Front Matter....Pages i-xvi
Introduction: Film and TV Melodrama: An Overview....Pages 1-21
Front Matter....Pages 23-23
Melodrama and the Classic Television Serial....Pages 27-41
Nature, Culture, Space: The Melodramatic Topographies of Lark Rise to Candleford ....Pages 42-60
‘We Are Like That Only’: Prime Time Family Melodramas on Indian Television....Pages 61-78
On the ‘Scalpel’s Edge’: Gory Excess, Melodrama and Irony in Nip/Tuck ....Pages 81-95
‘Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik’: Unearthing Gay Male Anxieties in Queer Gothic Soaps Dante’s Cove (2005–2007) and The Lair (2007–2009)....Pages 96-113
Don’t Stop Believing: Textual Excess and Discourses of Satisfaction in the Finale of The Sopranos ....Pages 114-129
Front Matter....Pages 131-131
Melodrama as History and Nostalgia: Reading Hong Kong Director Yonfan’s Prince of Tears....Pages 135-152
Vincere: A ‘Strikingly Effective’ Contemporary Film Melodrama....Pages 153-170
Vienna to Beijing: Xu Jinglei’s Letter from an Unknown Woman (China, 2004) and the Symbolic Simulation of Europe....Pages 171-186
Deconstructing Melodramatic Destiny: Late Marriage (2001) and Two Lovers (2008)....Pages 187-202
Anticipating Home: The Edge of Heaven as Melodrama....Pages 205-222
Framing a Hybrid Tradition: Realism and Melodrama in About Elly ....Pages 223-238
Back Matter....Pages 239-246