This book offers a comparative study of historical television genres in
Europe, with a special focus on Germany and Great Britain and their way
of narrating twentieth century European history. The book analyses our
common European past and memory through central historical television
narratives. Each chapter looks at how historical TV genres, fictional
and documentary, have dealt with the most salient and defining periods,
events and changes in the twentieth century-- an age of extremes.
Bondebjerg offers unique theoretical and analytical insight into the
role of television in mediating and shaping the past. The book explores
television's creation of transnational cultural encounters across Europe
in relation to our common and national past. The book addresses how
television has influenced our understanding of history, collective
memory and public debate over the twentieth century. It is fundamentally
a book about the importance of the past in present day Europe and the
centrality of media for transnational understanding.