New Perspectives on Irish TV Series ─ Identity and Nostalgia on the Small Screen

Within the growing field of television studies, little work has yet been done on the Irish context. This volume aims to fill this gap by offering new and compelling studies of contemporary Irish TV series. Fictional TV series, which constitute an autonomous genre within the broader cultural phenomenon of TV broadcasting, are explored here as paradigmatic representations of Irish popular culture. This book investigates the vast number of series produced in Ireland over the past two decades, focusing on their cultural impact at a time when American and British dominance have led many critics and viewers to underestimate the significance of Irish programming. The essays collected here reveal a distinctly Irish culture of TV fiction series, in both the Irish and English languages, and examine some of its finest examples, from Father Ted to Love/Hate and Sin Scéal Eile.

Flore Coulouma is Associate Professor in the English Department at the Universite Paris Ouest Nanterre. She is the author of Diglossia and The Linguistic Turn: Flann O’Brien’s Philosophy of Language and has written on contemporary Irish and American literature and popular culture. She teaches and researches in English linguistics and Irish literature and her other research interests include ecocriticism and the relationship between law and linguistics.