This lively introduction to television documentaries spotlights their history, production and reception, principal forms and functions and their adaptation to today's programming needs. What impact has television's growing commercialisation had on the type of documentary broadcast? What has led to the introduction of an increasing number of hybridised forms? These questions are addressed within an examination of the role of institutions, documentary's 'special relationship' with the real, and an insight into how audiences interpret the documentaries they view. Confronting reality has been...

'Staging the Real' is a lively, stimulating account of recent developments in factual TV programming, including 'Big Brother'. Primarily aimed at Media Studies students, it will also be of interest to the more general reader.

Taking the Long View is a study of documentary series such as Michael Apted's world-famous Seven Up films that set out to trace the life-journeys of individuals from their earliest schooldays till they are fully grown adults, often with children of their own. In addition to Seven Up, the book provides extended accounts of the two other best known longitudinal series to have been produced in the last three or four decades: Winifred and Barbara Junge's The Children of Golzow and Swedish director Rainer Hartleb's The Children of Jordbro. Long docs have been an especially popular form of...