We were asked to look at TV drama for part of our media AS level course. Previously we all were given a genre of TV drama, mine was police drama. We were asked to give examples of 10 or more dramas that we know which involve our genre. The next lesson included using this information to create a london underground map, but instead of all the stations we were asked to print out a blank one and fill all the spaces up with TV drama. This appeared easy at first but soon we discovered some stations interlocked and this became a problem as some things we could not find that contained both genres for example sci fi and soap. Each coloured line was given a genre of drama for example the pink line had soaps along it. Some lines were very difficult as some had at least 50 lines so therefore we had to find 50 TV dramas relating to that specific genre. Some things like soaps, medical dramas etc would not be hard to find 50 examples for but some others would be very hard to find.

For our previous homework we had to think of a TV drama that had 6 sub genres eg crime etc. For mine i chose Eastenders as it involved 6 or more sub genres, these included crime, youth, 1980's, soap, actors involved, romance. This was a good starting point for the middle of the underground map (kings cross station) as some genres interlocked and the kings cross station had 6 interlocking with it.

Therefore as a class we decided to use my idea as eastenders for the middle of the underground map as this would be a very good starting point. After working as a class for one and a half lessons, we were each assigned jobs and this helped us considerably. Some people were writing all the tv dramas down on a big sheet of paper ready to list on the map, some were on computers researching certain TV dramas and who was in them, what date they were first aired etc, and some were writing the TV dramas on the underground map (on the big whiteboard) and finding out where things would go - and what fitted with what genre. We got up to working from the middle towards the outer side of the map, and in my opinion i think working from the middle was considerably better as it gave us less chances of mistakes.

We still however need to continue working outwards from the centre of the map, checking for mistakes and ensuring the genres fit correctly and there are no mistakes. This needs to be done carefully and as a group as working in a group would get the task done a lot quicker. We need to finish the map effectively so this could take a while if we encounter any mistakes along the way, as changing one line of genre could result in the whole map going wrong.

If we had a chance to start it again as a class, we would have settled down to the task more quickly as some were not keen on the task and did not see the relevance, and some got confused about the way in which genres interlocked and fitted together. Overall i think we have done well so far considering it is an extremely long task to do and could go wrong at any time, perhaps causing us to start again. I think the assigning of roles was a very good idea as it got us focused on one job rather than trying to do everything simultaneously. I think the task is relevant to our media AS level and would help us in terms of TV genres. I like the fact we work as a class group as it would be considerably harder if we worked in smaller groups.