The Age of Television: Experiences and Theories
By Milly Buonanno
Intellect Books £19.95, 144 pages
FT bookshop price: £15.96

Television, and the popular drama which accounts for so many hours of its nightly output, is our way of making sense of life. Like the 19th-century novel, from which such dramas are derived, television series are an antidote to the grim fact of death. In secular societies deprived of the consolation that life (if properly lived) is but a preparation for a more glorious eternity, we have grasped at narrative – overwhelmingly, now, TV narrative – to give us some peace from the dread thought of finity.