Palgrave Entertainment Industries is the first series to take an empirical multidisciplinary approach to the understanding of entertainmentdefined as "audience-centred culture". The series understands the work of culture by studying production (including distribution), texts and consumption practices. While maintaining a sophisticated and reflective intellectual stance, Palgrave Entertainment Industries leaves behind anti-empirical "mass-culture" models of commercial culture in order to take an evidence-based approach to entertainment as a cultural system.Entertainment has been an integral component of everyday lives throughout modernity, remaining remarkably consistent in its textual features for over two hundred years. It is the form of most culture consumed by the majority of citizens of Western countries. The entertainment industries are diverse, encompassing sectors including film, radio and sports, music, television, casinos and live events/festivals, and were estimated to be worth more than US$2.2 trillion in 2012, in addition to employing millions of people around the world.This innovative new series will address the lack of academic attention devoted to entertainment by examining the ways that entertainment as a product, as an industry and as an activity can be understood in our society.

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Broadcast on the streaming platform Amazon since 2014, Transparent centers on the life of the trans woman Maura Pfefferman as she transitions from male to female. One of the most trans‐ and queer‐inclusive television programs to date, it has been praised for promoting trans visibility and for offering positive and realistic depictions of queerness. Drawing on historical facts and on the expertise of trans consultants, Transparent aims to educate viewers by depicting the experiences of trans and genderqueer individuals as accurately as possible. As studies have shown, it challenges heteronormativity and explores the meaning of gender in an innovative manner, often in relation to age, ethnicity, and religion. In addition, the program seeks to empower women by crafting a “female gaze.” However, scholars and critics also highlight the series' limitations. Indeed, the Pfeffermans' privileged background, the casting of a White, heterosexual, cisgender man as the lead trans character, and the persistence of the “wrong body” narrative remain problematic.

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