TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era: Transnational Coproduction and Cultural Specificity 3031355849, 9783031355844

Citation preview

TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era

Transnational Coproduction and Cultural Specificity Edited by Trisha Dunleavy Elke Weissmann

TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era

Trisha Dunleavy  •  Elke Weissmann Editors

TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era Transnational Coproduction and Cultural Specificity

Editors Trisha Dunleavy Media and Communication Programme Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand

Elke Weissmann Department of English & Creative Arts Edge Hill University Ormskirk, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-35584-4    ISBN 978-3-031-35585-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: It’s a Sin (Channel 4/HBO, 2021) Still © Red Production Company This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Acknowledgements

All research projects start somewhere. This book is an outcome of our wider collaboration which began with an initial conversation between Trisha and Elke at the conference on Transnational Television Drama, held at Aarhus University, Denmark, in 2018. This notably stimulating conference was organised by Anne Marit Waade, Gunhild Agger, and Ushma Chauhan Jacobsen and we are indebted to these the people (as well as others who ensured this conference was so successful). While at Aarhus, Trisha and Elke were introduced to each other by a long-time mutual friend and colleague, Jeanette Steemers, with whom Trisha worked during her years at De Montfort University, Leicester. This anthology book project developed in the period that followed Janet McCabe’s invitation for us to deliver a special edition of transnational drama and coproduction for Critical Studies in Television (CST). Our CFP for this planned issue drew so many responses and proposals that we quickly realised that a larger book volume could be produced in tandem with our work on the CST special issue. We are very grateful to this book’s contributing authors; some 15 scholars in addition to ourselves, these all either domiciled within or otherwise closely connected with a large range of countries (including New Zealand, United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Spain, Turkey, Brazil, and Colombia). We thank these authors for their faith in this project, their exciting research, and their fastidious developing and revising of abstracts and chapters. In combination, these authors have allowed us to develop a book that offers a truly multinational exploration of today’s multiplatform commissioning and creative landscape for high-end TV v

vi 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

drama. One of these scholars, Will Stanford Abbiss, warrants special mention because of his invaluable and singular contribution to the final proofreading and formatting of book chapters. Will sets very high standards, and his meticulous work helped us to ensure that the manuscript was delivered in beautiful shape and right on time. Thank you Will. It is important to explain that funding from our respective university systems has allowed this work to proceed and supported it to completion. In this case funding has come from two countries: the UK and New Zealand. In the UK Edge Hill University supported the research with an internal grant that facilitated a sabbatical. The British Academy has funded Elke’s research through its Small Research Grant Scheme. This edited collection is one of the outcomes of this funding (Ref. SRG1819\190605). In New Zealand, this research was funded by Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, and there were two grants involved. This support not only allowed Trisha to complete research, travel to UK industry events, and work directly with Elke during one visit, but also funded the final proofreading and formatting of book chapters. We would like to thank those who have helped to create and complete this book in terms of its commissioning and production stages. Most important here is Palgrave Macmillan, and we are very grateful to Arunaa Devi, Palgrave’s production editor for this book, for her initial and ongoing interest in this project, her patience with us, and for everything she has done to get this book published. Arunaa has been supported in this work by Palgrave editor, Lina Aboujieb, and we are grateful to her. Thankyou to Sheela Jasmine for her fastidious work on the book production. Special thanks to Russell T. Davies for approving our use of the cover image (and his notes on the It’s a Sin chapter), to Sue Keatley from Red Production Company, and to Lizzie Ribeiro from All3Media. Individually, there are always people who leave their mark and enable us to do what we do. Elke would like to thank Claire Parkinson for creating spaces to develop her thinking and then deliver the work. Trisha and Elke would both like to thank their colleagues, family, and friends. Trisha would like to thank her partner, Derek Neal, for his unfailing support.

Contents

1 Multiplatform  TV, the Cultural Diversification of High-­ End Drama, and New Coproduction Strategies  1 Trisha Dunleavy 2 Moving  across Platforms and Cultures: From BBC to Syfy to Amazon Prime: The Adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle 35 Richard Paterson 3 Netflix and Borgen: A Match Made in…? 57 Jakob Isak Nielsen 4 Magnífica 70: HBO’s Portrayal of the Brazilian Boca do Lixo Cinema 81 Maria Cristina P. Mungioli and Christian H. Pelegrini 5 British  History from a Distance: Transnational and Intergenerational Framings of The Crown101 Will Stanford Abbiss

vii

viii 

Contents

6 It’s a Sin: Cross-Platform Coproduction, Cultural Specificity, and Conflicting Cultures119 Trisha Dunleavy 7 Unseen  Particles in Time: Co-producing Transcultural Memory as a Discourse of TV Legitimacy Within the Sky/HBO Miniseries TV Event, Chernobyl (2019)141 Janet McCabe 8 Les de l’Hoquei/The Hockey Girls: From a Catalan Bachelor’s Degree Project to Netflix165 Marta Lopera-Mármol, Ona Anglada Pujol, and Manel Jiménez-Morales 9 Gender  and the Youthification of German Television: Zeit der Geheimnisse/Holiday Secrets and Generational Change in High-­End TV Drama185 Elke Weissmann 10 Atiye/The Gift: Narrating Cultural Diversities as Spiritual Fantasy in an Authoritarian Climate203 Deniz Zorlu 11 Freedom  of Defection: The Representation of Ultra-­ Orthodox Jews and Netflix’s Unorthodox223 Eik Dödtmann 12 P  olish Culture? World on Fire, Transnational Coproduction and the Inscription of Cultural Specificity249 Joanna Rydzewska and Elżbieta Durys 13 El Robo del Siglo/The Great Heist: Perpetuating False Territorial Dichotomies in Colombia?273 Juan-Pablo Osman Index291

Notes on Contributors

Will Stanford Abbiss  recently graduated with a PhD from Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His research focuses on representations of nationhood in long-form television drama, including the status of public service television in the twenty-first century. His doctoral study established a post-­heritage critical framework, through which British period drama productions from the 2010s were analysed. His monograph, Post-Heritage Perspectives on British Period Drama Television (2023), arises from this research. His future research will further consider international and contemporary-set productions, applying his findings on the depictions of cultural identity to a broader spectrum of television drama. Ona Anglada Pujol  is a PhD student in Communication and a member of the MEDIUM research group at the Communication Department of Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She holds the UNICA PIF-UPF fellowship. She has a BA in Audiovisual Communication and an MRes in Social Communication Research. She is the co-­creator and screenwriter of The Hockey Girls (TV3/Netflix, 2019-20). Her doctoral thesis concerns slash fiction practices about gamers and its discourses on gender, sexuality, and romantic love. Her main research interests are gender and queer studies, fan studies, popular culture, and television series. Eik  Dödtmann received a PhD in Jewish Studies from Potsdam University, Germany. As well as writing his chapter for this book, he has been researching Jewish Ultra-Orthodoxy and ‘Jewish Film’ while working at Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Germany. He is the author ix

x 

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

of two books, The Haredi Jews in Israel in the 21st Century: The Status Quo between State and Religion (2021), and The Immigration of Polish Jews from 1968 into Israel (2013). His research on Polish-Jewish migration is documented in his film There is No Return to Egypt (2013). Trisha  Dunleavy is Associate Professor in Media Studies and Communication at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her central research interests are multiplatform television, creative industries, high-end TV drama, TV narrative and aesthetics, and transnational coproduction. Her books include Ourselves in Primetime: A History of New Zealand Television Drama (2005), Television Drama: Form, Agency, Innovation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), New Zealand Film and Television: Institution, Industry and Cultural Change with Hester Joyce (2011), and Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television (2018). She is co-editor with Elke Weissmann of Critical Studies in Television’s 2023 special issue, ‘Cultural Diversity in Internationally Coproduced High-­End Drama’. Elżbieta  Durys is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Warsaw, Poland. She is the author (all in Polish) of Film as a Source of Historical Knowledge  (Warsaw UP, INoP, 2019),  American Popular Cop Cinema  (Lodz UP, PWSFTviT, 2013),  and Just a Little Problem That Came Up… The Works of John Cassavetes  (2009).  She is a member of the Steering Committee of the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS). Manel Jiménez-Morales  is Professor in the Communication Department at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). He graduated in Audiovisual Communication from UPF and Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from the University of Barcelona. Manel has a PhD in Social Communication from UPF.  He has been a scriptwriter, producer, and director for various films, television projects, and cultural programmes. He has been on several international research stages and has taught at various German and British universities. In 2016, he took over the academic management of the Centre for Learning Innovation and Knowledge at UPF. He holds the position of Vice-Rector for Educational Transformation, Culture and Communication (appointed in 2021).

  NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 

xi

Marta  Lopera-Mármol  is a PhD candidate in Communication at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and a researcher affiliated with the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge. She is also a researcher at the Communication Advertising & Society Group (UPF). She obtained an MRes in Social Communication from UPF. She graduated in Audio-visual Communication from the University of Barcelona. She has written several articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. She has undertaken international studies as a visiting scholar and researcher at the University of Cambridge, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle III, La Trobe University, and Hanzehoge school. Her main lines of research are television series, mental disorder, and media sustainability. Janet  McCabe  is Reader in Television and Film Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She has written extensively on feminism, representational politics and television cultures and is co-editor (with Kim Akass) of several anthologies including TV’s Betty Goes Global (2013), Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (2007) and Reading Sex and the City (2004), translated into Korean, Russian and Japanese. She is one of the editors of Critical Studies in Television and her latest monograph on the representational geopolitics of Bron/Broen/The Bridge is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic. Maria Cristina P. Mungioli  is Professor at School of Communications and Arts of University of São Paulo (Brazil), Productivity Researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq/Brazil), Leader of the Research Group GELiDis (Languages and Discourses in Media) at University of São Paulo/CNPq and co-editor of Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias de la Comunicación edited by ALAIC (Asociación Latinoamericana de Investigadores de la Comunicación). Jakob Isak Nielsen  is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Journalism Studies at Aarhus University. His research interests include media production studies, media aesthetics, media policy and regulation, and the trajectory of legacy media into the digital realm. He is co-editor of a book on the ‘third golden age’ of American drama series, Fjernsyn for viderekomne (2011), and a follow-­up book with a transnational focus on serial phenomena in the IDTV era, Streaming for viderekomne (2020). His

xii 

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

research projects include  What Makes Danish TV Drama Series Travel? (Independent Research Fund Denmark, 2014-2018); CresCine – Increasing the International Competitiveness of the European Film Industry in Small European Markets (Horizon-RIA, 2023-2026). Juan-Pablo  Osman  is a Master of Arts in Filmmaking and PhD in Communication Studies. He is a professor and researcher in Fiction Media at the Department of Communication and Journalism at Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia. Among his research fields of study are Media and Society, Media and Culture, Film and History, and Film and Sport. His most recent works have been approaching cultural specificity in TV dramas in the transnational/multiplatform production era and an analysis of the Charlie’s Angels franchise and its female action heroines under a feminist perspective. Richard Paterson  is a Research Associate and Honorary Professor in the Centre for Cultural Policy Research at the University of Glasgow and was co-investigator on the Economic and Social Research Council-funded ‘Television Production in Transition’ project (Reference ES/N015258/1). He has written widely and was formerly Head of Research and Scholarship at the British Film Institute. Christian H. Pelegrini  is Professor at Institute of Artes and Design of Federal University of Juiz de Fora (Brazil). His research interests are serialization and narrative, narrative industries, transmedial narratology, and comedy. He is leader of Entelas (Research Group of Transmedia Content and Converge of Cultures and Screens). He is the author of Enunciação e narrativa em sitcoms: uma análise de Arrested Development (2017) and Perspectivas do Audiovisual Contemporâneo: urgências, conteúdos e espaços, with Felipe Munais (2019). Joanna Rydzewska  is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at Swansea University, UK.  She is completing The Cinema of Paweł Pawlikowski: Sculpting Stories and From Valiant Warriors to Bloody Immigrants: Poles in Cinema. Elke Weissmann  is Reader in Film and Television at Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK. She has written on transnational television drama and representations of masculinity and television. She is one of the European Communication Research and Education Association editors of Critical Studies in Television and she has received funds for a project on local television, community voices, and climate action.

  Notes on Contributors 

xiii

Deniz  Zorlu  has written several articles in peer-reviewed international journals, including New Review of Film and Television Studies and VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture. After getting his PhD from Queen’s University’s Cultural Studies programme in Kingston, Canada, he started to work in the Department of New Media and Communication at the Izmir University of Economics, Turkey. He has been affiliated with the Department of Film Design and Management at Ankara Bilim Üniversitesi, Turkey since September 2021. His research focuses on Turkish TV serials, the politicization of social media platforms, and cultural change in Turkey.

