Musical episodes in (otherwise non-musical) television series have been a feature of the TV landscape for almost half a century, and in some ways for longer than that. The academic literature on them is seriously lopsided, though; an inordinate proportion focuses on just one episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s ‘Once More with Feeling’ (2001), and fewer than 20 episodes have been discussed at all. But there have been at least 160 such episodes since the late 1970s (at my own very likely very incomplete count), and they are part of a more complex field of televisual takes on the musical that has not been mapped in any depth or detail. One of my current research projects tries to rectify that sorry state of things, and today’s Research Seminar will discuss a few examples from the pre-history and early history of the musical episode, from the 1950s up to the breakthrough of the phenomenon in around 1996.

Bio

Guido Heldt is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Bristol and has widely published on British art music in the 20^th century and, chiefly, on film and other screen media music. He is currently working on music in film comedy, on musical episodes in TV series and on YouTube videos referring to the Disney Princesses.