Television, Tourism, and Rural Life

This article analyzes the relationship among dramaturgy, tourism, and rurality. Through an ethnographic study of Goathland in North Yorkshire—the filming location for the U.K. television drama series Heartbeat—the rural is shown to be a cultural performance that invokes certain lifestyle preferences that are both reliant and counterpoised to urban society. However, when urban viewers exchange the virtuality of television viewing for the corporeality of visiting the rural scenes that have become a familiar part of their cultural landscapes, the consequences are much more profound, nuanced, and complex than the demarcation of positive or negative impacts reified in certain managerialist discourses. Moreover, the article shows how the public and private spaces of the rural are being fundamentally transformed by the types of global consumption and mobility that “film-induced tourism” represents.