Miami Vice

Art Deco interiors, neon–wrought nighttime cityscapes, high–styled men′s fashions, "designer stubble," and perhaps most importantly, an aesthetic approach to mood, music, and visual style unlike anything else in television history′. This book captures the glitter and glamour embodied by Crockett and Tubbs in Miami Vice , and offers students an anatomy of a ground–breaking work in the police procedural genre. Explores Miami Vice ’s combination of disparate influences (MTV, film noir, soap opera, “high concept” action films) as well as the social, cultural, and industrial moments when it burst onto the network Introduces readers to major components of televisual analysis –– style, storytelling, the television show as commodity, and ideological critique –– that illustrate the show’s unique features Provides a model for students’ own assessment of other shows, and confirms precisely how –– and on what terms –– Miami Vice  redefined the police drama and an era

Acknowledgments. Introduction. 1. I Want My MTV Cops: Miami Vice as Television Commodity. 2. Guns, Glitter, and Glamour: Styling the Show. 3. Losing the Plot?: Storytelling in Miami Vice. 4. Risky Business: the Cultural Politics of Vice. Afterword. Broadcast Date Notes. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

James Lyons is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter, where he researches and publishes in the area of contemporary American television. His publications include a co–edited collection Quality Popular Television (BFI Press, 2003), and two forthcoming book chapters on the Miami–set medical drama Nip/Tuck. he is also author of Selling Seattle: Representing the Contemporary American City (Wallflower Press, 2004).

"All in all, the careful, detailed analysis of the various contexts of network television turns this study into a useful handbook especially for film students who can use it as blueprint for analysing other series." (European Journal of American Studies, 2011) "[Lyons] displays, in addition to still other virtues, an attentiveness to visual texture and theme as refined as that in the best film criticism. This book offers the richest account of a single television program I′ve ever read, describing a defining show of the Reagan years...Lyons′s treatment of the series′ conflicted ideology is equally illuminating." (Cinema Journal, 1 June 2011)