'At last a book that really understands the vision part of television, and television studies. Helen Wheatley here rediscovers responses to the wide range of visual delights - and shocks! - that the medium has offered since its inception, highlighting television's spectacularity through careful analyses.' - Professor John Ellis, Royal Holloway, University of London; 'Helen Wheatley's innovative Spectacular Television exposes our contemporary oversight of the significance of television's visual strategies. Through a series of compelling case studies, and a fascinating history of television as technology, she demonstrates how television - the apparent 'poor relation' of cinema in terms of spectacle - always enticed and continues to entrance audiences with images that variously provoke curiosity, wonder and disgust.' - Professor Karen Lury, University of Glasgow; 'This superb book is no small accomplishment. Spectacular Television provides a painstaking archaeology of televisual excess as both a formal and industrial practice and places television in dialogue with an array of illuminating approaches. In doing so, Wheatley develops a precedent-setting research model and absolute must-read for television studies students and scholars everywhere.' - Professor John T. Caldwell, UCLA, USA