TELEVISION
Resources
Principal content
John Lloyd is contributing editor at the FT. He writes a weekly column - “The Ideas Department” - on current affairs for the FT magazine, of which he was founding editor.
His previous FT posts include Labour Editor, Industrial Editor, East Europe Editor and Moscow Bureau Chief.
He has been a reporter and producer for LWT’s London Programme and Weekend World, and editor of Time Out and the New Statesman magazines.
He sits on the editorial board of Prospect magazine and on the board of the Moscow School of Political Studies.
His books are Loss Without Limit: The British Miners’ Strike (1985); Rebirth of a Nation: an Anatomy of Russia (1998); and What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics (2004).
He was born in Fife in Scotland, lives in London and is married with one son. - -
Flights of fantasy and a real test of faith
Television now too infrequently uses the tools of investigation to reveal the texture and trends of our everyday lives, writes John Lloyd
Something serious for the silly season
A programme about a team of archaeologists on a quest for Excalibur exposes inner truths and trends about contemporary drama on British TV, writes John Lloyd
Car bombs, lies and videotape
The most expensive of these explosions, which are not far from their grisly centenary, cost just a few thousand dollars, writes John Lloyd
So this is what postmodern looks like
History on TV murders the distinction between what is and what is not in its desperate quest to seize our leisure time, writes John Lloyd
It was the Americans wot done it
Hollywood used to cast upper-class Brits as villains as a reminder that the British used to be snobbish imperialists. Now the BBC is casting Americans as villains, to remind us that ‘they’ are the imperialists now, writes John Loyd
True cross found, plot hopelessly lost
By trying to plug into some perception of the social zeitgeist to shore up flimsiness, bad TV reveals much about a society, says John Lloyd
When criminal justice meets artistic licence
Two new TV crime dramas depict a cynical and indifferent justice system, stoking anger from members of the London legal world, writes John Lloyd
Parallel worlds in space and Stamford Hill
A three-part series on Anglo Jews demonstrates to John Lloyd that television can be a medium for aiding reflection
Window on different worlds
Whether documentary or fiction, each television show tells us something about its creators and how they think about their subjects, says John Lloyd
Where no woman has gone before
Television profiles of two outstanding women politicians highlight how their heroism surpasses the understanding of comfortable societies, writes John Lloyd