CHAPTER 1

Multiplatform TV, the Cultural Diversification of High-End Drama, and New Coproduction Strategies Trisha Dunleavy

Introduction Squid Game is not the first nor will it be the last non-English language drama to make international waves. French crime drama Lupin and Spanish thriller Money Heist are among other non-English language dramas to rack up the views to the point where the genre is arguably no longer a trend but the status quo. That idea is backed up by Netflix, whose global head of TV, Bela Bajaria, revealed that 97% of American Netflix subscribers watched a non-English language title in 2021[…] (Ruth Lawes, 2022)

The above assertions affirm the influence of a nascent area of development within ‘high-end’ TV drama that this book, through its focus on non-US examples produced for international distribution and involving transnational collaboration, seeks to examine. In the face of this development, the foremost question that this book aims to answer is that of to what extent

T. Dunleavy (*) Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_1

1

2 

T. DUNLEAVY

and in what ways this international and coproduced drama—an increasing proportion of which is also being filmed in a non-English language—is pursuing and/or exhibiting cultural specificity. Among the first scholars to write about this turn in ‘high-end’ drama, Tim Havens (2018) used the term “conspicuous localism” to emphasise its difference as content that internet TV services, especially subscription-­ funded providers, have made available to US audiences. Havens alludes to two characteristics that he sees as constituting the ‘conspicuous localism’ of this non-US drama. First, these shows use “cinematography, storylines and languages” in ways that locate them in a particular place, imbue them with cultural specificity, and allow them to achieve a “strong sense of authenticity” (Havens, 2018). Second, and although these dramas are also popular with domestic audiences in their country of origin, Havens emphasises their capacity to target and deliver a “cosmopolitan international audience”, a strategically valuable one for Netflix and other leading subscription-video-on-demand providers (SVoDs). Cultural specificity, as a decades-old, ever-prized characteristic of TV drama almost everywhere, is and has always been facilitated by national broadcasters, emphatically those whose public service broadcasting (PSB) remits require them to contribute to the representation of cultural identity in the programmes they commission. While in the past, national broadcasters held a primary role in providing elements of cultural specificity in TV drama, this role is now shared with multinational and transnational providers, especially the US-owned SVoDs that are commissioning or co-­ financing non-US dramas in which cultural specificity is a feature. This book’s case studies suggest that, although not characteristic of all or even a majority of SVoD-commissioned TV dramas, cultural specificity is an expanding feature of ‘high-end’ drama, as programming whose rising cost is aligning it with the necessity for international distribution and appeal. An important example of the ‘conspicuous localism’ proposed by Havens is the more overt use of non-English languages. Even though English-language drama is still considered by industry commentators to travel the most extensively (Guyonnet quoted in Akyuz, 2022), a transition towards the more frequent use of local languages for high-end TV dramas devised for international distribution, the aim of which is to increase its cultural authenticity as perceived by audiences, is evidently underway. At a recent international TV drama industry panel entitled ‘Time to Stop Saying Foreign-Language’, the keynote speakers agreed that “local-language and authenticity in stories” provide “the means to

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

3

connect with increasingly content-savvy audiences that are, as Netflix has proven, very receptive to other languages and cultures” (Akyuz, 2022). One of these speakers, drama producer, Erik Barmack, former Netflix head of international originals, predicted that non-English language content will expand to comprise three-quarters of the annual list of top-­ performing international shows within the next ten years (Barmack quoted in Akyuz, 2022). Bajaria’s estimate that 97 per cent of US Netflix subscribers watched a non-English language drama in 2021 (Lawes, 2022) may suggest that Barmack’s view of the future of international TV drama is grounded in a perception of changing audience sensibilities, emphatically among viewers who use SVoD services to access a larger range of TV content than national providers can offer. Evidenced by the welcoming international reception of Netflix’s Korean-language Squid Game and French-Language Lupin in 2021, more favourable audience reactions to the linguistic diversity of high-end dramas indicate some erosion in the earlier resistance of some international audiences (English-speaking audiences, for instance) to watching subtitled shows. Although this erosion is far from complete and some TV viewers will continue to reject subtitled shows, it is being attributed to the increased flexibility that online viewing brings to subtitled dramas (De Maio quoted in Owen, 2018; C21Media, 2022). The deployment of cultural specificity in ‘high-end’ dramas devised for international consumption foregrounds the strategic value of shows whose cultural details can imbue them with a marketable distinction in today’s multiplatform era. As ‘high-end’ productions, thus difficult for individual broadcasters to finance alone, these dramas are being facilitated by significant investment from multinational and/or transnational SVoDs (the former often US-owned), to which subscriber retention and expansion remains a crucial objective, and for whom a supply of distinctive ‘high-­ end’ dramas, sourced from a variety of countries, is an important means to progress their businesses. Today, thanks to internet distribution for television and to the reach and penetration of SVoDs, the roaming trajectory of a TV drama that is expected to travel is not one that culminates in its distribution to nearby countries, but rather entails potential distribution to hundreds of national markets. Netflix has been an active agent of change for this new trajectory for international TV drama. In commissioning an increasing number of its drama originals from non-US countries and their industries (Afilipoaie et al., 2021) Netflix has led by example, with the direction of its non-US

4 

T. DUNLEAVY

commissioning being encouraged by its established presence in some 190 countries. Accentuating Netflix’s identity as a multinational SVoD, Amanda Lotz (2021) foregrounds two indicators of its ongoing interest in the regular commissioning of non-US originals. One is the presence of a multinational array of Netflix offices. Although not all of these operate as commissioning hubs, many do, and Netflix originals are being sourced from an increasing number of non-US countries. Another is that more than half of Netflix’s commissions and coproductions by 2021, or 177 out of 306 productions and 58 per cent of the total (Lotz, 2021: 202), were produced outside the US. Working together, these Netflix practices are yielding an unprecedented cultural and linguistic diversity for the ‘high-­ end’ drama available on its portals. This development is exemplified by the following range of Netflix-commissioned examples: Suburra: Blood on Rome (Italy, 2017–20), Dark (Germany, 2017–20), Sacred Games (India, 2018–19), The Rain(Denmark, 2018–20), Elite (Spain, 2018–present), Ragnarok (Norway, 2020–22), and Young Royals (Sweden, 2021–present). Created by independent producers within the originating country, these dramas use a specific national language yet were not commissioned primarily for consumption in their domestic market, but rather to serve Netflix’s multinational subscriber base and within it, for appeal to niche audiences constituted across the streamer’s multiplicity of territories. Netflix has undoubtedly led the expansion of non-US drama commissions and encouraged the increased use of non-English languages by these productions. However, its closest SVoD rivals—Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, and Disney+, albeit with a smaller range of countries and languages involved thus far—are emulating Netflix’s multinational commissioning strategies. Important milestones, as early non-US and/or foreign-­language commissions for these SVoDs, were The Man in the High Castle (Amazon Prime Video, 2015–19) which is case-studied in this book; Italian-­ language drama, L’Amica Geniale/My Brilliant Friend (Rai/HBO, 2018); and French-language drama, Oussekine (Disney, 2022). This chapter examines key elements of the institutional, economic, and industrial contexts that are producing, or are being impacted by, the above cultural diversification of ‘high-end’ TV drama devised for international distribution. First are the characteristics and distinctions of television’s multiplatform era, as one profoundly shaped by internet distribution, the expansionist objectives of multinational SVoDs, and a continuing shift towards the online consumption of TV programming. Second are broadly applicable changes to the cost and prevailing forms of ‘high-end’ drama.

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

5

These can be linked to its strategic function for both SVoDs and broadcasters in the multiplatform era and to this drama’s irreversible internationalisation (Doyle et  al., 2021: 171). Third, with this chapter foregrounding the UK industry as a significant producer of widely distributed ‘high-end’ drama, are the impacts on this drama’s financing and commissioning at a national level. Finally, the chapter explains the strategies for drama coproduction that distinguish the older practices of ‘international coproduction’ from the newer strategies now shaping cross-national collaboration in TV drama creation, a paradigm that Michele Hilmes (2014) calls “transnational coproduction”.

The Multiplatform Era and Some Impacts of Internet-Distributed Television The industrial context for the above developments for international high-­ end drama can be broadly termed ‘multiplatform television’ (Dunleavy, 2020: 339), a label that draws together the entirety of platform types, both new and longstanding—namely broadcast, cable/satellite, and internet-­only—that now comprise the medium of television. As with the ‘multichannel era’ that preceded it, TV services are funded in three main ways: via public broadcasting fees, advertising, and monthly subscriptions. However, with internet providers and mobile phone companies now offering their own TV services, adding to the existing array of broadcast, cable/satellite, and SVoD services, the number and range of outlets for which new TV drama is being produced is broader than ever. Internet distribution and online consumption are key distinctions of multiplatform television; the provisions that separate it from TV’s ‘multichannel’ era, its predecessor, as well as providing the primary motivation for the institutional, industrial, and creative changes that television industries are dealing with now. The burgeoning of internet-distributed television (IDTV) has instigated major industrial transitions for free-to-air broadcasters and subscription-funded providers alike and, since 2018, stimulated a new wave of major acquisitions and mergers for top-tier US-owned media conglomerates. Foregrounding political economy, the evolution of television has been theorised in relation to four main phases—‘TVI’, ‘TVII’, ‘TVIII’, and ‘TVIV’ (Rogers et al., 2002; Jenner, 2016, 2018; Edgerton, 2023)—the transitions between which have been enabled by the arrival of new

6 

T. DUNLEAVY

technologies that brought expansion and diversification to TV services, distribution, and programming, as well as dividing TV audiences across longstanding and newer services. The first two phases, TVI and TVII, are located in television’s formative decades and, as such, constituted nationally. Whereas ‘TVI’ refers to a broadcast-only era in which a paucity of TV services and corresponding concentration of national eyeballs meant that TV services and programmes were obliged to serve mass audiences, ‘TVII’ recognises the medium’s expansion (facilitated by the addition of cable and then satellite distribution systems) to a multichannel era in which, as broadcast and non-broadcast providers competed within national markets, audiences gained a new degree of channel and programme choice. Importantly in ‘TVII’, TV services and programmes were both able to target and deliver niche audiences, audience segments involving higher levels of disposable income gained increased commercial value (Dunleavy, 2009: 137), and national audiences continued to fragment across an enlarged number of linear TV channels. Multiplatform television connects the next two phases, ‘TVIII’ and ‘TVIV’. Framed by digitization and thus by what John Ellis (2000) terms ‘plenty’, ‘TVIII’ saw brand marketing take precedence over the mass and niche marketing tendencies of TVI and TVII in turn (Rogers et al., 2002). Although ‘TVIII’ and ‘TVIV’ are linked together by their foregrounding of brand marketing as well as by the more direct relationships between providers and viewers that subscription-funded TV services entail, what divides ‘TVIII’ and ‘TVIV’ into different phases of development for this medium, is that the nascent ‘TVIV’, a label coined by Mareike Jenner (2016), is a phase in which TV programmes are increasingly delivered and consumed not through a linear schedule but via the internet (Jenner, 2016; Edgerton, 2023). Making the important observation that these linear and internet modes both constitute ‘television’, Amanda Lotz underlines that “internet-distributed television is not a new medium, but the medium of television distributed through a different technology” (Lotz, 2016: 134). The transition away from a primarily linear consumption of TV programming to an increasingly online, on-demand model, is additionally important because it means that, unlike TVIII, which has been tethered to national services and outcomes, TVIV is a phase in which SVoDs can serve their subscribers on a transnational or multinational basis, a context that is facilitating higher production budgets for TV content (indicatively for drama), demanding distinctive shows that service platform brands across multiple territories, and enabling costly new shows

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

7

to amortise their production costs by using the audience targeting strategy that Lotz (2017: 26) terms “conglomerated niche”. Although Lotz coined this concept in connection with Netflix, ‘conglomerated niche’ is an increasingly influential audience strategy in TVIV because it is available to all SVoDs. As such, it can now refer to the capacity of expensively produced original TV shows commissioned for or in coproduction with SVoDs, to cultivate and serve niche audiences that are constituted on a near-global basis.

An Era of Change for High-End TV Drama This book foregrounds ‘high-end’ drama over other areas of fiction production, a category distinguished from ‘ordinary’ television (Bonner, 2003) and from other TV drama by its creative ambition, conceptual novelty, cultural cachet, and exceptional cost. The term ‘high-end’ acknowledges the presence of high production values. Even though these can apply to a large range of drama productions (including long-running procedural drama series and supersoaps) ‘high-end’ is often used to acknowledge a drama’s location at the ‘cinematic’ end of television’s production value spectrum (Biskind, 2007; Nelson, 2007; Dunleavy, 2018). As Deborah Jaramillo (2013: 67) asserts, the term ‘cinematic’ “connotes artistry mixed with a sense of grandeur”. As a category of TV production whose images are captured on the same Ultra HD digital cameras that are used to shoot feature films, high-end drama has become increasingly ambitious in terms of its mise-en-scène and often deploys complex storytelling strategies (Dunleavy, 2018: 98–123). While aesthetic enhancement has contributed much to the escalation of this drama’s costs, it has also helped to reduce once marked aesthetic distinctions between TV drama and cinema (Nelson, 2007; Dunleavy, 2018). Even though many narrative and format differences between feature films and TV dramas remain, high-­end drama creation is more subject now than it was in the past to an inflow of writers, producers, and directors with feature film experience. Ultimately, the production values that now characterise and distinguish high-end drama provide their writing and production processes with resources that far exceed those of ‘ordinary’ television. These include a greater proportion of location scenes, along with production workflows that allow time for meticulous attention to scriptwriting, visualisation, camerawork, and mise-en-scène. As broadcasters and subscription-funded networks both exploit the considerable flexibilities of internet distribution and an increasing

