The police series: The Bill

Abstract

The previous two chapters have, we hope, provided a full introduction to the key concepts used in media studies — they are meant to help you see what to look for when you start to analyse a visual text. But you also need to be able to talk about a TV programme as a whole, and to do this successfully you need a method of analysis that will enable you to build your own views on any programme that you have chosen to study. This is what this chapter is about: it shows you how to use a sequence of steps to build up a critical view of a television programme, drawing on the ideas outlined in Chapters 2 and 3.