Gothic television

Television is an innately Gothic medium, bringing immaterial figures and stories of the horrors of the past and present into the family home. Across the development of television it has engaged with the Gothic in style, technologies and narratives, embracing the medium’s potential to suggest horror, while occasionally daring to embrace the graphic with developments in effects and visual clarity. In this way the Gothic aspects of television have engaged multiple audiences in different ways. Current television particularly presents a Gothicisation of history, informing viewers of the traumas of the past through factual and fictional programming, from Who Do You Think You Are? to Peaky Blinders. We can therefore find the Gothic not just in the expected places, but throughout the medium of television.