I got my copy of Television Aesthetics and Style, edited by Jason Jacobs (The University of Queensland) and Steven Peacock (University of Hertfordshire), today. As Christine Geraghty (University of Glasgow) says in the back cover, “this collection will be essential and rewarding reading for anyone interested in the possibilities of television”. I am thankful to Jason and Steven for their dedicated work and for giving me the opportunity to participate in this momentous project alongside great scholars — some of them friends like Sarah Cardwell (University of Kent), Alex Clayton (University of Bristol), Lucy Fife Donaldson (University of Reading), and James Walters (University of Birmingham). My chapter is called “Situating Comedy: Duration and Inhabitation in Classical American Sitcoms” and it analyses the significance of inhabitation (of living in a space and finding a place in it) and duration (of experiencing time and valuing it) in sitcoms such as Cheers (1982-93) and its spin-off Frasier (1993-2004).
