Part of Praeger's Media and Society Series, this volume breaks new ground in television studies as the first booklength study of an individual television producer. Robert J. Thompson examines the work of Stephen J. Cannell, one of television's most prolific and successful producers. Thompson uses theories of film authorship revised for application to television texts and provides close analysis of Cannell's programs, including individual episodes of The Rockford Files, The A-Team, and The Greatest American Hero. Moving away from the notion that a television series is the creation of an individual author, the book begins with a look at the televisionmaker. Thompson probes the polyauthorial nature of the medium and introduces a new method of studying television authorship. The book then turns to Cannell and a study of his career, focusing on how he developed the formula for his many highly rated television series. Students and teachers of television and television criticism will find Adventures on Prime Time a source of stimulating ideas about the nature of the medium.
Part of Praeger's Media and Society Series, this volume breaks new ground in television studies as the first booklength study of an individual television producer. Robert J. Thompson examines the work of Stephen J. Cannell, one of television's most prolific and successful producers. Thompson uses theories of film authorship revised for application to television texts and provides close analysis of Cannell's programs, including individual episodes of The Rockford Files, The A-Team, and The Greatest American Hero. Moving away from the notion that a television series is the creation of an individual author, the book begins with a look at the televisionmaker. Thompson probes the polyauthorial nature of the medium and introduces a new method of studying television authorship. The book then turns to Cannell and a study of his career, focusing on how he developed the formula for his many highly rated television series. Students and teachers of television and television criticism will find Adventures on Prime Time a source of stimulating ideas about the nature of the medium.
Introduction
The Television Auteur
A Television Auteur
Adventures about Prime Time
Cannell's Adventures at Universal: An Apprentice in a Sausage
Factory
Autobiographical Adventures: The Early Days of Stephen J. Cannell
Productions
Beyond Autobiography: Manufacturing Television
The Further Adventures of Stephen Cannell
Selected Bibliography
Index
This volume provides an in-depth critical and historical examination of the TV programs of one of America's most prolific and successful producers. The book also breaks new ground in the development of the study of television authorship. It features discussion of specific episodes ofeach of Cannell's major series, including The Rockford Files, The A-Team, Greatest American Hero, and Private Eye.
ROBERT J. THOMPSON is an Associate Professor at the State University of New York at Cortland, the Director of the Radio-TV-Film N.H.S.I summer program at Northwestern University, and an occasional visiting Professor at Cornell University. In addition to the present volume, he is the co-editor of two anthologies of essays entitled Television Studies: Textual Analysis (Praeger) and Making Television: Authorship and the Production Process (Praeger).
?Thompson usefully surveys the anomalies of TV auteurism,
establishing its characteristic recombinance' and the hyphenate'
(writer-producer). Happily Stephen Cannell's Hardcastle provides a
definition for auteurism: Criminals commit the same crime over and
over again' (p.118). But as he is less a critical analyst than a
journalist, Thompson's goal is misdirected: to juxtapose
biographical information about Cannell with the texts he wrote and
produced and to examine the fit.' Thompson diminishes Cannell's
works by centripetally reading them as autobiography' instead of
exploring wider themes. For example, in The Greatest American Hero
the magical suit (with lost directions) more interestingly alludes
to runaway technology (nuclear or otherwise) than it represents the
lack of clear rules for successful TV writing. With unsettling
imprecision Thompson uses autobiography' for TV career, ' hubris'
for authorial vanity, ' and Trojan horses' for disguise.'
Thompson's autobiographical' parallels do not establish Cannell as
working in metatelevision' as Moonlighting did. Variations on
formulas do not make the Cannell canon a history of his career in
television, ' nor does his casting of a stock company foreground
the artificiality of the presentation'--not for Cannell, not for
Ingmar Bergman, not for John Ford. Nonetheless, Thompson does prove
that this writer-producer has stamped a distinctive tone as well as
recurrent concerns and strategies on his wide range of TV series.
One suspects that Cannell's art would sustain more ambitious
explication than Thompson undertakes.?-Choice
"Thompson usefully surveys the anomalies of TV auteurism,
establishing its characteristic recombinance' and the hyphenate'
(writer-producer). Happily Stephen Cannell's Hardcastle provides a
definition for auteurism: Criminals commit the same crime over and
over again' (p.118). But as he is less a critical analyst than a
journalist, Thompson's goal is misdirected: to juxtapose
biographical information about Cannell with the texts he wrote and
produced and to examine the fit.' Thompson diminishes Cannell's
works by centripetally reading them as autobiography' instead of
exploring wider themes. For example, in The Greatest American Hero
the magical suit (with lost directions) more interestingly alludes
to runaway technology (nuclear or otherwise) than it represents the
lack of clear rules for successful TV writing. With unsettling
imprecision Thompson uses autobiography' for TV career, ' hubris'
for authorial vanity, ' and Trojan horses' for disguise.'
Thompson's autobiographical' parallels do not establish Cannell as
working in metatelevision' as Moonlighting did. Variations on
formulas do not make the Cannell canon a history of his career in
television, ' nor does his casting of a stock company foreground
the artificiality of the presentation'--not for Cannell, not for
Ingmar Bergman, not for John Ford. Nonetheless, Thompson does prove
that this writer-producer has stamped a distinctive tone as well as
recurrent concerns and strategies on his wide range of TV series.
One suspects that Cannell's art would sustain more ambitious
explication than Thompson undertakes."-Choice
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