The Avengers and The Prisoner: The Transformation of the British Adventure Series of the Sixties

Through a close reading of two cult British TV series, The Avengers and The Prisoner, the author examines the rise, the transformation and the subsequent decline
of the so-called »British adventures series genre«, placing it into a wider sociocultural context of its production and reception, as well as the particular historic context of the 1960s. In both cases, the unstable and mutable nature of the genre is seen as a defining characteristics, but also that which eventually helps to erode the series’ very own generic identity, demonstrating how the genre hybridity of the first »Golden age« of British television can later become the very essence of television genre production.

The integral version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!