‘Quality television’ as a critical obstacle: explanation and aesthetics in television studies

The category of ‘quality television’ is familiar in its generic and evaluative functions. Less frequently examined are its implications as a framework for explaining the emergence of particular forms and instances of television fiction. This essay highlights and analyzes this aspect of ‘quality television’ discourse. It situates this discourse within television studies’ widespread tendency to account for the development and status of particular television fictions through appeal to industrial determinants and taste formations. This tendency is shown to present an obstacle to the kind of interpretive attention and response that television fictions call for, and that is needed if we are to understand why particular fictions take the precise form that they do. The essay thus stakes a claim for television studies to accord greater importance to the practice of interpretive, expressive criticism.