8 

T. DUNLEAVY

audience preference to watch TV shows on-demand, new formal, aesthetic, and financial parameters have emerged for high-end drama as content that is created to travel. While other sections of this chapter examine institutional, industrial, and financial contexts for the commissioning of high-end drama, this one accentuates key adjustments in this drama’s function, cost, form, and textuality. High-end TV drama has experienced an unprecedented and irreversible internationalisation (Doyle et al., 2021: 171); a change that follows the trajectory of national cinema films. This means that international appeal, even though it continues to be reconciled with domestic cultural expectations, is now an early consideration in the development and financing of high-end TV dramas. Important to this book, given its focus on high-end dramas produced outside the US, is that their aesthetic sophistication and escalating cost have also made these dramas unviable as primarily domestic programmes, leaving them unavoidably tethered to the necessity for international circulation and accessibility to international audiences. High-end drama’s production costs were steadily rising in the 2010s (Ryan & Littleton, 2017). However, the multiplatform era is yielding even higher budgets for it than ever, a change that is reflected in a trio of record-setting recent examples: Game of Thrones (HBO), The Crown (Netflix) and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime Video). Game of Thrones averaged US$15 million per episode for its lavish final season, The Crown ’s fifth season had a reputed budget of US$26 million per episode, and the first season of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is thought to have cost a staggering US$ 58.1 million per episode. These examples underline that leading SVoDs are providing much higher episode budgets for TV drama than broadcasters can afford and that the gap between broadcast and SVoD budgets for this drama has continued to widen since Maureen Ryan and Cynthia Littleton (2017) registered it as an emerging pattern for US drama productions by comparing their average budgets. Highlighting that this gap between broadcast and SVoD budgets is strongly evident in UK-produced content, Roberta Pearson (2021) provides two important examples; observing that Amazon and Netflix spent UK£12.7 billion on content that year compared to just UK£2.9 billion for UK PSBs and that “Netflix alone has more spending power than the PSB’s combined budgets” (Pearson, 2021: 90). This difference in the content spending of multinational SVoDs compared with broadcasters is all the more significant when we consider their different functions; the most obvious element of which is the national

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

9

orientation of the former versus the global aspirations of the latter. Content commissioned by Netflix and other multinational SVoDs is likely to debut in a larger number of their markets and significant investment in it is vital to increasing subscriber penetration in these markets. Hence the capacity of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, and Disney+, in particular, to spend far larger amounts of money on their individual commissions than other TV providers can, is because this investment is amortised by their total subscriber numbers and can also ensure that these numbers continue to grow. Yet SVoDs also differ from broadcasters as to the kinds of audiences that these target, producing a divergence in the range of programmes that each type of network seeks to provide (Pearson, 2021). While high-end dramas can target and deliver broad audiences, they are often commissioned to target well-educated viewers with higher levels of disposable income; hence the necessity for SVoDs to finance their productions so as to secure as much control over their distribution and ‘afterlife’ as possible. Imperative for SVoDs, therefore, is not only the exclusivity of the dramas they commission but also their capacity as narratives to motivate new subscribers and reduce the potential for subscriber losses to ‘churn’. As HBO was the first US premium network to realise, these economic goals for subscription-funded providers are more effectively served in the category of high-end drama by the deployment of ‘serial’ rather than ‘series’ form. The increased prevalence of high-end serials and corresponding contraction of conventional drama series in the early multiplatform era is the latest example, in the succession that can be found in TV history, of Roger Hagedorn’s (1995: 41) observation that “when media industries decide to target a new sector of the population in order to expand their market share, they have consistently turned to serials as a solution”. This preference is most marked in drama originated for SVoDs, as services for which seriality has proved vital in incentivising and sustaining subscriber engagement and monthly payments. SVoDs, following the serial drama strategies pioneered by HBO, (Dunleavy, 2018) are commissioning three main forms of high-end serial fiction—multi-season serials, limited serials, and dramedies—to be briefly introduced below. The multi-season serial is an hour-long drama form whose generic diversity can be seen in its mix of crime, melodrama, horror, thriller, science fiction, and historical examples. These serials attain additional elements of novelty, including narrative and aesthetic distinction, through such strategies as non-linear storytelling, self-reflexivity, and/or ‘second-­ degree style’ (Dunleavy, 2018: 140–45). A rising sub-form of high-end

10 

T. DUNLEAVY

serial drama is the one that I have labelled ‘complex serial’ (Dunleavy, 2018). Agreeing with Jason Mittell (2013: 46) that complex TV programming is invested with “sophistication and nuance” and that its viewers must “engage fully and attentively” because of these qualities, my monograph on complex drama identifies and examines the narrative and aesthetic characteristics of a specific form of high-end, long-format drama that I term the ‘complex serial’, exemplified by HBO’s The Sopranos, AMC’s Mad Men, and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale (Dunleavy, 2018). ‘Complex serials’ are distinguished within TV drama by their constructions of troubled central characters and their progression of one main story, which I call the ‘overarching story’ because it bookends the show from first to final episode (Dunleavy, 2018: 102). Unfolding over successive seasons, this overarching story uses regular flashbacks to probe character history and motivation and attains complexity from its psychological investigation of what are always morally conflicted but can also be transgressive central characters (Dunleavy, 2018: 109–13). Although complex serials also integrate short-­lived sub-plots, they prioritise their overarching story, a strategy that enables an unusual level of integration between the main conflict this story presents and the personal dilemma of the show’s foremost character (Dunleavy, 2018: 111–3). Non-US complex serial examples include Netflix originals Dark (2017–20), Atiye/The Gift (2019–21), and The Crown (2016-present), with the last two being casestudied in this book. Of these, The Crown provides a useful exemplar for this chapter. Its overarching story examines the irreconcilable tension between individual aspiration and public duty that is the unique and most challenging conflict for a reigning monarch. The Crown’s overarching story and conflict are embodied by its foremost character, Queen Elizabeth II, a fictional representation of the longest-standing British monarch, and a character that the serial subjects to probing investigation through its successive seasons. A longstanding form of high-end serial fiction, once called the ‘mini-­ series’, is increasingly referred to as ‘limited serial’, a label that accentuates its seriality. As with complex serials, limited serials require episode budgets that are generally higher than for the most prevalent types of broadcast TV fiction (sitcoms, police, or medical series, and continuing soaps). Although varied in the array of narrative strategies available to it, this form is capable of the same elements of complexity as the multi-season complex serial— emphatically the psychological investigation of morally conflicted characters and their capacity to embody the overarching story—despite its limited

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

11

duration. Precisely because they are intended to be one-season products, limited serials can take significant risks with subject matter. In consequence, they are highly accommodating of conceptual novelty, stylistic idiosyncrasy, representational innovation, and cultural specificity, facets which have made them an asset for public service broadcasters. But this form’s cultural cachet and capacity for critical acclaim have also enticed subscription-funded networks to commission it. With both provider types finding value in the limited serial, albeit for different reasons, it is hardly surprising that it has also been a strong candidate for coproductions between national PSBs and transnational or multinational SVoDs. Two high-performing British examples—I May Destroy You (BBC/HBO, 2020) and It’s a Sin (Channel  4/HBO, 2021)—were both coproduced with HBO. Limited serials are a central form for ‘authored drama’, since their short duration opens them to the primacy of a single creator-writer-­producer. The limited serial is also an ideal canvas for the screen adaptation of existing novels, an approach that TV drama has deployed since the medium’s inception, with recent examples in Sharp Objects (HBO, 2018), A Suitable Boy (BBC, 2020), and Normal People (BBC/Hulu, 2020). Highlighting the reassurance that today’s novel adaptations can offer to commissioning networks and noting the potential of limited serials to shift the impetus for these adaptations from cinema to television, John Hazelton explains that as the industry’s output of scripted drama continues to climb, novels—with their carefully crafted plots, fully formed characters and, in many cases, built-in audience awareness—have become an important source of inspiration and IP.  And [limited serials], with their three-to-ten hour running times and binge-ready audiences, have proved to be a better format for novel adaptation than time-constrained feature films. (Hazelton, 2019)

This brief overview foregrounds the tendency of limited serials to deliver single-season and therefore ‘closed’ narratives. However, this form is sometimes produced and renewed in ‘anthology serial’ format, examples including HBO’s The White Lotus (with two seasons so far) and DR /ZDF Enterprises’ Forbrydelsen/The Killing (with three seasons). Although ‘anthology serials’ entail continuities of setting, style, theme, and/or character, each season tells a self-contained story. The third form, dramedy, first emerged on US broadcast TV in the 1980s but changed substantially after HBO adapted it as premium cable fare, a foray that yielded such prominent examples as Sex and the City

12 

T. DUNLEAVY

(1998–2004) and Girls (2012–17) whose success and creative influence managed to reinvent dramedy as high-end TV fiction, associate this form with feminist perspectives and identity politics, and enable its transition to SVoD-originated content. Accordingly, contemporary dramedy is represented by Fleabag (BBC, 2016 and 2019), Sex Education (Netflix, 2019–23), Emily in Paris (Netflix, 2020-present) Ted Lasso (Apple TV+, 2020–23) as well as by Les de l’Hoquei/The Hockey Girls (TV3/Netflix, 2019–20), the last example being a Catalan-language dramedy case studied in this book. While there can still be variation, since dramedy straddles the formal boundaries between hour-long drama and single-camera sitcom, this generic hybrid and the above examples of it share the following characteristics. Contemporary dramedies tend to be devised as multi-­ season productions and prefer 30–40-minute episodes. Working hand in glove with the tonal range of their stories between the ‘dramatic’ and ‘comedic’, dramedies also blend the narrative conventions of situation-­ oriented series with the overarching story and character focus of serials. In consequence their episodes foreground a ‘problem-of-the-week’ (a feature drawn from sitcom) at the same time as using continuing ‘arcs’ to progress their character-focused overarching story. Identifying some repercussions of the above generic blending in contemporary dramedy, Julia Havas and Maria Sulimma (2020) include its articulations of a “‘progressive’ identity politics”, its investigation of complex characters, and its capacity for “cringe aesthetics”. Havas and Sulimma (2020: 79) also suggest that in “[c]ombining the different inheritances of comedy and drama, [contemporary] dramedy is rarely interested in ‘capital P’ politics … and instead, trades in the politics of the ‘everyday’”.

High-End Drama Commissioning and Financing at the National Level: The United Kingdom The unprecedented, still rising production cost of high-end drama, a programme category of strategic importance to both broadcasters and SVoD providers in the multiplatform era, has necessitated what Doyle, Paterson and Barr  (2021: 165) describe as a “mixed economy approach” to the facilitation of its production in which “commissions and revenue are sought from a range of sources”. This section foregrounds recent tendencies in the commissioning and financing of high-end TV drama through a focus on the UK. British television and its TV drama are well placed to

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

13

reveal key developments and challenges arising from the multiplatform television landscape for the four reasons below. First, British TV drama remains a leading and influential non-US industry and creative paradigm for TV drama. A 2020 European Audiovisual Observatory report on EU-produced high-end fiction in the period 2015–18 identified the UK as the largest producer and exporter of high-­ end drama in Europe, underlining the “impressive 67% share of all TV series available on non-European SVOD services” enjoyed by UK TV drama during this period (Fontaine & Pumares, 2020: 1). With the UK industry establishing itself as an early and highly successful exporter of drama, British TV drama has maintained consistent profile, cultural influence, and popular appeal in the international arena, an important underpinning for which is that, as English-language programming it is “part of a dominant Anglophone-U.S. television culture” (Steemers, 2016: 739). Even though non-English language drama is expanding in the ways identified earlier this chapter, Françoise Guyonnet (managing director of TV for StudioCanal) underlines that “English-language content still travels better”, adding that the expectation of greater export success for this content is reflected in higher prices paid for it compared with its non-English language counterparts (Guyonnet quoted in Akyuz, 2022). Second is the continuity, alongside its commercial functions, of UK television’s ‘public service’ obligations, which have long included the requirement for broadcasters to originate and regularly offer TV drama. Even though PSB functions for domestic TV drama are common in many countries, the continuity, plurality, and effectiveness of the British PSB model have made it an influential example for most of them. In addition to the BBC and Channel 4 as public broadcasters, privately owned networks, ITV and Channel 5, also have PSB status, an important regulatory requirement for which is that they “produce diverse original content” in ways that “support the UK’s creative economy” (McElroy & Noonan, 2019: 46–47). Third, overseen by Ofcom, British television’s content regulation has aimed to ensure a strong, sustainable independent production sector, a process that took a new turn after the UK’s 2003 Communication Act which “paved the way for independent producers to retain copyright ownership in programming and control secondary rights after first broadcast” (Steemers, 2016: 739). In 2004, as Jeanette Steemers (2016: 740) highlights, “terms of trade” were introduced which “gave producers IP rights” and enabled “producer-distributors [to become] a more potent force”.

14 

T. DUNLEAVY

Independent production was further supported by the BBC’s ‘Window of Creative Competition’ (WoCC), introduced from 2008, which divided BBC commissions between in-house (50 per cent) and independent (25 per cent) and allowed for the final 25 per cent of TV commissions to be competed for between BBC in-house and independent producers. By 2013, when the WoCC was reviewed by the BBC Trust, independents were securing 72–82 per cent of “available network television hours” and producing a “large proportion” of TV drama hours (McElroy & Noonan, 2019: 48–49). With the above initiatives combining to facilitate and sustain its performance into the multiplatform era, “[t]he success of the UK TV production sector”, one Ofcom report asserts, “is not a product of chance—it’s grown out of a close relationship with the PSBs and a series of regulatory interventions [designed] to ensure that they commission in a way which benefits the UK TV production sector” (Ofcom, 2020: 2). Fourth, the multiplatform era arrived comparatively early to British television. Even before Netflix began its transition from a mail-order DVD company to a multinational SVoD, the UK’s leading PSBs had launched broadcast-video-on-demand portals (BVoDs), starting with All4 in 2006 and BBC iPlayer in 2007. In 2012, Netflix entered the UK, selecting it as the first of several markets it would use to test conditions for the roll-out of its services in Europe (Bondebjerg, 2017: 54). Although a far larger national market than the individual Scandinavian countries that Netflix also used for this purpose, in common with them, the UK too, offered high rates of internet penetration and the potential to build a large subscriber base. Today, Netflix leads the UK’s SVoD market, with 60 per cent of households subscribing, followed by Amazon Prime (46 per cent) and Disney+ (23 per cent) (Ofcom, 2022: 14). For PSBs, Ofcom’s latest figures (Ofcom, 2022) suggest that although UK broadcasters continue strongly, their live audiences are declining slightly each year, a change reflected in the UK’s annual average minutes of viewing per day. Audience research also reveals a widening demographic divide, in which young adult audiences are spending increasing time on SVoD platforms and less on broadcast platforms (Ofcom, 2022). Finding demographic, as well as technological, challenges for the BBC in competing with Netflix, as revealed by the BBC’s own audience data, Jim Waterson (2022) observes that, “Eighty-eight per cent of all time spent with BBC services is in the form of people watching television or listening to radio services. This risks dooming the BBC to catering for an older audience, with Netflix more than twice as popular as iPlayer among 16- to 34-year-olds”.

