University of St Andrews

In this paper I will reflect on some of the theoretical ideas regarding time, textuality and the everyday that underpin television studies scholarship and that I have returned to in the writing of my current monograph (Patterns of Feeling: On Living with Television, Duke University Press, forthcoming). Drawing upon the feminist legacies within the discipline I will consider the continued significance of the domestic and the everyday for television studies, arguing that the current critical lexicon of ‘complex’, ‘linear/non-linear’ and ‘cinematic’ neglects the continued ‘messy vitality’ (Mellencamp) of television as it accompanies our domestic lives. In particular, I will draw upon episode six of Russell T. Davies’ 2015 series Cucumber (from which title of this paper is drawn) to illustrate the patterns of feeling that emerge in our temporal and textual experiences of the medium.