexts of Irish children as viewers. The selected schedule provision, relevant formative factors, and the programming environment are examined in general terms in Chapter Two. The selected provision is analysed in generic and thematic categories in Chapters Three, Four and Five. Chapter Three examines drama in the fantasy paradigm, which is predominantly animation drama; Chapter Four analyses the live action provision, discussing films originally made for cinema, drama particularly relevant to the actuality of children's lives, adventure drama, situation comedy and family-centred drama, and drama featuring animals. Chapter Five examines two categories characterised by heavy value-loading— drama based on literature and drama based on history; this chapter also discusses sources for research on thesis topics and gives a brief summary of developments in home produced television drama for children from 1987 to date. Chapter Six sets out the conclusions and areas of further enquiry indicated by the study of the provision and the analysis.