ABSTRACT
Stephen Poliakoff’s first television serial, Shooting the Past, is considered a major breakthrough in his career as one of British television’s most acclaimed writers and directors. It is also a significant example of how “high-end” television drama has been extending the series-serial narrative. This chapter contends that Shooting the Past may be construed as a manifesto propounding how serial forms can induce an alternative model of “authored drama” production on television. The whole drama is conceived as variations on the notion of series and seriality, playing on episodic and serial effects, ultimately offering self-reflexive comments on the serial essence of the filmic image and its power to build up a narrative when set in montage.
