ABSTRACT
Since television cannot be a ‘true’ representation, it could draw the viewer’s attention to his or her relationship with the medium and make him or her recognise the social relations that this relationship involves. So perhaps the strangeness or unrealistic nature of television versions of reality, when familiar recognitions and identifications break down, might draw the viewer’s attention to the fact that he or she is watching a representation and not a reality. This strategy of ‘critical realism’ involves recognising a relationship between television and reality, yet resisting television’s apparently neutral transcription of that reality. Drama like that would reveal the work that television representation does, and show that TV realism is not natural but cultural and constructed.
