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Adventures on Prime Time The Television Programs of Stephen J. Cannell
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By Robert J. Thompson
ISBN: 0-275-93330-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-93330-2
160 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 6/22/1990
List Price: $97.95 (UK Sterling Price: £54.95)
Availability:
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Series Title: Media and Society Series
Reviews:
  • 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
Description: 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.
Table of Contents:
  • 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
LC Card Number: 89-26572
LCC Class: PN1992
Dewey Class: 791.45
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