Read e-book online Swashbucklers: The costume adventure series PDF

Swashbucklers is the 1st research of 1 of the preferred and enduring genres in tv historical past - the gown event series.

James Chapman explores the historical past of swashbuckling tv from its origins within the Nineteen Fifties to the current day. He maps the main construction cycles of the Anglophone swashbuckler either in Britain and within the usa and areas the style in its old, cultural and institutional contexts. He exhibits how the luck of The Adventures of Robin Hood within the Nineteen Fifties demonstrated a template for a style that has been probably the most profitable of British tv exports. And he considers how the United States answered to this 'British invasion' with its personal swashbuckling heroes corresponding to Zorro.

Chapman additionally analyses the cultural politics of the swashbuckler, contemplating the way it has been a motor vehicle for the illustration of ideologies of sophistication, gender and nationhood. whereas a few swashbucklers have promoted consensual politics, others reminiscent of Dick Turpin and Robin of Sherwood have offered us with heroes at the margins of society who problem its inequities and injustices. the connection of the televisions swashbuckler to the founding myths of the style is mentioned, in addition to how the style has spoke back to the altering cultural and ideological contexts within which it truly is produced. What emerges is an image of a style that has proved remarkably versatile in adapting its shape and elegance to check the preferred tastes of audiences.

Swashbucklers is meant for college students and lecturers of well known tv drama in addition to for adventure-lovers everywhere.