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1In this book, derived from his doctoral dissertation, Will Stanford Abbiss sets out to formalise a critical framework to identify the resistance he sees to the dominant political ideology of neoliberalism in period drama Television—an umbrella term for ‘all fictional television set in the past’ (1). The period under scrutiny is the 2010s, a transitional decade marked by innovations like new online services that also had consequences on the output of traditional television and is characterised for Abbiss by a post-heritage cycle in response to the success of Downton Abbey (ITV 2010–15). The corpus is dominated by, but not limited to, commissions or re-commissions by the BBC and enables Abbiss to identify tensions between public service aims and commercial objectives in an increasing number of transnational co-productions with ensuing risks and loss of creative control for public-service broadcasters.

2The book is structured in six parts, each with its own bibliography, followed by an index at the end of the volume. The introduction clearly explains how Abbiss adopts and adapts Claire Monk’s concept of ‘post-heritage’ for period/literary films marked by a strong self-consciousness in relation to Andrew Higson’s notion of ‘heritage films’, considered as conservative in content and form for their display of the past as spectacle, conveniently distanced from the present. Abbiss sees both as ‘co-existing’, sometimes ‘competing’ elements of period drama production in the 2010s. To discuss these notions, this dense and rich introduction invokes Helen Wheatley’s ‘spectacular television’, Tom Brown’s ‘décor of history’ and ‘historical gaze’, John Urry and Jonas Larsen’s theory of the ‘tourist gaze’. The post-heritage critical framework propounded by Abbiss is guided by five central elements: interrogation (of heritage drama); subversion of traditional expectations, visually and narratively thus allowing for a wider range of identities; subjectivity that enlists the viewer’s empathy and critique of contemporary issues; self-consciousness that acknowledges the impossibility of authenticity and the status of the production as media text; ambiguity with the evasion of definitive responses and narrative resolution. The introduction also presents critical and theoretical tools from television scholarship deemed useful here: questions of style and of the increasing hybridisation of narrative forms of TV dramas, John Ellis’s notion of ‘working through’ (i.e. process of making and remaking meanings) expanded on by Jerome de Groot in historical fiction, trauma theory and the fluidity and palimpsestic dimension of genres.

3Chapter 1 addresses varied instances of what Abbiss calls ‘society drama’, i.e. ‘narratives of the past that focus on class differences and social structures’ (27). Abbiss first demonstrates how Downton Abbey (ITV/Masterpiece) does not fulfil its post-heritage potential. Then, having contextualised the less studied Upstairs Downstairs (BBC/ Masterpiece), Abbiss points to the marked post-heritage approach of the first season of this 2010 series. This chapter also considers The Mill (C4) and The Village (BBC), which Abbiss qualifies as ‘anti-heritage’ series because of their focus on the working-class condition, to show how they generally miss out on potential post-heritage complexities. Abbiss then briefly looks at a sub-category of ‘retail society’ drama exemplified in The Paradise (an adaptation of Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames) and Andrew Davies’s Mr Selfridge (54–55). This chapter closes with a study of The Halcyon (ITV) that, Abbiss argues, best pursues the post-heritage potential of society drama but only ran for one season. Here as throughout the book, Abbiss stresses the importance of production and commissioning, suggesting that The Halcyon’s post-heritage elements may have discouraged transnational co-production funding.

4In Chapter 2, after providing a historical overview of the classic serial, Abbiss focuses on recent TV adaptations of Dickens’s works, Tony Jordan’s Dickensian (BBC) and Steven Knight’s A Christmas Carol (BBC/FX), arguing that their use of soap opera conventions conveys a post-heritage perspective. In his turn, Abbiss closely looks at Dickensian’s innovations and attempts to combine literary prestige and popular appeal but are nevertheless limited by the institutional constraints. In both series, Abbiss analyses the revisionist capacity of post-heritage adaptation when it gives voice to marginalised figures, particularly women and diverse identities, and how they may offer a sociocultural commentary and confront the viewer with ‘the dark underbelly of the idealised Dickensian Christmas’ (92) contrasting with the sanitised versions of Dickens fostered by classic TV serials.

5Entitled ‘Matters of Royalty in The Crown’, Chapter 3 contextualises the Netflix series in light of British Royalty TV drama. It then details the post-heritage features of the first four seasons: it foregrounds the fact that The Crown prioritises critique over visual spectacle, its imaginative development of the subjectivity of public figures coupled with the acknowledgement that speculation is part of historical drama as made visible by unresolved ambiguities and self-consciousness stemming from periodic recasting. In this case, Abbiss argues that, it being a transnational TV drama with a global audience as its target gives The Crown more leeway with historical truth, freedom in terms of topic (not focusing only on the aristocracy), ‘avoiding a deferential attitude towards the monarchy’ (131). Some of the best pages may be the ones dealing with how the series acknowledges its intervention in contemporary and historical debates through a self-reflexive recurring motif of media representations, including a stimulating analysis of the representation of the coronation leading to underline the limited viewpoint of history.

6In his final case study in Chapter 4, Abbiss examines three BBC serial dramas from the 2010s by Stephen Poliakoff, all marked by a shift of focus to corners of British history that resonate with the present moment in order to ‘establish the continued role of distinctive, authored drama under a public service ethos’ (137). Abbiss first dwells on Dancing on the Edge that ‘explores racial identity’ and features the presence of fascist values in the British upper class (145). He then looks at the exploration of the moral dilemma of hiring a Nazi sympathiser and of the trauma of two brothers in Close to the Enemy set in the aftermath of WWII. Finally, he probes how the theme of surveillance and secrecy pervades Summer of Rockets, set during the Cold War. In this final chapter, Abbiss repeats the risks of transnational collaboration that may jeopardise the aims of public service media along with the perspective and subjects tackled. Examining Poliakoff’s oeuvre from the 2010s, which he considers a marker of distinctiveness for the BBC, Abbiss connects post-heritage elements with less commercially driven programming.

7The concluding pages return to the transnational dimension of these serials since co-production influences their aesthetics, values and narratives and therefore the dominance of heritage or post-heritage elements. It usefully summarises the presence in the series of the five post-heritage elements set forth in the introduction but that somewhat faded from view in the following chapters. Abbiss finally proposes to expand the scope of the post-heritage framework to non-period TV dramas.

8Abbiss offers here a well-documented and extensive discussion of mostly major period dramas of the 2010s, considering elements of style, narrative and production context. The introduction is extremely rich and opens lots of avenues. Chapters can be read independently even if the post-heritage framework duly established in the introduction tends to become a mere reference, especially in Chapter 4. Well-researched though it is, Abbiss’s book is not without the occasional error or typo, and a few inaccurate page references in an index that one could wish to be more inclusive (listing more names but also notions such as slow television). It is occasionally vague (the ‘auxiliary episodes’ of Poliakoff’s serials are just deemed ‘atypical’ without reflecting much on the effects of a final episode that is not one at all). These are minor and occasional problems that do not affect the overall quality and interest of this scholarly work that renovates a concept to offer a very useful framework for approaching contemporary period drama along with convincing analyses of key TV dramas.