A Passage to Manchester: Space, Place and Aesthetic in The Jewel in the Crown. Issue 3 (November 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dunn, David
• Is Part Of: Critical studies in television. Volume 10:Issue 3(2015)
• Page Start: 37
• Page End: 52
• Publication Date: 2015-11
• Subjects: Granada Television -- 'quality drama' -- theatrical -- cinematic -- aesthetic -- performance; Television -- Periodicals; Television criticism -- Periodicals; 384.5505
• DOI: 10.7227/CST.10.3.4
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1749-6020

Abstract

The Jewel in the Crown (1984a) was Granada Television's second major film drama series made in the 1980s. It was based on Paul Scott's Raj Quartet and considerable publicity surrounded its four months of filming in India, yet much of it was shot in studio in Manchester. Through an examination of its places of production and narrative and its spaces of performance this article suggests that the series offered a complex and ambivalent response to 'quality drama', and argues that in its literary adaptation of a literary source its aesthetic drew heavily on certain theatrical traditions of the television studio.