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

15

In the face of these challenges, UK broadcast channels and their BVoD services remain an important complement to SVoDs because of their different menus and functions. Contrasting British PSBs with Netflix, Roberta Pearson offers useful big-picture comparisons between broadcasters and SVoDs, which are applicable to most TV-producing countries: Whilst public service broadcasters offer a wide variety of programming genres to a national community, Netflix offers high end dramas and other fictional content to global ‘taste communities’ defined by cultural preferences rather than demographics or geography. A fundamental principle of public service is the mixed programme schedule; regulation obliges PSBs to provide a diversity of programme genres. (Pearson, 2021: 87-88)

The above elements combine to form the context in which UK-produced high-end drama is commissioned and financed. This is one of encroaching internationalisation; extending from the purchases of UK production companies by non-UK conglomerates (Doyle, 2019) to the increased commissioning of TV shows and films by foreign-owned SVoDs. In an era of blurring boundaries between domestic and foreign influences on UK screen production, four main types of agents—national broadcasters, domestic indies, large producer-distributors (termed ‘super-indies’ or ‘mega-indies’ depending on their relative size), and multinational or transnational SVoDs—enable this process. Often initiating the commissioning of drama is one of the five PSBs, of which the three most-watched networks, BBC, ITV, and Channel 4, commission the most drama. Just as vital to commissioning are the companies who produce it for them. These divide into two groups; ‘independent’ production companies and network-owned production subsidiary companies, with the former having been subject to acquisition by larger companies, some foreign-owned. An important element of the considered ‘independence’ of the UK’s indie companies, whether or not they are owned by larger international entities, is that they are neither “part of nor allied to a UK broadcaster” (Doyle et al., 2021: 198). Indies’ provision of content produced outside of broadcast in-house departments and/or network-­owned production companies has helped to promote “competition and cost-efficiency” in UK TV production (Doyle et al., 2021: 200). However, there are questions about the authenticity of an indie’s ‘independent’ status today (Doyle et  al., 2021: 203) because so many have been absorbed by bigger companies. Today, for example, Red Production

16 

T. DUNLEAVY

Company’s corporate parent is the Paris-based StudioCanal, World Productions is owned by ITV Studios, Kudos is owned by the Paris-based Banijay, and both Left-Bank Pictures and Bad Wolf are owned by the US-based Sony Pictures Television. Folding together production companies, production financing and distribution functions, the next level of organisation is performed by ‘super-­ indies’, each of which comprises a group of smaller indies, a structure that offers them enhanced scale in terms of the production financing they can obtain as well as greater access to international buyers. Leading examples, ITV Studios, BBC Studios, and Sky Studios, are all subsidiaries of UK networks, yet also own smaller indie companies. The largest producer-­ distributors also qualify as ‘mega-indies’—this label indicating their ownership of dozens of indies, their larger size and scale also ensuring mega-indies a multinational sphere of influence. Important mega-indies for UK-produced TV drama, aside from BBC Studios, are the London-­ based All3Media International and Fremantle, the Paris-based Banijay and StudioCanal, along with the LA-based Sony Pictures Television and NBCUniversal. The final and fastest growing influence on the commissioning and financing of UK-produced drama are multinational SVoDs. In order of their current influence on UK-produced drama commissioning to date, leading multinational examples are Netflix, HBO Max  (now  Max), Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Paramount+, and Canal+. Following Netflix, as noted earlier this chapter, multinational SVoDs are establishing commissioning offices and/or production studios in key markets, including the UK, to form direct relationships with a range of national production industries. Because of its unusual production cost, high-end drama relies on all the above groups and mobilises most, if not all, of the potential complexities of a ‘mixed economy approach’ (Doyle et  al., 2021: 165) to financing. Two key approaches to investment in high-end drama, bearing in mind that the budgets for it are “comparable to those for independently-made feature films” (Doyle et  al., 2021: 178) are ‘deficit financing’ and ‘cost-plus’. ‘Deficit financing’, a strategy that has been prominent in the US, involves the sharing of total production cost between the commissioning network and the production company. In multichannel era US television, it meant that the network “might cover only 75 per cent of the production costs” (Higgins, 2006), obliging the production company to deficit

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

17

finance the rest. Even though deficit financing does increase the upfront financial risk for indie companies compared with ‘cost-plus’, its main benefit is that it allows these companies to retain, exploit, and profit from subsequent sales. However, deficit financing has favoured certain forms of high-end drama over others, beginning with the incentive for producers “to create series likely to succeed in both first-run and secondary markets” (Lotz, 2019: 927). Especially in the US, deficit financing, influenced simultaneously by the requirements of advertiser-funded broadcast networks and the preferences of a broader range of secondary network buyers (domestic and foreign), has encouraged the creation of drama as episodic ‘series’, designed to run for many seasons (Lotz, 2019: 929), in contrast with high-end drama serials, whose form entails a more limited capacity for episode volume and seasonal continuity. ‘Cost-plus’ financing is considerably less determining in terms of drama’s design and duration and is more hospitable to the creation of high-­end drama in serial form. ‘Cost-plus’ means that the finance is provided entirely by the commissioning network/s, the exchange for which is that these own the production, along with its potential profits. Foregrounding its different configuration of benefits and risks, Lotz (2019: 930) argues that cost-plus “eliminates the risk to which deficit financing exposes production companies but also limits their reward in success”. As Doyle, Paterson and Barr (2021: 185) underline, cost-plus financing was “commonplace in the UK up until the [2004] terms of trade” and “remains prevalent elsewhere in Europe and beyond”. While cost-plus financing was routine for UK drama before this category became reliant on outsourcing, independent production, and a ‘mixed economy approach’ (Doyle et al., 2021: 165), cost-plus has re-appeared in a more pervasive form since it was appropriated by Netflix as its preferred production financing model (Lotz, 2021: 930). Deficit and cost-plus financing have been in operation for decades, but the multiplatform era has altered the logics for both. The tendency is for deficit financing to predominate among dramas commissioned by broadcasters; yet outsourced rather than produced in-house, whereas cost-plus is most attractive for dramas entirely financed by SVoDs because it secures their ownership and thus continued exclusivity of these dramas on their portals. BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 still lead the UK’s drama commissioning process as its primary domestic buyers (Doyle et al., 2021: 200). In addition to the brand value of having domestic drama in their schedules and on their BVoD portals, these commissions help PSBs to demonstrate their

18 

T. DUNLEAVY

compliance with content regulations and ensure a flow of UK-produced drama that can reflect and sustain a sense of British cultural identity, a form of cultural specificity that holds appeal for international as well as UK audiences. Emphasising the continuing centrality of PSBs to UK drama and foregrounding both in-house and indie contributions to its production, Ruth McElroy and Catriona Noonan (2019: 46) underline that “it is the PSBs who commission most of the drama consumed by UK television audiences and who are the main buyers of original drama content from UK independent production companies”. At the same time, UK-produced TV drama is subject to increasing levels of ‘third party’ financing (Ofcom, 2021: 74), a broad label that involves a range of possible internal or external sources, including pre-sales agreements with international distributors, coproduction between broadcasters and SVoDs, and incomes from the ‘High-End Television Tax Relief’ scheme, available since 2013 to qualifying UK dramas. Operated by the British Film Commission, this scheme allows scripted high-end productions to claim 25 per cent of their costs if they meet the thresholds for episode budgets and cultural requirements and have a UK broadcaster involved. The broader financial challenges for UK drama can be attributed to reducing public funding, declining advertising revenue, and increased production budgets, as well as to “elevated expectations of high production values from audiences, commissioners and reviewers”, this last element being most pronounced for high-end drama (McElroy & Noonan, 2019: 47). Often including investment from multinational and/or transnational SVoDs, today’s ‘mixed economy approach’ (Doyle et al., 2021: 165) may combine investment from national broadcasters, pre-sales financing from mega-indies /distributors (Steemers, 2016: 747), and additional or alternative investment from the private equity companies that are now being enticed into TV financing by the new potentials of IDTV (Pinto, 2022). In this context, deficit financing remains the dominant, most optimum model for UK producers and has been important to the growth and sustainability of its indie sector. However, cost-plus financing is becoming standard practice for productions commissioned by SVoDs, as one whose impacts apply to every national TV industry that creates programmes for them. Even though producers gain production contracts that did not exist before the rise of SVoDs, cost-plus financing requires them to surrender their IP rights to SVoD companies. As SVoDs increase their originations of drama from UK, EU, and other non-US production industries, their

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

19

cost-plus financing imperative threatens to reduce the economic self-­ determination and viability of national independent production sectors, an issue that Doyle, Paterson and Barr raise in regard to the UK (Doyle et al., 2021: 219). This threat arises from the business imperatives for SVoDs, especially multinational examples, to own their original shows outright so that these can be deployed, and the initial investment readily amortised, across their many markets. When used in the multiplatform era’s context of increasing commissioning of non-US drama by US-owned SVoDs, the key challenge of their cost-plus financing, as Doyle et  al. (2021: 217) explain, is that “it cuts across the ability of indigenous production companies, small and large, to build up their catalogues of revenue-generating intellectual property assets and to use windowing strategies to build their businesses”.

From ‘International’ to ‘Transnational’: Coproduction Strategies in the Multiplatform Era ‘International coproduction’, which refers to film or TV projects involving a collaboration between organisations located in different countries, became a regular option for high-end TV drama by the 1970s, at which point its creative ambition and production costs were beginning to confront the limits of available national resources. Until digitisation, and later, IDTV had both developed sufficiently to change the parameters for it, international coproduction in television involved a very limited proportion of annual drama output. Providing a useful overview of UK coproduction activity by the early twenty-first century, Jeanette Steemers (2004: 38) observes that “very small proportions of British programmes are coproduced, and these tend to be high-cost drama and factual productions, initiated in Britain”. This pattern was also true of countries within the European Union, with Steemers referencing a Eurofiction Project finding for 1999 that coproductions “only represented 6 per cent of first-­ run television fiction[…] in five European countries[…] including Britain” (Steemers, 2004: 38). International coproduction deals were shaped by the needs of linear networks in different countries, fuelled by the necessity for foreign financial input into unusually expensive productions, and paired co-commissioning TV networks with distribution companies. Even though coproduction deals rarely extended beyond finance into creative collaboration (Bondebjerg, 2017: 8), they still needed to remain open to

20 

T. DUNLEAVY

editorial input from a project’s international partners to ensure, as far as possible, that the resulting programme could succeed in the different markets for which it was created. The challenges of this coproduction model, especially for the originating network and its producer, were notably cultural; Steemers (2004: 38) foregrounds “the need to alter cultural parameters to fit in with others” and to “compromise resulting in less control and cultural specificity”. Even though these deals facilitated ambitious dramas that might not otherwise have been produced, the negotiation of cultural elements usually favoured the larger network partner, thus international coproductions could be daunting for the smaller network and its creatives. Observing the new influence of coproduction deals in 1970s Australian television, for example, its PSB, the ABC, registered the following industry feedback in its 1976 Annual Report: Among the creative community in Australia there is concern that involvement in co-productions with overseas organisations means a loss of control for Australia. This has some validity. No one will invest money in another country, or make commitments, sight unseen, to purchase productions unless there is a substantial assurance that the result will be acceptable. (quoted in Moran, 1985: 63)

For the originating domestic network, the particular and ongoing risk of an international coproduction was that the reduction in its local cultural details and specificity could threaten the appeal of the resulting production for its domestic audience. As Albert Moran writes: One ex-producer felt that the ABC was generally screwed in its coproduction arrangements by the overseas partner, whether English, American or European. Others raised the question how a series remains ‘local in concept’ arguing that it is not just a question of the proportion of local personnel (actors, writers, directors and so on) involved in the production but also of the local relevance it might have. (Moran, 1985: 63)

Scholarly work confirms that attempts to scale back the cultural specificity of an internationally coproduced TV drama were predicated on a conviction that this specificity might reduce the accessibility and appeal of the resulting programme in foreign markets, including and especially the larger coproducing country (Esser, 2020: 41). Providing an ongoing challenge for many TV dramas that were created as international

