Reframing the Long 1960s on British Screens

In Reframing the Long 1960s Estella Tincknell explores the way British crime films and television series made during or about that extended decade have been marked by ongoing tensions between nostalgic myths of masculinity, power and whiteness and attempts to challenge or transform those dominant narratives.
Tincknell blends cultural analysis and original research with close reading to examine a wide variety of crime subgenres from police procedurals and heist films to gangster narratives and thrillers, comparing the approaches of texts such as Z-Cars (1962-1978), Robbery (1967), Get Carter (1971) and The Sweeney (1975-1978) with those of period dramas aimed at twenty-first century audiences, including The Great Train Robbery (2013), Legend (2015), The Trial of Christine Keeler (2019) and Endeavour (2012-2023). Tincknell identifies the important intersections between text, genre, nostalgia and popular memory as she traces how persistent myths about crime and criminality-and about "the long 1960s" as a defining period for British cultural identity-have been represented and recirculated.

Estella Tincknell is a visiting fellow in film and culture at the University of the West of England, UK.

Introduction
Part One: "The long 1960s", crime narratives, masculinity, modernity and myth
1. Social cohesion, modernity and patriarchal authority in Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars and Special Branch
2. A Jigsaw puzzle Frenzy: Compulsive heterosexuality, masculinity and sex crime
3. Whiteness, masculinity and the law: The Sweeney's legacies
4. Honest outlaws: Modernity, violence and masculinity in the "long 1960s"
Part Two: Fantasy, nostalgia and styling "the long 1960s"
5. Annus mirabilis 1963 - robbers, showgirls and scandals: Reimagining Profumo and the Great Train Robbery
6. Not so Gentle Endeavours: 1960s nostalgia and modernized masculinity in the British period cop show
7. Legends for lads: The nostalgic gangster film, Thatcherism and the authenticity of Whiteness
8. Annus mirabilis 1973 - Life on Mars, Prime Suspect 1973, and the myth of "the seventies"
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
Index