This innovative and timely collection offers a wide-reaching critical evaluation of performance in television, mapping out key conventions, practices and concerns while introducing performance theory and criticism to the established field of television studies. Chapters from leading scholars move through a range of examples from different styles and genres, from Game of Thrones to America’s Next Top Model. Individual performances are analysed in close detail as the authors debate central questions of meaning, value and achievement.

Opening out new pathways for inquiry and investigation, this book is an important touchstone for undergraduate and postgraduate students of television, media and theatre studies with an interest in the work of actors and non-actors on screen.

Contributions by: Jonathan Bignell, Tom Brown, Sarah Cardwell, Alex Clayton, Amy Holdsworth, Simone Knox, Elliott Logan, Karen Lury, James Zborowski, Lydia Buckingham, Gary Cassidy, Timotheus Vermeulen