Janet McCabe is Research Associate (TV Drama) at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is Managing Editor of Critical Studies in Television and author of Feminist Film Studies: Writing the Woman into Cinema (Wallflower, 2004). Kim Akass is Research Fellow (TV Drama) at Manchester Metropolitan University and is co-editor of Critical Studies in Television. Janet McCabe and Kim Akass are joint Series Editors of the Reading Contemporary Television Series at I.B.Tauris. They have co-edited and contributed to Reading Sex and the City (2004), Reading Six Feet Under: TV To Die For (2005), Reading The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television (2006) and Reading Desperate Housewives: Beyond the White Picket Fence (2006, all I.B.Tauris).