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

21

coproductions, this pressure to reduce cultural specificity was not unique to drama coproductions. It also impacted any other non-US dramas whose higher cost required them to be developed not just for their domestic networks but with ‘exportability’ firmly in mind. As an expectation applied to ambitious New Zealand-produced TV dramas after 1980, I defined ‘exportability’ as “a continuing pressure to restrict drama production to concepts and formats that will readily sell” in foreign markets (Dunleavy, 2005: 10). Writing about transnational coproduction at the outset of today’s multiplatform era, Michele Hilmes (2014) suggests that a paradigm shift for international coproduction is now occurring and that the changes are so significant that a new label, ‘transnational coproduction’, is appropriate to separate the above international coproduction model from a nascent new coproduction paradigm. One change, which responds to the expansion of TV services and the economic diversification that these represent, has been in the more complex nature of the coproduction partnerships being formed. Hilmes (2014: 12) argues that the “staid international or ‘treaty’ coproductions prominent in television’s earlier decades have been transformed into a practice that … partners public-sector broadcasters with independents and larger commercial companies from two or more nations”. Another change, assisted by the direct involvement in these partnerships of drama indies, of foreign producers and other key creatives drawn from the different countries involved, is that today’s partnerships more often entail elements of creative collaboration. Offering insights as to why creative input from coproduction partners is beneficial, Hilmes asserts that, Transnational coproduction in the current era includes not just co-financing or pre-sale of distribution rights … it also involves a creative partnership in which national interests must be combined and reconciled, differing audience tastes considered, and, often, the collision of public service goals with commercial expectations negotiated. (Hilmes, 2014: 12)

Developing Hilmes’ assessment of changing strategies for coproduction, the following paragraphs, using the labels I proposed in a 2020 article, identify the two newest approaches to the transnational coproduction of high-end TV drama in the multiplatform era. While not entirely divorced from longstanding options for international coproduction, the strategies that separate today’s transnational coproduction from ‘international coproduction’ as it used to function have been encouraged by the

22 

T. DUNLEAVY

inception of IDTV and necessitated by the unprecedented budgets for high-­end drama that acknowledge its increased strategic importance in TV’s multiplatform era. High-end dramas are now created in the expectation of international consumption as well as a potentially lengthy afterlife on-­demand, and the proliferation of internet services has reduced some longstanding obstacles to cross-border coproduction by accelerating the international circulation of new shows. One strategy can be termed the ‘direct commissioning’ (Dunleavy, 2020) of a new TV show by a single, foreign-domiciledtransnational or multinational network, operating in partnership with one or more production companies within a given national market. This direct commissioning approach is exemplified by Netflix originals, Dark, Lupin and Squid Game, which were produced in Germany, France, and South Korea, in the respective national languages. Even though direct commissioning simulates TV drama’s traditional relationship between a given national TV network as ‘buyer’ and the one or more domestic indie companies who act as ‘producer’, it also fulfils one of the traditional purposes of TV drama coproduction by connecting foreign finance with domestic creative industries. What is new in the multiplatform era and anchors direct commissioning to the multinational context for which high-end TV drama is now created is that this approach to coproduction is motivated by international rather than national outcomes. Direct commissioning differs radically from international coproduction because it bypasses the necessity for a national TV network to even be involved. Instead, as the above examples show, direct commissioning allows dramas to be created by local indie companies under contract to a single transnational or multinational  provider. As such, a direct commissioning approach to the creation of TV drama reduces the diversity of network investors with a cultural stake in the emerging production. Although this coproduced drama may not necessarily avoid the reduction of cultural specificity, it can, as this book’s case studies demonstrate, produce a wider range of responses to cultural representation, as distinct from simply demanding the kind of “delocalization” (Gray cited in Straubhaar, 2007: 169) that has often characterised international coproductions. Netflix’s direct commissions Sex Education and Unorthodox (2020)—the former  influenced by  delocalisation’s reduction of cultural details, while the latter foregrounds cultural specificity, may help to underline that direct commissioning yields a spectrum of approaches to cultural representation rather than any prevailing pattern.

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

23

The other strategy is ‘cross-platform coproduction’ (Dunleavy, 2020), examples of which include Anne with An E (CBC/Netflix, 2017–19), L’Amica Geniale/My Brilliant Friend (Rai/HBO, 2018-present), Small Axe (BBC/Amazon Prime Video, 2020), and It’s a Sin. ‘Cross-platform coproduction’ deviates from earlier approaches to international coproduction because it involves a partnership between a national broadcaster and an SVoD. While the broadcaster is more often a public than a private network, the SVoD is either a multinational or a transnational example. In these cases, the domestic orientation of broadcast networks contrasts with and complements the shared imperative of SVoDs to use high-end dramas to increase, extend, and maintain their subscriber bases. As such, cross-­ platform coproduction recognises the alignment and necessary reconciliation of the different national and international objectives that these partnerships entail. Even though commercial as well as public broadcasters are involved in cross-platform coproduction, the above examples suggest an emerging, perhaps unexpected, commonality of interests between public broadcasters and transnational or multinational SVoDs in the creation of high-end drama. Whereas direct commissioning involves creative and financial negotiations between local producers and what is usually one transnational or multinational SVoD, unique to cross-platform coproduction is the necessity to reconcile the cultural requirements of national broadcasters (including public service examples) with the commercial and international imperatives of SVoDs.

The Structure of This Book Focussing on changing industry contexts, this introductory chapter explains the conditions that are fuelling the rise of high-end drama that is simultaneously produced outside the US, more often filmed in the language of the originating country, has been facilitated by foreign finance or co-investment, and whose unprecedented production cost exposes it fully to ‘internationalisation’, a process and trajectory that hinges on the expectation that viewers not just in nearby markets but rather in multiple world territories will watch it. Even though the ‘exportability’ impetus for high-­ end non-US drama has traditionally worked to reduce its local cultural details and representations (Moran, 1985; Hoskins et al., 1998; Dunleavy, 2005; Esser, 2020), Havens’ sense that this drama is today exhibiting “conspicuous localism” and a “strong sense of authenticity” suggests that something new is happening to high-end non-US drama that is

24 

T. DUNLEAVY

commissioned for today’s international audiences. Assisted by serial form and its capacities for narrative novelty, the contributions of local languages, settings, and mise-en-scène, and the increased autonomy of local key creative personnel, it is more possible for non-US drama that is created to travel widely to also foreground elements of cultural specificity. This first book chapter suggests that the cultural diversification of the high-end, non-US drama now available to international audiences is being strongly encouraged by the additional involvement in its commissioning of SVoDs. It is clear not only that SVoDs have more money to invest in this drama than broadcasters do but also—a facet borne out by the increased non-US drama commissioning activity of the US-owned Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ in recent years (Akyuz, 2022; C21Media, 2022)—that SVoDs see this commissioning as increasingly important to the success of their businesses. Whereas broadcasters, especially PSBs, retain a vested interest in the facilitation of culturally specific TV dramas and will continue to finance them, the multiplatform era is proving to be one in which cultural specificity also has a commercial value to ambitious SVoDs. Although no single trajectory for cultural representation in high-end drama is discernible for SVoD-commissioned dramas—and these, as with all other TV fiction, already involve some reconciliation of ‘universal’ and ‘local’ elements—cultural specificity is a more prevalent feature of international high-end drama, regardless of its country of origin, than it was before the multiplatform era. While IDTV and on-demand consumption are both contributors to this change, a more significant explanation is that the cultural specificity of high-end drama commissions and/or co-commissions is perceived by SVoD commissioning executives to deliver a new form of distinction in the territories in which they need this distinction the most. An indicative perception on the part of drama commissioners and producers, as explained by Akyuz (2022), is that this specificity provides a “means to connect with increasingly content-savvy audiences that are, as Netflix has proven, very receptive to other languages and cultures”. On this basis, and while culturally bland and/or universally oriented high-end dramas are still being produced, it can be asserted that the cultural details of story, location, language, and mise-en-scène (Havens, 2018) are able to solicit and entice the “cosmopolitan international audience” that Havens identifies, as one that is valuable to SVoDs because of its disposition and capacity to pay for access to a wider range of TV programmes.

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

25

This anthology foregrounds this new phase in the commissioning, coproduction, and role of high-end drama that has emerged in tandem with the burgeoning of multiplatform television; an era in which this drama not only functions more overtly as international product but is also conceived and created in a far larger range of countries and cultures than was possible in the past. Focussing on non-US productions, this book offers 12 case studies of drama produced for TV’s multiplatform era, all of which have also involved transnational coproduction. Occurring by means of either full financing or co-investment from one of three leading multinational SVoD providers (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and HBO/Max), each of these TV dramas offers representational innovation and, in some way, attests to the new mix of national and international influences to which all high-end TV drama is subject in today’s transnational television culture. The involvement of US-owned networks in directly commissioning or co-commissioning these non-US dramas—while it also entails significant changes to national drama paradigms through the greater influence of foreign providers and finance on domestic screen industries—can not only ensure them wider international reach but also enable new representations of cultural identity. Accordingly, this book responds to two interrelated research questions. One is how has non-US TV drama changed—in respect of its narrative form, storytelling strategies, production values, and/or international reach—under the influence of collaboration with and/or coproduction investment from SVoDs? The other is to what extent this coproduced drama is able to reflect elements of cultural specificity in such areas as language, setting, story, and mise-en-scène? The first three chapters, two of which offer industry-interview research and insights, share a focus on changing industry contexts for drama creation yet highlight very different kinds of experience for the institutions and people involved. The first, by Richard Paterson, examines the genesis and associated challenges for The Man in the High Castle (2015–19), a multi-season adaptation of the original novel, as an early SVoD original and the first UK-produced drama to be commissioned by Amazon Prime Video. Paterson demonstrates how this project deviated significantly from established industry practices as an ambitious internationally oriented drama that was produced by a small regionally based UK indie. Among the very significant challenges successfully met by Man in the High Castle were the representational complexities of the alternative ending to WWII that this story tells and the necessity to vastly extend the novel’s narrative in order to sustain a long-format TV drama of four seasons and 40 episodes. The second

26 

T. DUNLEAVY

chapter, by Jakob Nielsen, demonstrates the potential for multinational SVoDs to enter the commissioning process much later in the production lifecycle of an established TV drama. In this case the example is Borgen: Power and Glory (2022), season 4 of the acclaimed Danish drama, whose first three seasons (2010–11, and 2013) were produced for public broadcaster DR, but whose fourth season, created by Danish indie, SAM Productions, is the product of a cross-platform coproduction agreement between DR and Netflix. As the first instance of such collaboration for DR, and one involving a cherished flagship drama for this public broadcaster, Borgen: Power and Glory not only negotiates a raft of creative, institutional, and political issues on its domestic front but also represents what Nielsen labels a ‘site of conflict’ that entails the same axes anticipated by Hilmes (2014) in which a single drama production is obliged to negotiate the intersections and potentially conflicting interests of private versus public, of commercial versus PSB, and of national versus multinational. The third chapter, by Christian Pelegrini and Maria Cristina Mungioli about the HBO Brazil drama series Magnifica 70 (2015–18), examines the industrial significance and cultural specificity of Boca do Lixo, a strain of Brazilian cinema whose 1970s heyday coincided with a period of violent, authoritarian rule for Brazilian society. The chapter combines exploration of the Brazilian industry’s more recent adjustment to the increasing activity of US-owned SVoDs in the Brazilian market with analysis of the cultural distinctions of this multi-season series. A key interest for the chapter is the aesthetic disjuncture between the ultra-low budgets that defined Boca de Lixo in the 1970s and the high production values that have been characteristic of HBOcommissioned dramas since 2000. The next three chapters are connected by their analysis of dramas produced in the UK, highlighting the increased commissioning of such dramas by or in coproduction with US-owned SVoDs. These chapters are further linked by their interest in the representation of cultural history and memory; especially in the ways in which TV dramas revisit and reassess significant events in the recent past (which also places them within living memory for some viewers). The first is Will Stanford Abbiss’ examination of The Crown, whose lavish production values and narratively complex, multi-season investigation of the British monarchy made it a turning point for its host provider, Netflix. Abbiss demonstrates that The Crown’s transnational and intergenerational appeal derive notable support from the drama’s framing of history in ways that are accessible to audiences of all ages, allowing The Crown to reach across the expected divides of cultural

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

27

memory. The Crown is also distinguished, as Abbiss explains, by its narrative engagement with wider socio-cultural and political developments, including the experiences of ordinary citizens. The second chapter is Trisha Dunleavy’s analysis of It’s a Sin (2021), a limited serial and cross-­ platform coproduction for Channel 4 and HBO. While this chapter traces the genesis of this important production—including its commissioning by Channel 4 and its cultural significance as ‘authored drama’—it emphasises It’s a Sin’s representation of a highly destructive and prolonged cultural conflict, its investigation of the devastating impacts on gay men, and the convergence of these elements in what the narrative shows are peak years for “anti-gay sentiment in the UK” (Nicholls, 2021). The third chapter in this group is Janet McCabe’s exploration of Chernobyl (2019), a co-­ commission for Sky Atlantic and HBO. McCabe investigates Chernobyl as a unique and “commemorative” TV drama that makes a significant contribution to what she terms the “restricted cultural field of TV production” occupied by such dramas. McCabe’s chapter provides a compelling examination of how historical discourses and representations operate, gaining additional potency in this case from the catastrophic nature of this disaster and its status (more than 30  years on) as a still contested transcultural memory. McCabe poses and answers the key questions of what it means to construct and produce transcultural memories of such significance decades after the event itself and in the context of a transnational collaboration. The next three chapters are connected not only through their shared interest in cultural specificity and use of local languages, but also through their innovation as dramas that foreground female experience in male-­ dominated societies. The first chapter, by Marta Lopera-Marmol, Ona Anglada Pujol, and Manel Jiménez-Morales, examines the trajectory and triumph of Les de I’Hoquei/The Hockey Girls (2019–20), a feminist drama series from Catalonia, which was initially produced for this region’s TV3 network but whose potential saw it attract a co-commissioning deal with Netflix. The chapter locates this show’s concept within the international popular sub-genre of ‘coming-of-age’ drama, before examining the characteristics of this series, which follows a group of teenage girls who defy the constraints of a male-dominated culture by forming a successful girls’ hockey team. As a production that was co-written by Anglada above and developed/created as a final-year university thesis project, the chapter offers intriguing insider perspectives to explain how the potentially conflicting objectives of cultural specificity and universal appeal are negotiated and how feminist politics were able to inform and distinguish the

