This book deals with the role of television drama in Europe as enabler of transnational, cultural encounters for audiences and the creative community. It demonstrates that the diversity of national cultures is a challenge for European TV drama but also a potential richness and source of creative variation. Based on data on the production, distribution and reception of recent TV drama from several European countries, the book presents a new picture of the transnational European television culture. The authors analyse main tendencies in television policy and challenges for national broadcasters coming from new global streaming services. Comparing cases of historical, contemporary and crime drama from several countries, this study shows the importance of creative co-production and transnational mediated cultural encounters between national cultures of Europe.

This book deals with the role of television drama in Europe as enabler of transnational, cultural encounters for audiences and the creative community. It demonstrates that the diversity of national cultures is a challenge for European TV drama but also a potential richness and source of creative variation. Based on data on the production, distribution and reception of recent TV drama from several European countries, the book presents a new picture of the transnational European television culture. The authors analyse main tendencies in television policy and challenges for national broadcasters coming from new global streaming services. Comparing cases of historical, contemporary and crime drama from several countries, this study shows the importance of creative co-production and transnational mediated cultural encounters between national cultures of Europe.

This book is the first to focus on the role of European television crime drama on the international market. As a genre, the television crime drama has enjoyed a long and successful career, routinely serving as a prism from which to observe the local, national and even transnational issues that are prevalent in society. This extensive volume explores a wide range of countries, from the US to European countries such as Spain, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, England and Wales, in order to reveal the very currencies that are at work in the global production and circulation of the TV crime drama. The chapters, all written by leading television and crime fiction scholars, provide readings of crime dramas such as the Swedish-Danish The Bridge, the Welsh Hinterland, the Spanish Under Suspicion, the Italian Gomorrah, the German Tatort and the Turkish Cinayet. By examining both European texts and the ‘European-ness’ of various international dramas, this book ultimately demonstrates that transnationalism is at the very core of TV crime drama in Europe and beyond.

This book maps the landscape of contemporary European premium television fiction, offering a detailed overview of both the changes in the digital production and distribution and the emergence of specific national and transnational case histories. Combining a media-production approach with a textual and audience analysis, the volume offers a complex, stratified, systemic view of ongoing aesthetic, sociocultural and industrial developments in contemporary European TV. With contributions from leading experts in the field, the book first offers an overview of the industrial, policy and cultural context for the renaissance of European television drama over the past decade, based on original comparative research. This research is then supported by case study chapters from the key contexts within which quality European television is being produced, offering a complex and complete picture of the industry’s strengths and limitations, its traditions and trends, its constraints and future perspectives. A European Television Fiction Renaissance is a must-read book for TV scholars working across Europe and beyond in the areas of media studies, international communications and television studies, media industries studies, production studies, European studies, and media policy studies as well as for those with an interest in television drama, Netflix, globalisation, pay TV and on demand.

This book examines television drama in the age of streaming—a time when television has been reshaped for national and international consumption via both linear ‘flow’ and on-demand user modes. It builds on an in-depth study of the Norwegian public service broadcaster (NRK) and some of its game-changing drama productions (Lilyhammer, SKAM, blank). The book portrays the formative first decade of television streaming (2010-2019), how new streaming services and incumbent television providers intersect and act in a new drama landscape, and how streaming impacts existing television production cultures, publishing models and industry-audience relations. The analysis draws on insight gained through more than a hundred interviews with television experts and fans, hundreds of hours of observations, and unique access to industry conferences, meetings, working documents, and ratings. The book combines perspectives from production studies, media industry studies, and fan studies to inform its analysis.

This history of British and American television drama since 1970 charts the increased transnationalisation of the two production systems. From The Forsyte Saga to Roots to Episodes , it highlights the close relationship that drives innovation and quality on both sides of the Atlantic.

This book explores how to understand the international appeal of Danish television drama and Nordic Noir in the 2010s. Focusing on production and distribution as well as the series and their reception, the chapters analyse how this small nation production culture was suddenly regarded as an example of best practice in the international television industries, and how the distribution and branding of particular series – such as Forbrydelsen/The Killing, Borgen and Bron/The Bridge – led to dedicated audiences around the world. Discussing issues such as cultural proximity, transnationalism and glocalisation, the chapters investigate the complex interplays between the national and international in the television industries and the global lessons learned from the way in which screen ideas, production frameworks and public service content from Denmark suddenly managed to travel widely. The book builds on extensive empirical material and case studies conducted as part of the transnational research project ‘What Makes Danish Television Drama Travel?’

This book presents a compelling case for a paradigmatic shift in the analysis of television drama production that recentres questions of power, control and sustainability. Television drama production has become an increasingly lucrative global export business as drama as a form enjoys increased prestige. However, this book argues that the growing emphasis on international markets and global players such as Netflix and Amazon Prime neglects the realities of commissioning and making television drama in specific national and regional contexts. Drawing on extensive empirical research, Producing British Television Drama demonstrates the centrality of public service broadcasters in serving audiences and sustaining the commercial independent sector in a digital age. It attends closely to three elements—the role of place in the production of content; the experiences of those working in the sector; and the interventions from cultural intermediaries in articulating and ascribing value to television drama. With chapters examining the evolution of British TV drama, as well as what might be in store in its future, this book offers invaluable insights into the UK as a major supplier of and market for television drama.

Europe Un-Imagined examines one of the world’s first and only trans nationally produced television channels, Association relative à la télévision européenne (ARTE). ARTE calls itself the "European culture channel" and was launched in 1991 with a French-German intergovernmental mandate to produce television and other media that promoted pan-European community and culture. Damien Stankiewicz’s ground-breaking ethnographic study of the various contexts of media production work at ARTE (the newsroom, the editing studio, the screening room), reveals how ideas about French, German, and European culture coalesce and circulate at the channel. He argues that the reproduction of nationalism often goes unacknowledged and unremarked upon, and questions whether something like a European "imagination" can be produced. Stankiewicz describes the challenges that ARTE staff face, including rapidly changing media technologies and audiences, unreflective national stereotyping, and unwieldy bureaucratic infrastructure, which ultimately limit the channel’s abilities to cultivate a transnational, "European" public. Europe Un-Imagined challenges its readers to find new ways of thinking about how people belong in the world beyond the problematic logics of national categorization.

This volume offers an up-to-date analysis of film and television co-production in Europe. It brings together the voices of policy professionals, industry practitioners and media industry scholars to trace the contours of a complex practice that is of increasing significance in the global media landscape. Analysis of the latest production statistics sits alongside interviews with producers and the critical evaluation of public film policies. The volume incorporates contributions from representatives of major public institutions—Eurimages, the European Audiovisual Observatory and the European Commission—and private production companies including the pan-European Zentropa Group. Policy issues are elucidated through case studies including the Oscar-winning feature film Ida, the BAFTA-winning I am not a Witch and the Danish television serial Ride Upon the Storm. Scholarly articles span co-development, co-distribution and regional cinemas as well as emerging policy challenges such as the digital single market. The combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, and the juxtaposition of industry and scholarly voices, provides a unique perspective on European co-production that is information-rich, complex and stimulating, making this volume a valuable companion for students, scholars, and industry professionals.