Costume Drama Handout

Costume Drama


Two types:

• Most common one is the historical costume drama

• And the futuristical costume drama; takes place in the distant future (actors often wore strange,unsual and sometimes hi-tech costumes to predict on what the clothes of th future might be like)

Both have a wide ranging, love & war, birth & death, rich & poor, ... .

The costume drama is a period piece which uses sets and props and elaborate costumes in order to capture the ambience of a particular era

Sets:

Props:

Different genres:

• historical dramas
• romances
• adventure
• swashbucklers

Costume Drama is often intertextually linked to ´classic´ novels or plays and tends to offer a set of pleasure which is very different to the drama that is set in our own world contexts and times.

Examples:

• Battlestar Galactica
• Pride and Prejudice
• Rome
• Sense and Sensebility
• Robin Hood
• The Tudors
• Little Dorrit

Hyperlinks:
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/482184/index.html

http://www.itv.com/Drama/perioddrama/TheStoryoftheCostumeDrama/

Crime Drama Factfile

What is a Crime Drama:
"The police procedural is a sub-genre of the mystery story which attempts to convincingly depict the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes. While traditional detective novels usually concentrate on one single crime, police procedurals frequently depict investigations into several unrelated crimes in a single story. While traditional mysteries usually adhere to the convention of having the criminal's identity concealed until the climax, the so-called whodunit, in police procedurals, the perpetrator's identity is often known to the reader from the outset. Police procedurals depict a number of police-related topics such as forensics, autopsies, the gathering of evidence, the use of search warrants and interrogation." Wikipedia

• two kinds: one-off crime drama
  long-running TV crime drama
• each crime drama has it's own unique representational aspects
  -> these are not directly related to the crime
• stereotypical characters:
  policemen and policewomen
  male are more dominant
  victims are often older people

Normally 5 key binaries:

1. Crime/the police
2. Criminals/the criminal justice system
3. Lawyers vs. courts
4. Social workers vs. the police
5. Victims vs. the police