28 

T. DUNLEAVY

coming-­of-­age perspectives and experiences being depicted. The second chapter in this group is Elke Weissmann’s analysis of Zeit der Gehimnisse/Holiday Secrets (2019) a Netflix-commissioned limited serial in the German language. Highlighting conservative tendencies in German society that have helped sustain an unusually gendered society in which men still assume dominant roles and adult women continue to be relegated to the domestic sphere, Weissmann affirms the rarity of German TV dramas with more progressive representations of women. In the face of this challenge, a slew of recent German-produced high-end dramas (as part of a wider effort by TV providers to solicit younger viewers) have brought innovation to representations of women. While multichannel competition for young adults is important in driving change, another influence on new German TV drama is the evident popularity, with this strategically crucial demographic, of US-produced dramas. German drama production, Weissmann explains, is subject to increasing competition between the national and multinational providers who both need it. Zeit der Gehimnisse, this chapter shows, exemplifies a broader effort by German drama producers and writers to develop and perfect a German form of ‘quality TV drama’, as one that combines domestic with international appeal, and achieves the above objectives through the more frequent use of active, complex, and autonomous female characters. The third chapter is Deniz Zorlu’s examination of Atiye/The Gift, a multi-season Turkishlanguage serial produced for Netflix. Zorlu’s analysis suggests that this Netflix-commissioned drama deviates significantly from Turkish dramas created for domestic networks. Three contexts are fuelling the emergence of more progressive Turkish TV dramas: the authoritarianism of the Turkish government, the tendency of Turkish history to define national identity in terms of religion and masculinity, and the traditional foregrounding of male characters and perspectives in Turkish screen production. In addition to the centrality and individual agency that Atiye gives to its female title character, Zorlu’s analysis demonstrates how this Netflix drama also deviates from the traditions of Turkish TV drama in its investigations of diverse and historic cultural and religious identities and in its celebration of input of female characters within these cultures. The final trio of chapters share an interest in the exploration of different, usually oppositional, cultural, ethnic, and/or religious allegiances that operate inside and have the capacity to forge divided loyalties within, a given national culture. The first chapter in this group is Eik Dödtmann’s analysis of Unorthodox, a limited serial produced for Netflix. Adapted from

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

29

the novel by Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox offers the novelty of an ‘insider’ perspective on the practices, beliefs, and culture of a geographically dispersed, yet socially isolated Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Unorthodox follows the defection, escape, and subsequent challenges of a young, newly married woman, Esther Schapiro (Shira Haas), who abandons her Satmar Hasidic sect in Williamsburg, New York, for the relative freedoms of Berlin. Providing rare and fascinating insights into the constraints of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish culture through his analysis of this story, Dödtmann also places Unorthodox in the context of the Israeli TV drama with which it most closely connects and examines key elements of the debates that occurred following the release of this drama within Jewish communities in both the US and Germany. The second in this group is a chapter by Joanna Rydzewska and Elżbeita Durys about World on Fire (2019-present), a multi-season serial drama coproduced by the BBC and US public network, PBS. The authors use World on Fire to evidence an increased international interest in elements of cultural specificity, a trajectory that finds support in other chapters of this book. Observing the juxtaposition of different national experiences that separate World on Fire from most other dramas about World War II, the authors focus on the novelty of this drama’s investigation of Polish experiences and perspectives which are rarely available in contemporary high-end TV fiction about this war. Finding a context for this drama’s foregrounding of Polish experiences and identity in recent Polish immigration to the UK and the BBC’s response to this, Rydzewska and Durys examine how this specificity is evidenced in World on Fire’s first season. The final book chapter is Juan-­ Pablo Osman’s examination of El Robo del Siglio/The Great Heist (2020), a Colombian-produced limited serial, commissioned by Netflix. Osman’s focus in this instance is El Robo del Siglio’s deployment and evocation of a longstanding cultural dichotomy in Colombia between the Costeños and Cachacos, as opposing groups that are aligned with different Colombian territories and whose differences from each other (which have been exaggerated in Colombian film and TV productions) have provided an important source of domestic conflict. While several book chapters combine to infer that SVoD commissioning can bring the opportunity to deviate from longstanding domestic traditions for representation and to this extent challenge existing representational boundaries, Osman’s analysis suggests that this potential can be maximised only as far as the domestic producers and writers who create this transnational drama feel able to take this opportunity.

30 

T. DUNLEAVY

Acknowledgement  This research was supported by a University Research Grant from Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. This was awarded in 2020 for a research project developed in collaboration with Elke Weissmann and titled ‘New Directions for Transnational High-End Drama in TV’s Multiplatform Era’.

References Afilipoaie, A., Iordache, C., & Raats, T. (2021). The Netflix ‘Original’ and What It Means for the Production of European Content. Critical Studies in Television, 16(3), 304–325. Akyuz, G. (2022). Time to Learn the New Language of Localisation. C21 Media News. Available at: https://www.c21media.net/department/ahead-­of-­the-­ curve/time-­to-­learn-­the-­new-­language-­of-­localisation/. Accessed 28 October 2022). Biskind, P. (2007). An American Family. Vanity Fair. Available at: https://archive. vanityfair.com/article/2007/4/an-­american-­family. Accessed 19 Mar 2023. Bondebjerg, I. (2017). The Perfect Storm: European Television Policy and the Emergence of Streaming Services. In I.  Bondebjerg, E.  Novrup Redvall, R.  Helles, S.  Sophus Lai, H.  Søndergaard, & C.  Astrupgaard (Eds.), Transnational European Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences (pp. 49–77). Palgrave Macmillan. Bonner, F. (2003). Ordinary Television: Analysing Popular TV. Sage. C21Media. (2022). Theme Festival – Non-English Language Drama. Available at: https://www.c21media.net/screenings/nonenglishlanguagedrama22/. Accessed 1 Nov 2022. Doyle, G. (2019). Public Policy, Independent Television Production, and the Digital Challenge. Journal of Digital Media and Policy, 10(2), 145–162. Doyle, G., Paterson, R., & Barr, K. (2021). Television Production in Transition; Independence, Scale, Sustainability and the Digital Challenge. Palgrave Macmillan. Dunleavy, T. (2005). Ourselves in Primetime: A History of New Zealand Television Drama. University of Auckland Press. Dunleavy, T. (2009). Television Drama: Form Agency Innovation. Palgrave Macmillan. Dunleavy, T. (2018). Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television. Routledge. Dunleavy, T. (2020). Transnational Co-production, Multiplatform Television and My Brilliant Friend. Critical Studies in Television, 15(4), 336–356. Edgerton, G. R. (2023). Mad Men. Wayne State University Press. Ellis, J. (2000). Seeing Things: Television in the Era of Uncertainty. Routledge.

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

31

Esser, A. (2020). The Appeal of ‘Authenticity’: Danish Television Series and their British Audiences. In P. M. Jensen & U. C. Jacobsen (Eds.), The Global Appeal of Danish Television Drama (pp. 39–56). Gothenburg. Fontaine, G., & Pumares, J. (2020). European High-End Fiction Series: State of Play and Trends. European Audiovisual Observatory. Available at: https:// rm.coe.int/european-­h igh-­e nd-­f iction-­s eries-­s tate-­o f-­p lay-­a nd-­t rends-­g -­ fontaine-­a/16809f80cd. Accessed 28 Feb 2022. Hagedorn, R. (1995). Doubtless To Be Continued: A Brief History of Serial Narrative. In R.  C. Allen (Ed.), To Be Continued… Soap Operas Around the World (pp. 27–48). Routledge. Havas, J., & Sulimma, M. (2020). Through the Gaps of My Fingers: Genre, Femininity and Cringe Aesthetics in Dramedy Television. Television and New Media, 21(1), 75–94. Havens, T. (2018). Transnational Television Drama and the Aesthetics of Conspicuous Localism. FlowTV. Available at: http://www.flowjournal. org/2018/04/transnational-­television-­dramas/. Accessed 23 June 2019. Hazelton, J. (2019). Emmys 2019: How Novel Adaptations Are Driving the Peak-TV Boom. Screen Daily. Available at: https://www.screendaily.com/features/emmys-­2 019-­h ow-­n ovel-­a daptations-­a re-­d riving-­t he-­p eak-­t v-­ boom/5140085.article. Accessed 23 Nov 2021. Higgins, J. (2006, September 18). American Television Rebounds Worldwide. Broadcasting and Cable, pp. 18–9. Hilmes, M. (2014). Transnational TV: What Do We Mean by Coproduction Anymore? Media Industries, 1(2), 10–15. Hoskins, C., McFadyen, S., & Finn, A. (1998). The Effect of Cultural Differences on the International Co-production of Television Programs and Feature Films. Canadian Journal of Communication, 23(4), 523–538. Jaramillo, D. (2013). Rescuing Television from the Cinematic: The Perils of Dismissing Television Style. In J.  Jacobs & S.  Peacock (Eds.), Television Aesthetics and Style (pp. 67–75). Bloomsbury. Jenner, M. (2016). Is this TVIV? On Netflix, TVIII and Binge-watching. New Media and Society, 18(2), 257–273. Jenner, M. (2018). Netflix and the Re-Invention of Television. Palgrave Macmillan. Lawes, R. (2022). Watch Your Languages. Ahead of the Curve: Non-English-­ Language Drama. C21 Drama, Spring 2022, 77–78. Lotz, A.  D. (2016). The Paradigmatic Evolution of US Television and the Emergence of Internet-distributed Television. Icono, 14(2), 122–142. Lotz, A.  D. (2017). Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. Maize Books. Lotz, A. D. (2019). Teasing Apart Television Industry Disruption: Consequences of Meso-level Financing Practices Before and After the US Multiplatform Era. Media, Culture and Society, 41(7), 923–938.

32 

T. DUNLEAVY

Lotz, A.  D. (2021). In Between the Global and the Local: Mapping the Geographies of Netflix As a Multinational Service. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 24(2), 195–215. McElroy, R., & Noonan, C. (2019). Producing British Television Drama: Local Production in a Global Era. Palgrave Macmillan. Mittell, J. (2013). Vast versus Dense Seriality in Contemporary Television. In J.  Jacobs & S.  Peacock (Eds.), Television Aesthetics and Style (pp.  45–56). New York and London. Moran, A. (1985). Images and Industry: Television Drama Production in Australia. Currency Press. Nelson, R. (2007). State of Play: Contemporary High-End TV Drama. Manchester University Press. Nicholls J (2021) Growing up in Silence: A Short History of Section 28. Twenty-­ Six Digital. Available at: https://www.twentysixdigital.com/blog/growing-­ up-­silence-­short-­history-­section-­28/. Accessed 25 July 2021. Ofcom. (2020). Small Screen: Big Debate – A Five-Year Review of Public Service Broadcasting (2014-18). Available at: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/ assets/pdf_file/0013/192100/psb-­five-­year-­review.pdf. Accessed 2 Nov 2021. Ofcom. (2021). Media Nations: UK 2021. Available at: https://www.ofcom.org. uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/222890/media-­nations-­report-­2021.pdf. Accessed 2 Nov 2022. Ofcom. (2022). Media Nations: UK 2022. Available at: https://www.ofcom.org. uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/242701/media-­nations-­report-­2022.pdf. Accessed 15 Oct 2022. Owen, R. (2018). My Brilliant Friend Brings Italian Voices to Premium Cable on HBO. Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2018/tv/features/my-­ brilliant-­f riend-­h bo-­s ubtitled-­d rama-­i talian-­l anguage-­t v-­1 202742619/. Accessed 12 Feb 2019. Pearson, R. (2021). ‘The biggest drama in British television history’: Netflix, The Crown and the UK Television Ecosystem. In L. Barra & M. Scaglioni (Eds.), A European Television Fiction Renaissance: Premium Production Models and Transnational Circulation (pp. 86–100). Routledge. Pinto, J. (2022). Mare of Easttown Prodco Wiip Secures Additional Investment from Atwater Capital. C21Media News. Available at: https://www.c21media. net/news/mare-­o f-­e asttown-­p rodco-­w iip-­s ecures-­a dditional-­i nvestment-­ from-­atwater-­capital/. Accessed 28 Oct 2022. Rogers, M. C., Epstein, M., & Reeves, J. L. (2002). The Sopranos as HBO Brand Equity: The Art of Commerce in an Age of Digital Reproduction. In D. Lavery (Ed.), This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos (pp. 42–57). Wallflower Press and Columbia University Press. Ryan, M., & Littleton, C. (2017). TV Series Budgets Hit the Breaking Point as Costs Skyrocket in Peak TV Era. Variety. Available at: https://variety.

1  MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END… 

33

com/2017/tv/news/tv-­series-­budgets-­costs-­rising-­peak-­tv-­1202570158/. Accessed 26 Nov 2021. Steemers, J. (2004). Selling Television: British Television in the Global Marketplace. British Film Institute. Steemers, J. (2016). International Sales of U.K. Television Content: Change and Continuity in ‘The Space in Between’ Production and Consumption. Television and New Media, 17(8), 734–753. Straubhaar, J. D. (2007). World Television: From Global to Local. Sage. Waterson, J. (2022). Funding Cuts Mean BBC Can’t Compete with Netflix, Says Watchdog. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/ media/2022/dec/14/funding-­cuts-­mean-­bbc-­cant-­compete-­with-­netflix-­ says-­watchdog. Accessed 14 Dec 2022.

