Current television is a slave to naturalistic convention.

Almost every television drama produced for modern day viewing closely reflects today’s society. For example, people enjoy watching soap operas because they can relate to the issues being portrayed. A typical example of this would be Shelly and Peter getting engaged in Coronation Street. A lot of people would be able to relate to this situation, as it is something occurs in most relationships.

Dennis Potter is well known for writing, acting, directing and producing many television programmes and films. In 1986 he wrote the television series ‘The Singing Detective’. Potter reworked material from his first novel ‘Hide and Seek’ (1973) with popular music and 1940’s film noir and he came up with this idea of ‘The Singing Detective’. The series is about detective novelist Philip Marlow who suffers from psoriatic arthropathy. He is confined to a hospital bed where he has strange hallucinations whilst mentally rewriting his own thriller ‘The Singing Detective’. He himself is the lead role throughout and he drifts into a surreal 1945 fantasy of spies and criminals, along with vivid memories of a childhood in the For

The 'Big Brother' series has been very popular with viewers as it is an original idea and quite entertaining. The programme uses naturalistic conventions as it is set in a house and people filmed living each day. Although the housemates are cut off from the world (no contact with anyone outside the house, excluding Big Brother himself) and there is the unnatural element of the television cameras surrounding the house both inside and out, the concept is quite normal. This is because housemates are just expected to live normally whilst being filmed.

est of Dean. This was quite a different television series as it

The audience of todays society enjoy watching dramas about violence and real life situations. Over the past few years there has been a sudden increase in the number of reality television programmes shown on British tv. For example in year 2000 the first 'Big Brother' was aired. 'Big Brother ' is a tv reality tv show that films eleven housemates housemates over ten weeks in a secluded house. Each week the housemates are given tasks and they have to do well to earn their weekly budget to spend on food. Also each housemate has to nominate two housemates every week and the two housemates with the most number of votes get put up for public nomination. The one with the most votes is evicted at the end of the week. The final housemate left at the end of the ten weeks wins the competition and recieves £70,000.

This type of television show is very popular because it allows people to become voyueristic and entertained at the same time. Because it is shown at the same time it is being filmed, the issues that are talked about between the housemates are quite recent.

Many issues have been used within soap operas. For example adultery, divorce, death, rape and teen pregnancy. In 'Coronation Street' Sarah Louise became pregnant when she was thirteen. Sarah Louise had the baby and raised it with her mothers help. This brought about much

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