Acting in British Television

This book offers the first in-depth exploration of acting processes in contemporary British television production. Centred around sixteen new interviews with celebrated British actors, including Rebecca Front, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Ken Stott, Penelope Wilton and John Hannah, this rich resource delves behind the scenes of a range of British television programmes in order to examine how actors build their characters for television, how they work on set and on location, and how they create their critically acclaimed portrayals for the screen. The book investigates actors’ work across five diverse but popular television genres: soap opera, police drama, medical drama, comedy, and period drama. The book's discussion of landmark television productions and its critical and contextual post-interview analysis of actor insights makes a valuable contribution to scholarship across Television Studies; the study of theatre, performance and acting; as well as Cultural Studies and Media Studies more broadly