CHAPTER 2

Moving across Platforms and Cultures: From BBC to Syfy to Amazon Prime: The Adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle Richard Paterson

Introduction For many years, the Estate of Philip K.  Dick refused to countenance a screen adaptation of his cult 1962 novel The Man in the High Castle, despite the huge commercial and critical success of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, which had been loosely based on Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? As with the novel, the multi-season TV drama adaptation, The Man in the High Castle (Amazon, 2015–19) posits the consequences of the historical counterfactual of a victory in World War Two for the main Axis powers (Germany and Japan) and their post-war occupation of the US. This chapter outlines the history of the production, based on interviews with centrally involved executive producer, Stewart Mackinnon,

R. Paterson (*) University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_2

35

36 

R. PATERSON

from a small UK-based independent producer, Headline Pictures, and then considers the issues of representation and the development of the narrative beyond the text of the original novel. Its realisation involved the crossing of boundaries: after initial development funding from the UK’s formerly dominant national public service broadcaster, the BBC, then to a major specialist cable channel, Syfy, and finally landing with the SVoD platform, Amazon Prime, prioritising addressing audiences across the globe; as well as a critical extension of the narrative by the showrunner. The interviews with Mackinnon were part of a series of semi-structured interviews with senior UK executives selected from a range of company types (Paterson, 2018) to review the factors underpinning the evolution of the UK independent production sector (Doyle et al., 2021). The use of the same core questions in face-to-face interviews with individuals who had agency in this evolution (with follow-on questions specific to these individuals) provides critical first-hand evidence of the changing power dynamics of the screen industry and its decision-making1 as well as of the importance of networks and industry knowledge in securing talent. This approach enables analysis of the dynamics of change in a globally dispersed creative industry like television, in which success is linked to the behaviour of audiences. It is consistent with the methodological framework of engaged pluralism (Hassink & Klaerding, 2014) and is adequate to its inherent complexity. This case study provides an example of a small regionally located UK independent production company, Headline Pictures, a ‘true’ indie (meaning that it is not part of any larger group). In negotiating television’s fast-changing geographically dispersed production industry, this study exemplifies the consequences of a recent upsurge in transnational productions occurring outside the US, these often commissioned by multinational SVoDs operating in the UK and other territories.

Production History The Man in the High Castle was the first major drama commission by Amazon Prime Video in the UK. It forged a pathway for many commissions of productions around the world in terms of deal structure between a phenomenally wealthy SVoD platform and an independent producer, and consequently, in the evolution of the production landscape. The drama’s emergence had a complicated passage; first requiring the securing of rights for a screen adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel from what producer, Stewart Mackinnon, described as a “very industry savvy family,

2  MOVING ACROSS PLATFORMS AND CULTURES: FROM BBC TO SYFY… 

37

including one who is a very talented screenwriter” (Mackinnon, 2018). This involved the assistance of Ridley Scott, who had initially told him that he would never get the rights. However, as Mackinnon noted, “Ridley of course could open doors” (Mackinnon, 2018) not least because he had directed the hugely successful Blade Runner, also adapted from a Dick novel. The Man in the High Castle had a stop-start trajectory up until the commencement of the production phase, eventually ending up with the multi-­ season commission from Amazon Prime. The UK independent producer, Headline Pictures, headed by Stewart Mackinnon, had built a reputation for quality drama including producing the Dustin Hoffman-directed film Quartet and had initially secured the rights and a development deal for the screen adaptation at the BBC in partnership with the super-indie Fremantle, where Headline had a first-look deal. The first writer to be contracted was the Scottish screenwriter, Frank Deasy, but he was suffering from liver cancer and died. As Mackinnon explains: “we looked at his computer. Had he written anything? and his wife looked—[and] nothing” (Mackinnon, 2018). Mackinnon then enlisted British playwright Howard Brenton, famous for the controversial National Theatre production “The Romans in Britain”. Brenton scripted an initial two episodes as part of the development deal with the BBC. Brenton was well suited to the task having written 13 episodes of the BBC series Spooks (produced by UK Indie Kudos and in which he had given the series a sharp political edge). Polly Hill, then BBC Head of Drama, became very involved in the development process, until a critical juncture when, as Mackinnon explains: Howard wrote this unbelievable scene of Churchill being hung in the Tower…. Wow, that really is mainstream BBC love land, you know? Being torn out of The Telegraph, but of course that’s what would have happened …. It was symbolic and eh, so we did this … then at the BBC it went all the way to Ben Stephenson [then BBC Controller of Drama Commissioning]. He loved the script … but it went higher still. (Mackinnon, 2018)

When it came to the decision as to what to fully commission from several projects in development at the BBC, Mackinnon recalls, “I had a conversation … it was a really senior conversation and I was told ‘we either do Jane Campion’s series—Top of the Lake—or yours[…] We can only make one. You can get it made in America with Ridley attached with The Man

38 

R. PATERSON

in a High Castle’” (Mackinnon, 2018). Mackinnon was clear in his response that “if I take this to America it will become an American show”, but pragmatically followed up using his contacts at Universal. As he explains, I knew two guys that have since left. Mark Stern, who’s now running another huge corporation in America. …. Very well read and he said, “we’ll do it”[…] So, we said, “fantastic[…] Pick it up, we’ll develop it”[…] We signed the contract with them, and it was then done, you know, like sign it and the Americans are really fast, and they pick up the Fremantle money, they pick up the BBC money[…] Then, on the day they signed the contract, a call came from Universal. First they said “Stewart, can we now discuss about next steps? We want to do some more work on the script”. I said, “yeah. Well, we can do another pass”. And it continued “no, no. Not another pass[…] We want another writer”. (Mackinnon, 2018)

This was not an unusual occurrence as the choice of writer is a major factor in the calculative culture and market assemblage for any screen production in mitigating potential risk (Franklin, 2022: 50). While Brenton’s scripts for the BBC had basically just taken the book and adapted two episodes of a projected six, with no expectation of a returning series, Universal, with a view to maximising the potential international distribution in secondary markets, wanted to do eight episodes, and use an American writer. Mackinnon had to concede; he signed the contract. By the point when Universal asked if he had any thoughts, fortuitously Frank Spotnitz—a prominent American showrunner in long-form drama, most notably for The X-Files—had come to London and been introduced to Mackinnon and told him he would have liked to work on the adaptation. Mackinnon suggested using Spotnitz. Universal agreed and quickly contracted Spotnitz. Mackinnon notes that the first two Spotnitz’ episodes (which were initially destined for the Universal-owned Syfy channel) “were totally different from Howard Brenton’s” and were now wholly set in the US. However, again the unpredictability of the industry, in considerable flux at the time, intruded. Mackinnon received a call from business affairs at Universal Pictures telling him they had decided not to proceed into production of the series. When this became public knowledge, Amazon Prime Video got in touch with Headline Pictures. This was a point in time when little programming had yet been commissioned for Amazon Prime Video, the new

2  MOVING ACROSS PLATFORMS AND CULTURES: FROM BBC TO SYFY… 

39

SVoD service of the company, let alone any from non-US production companies. This was an important moment of transition in the screen production sector, with the emergence of SVoD platforms, which as Lobato (2019) has argued in relation to Netflix and which Amazon Prime has emulated, can be understood as a hybrid media technology that both deploys and develops a range of earlier forms while also incorporating distinctly digital elements, such as its algorithmic suggestion engine. Amazon perceived the huge revenue potential of this multinational market in its launch of Prime Video. One way of understanding these developments is as a continuing interpenetration of national and global media, which affects companies in sectors across the screen value chain as they adapt to a more geographically dispersed production sector in different territories of the world. The emergence of SVoD platforms has had a far-reaching impact on the screen production sector, providing new buyers and commissioners of content, as well as encouraging innovation in aesthetics and form. SVoDs have different objectives to those of the legacy broadcasters and are able and willing to commit much larger budgets, in turn innovating in genre formats. The differences in the tone and tenor of conversation between producer and commissioning body is captured by Mackinnon’s account: They said, “hey Stewart. I know you’ve got the rights and[…] I’ve talked to the estate, and I know your rights are running out,” because we had extended twice and, you know, it’s ruthless this business[…] And I knew the estate had other offers because everyone knows that things fall apart, so people say, “I will buy it”. (Mackinnon, 2018)

Prime Video asked whether Headline could shoot the pilot in three months and whether they could guarantee making 50 hours from the book. Mackinnon agreed to these provisions. Prime was clear that Headline would produce it but didn’t want prominent cast members because of the need for key players to commit to five years of work.2 In short, over the period between the initial BBC development and Amazon wanting to commission, Headline had lost the rights. As Mackinnon (2018) explains, “we were out of the rights by a few days, so they had us over a barrel, but they wanted the scripts and …. they were actually principled about it. They said, ‘look, you’ve developed this and we want you to remain involved, but we will produce it’”.

40 

R. PATERSON

Amazon Prime Video, a US-owned multinational SVoD, has considerable power in its relationship with most suppliers, but recognised that Headline was a small company and wouldn’t easily be able to manage a high-end TV serial drama production on this scale. Amazon Prime Video proposed the creation of a writers’ room in London, where Frank Spotnitz was then living. For Mackinnon this was an unmissable opportunity for a small company which had been unsuccessfully trying to make long-form drama but had failed, until then, to get anything commissioned. For Mackinnon “here we were, first commission from Amazon, first in Europe to get a commission for a big drama, huge drama, and I mean beyond comprehension of money” (Mackinnon, 2018). Mackinnon’s experience within the global world of film production networks facilitated his negotiation with Amazon. One of the key factors in the financing and negotiation by the different parties for any screen production is the assessment of the level of risk (Franklin, 2022). Mackinnon’s association with Ridley Scott, together with his willingness to adopt the American practice of establishing a writers’ room run by an established successful showrunner, enabled Headline to adapt organisationally and complete this first UK drama commission from Amazon Prime Video. After the BBC’s decision to fully commission Top of the Lake and not to proceed beyond the development phase with Man in the High Castle—which was possibly influenced by the availability of co-production finance (from Sundance TV) and the involvement and logistical support of Screen Australia for Top of the Lake—Headline had to forge its own route into the emerging model for high-end drama production for SVoDs, which necessitated having to work outside the UK’s established terms of trade, which vested copyright in the production company rather than the commissioning/financing organisation (Doyle & Paterson, 2008). This was a significant transition in financing practices for high-end drama production in the international arena. It also emerged just as leading UK commissioners, like BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC (now BBC Studios), were still seeking international financial partners for their high-end drama productions. At this point BBC Worldwide, for example, could no longer rely on the previously reliable stream of funding from PBS in the US, yet the UK’s ‘High-End Television Tax Relief’ scheme (mentioned in Chap. 1 of this book) had not yet been introduced. Although the BBC passed on The Man in the High Castle, which, if it had not, could have developed as a cross-platform production (Dunleavy, 2020), the BBC did subsequently begin to partner with SVoD players on

2  MOVING ACROSS PLATFORMS AND CULTURES: FROM BBC TO SYFY… 

41

other cross-platform co-productions, including Normal People and Conversations with Friends (with Hulu), Bodyguard (with Netflix), and Small Axe (with Amazon Prime). In the context of the strategies of broadcasters and the increasing dominance of large production companies in the UK, notably the consolidated super-indies formed through the process of mergers and acquisitions which followed the 2003 Communications Act (Doyle et  al., 2021), SVoDs had begun to create some problems. As Kevin Lygo, at vertically integrated commercial broadcaster ITV, intimated, there was a danger that they were feeding the streamers “our lunch” (Lygo cited in Doyle et  al., 2021: 118). The opportunities that emerged with the changes caused by big budget commissions based on the cost-plus model adopted by SvoDs3 have been generally welcomed by the independent sector. Yet at the same time, the consequential foregoing of future library sales requires a reduced role for the distribution arms of both broadcaster and super-indies. As Lygo explains: The way we looked at it was, in a perfect world[…] you want to own the content that you’re commissioning. And from the moment you commission this programme through to the end of its life you want to be continuing to earn off that intellectual property[…] And for the parent company ITV, almost as important as the money—though probably not as important—is the control that you have over it. So, the broadcaster can say, “Right, I don’t want this appearing on another channel for X years”. Whereas if you’re dealing with an independent, that’s a negotiation. (Kevin Lygo cited in Doyle et al., 2021: 117)

The changes in the configuration of the TV production sector have often pivoted around the ownership of IP, which has at times necessitated the intervention of the regulator to impose a code of practice (Paterson, 2017a; Doyle & Paterson, 2008), and the need for an extension of this practice to SVoDs has emerged in policy discussions in the UK. Amendments have been made to the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive in recent years to impose financial obligations on SVoDs to contribute to the financing of national production (Blázquez et al., 2022), though the EU has yet to mirror the UK’s support of independent producers with the assignment of IP exploitation to the production company even for national broadcasters.

