History on Television by Ann Gray and Erin Bell (review)

In History on Television, cultural studies scholar Ann Gray and historian Erin Bell consider whether historical television programming can be considered a form of public history, thus bridging a gap in existing scholarship in television and historical studies. To address these questions, the authors take an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing the recent history boom in U.K. television programming from 1995 onward. Drawing on television, cultural, and historical studies, Gray and Bell investigate three sites — history programming, history in the academy, and media production contexts — in order to determine how television “‘does history’” (p. 1) in a media environment shaped by proliferating channels, fragmented audiences, and reality television which sparks the paradoxical rise of celebrity culture and “ordinary people.”

In “The Business of Television,” Gray and Bell provide a detailed survey of the political economy of historical programming in the U.K., arguing that the advent of digital technologies and the proliferation of terrestrial, satellite, and independent channels resulted in cooperative scheduling among terrestrial broadcasters, intensified channel branding, the development of hybrid genres, and the rise of the historian-celebrity. This sets the stage for the subsequent three chapters, which focus on the development of three seminal categories of history programming: landmark, commemorative, and reenactment television.

In their analysis of landmark and flagship television, Gray and Bell signal the importance of “super-event” programming for shaping channel identity, but their broader interest lay in exploring how high profile productions construct an imagined national community. A notable intervention made by the authors is their development of seven “historical gazes” summoned by different aesthetic styles of landmark productions, from the “civilizing gaze” of Simon Schama’s authoritative presentation of A History of Britain (2000) to the “personally reflective gaze” of celebrity genealogical series Who Do You Think You Are?, which encourages audiences to reflect upon their personal connections with “broader, often traumatic, historical knowledge” (p. 84).

Another compelling contribution is the authors’ analysis of a new genre of historical programming. “Reality history” programs like Restoration, where audience voting determines which historical structure is preserved, and reenactment shows, such as Restoration Home, which present homeowners’ restoration projects, constitute more than “historical make-over shows,” according to the authors (p. 40). Produced by the bbc, the authors argue that such shows signal an investment in developing programming that activates viewer interest in cultural heritage and the “restoration of the nation” (p. 39) by creating entertaining and, often, interactive historical television. The authors take up these ideas more fully throughout chapter four, which, in a compelling move, also examines historical reenactment shows, like 1900 House and Edwardian Country Home, as a form of “prosthetic memory” (Landsberg, 2004) by inviting viewers to empathize and engage with what is shown.

Chapter five shifts focus from programming to examine the “imagined” audiences of historical television, arguing that media professionals’ subjective notions of the ideal audience often results in the production of television histories that reproduce hegemonic versions of the national biography, which suppress alternative narratives (including black, women’s, and imperial histories). Gray and Bell determine that media producers construct “oversimplified and streamlined versions of audiences” (p. 185) that empower gendered, racialized, and classed perceptions of spectators’ tastes and viewing preferences. While these ideal audiences prove useful for marketing campaigns and commissioning processes, media producers’ loyalty to normative ideas of audiences’ viewing preferences limits the diversity of history programming — both in terms of the topics chosen for development and who presents these histories.

History on Television can make for a challenging read insofar as the analysis tends to presume a certain degree of familiarity with the media examples under discussion. Chapter three, for instance, focuses on commemorative programming marking significant anniversaries of the world wars. The rapid-fire analysis of multiple special events programs, developed for different channels (and, at times, in distinct national contexts, such as the German-produced Die Letzte Schlacht) can be overwhelming (an effect compounded by a complex writing style and too-small...