Ten-year-old Sadie Meadows is reading in bed on New Year's Eve when she notices an unopened present beneath her window. She finds it contains a book called The World from Your Bedroom - There and Back Again, but when she opens it up and begins to read, she is disappointed to see it is nothing more than a travel book packed with pages detailing hundreds of places across the world. She reads the first page, then puts the book down just as sleep claims her at the instant that the New Year arrives. She awakes to find that, instead of being in her bedroom at home in Skipton, somehow she has been transported to Ireland, the location that she had just read about in the book. There follow a series of adventures, each set in a different location, as Sadie finds herself travelling across the globe as she attempts to get back home again. This month sees her completing her travels across Europe and returning to the United Kingdom. But will she be allowed to go home?

Ten-year-old Sadie Meadows is reading in bed on New Year's Eve when she notices an unopened present beneath her window. She finds it contains a book called The World from Your Bedroom - There and Back Again, but when she opens it up and begins to read, she is disappointed to see it is nothing more than a travel book packed with pages detailing hundreds of places across the world. She reads the first page, then puts the book down just as sleep claims her at the instant that the New Year arrives. She awakes to find that, instead of being in her bedroom at home in Skipton, somehow she has been transported to Ireland, the location that she had just read about in the book. There follow a series of adventures, each set in a different location, as Sadie finds herself travelling across the globe as she attempts to get back home again. This month sees her journeying across China and the Far East into the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

Ten-year-old Sadie Meadows is reading in bed on New Year's Eve when she notices an unopened present beneath her window. She finds it contains a book called The World from Your Bedroom - There and Back Again, but when she opens it up and begins to read, she is disappointed to see it is nothing more than a travel book packed with pages detailing hundreds of places across the world. She reads the first page, then puts the book down just as sleep claims her at the instant that the New Year arrives. She awakes to find that, instead of being in her bedroom at home in Skipton, somehow she has been transported to Ireland, the location that she had just read about in the book. There follow a series of adventures, each set in a different location, as Sadie finds herself travelling across the globe as she attempts to get back home again. This month sees her travelling across Europe from East to West.

Ten-year-old Sadie Meadows is reading in bed on New Year's Eve when she notices an unopened present beneath her window. She finds it contains a book called The World from Your Bedroom - There and Back Again, but when she opens it up and begins to read, she is disappointed to see it is nothing more than a travel book packed with pages detailing hundreds of places across the world. She reads the first page, then puts the book down just as sleep claims her at the instant that the New Year arrives. She awakes to find that, instead of being in her bedroom at home in Skipton, somehow she has been transported to Ireland, the location that she had just read about in the book. There follow a series of adventures, each set in a different location, as Sadie finds herself travelling across the globe as she attempts to get back home again. This month sees her completing her travels across the Middle East and journeying into Eastern Europe.

Almost eight months after her adventures around the world had concluded, twelve-year-old Sadie Meadows has been celebrating her birthday at home when 'The Book' pays her another unwelcome visit. This time, it tells her that she will be taken to the various planets of the Solar System, one a year at the end of this and her next seven birthdays. When she awakes, she finds herself on the surface of the planet Mercury, where she is given a task to complete before she will be allowed to go home. Will she be able to fulfil her requirements, year-by-year, until she can finally go back for good?

The notion of mode is critical in the reevaluation of melodrama. As a mode, melodrama appears not only as a dramatic genre pervaded by sensationalism, exaggerations, and moral polarities, but also as a cultural imaginary that shapes the emotional experience of modernity, characterized by anxiety, moral confusion, and the dissolution of hierarchy. Despite its usefulness, the notion of mode remains mystifying: What exactly are modes and how do they differ from genres? Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television: Captive Affects, Elastic Sufferings, Vicarious Objects argues that, whereas genres divide a universe in terms of similarities and differences, modes express or modify an indivisible whole. This study contends that the melodramatic mode is concerned with the expression of the social whole in terms of suffering. Zarzosa explains how melodrama is not a cultural imaginary that proclaims the existence of a defunct moral order in a post-sacred world, but an apparatus that shapes suffering and redistributes its visibility. The moral ideas we associate with melodrama are only a means to achieve this end. To develop this conception of melodrama, Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television offers a novel conceptualization of the following aspects of melodrama theory: affect, interpretation, exchange, excess, sacrifice, and coincidence. These aspects of melodrama are coupled with the analysis of classic melodramas (Home from the Hill and The Story of Adele H.), contemporary films (The Piano, Safe], and Year of the Dog), and television series (Torchwood and Lost). Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television provides an essential new look at melodrama and its function in popular culture and media.