CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Preface : emotion, engagements and orientation viii Introduction : why study television? 1 Part 1 : Theoretical background 1 'Desperately Seeking the Audience' : models of audience reception 11 2 Personal Meanings, Fandom and Sitting Too Close to the Television 30 3 Global Meanings and Trans-cultural Understandings of Dallas 45 4 Theorising Emotion and Affect: feminist engagements 55 5 Theorising Emotion in Film and Television 72 Part 2 : Case studies 6 A Sentimental Journey: writing emotion in television 89 7 'There's No Place Like Home': emotional exposure, excess and empathy on TV 100 8 Emotional Rescue : The Sopranos (HBO 1999-2007), ER (NEC 1994-) and State of Play (BBC1 2003) 115 9 Feminising Television : the Mother Role in Six Feet Under (HBO 2001-6) and Brothers fr Sisters (ABC 2006-)128 10 Researching Emotion in Television : a small-scale case study of emotion in the UK/Irish soap industry 142 Bibliography 156 Index 173