Your first ideas

Television Drama

“The family” in television drama.
What range of representations of “the family” are offered by television drama? Does the genre favour the traditional nuclear family over other forms? (ie is it basically a conservative genre? – does it assume that women, for example, should be doing the domestic work of the family rather than going out to work? Does it suggest that single parent families are inferior?)

V interesting title. No previous essays done on it so I cannot give you one to read.

This site, though from the US, gives a little background:
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/familyontel/familyontel.htm

You should look at some classic mainstream family dramas as well as the more interesting versions such as Shameless.

I will think about reading you need to do, but you should make a start by looking for stuff on “representations of families”.

You will also need to think about what primary research you will do. What about getting audience members from a range of different “family” setups to view a range of reps of families to explore their reactions? (This needs a bit more thinking)

Sean