Books by Rodney Marshall

Television drama is frequently marginalised as a piece of fleeting popular culture rather than 'a more lasting art form'. The emergence of television studies has helped to question this mind-set. Innovative television drama can rival any field of the arts in terms of material worthy of critical exploration. This series of books focuses on 'outstanding' examples of British television dramas, centring on a single episode in an attempt to explain what makes both the episode in particular, and the series in general, remarkable. The social context, script, characters sets/locations, music, and direction are all focal points. This Classic British Television Drama (CBTD) series of books continues with an exploration of Man in a Suitcase's episode Day of Execution. Elements of Cold War espionage, American gumshoe, British thriller and 'Swinging' London combine in a series which is hard to define and was, arguably, ahead of its time.

Rodney Marshall examines Northampton Town's 2017-18 season, in addition to aspects of football which reach beyond NTFC: football as business; fan ownership; the ever-evolving power of social media; the mental health and safeguarding of players; racism, football franchises and B teams; the demise of the FA Cup; glass ceilings and transfer windows; referees, laws and the use of technology; ground safety and redevelopment; the changing nature of towns and football clubs in the 21st century.

Drawing inspiration from the private detective and Western genres, as well as the cult 1960s series The Fugitive, Roger Marshall's mid-1980s drama Travelling Man was both critically acclaimed and commercially popular, drawing audiences of up to 13.2 million viewers. Ex-Drugs Squad detective and jailbird Alan Lomax is a fascinatingly flawed protagonist, but it is the setting of the canals and inland waterways of Britain which provide the unique charm of Travelling Man, offering the perfect backdrop for Lomax's nomadic quests. The canals also dictate the show's leisured pace. Avengers expert Rodney Marshall offers a critical guide to all thirteen episodes, exploring the scripts, direction, characterisation, acting and music. "One thing about quiet waterways, you can hear footsteps."

Political satire, comic strip action adventure, science fiction, space opera, Orwellian dystopia, costume drama, Western...Drawing on a range of genres, Terry Nation's Blake's 7 resists categorisation or labelling; a ground-breaking piece of television drama. Presenting itself as easy-viewing, early evening entertainment for a (largely) teenage audience - which, on one level, it was - it tackles state-surveillance, propaganda, corruption, genocide, revolution, and terrorism. Avengers expert Rodney Marshall turns his attention to Blake's 7, offering unauthorised, entertaining, thought-provoking critical guides to all fifty-two episodes in Series 1-4. Horizon (the official Blake's 7 fan club) moderator Alex Pinfold has added a Foreword to this third edition, while television historian Matthew Lee has penned an essay on Terry Nation and Blake's 7. Combining dark humour, surrealism, shiny surfaces and dramatic depth, Blake's 7 blurs the boundary between hero/villain. http://www.blakes7online.com/news.php

It was a sunny Saturday lunchtime in June 1944. Most of the inhabitants of a sleepy village situated in the 'Free Zone' of war-ravaged France were sitting down to a leisurely meal. Without warning, an attachment of Das Reich soldiers (the elite force of the Nazi's Waffen-SS division) arrived. Hours later, 642 defenceless people had been massacred; their homes were smouldering ruins. From these embers emerged life-affirming stories of survival as individuals defied machine-guns, snipers, explosives and burning buildings to escape the clutches of the deadly Wolf's Hook (the Das Reich emblem). Wolf's Hook is a factionalised account of the Das Reich attack on a hillside village. It recaptures the essence of what happened that day, using four first-person narrative strands: a waiter, a young boy, an SS soldier and a grandmother. Through their eyes we see the terrifying day unravel. Not suitable for readers under 12.