Miami Vice

Miami Vice captures the glitter and glamour embodied by Crockett and Tubbs 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.

"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)

James Lyons is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Exeter. His publications include Quality Popular Television (2003), Selling Seattle: Representing Contemporary Urban America (2004), and Multimedia Histories: From the Magic Lantern to the Internet (2007). 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