This edited collection examines a new phase in the creation of transnational high-end drama in television’s current multiplatform era. Fuelled by the wider international exposure that internet distribution has brought to TV shows, this phase for high-end drama is one of unprecedented budgets and costs, frequent transnational coproduction and increased cultural diversification. While this drama continues to be facilitated by national broadcasters, fuelling the above trio of influences upon it has been the commissioning activity of multinational subscription-video-on-demand (SVoD) providers. This book showcases leading examples of transnational TV drama, produced outside the US, yet involving collaboration with US-owned SVoDs. It foregrounds some new potentials for drama creation in the context of its strategic importance to providers as different as national broadcasters and multinational SVoDs. This book helps to explain why today’s high-end dramas are demonstrating new elements of cultural specificity despite their common objective to engage a diverse international audience.

This edited collection examines a new phase in the creation of transnational high-end drama in television’s current multiplatform era. Fuelled by the wider international exposure that internet distribution has brought to TV shows, this phase for high-end drama is one of unprecedented budgets and costs, frequent transnational coproduction and increased cultural diversification. While this drama continues to be facilitated by national broadcasters, fuelling the above trio of influences upon it has been the commissioning activity of multinational subscription-video-on-demand (SVoD) providers. This book showcases leading examples of transnational TV drama, produced outside the US, yet involving collaboration with US-owned SVoDs. It foregrounds some new potentials for drama creation in the context of its strategic importance to providers as different as national broadcasters and multinational SVoDs. This book helps to explain why today’s high-end dramas are demonstrating new elements of cultural specificity despite their common objective to engage a diverse international audience.

This book examines the creative strategies, narrative characteristics, industrial practices and stylistic tendencies of complex serial drama. Exemplified by shows like HBO’s The Sopranos, AMC’s Mad Men and Breaking Bad, Showtime’s Dexter, and Netflix’s Stranger Things, complex serials are distinguished by their conceptual originality, narrative complexity, transgressive lead characters and serial allure. As a drama form that continues to expand and diversify in today’s television, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones, Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale provide further examples. Dunleavy investigates the strategies that underpin the innovations, influence and success of complex serial drama, giving students and scholars a nuanced understanding of this contemporary TV form.

Since the cable revolution of the 1990s and early 2000s, the TV landscape has changed dramatically. Beyond Television explores the modern mediascape and changes in television production through analyses of prominent TV series (e.g. True Detective, Transparent, Better Call Saul, Stranger Things, Twin Peaks: The Return and Euphoria) and interviews with more than 100 people from the industry, including David Chase, David Simon, Mary Harron, Nic Pizzolatto, Beau Willimon, Tricia Brock, Jesse Armstrong, Jay Duplass, Joel Fields, Tom Fontana, Angela Kang, Peter Gould, Derek Cianfrance, Tom Perrotta, Sabrina Sutherland and Sam Levinson.

An exciting new strand in The Television Series, the ‘Moments in Television’ collections celebrate the power and artistry of television, whilst interrogating key critical concepts in television scholarship. Each ‘Moments’ book is organised around a provocative binary theme. Complexity / simplicity addresses the idea of complex TV, examining its potential, limitations and impact upon creative and interpretative practices. It also reassesses simplicity as an alternative criterion for evaluation. Complexity and simplicity persuasively illuminate the book’s chosen programmes in new ways. The book explores an eclectic range of TV fictions, dramatic and comedic. Contributors from diverse perspectives come together to expand and enrich the kind of close analysis most commonly found in television aesthetics. Sustained, detailed programme analyses are sensitively framed within historical, technological, institutional, cultural, creative and art-historical contexts.

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 book distinguishes itself from earlier books on David Lynch by taking in-depth consideration of his entire oeuvre. Besides his films and the Twin Peaks series, David Lynch: Blurred Boundaries includes discussions of Lynch’s paintings and drawings, music videos, commercials, short experimental works, digital projects on the YouTube channel David Lynch Theater and the Internet documentary The Interview Project, as well as the exhibition The Air is on Fire, which Jerslev regards as one of Lynch’s main works. David Lynch: Blurred Boundaries offers a view of Lynch’s total work, in which one medium or genre is no more important than the other. It discusses the ways in which Lynch has worked throughout his career with different art forms and has right from the start experimented with the blurring of boundaries between media and genres. And it discusses ways Lynch creates atmospheres by different audio-visual and visual means.

Television is changing almost beyond recognition. In the battle for consumers, social media sites, smart phones and tablets have become rivals to traditional linear TV. However, audiences and producers are also embracing mobile platforms to enhance TV viewing itself. This book examines the emerging phenomenon of the second screen: where users are increasingly engaging with content on two screens concurrently. The practice is transforming television into an interactive, participatory and social experience. James Blake examines interactive television from three crucial angles: audience motivation and agency, advances in TV production and the monetisation of second screen content. He also tracks its evolution by bringing together interviews with more than 25 television industry professionals - across the major UK channels - including commissioning editors, digital directors, producers and advertising executives. These reveal the successes and failures of recent experiments and the innovations in second screen projects. As the second screen becomes second nature for viewers and producers, the risks and opportunities for the future of television are slowly beginning to emerge. Television and the Second Screen will offer students and scholars of television theory, industry professionals and anyone with an abiding interest in television and technology, an accessible and illuminating guide to this important cultural shift.

This widely-respected history of British television drama is an indispensable guide to the significant developments in the area; from its beginnings on the BBC in the 1930s and 40s to its position in the twenty-first century, as television enters a multichannel digital era. Embracing the complete spectrum of television drama, Lez Cooke places programmes in their social, political and industrial contexts, and surveys the key dramas, writers, producers and directors. Thoroughly revised and updated, this second edition includes new images and case studies, new material on British television drama before 1936, an expanded bibliography and a substantial new chapter that explores the renaissance in the quality, variety and social ambition of television drama in Britain since 2002. Comprehensive and accessible, this book will be of value to anyone interested in the rich history of British television and modern drama.

Today more than ever, series finales have become cultural touchstones that feed watercooler fodder and Twitter storms among a committed community of viewers. While the final episodes of The Fugitive and M*A*S*H continue to rank among the highest rated broadcasts, more recent shows draw legions of binge-watching fans. Given the importance of finales to viewers and critics alike, Howard and Bianculli along with the other contributors explore these endings and what they mean to the audience, both in terms of their sense of narrative and as episodes that epitomize an entire show. Bringing together a veritable “who’s who” of television scholars, journalists, and media experts, including Robert Thompson, Martha Nochimson, Gary Edgerton, David Hinckley, Kim Akass, and Joanne Morreale, the book offers commentary on some of the most compelling and often controversial final episodes in television history. Each chapter is devoted to a separate finale, providing readers with a comprehensive survey of these watershed moments. Gathering a unique international lineup of journalists and media scholars, the book also offers readers an intriguing variety of critical voices and perspectives.