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1981
Volume 15, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 2040-6134
  • E-ISSN: 2040-6142

Abstract

This article considers the sociological function of television drama via the Irish television crime series , which aired over five seasons between 2010 and 2014 on RTÉ, Ireland’s public service broadcaster. Drawing on Andrew Abbot’s concept of ‘lyrical sociology’, it will examine how media discourse surrounding consistently foregrounded the connection between its fictional events and real-life crime scenarios. Media coverage of , as well as the content of the series itself, it will be argued, posed the problem of sympathy between audience and its violent protagonists in spatial terms, as a question of belonging or otherwise in a shared social space. In particular, the experiential quality of home as a space of belonging will be explored as a central organizing structure in the series, one which ambiguously connected the lived spaces of its domestic television audience to the highly gendered home and city spaces of ’s story world.

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/content/journals/10.1386/jepc_00064_1
2024-07-22
2024-12-07
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