Abstract
This article explores television serial Synové a dcery Jakuba skláre as an item of television popular fiction produced and broadcasted by Czechoslovak television in 1980's. Consequently it examines serial's production and textual categories in its connection to communist ideology.
The concept of ideology is also reviewed with an eye to its development in cultural studies in last two decades. The serial represents a form of film historiography as it covers almost sixty years of Czechoslovak history from 1899 to 1957.
The textual content is examined from the methodological perspective of textual orientators - narrative features that refer to historical reality and simultaneously refer also to the moment of production by paradigmatic choices. Ideological choice of textual orientators is spotted in ascribed role of social democratic party and communist party and also in the division of two phases of communist periods: times of struggle and times of power.
However, the central textual category is disconnected from communist ideology. It represents universal modernist essentialism and postulates inner human qualities (in contrast with surface) as a marking sign of main good heroes.