This chapter discusses key controversies and tensions which will serve as a foundation for the research questions of this book. The key underlying issue concerning this relationship is that humanitarians are faced with a choice of working closely with the military or keeping distance. This has been described as a relatively straightforward analysis as a case “for” and “against” close relations with the military or, put another way, “integrated” and “segregated” approaches depending on the degree of separation between organizations. These two approaches are adopted as a basic means for examining the key controversies in the humanitarian-military relationship. These positions are analyzed from a number of angles including ethical, management and political perspectives thus looking at issues such as human rights and security.

This chapter critiques the representation of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) characters in Luther in the historical context of racism within the British police forces, particularly the Metropolitan Police Service (the Met). BBC's detective show Luther, which is often lauded for its groundbreaking cinematography, Idris Elba's acting and, in some quarters, its healthy representation of race, is just as flawed as the larger British television industry from which it emerged. In 2010, when Luther was first broadcast, BAME officers comprised 4.8 per cent of the police officers in England and Wales. Presented with very little family or a Black community to belong to, and a police environment where he is a statistical anomaly, John Luther is a perpetual outsider. To present him without a Black family or community is to buy into the assimilatory promise of multicultural England, while ignoring the cost of such 'inclusion'.

This chapter explores the importance of the concept of the iconic ghetto, examining its discursive importance in reproducing racism. It explains a critical discourse analysis of Top Boy to understand how the iconic ghetto is reproduced throughout the show. As one of the handful of black majority cast shows, Top Boy has an important role in framing how black communities are portrayed on British television. The relentless image of crime and poverty on the estate discursively binds the black community to the ghetto. The basis of the iconic ghetto portrayed throughout the show becomes apparent and is captured in the number of themes. They include the proliferation of poverty; crime and violence agency, a lack of female agency; and ultimately, blame cast on black communities for the problems the show exaggerates.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents transnational interpretations of how Black people have been represented on British television. It explores a range of contexts and practices that address the ongoing phenomenon of 'race' and its specific relationship with public service television. The book outlines how current studies of transnationalism highlight the importance of contemporary information societies and the global consortiums of transnational corporations. It examines how the 2005 reboot of the classic series utilises deracialised and decontextualised slavery allegories to absolve white guilt over the transatlantic slave trade. The book also examines the uses of race, immigration and multiculturalism as comic themes in British television sitcoms from the 1960s to the 1980s. It also explores the politics of 'tick-boxing' especially in regard to public service remits.

This chapter considers how the 2005 reboot of Doctor Who utilises the deracialised and decontextualised slavery allegories to absolve white guilt over the transatlantic slave trade. It examines the imperial fictions and post-racial slavery parables of Doctor Who. The liberal humanist whiteness of Doctor Who is most clearly laid bare in episodes that thematise the sins of European imperialism: slavery, genocide and dispossession. In the tenth version of Doctor Who, the most sustained engagement with slavery occurs in the three episodes, 'The Impossible Planet', 'Satan Pit' and 'Planet of the Ood', which feature the Ood: an alien species described as born to serve. The chapter illuminates the programme's 'structural opacities', how its colourblind universalism sustains and nourishes the boundaries of contemporary whiteness and colonial consciousness, and the fraught place of race in multicultural and, ostensibly, post-colonial Britain.

This chapter describes the extent to which public service broadcasters, specifically the BBC and Channel 4 contribute to the formation of what might be described as a progressive 'multicultural public sphere'. It explains the ideological function of scheduling in relation to the programmes made by racialised minorities. The chapter demonstrates how scheduling, as a form of cultural distribution, ultimately determines the ability for minorities such as British Asians to produce narratives that can contribute to cultural plurality, and a progressive/radical multicultural politics. It focuses on the decisive nature of distribution for British Asian cultural production. The chapter explores how British Asian cultural works are by default regarded as niche and examines how its success is measured by its ability to cross over into the white, mainstream market.

This chapter examines how BBC America (BBCA) represents contemporary Britain in its programming choices when it began service in the USA. In 1989, the BBC launched the 'Step Forward' programme to allow more Black comedy-writers to gain positions in television. In April 1999, Greg Dyke replaced Sir John Birt as the new Director General of the BBC. His primary tasks included 'the challenges of maintaining the BBC's prominence in the face of a massive expansion of digital channels and international competition'. Six years after the start of BBCA under then CEO Paul Lee, Bill Hilary was hired away from Comedy Central to replace the incumbent. The chapter describes how, despite a waning amount of black and brown faces on BBCA, transnationalism have a huge economic and intercultural effect on global audiences. It explores how BBCA can be touted as an ideological site for ethnic groups to negotiate power and agency.