Just thought I’d post a copy of a paper that I’ve written with Melissa Gregg on Australian true crime drama, Underbelly. We’ve submitted it for a special edition of Continuum which arises from the “Television and the National” conference held in Melbourne last year.
Although we’ve both presented papers and written journalism on this topic before, for me at least this is my debut in formally publishing television scholarship.
We were both impressed by Underbelly, both as a television text and as something that offered an appraisal of recent changes in Australian cultural life. Although it’s not developed extensively in this paper, in future work in this area we’re likely to further develop the idea of Underbelly as a kind of underground history of the Howard years.
Anyway, our author copy is available for download as a PDF at the link below. It will go through the review process now, and is likely to change substantially if it’s accepted for publication. I’ll keep you posted as to the ifs and whens of that. Meanwhile, comments are most welcome.
What did you think of the latest series? I feel like it was only so long until it lost the plot, and it definitely did then…