The Inequality, Culture and Difference research seminar series presents… Holby City saved my life! Or, what happens when you show two older women falling in love on Tuesday night television. Dr Georgina Turner, University of Liverpool 11 December 1-2pm, MAE101 – all welcome!

Abstract: This paper looks at viewers’ responses to the romance between two older women on the BBC medical drama Holby City. In the context of a continuing lack of representation of (older) women-loving women, viewers of all ages describe a transformative experience, with an emphasis on positive mental health outcomes – yet older women also orient to something implicitly problematic about this being the case. This is premised, I suggest, in the foregrounding of youth and adolescence in academic and public discussions of sexual self-realisation and the role of the media. The findings of the research trouble these prevailing assumptions and demonstrate the need to take account of the experiences of older viewers, and of network television even in the queer(er) digital market.

Dr Georgina Turner is a Lecturer in Media at the University of  Liverpool, with research interests in critical approaches to media discourse, the discursive construction of (collective) identity, gender and sexuality, and innovative research  methods.