42 

R. PATERSON

Mackinnon recalls his own experience of these changes as Amazon retained all the rights, but “negotiated a deal which gave Headline a share, like a movie, of the backend. Split it between the investor and the production company, they get recoup. Then you kind of divide it and then talent gets a bit and you, as a producer, get a bit. So, we really wrestled with them with that and got a very good deal”. Amazon Prime Video owned the rights and determined not to sell the series into secondary markets, such as Italy and France, where the SVoD had yet to be launched. This decision was no doubt informed by the planned gradual expansion of the service into other territories. The contract ignored the Terms of Trade then operational in the UK and thereby provided a challenge to the UK’s regulatory framework.4 Mackinnon, drawing on his experience in the negotiation of film finances, comments that: [At] this level of money everyone’s got to be tough, and you negotiate, and in the circumstances, we got the best, and we made the decision at the time. We [asked] “What are the choices?” and they knew it. I mean, everyone around the table knew that if we didn’t go with Amazon … we could maybe make it. But the estate knew that they could do it with Amazon and if they didn’t do it with Amazon there would be Netflix and new clients[…] [that] they have a property that will never go away. So, the estate was really savvy, you know, they’ve been selling those rights for years[…] [and] the rights were then bought by Amazon[…] They buy everything. (Mackinnon, 2018)

Once Frank Spotnitz became involved, the commission became less of a straightforward adaptation, instead using Dick’s basic premise for the novel and many of his characters, as the basis for a 50-hour serial narrative that would develop over four seasons and be labelled “developed by Frank Spotnitz”. When interviewed by Louise Mellor in 2015, Spotnitz was asked “How different were the four scripts for The Man in The High Castle that went to Syfy a little while back [from] the ten scripts that have been made for Amazon?” Spotnitz’s answer was: [E]pisodes one and two were almost identical, we changed very, very little. But three and four have changed quite significantly because originally, we were going to wrap it up in four episodes and then, if it was popular, continue it. When Amazon came on board, that was not the design at all. For instance, originally, in episode four, you met the Man in the High Castle. That doesn’t happen now at all. So, that was the biggest reconstruction we had to do. (Spotnitz in Mellor, 2015)

2  MOVING ACROSS PLATFORMS AND CULTURES: FROM BBC TO SYFY… 

43

With Spotnitz appointed as showrunner, production started on the first season and Spotnitz’s experience of US-styled writers’ rooms proved invaluable. The Man in The High Castle writers’ room was supported by specialist research advice from experts on the Second World War and on Japanese culture. Underlining the creative primacy of the showrunner as head writer and leading producer in long-form high-end TV drama, Mackinnon observes that, In this show I’m a non-writing exec producer and, you know, our company has a co-credit with Ridley’s company. It’s actually the showrunner that is the king or the queen[…] And your voice is under that[…] You have the hierarchy of the room and the showrunner. You will do a bible, the showrunner will write that, but it’s actually an assembly of all these writers, different people putting in ideas. They’re apportioned, have a respective episode, and their respective episode has got a beginning and an end, so there’s a coherent line. Then you put that bible and these scenarios—the bible being a breakdown of character and overarching story—one or two episodes—episodes one and two written usually by the showrunner and/or another writer—and then that will go for approval, and you will get notes on that. (Mackinnon, 2018)

In short, Spotnitz, in conjunction with the producers, mapped the key narrative points and storylines, which were then developed by individual writers. Mackinnon has emphasised how Spotnitz was keen to respect Dick’s work and that the key narrative elements were always agreed with Amazon. Mackinnon notes that one of the challenges encountered was in creating a narrative attuned to the primary US subscriber base for Amazon at the time. This was particularly problematic in terms of providing a context to enable American audiences to gain an understanding of what a national resistance movement there would look like. The genesis of The Man in the High Castle provides a contrast to earlier notions of internationally commissioned production. These were often co-productions, based on co-financing between broadcasters in different territories, with the hazards of an unclear focus being evidenced by the derided “Europuddings” of the 1980s, like Die Schwarzwaldklinik/Black Forest Clinic.5 This transition highlights co-dependencies in the evolution of the international production industry. As Trisha Dunleavy (2020) suggests, direct commissioning by the streamers became an important approach in this process of evolution, requiring cross-national dialogue

44 

R. PATERSON

between the commissioning SvoD seeking multinational reach and the production company operating in a different territory. However, direct commissioning and cross-platform co-production strategies (Dunleavy, 2020) both foreground the mix of contradictions and opportunities within national territories being faced by public broadcasters and independent production companies (Picard et al., 2016) and the coevolutionary landscape they now inhabit. Arguably, drama production companies are now obliged to develop scripts which may need to prioritise national specificity (especially if these are to be commissioned by or with national broadcasters) at the same time as being ready to pitch these same projects to multinational SVoDs whose priorities may be different. The success of Headline Pictures in delivering a successful box-set series to Amazon Prime, led to its acquisition by UGC, part of the French Gaumont Group. An interview conducted by Andreas Wiseman (2022) provides details of Gaumont’s strategy of producing fictional series across Europe for global streamers. The analysis of the consequences of the mergers and acquisitions regime in the UK after 2003 is outlined by Doyle, Paterson, and Barr (2021: 163) and shows the advantages of knowledge sharing and risk reduction across a group alongside financial certainty, as critical factors. Acquisition by a larger group was a major motivation in setting up many new independent production companies in the 2000s, often facilitated by intermediaries (Paterson, 2021). Mackinnon was clear that he “didn’t want[…] to be owned by a company” but liked UGC’s plan of “investing in people, not a business model” (Mackinnon, 2018). He also acknowledges that: [For a] small company to play big on the world stage, you have to have an association with a bigger company, [because you have to have] heft[…] I think my strategy now is to have a relationship with a platform[…] If you don’t have that then you’re really running around knocking on doors[…] You keep the overhead low—really low—[and] the skill is finding good people you can trust. (Mackinnon, 2018)6

This perspective contrasts interestingly, in terms of ambition and possibilities, with those of the early entrepreneurial founders of independent production companies in the UK in the 1980s (Paterson, 2017b). The fitness landscape of television drama production (Paterson, 2018), which is defined by the adaptive efforts of successful production companies to find and obtain the best creative capabilities and organisational

2  MOVING ACROSS PLATFORMS AND CULTURES: FROM BBC TO SYFY… 

45

structure, was significantly altered by the emergence of SVoD platforms that operate outside the purview of a national regulatory framework, which lead to a co-evolution of firms and initiated a succession of organisational adjustments. In the UK, these platforms benefitted from the innovative programming initiated by the national broadcasters, along with the availability of a skilled workforce across all departments and a mature industry infrastructure. Due to the possibilities opened by a growing multinational subscriber base, and using their financial strength, SVoDs were able to commit to very costly productions, with their investment leading to skills shortages in national industries, in turn raising labour costs. Production companies, particularly those with the necessary skills and knowledge, were able to negotiate beneficial contracts to create ambitious multi-season high-end dramas like The Man in the High Castle (other UK examples including Netflix’s The Crown from Left Bank Pictures and Sex Education from Eleven Films) and in so doing developing their businesses successfully in a highly competitive market.7

Representational Repertoire and Development of the Narrative As an early commission and audience success on Amazon’s SVoD platform, The Man in the High Castle suggests that one consequence of the current landscape for high-end drama commissions is that success for independent production companies is possible through the adaptation of successful novels and feature films into multi-season serial or limited serial TV dramas (see Chap. 1), some of which have cross-cultural elements. This process allows SVoDs to target a larger multinational audience by tapping into already familiar literary and/or film tropes and themes. Cassie Carter (1995) reflects on a series of relevant issues in Philip K.  Dick’s novel, focusing on the paradoxical ways in which the Japanese characters inhabit Americana, and the influence of orientalism. As she explains: Dick’s Japanese have colonised America following the guidelines set in Asia by Western imperialists. As products of centuries of Western colonization themselves, Dick’s Japanese characters, Tagomi and the Kasouras, are mirror images of Western ideals and values, reflecting back the West’s Orientalist construction of the East. At the same time, Dick’s ‘native’ Americans, especially Childan, are parodies of non-western peoples displaced through colonization. (Carter, 1995: 342)

46 

R. PATERSON

Carter also invokes Fanon’s (1961) characterisation of colonial subjectivity. However, a key question about the screen adaptation for Amazon Prime’s global audience is the extent to which these literary devices and features were, or even could be, retained in a TV drama adaptation. In developing the TV series, as noted above, Spotnitz introduced several key American characters which are not present in Dick’s novel—in particular, the Smith family (this comprising John, a former US Army officer who has risen to become Reichsmarshal of the Greater Nazi Reich in North America, his wife, Helen, and their three children). They become important characters in key narrative developments enabling the introduction of the theme of eugenics. This occurs when the diagnosis of the genetic disease of his son, Thomas, forces Smith to murder a doctor, thereby imperilling his position in the Nazi hierarchy. The infamous FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, assembles evidence against him and the case is further complicated when Helen murders the doctor’s wife. Family loyalty becomes a strong thematic element of the story, and this theme is paralleled among the Japanese occupation elite when the loyalist, Kido, seeks to protect his son. As Mackinnon acknowledges, these additional storylines increased the capacity for audience engagement in a multi-season narrative. Equally transformational in the narrative development of the TV drama adaptation of Dick’s novel is the replacement of the problematic book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which reveals the truth and copies of which are pursued by the Nazis. In Eric Brown’s introduction to Dick’s novel, readers are told that this was “written by the oracle” (Brown in Dick, 2001). However, in the TV drama, this problematic book becomes a series of films (viewers see film canisters labelled with the above identical name). These films reveal documentary footage showing that the axis powers lost the war. This is explained by Mackinnon as an attempt to use the potentials of screen storytelling to tap into the ways in which most of the American public are thought to gain an understanding of history. The introduction of the sci-fi-inspired notion of a parallel world does not occur in the novel. However, according to Mackinnon, this thread was derived from three unpublished chapters given to the production team by the Dick family. This alternative world is shown to be reached through the technological inventiveness of German scientists (led by the notorious Doctor Mengele) and is complemented and reinforced by occasional narrative interruptions which reveal that several characters (particularly Juliana and Tagomi) have been ‘travellers’ across these worlds.

2  MOVING ACROSS PLATFORMS AND CULTURES: FROM BBC TO SYFY… 

47

Insightful remarks about the representation of Japan in The Man in the High Castle were made by Frank Spotnitz in his 2015 interview with Louise Mellor. Spotnitz was born in Japan and had a Japanese nanny in his childhood, an experience that he considered to have given him useful insights into Japanese culture and helped him avoid some of the pitfalls of orientalism. As Spotnitz explains to Mellor: I left Japan when I was four, and my Japanese nanny came with me to the States for a year, so I was quite young, but it has stayed with me. Obviously, it’s held a very big place in my imagination, having been born there. To me, there are really two Japans. There’s the Japan of the Tagomi character, which is the sort of Buddhist Japan, the enlightened Japan, what I imagine Kyoto being like. And then there’s the other Japan, sort of embodied by the Inspector Kido character, which is unfamiliar to a lot of people alive today, which is fascist Japan, which is very brutal. The Japanese soldiers in World War II were every bit as terrifying as the Nazis. The two are not compatible, and that was really interesting to me in the show. That’s kind of why I wanted Juliana to be, on the one hand, studying Aikido, and recognising the beauty of it, but then on the other hand, somebody whose own father was killed by the Japanese. She is somebody who has the humanity to see both and that’s why she’s the heroine of this show. (Spotnitz in Mellor, 2015)

In addition, Spotnitz describes his intentions in relation to the original novel in broader philosophical terms and how he sees its relevance to contemporary politics: One of the big things that haunted me about this book is that the good guys didn’t win, and there’s nothing inevitable about good prevailing, and there’s nothing inevitable about our civilisation living up to its ideals. The only way it happens is if people are mindful of what their society is and if they act in accordance with their own convictions. Those are the questions I wanted to examine[…] I’m telling the story to people who are alive today in this moment, so I’m absolutely looking for relevance between the world depicted in this show and the world we live in now. (Spotnitz in Mellor, 2015)

For Mackinnon one of the problematic political factors in realising this narrative on screen was how to enable an American audience to identify with the members of the American resistance, who were engaged in an uprising against the occupying powers, Nazi Germany and Japan. Furthermore, he was concerned about issues of racial discrimination,

48 

R. PATERSON

finding that while he didn’t have to push for a Jewish voice, there was a need to argue for representation of Black Americans. Mackinnon notes that “in season two and in season three you do get the whole issue of a kind of oppression of the Jews, but personally, my frustration was, hold on a minute, half of America’s black. And you don’t have that voice…[There needs to be] Black actors” (Mackinnon, 2018). With such a high-profile adaptation of a cult novel, the promotion plans for early programming were critical to drive the subscription levels to Prime Video and the aim was to achieve such high visibility and shock value that audience discussion would go viral. Providing some examples of how this shock value was achieved in the US marketing of the production, Mackinnon recalls that “in season one, they decked out one of the New York subway stations as fascist, German swastikas everywhere and they were slammed, and they had to quickly withdraw it … The poster art was unbelievable” (Mackinnon, 2018). In order to maximise the effectiveness of the kinds of cultural and political issues involved in adapting Dick’s novel, experts were hired to redress the limited historical and cultural knowledge of the writers. The dynamic of dealing with the development of a novel for a TV drama serial addressing contemporary audiences has also been considered by Williams (2022), referencing Shirley Li’s comments on the Hulu adaptation of Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere. Li comments that: The show is clearly trying to cover the bases Ng couldn’t get to herself, and it’s admirable to see an adaptation try to improve upon its source material and write toward a savvy audience mindful of social and racial issues. Yet in some ways, it can feel like the show is being pulled in too many directions at once. (Li in Williams, 2022)

In short, the representation of history and cultures in the adaptation of The Man in the High Castle enable an understanding of the material conditions for addressing the desired multinational audience, which meant the team had to come to terms with contemporary expectations of cultural representation as well as with the necessity for understandable historical referents.

2  MOVING ACROSS PLATFORMS AND CULTURES: FROM BBC TO SYFY… 

49

Audiences and Borders The genesis of Man in The High Castle as a multi-season TV drama series is indicative of some of the issues raised by the transitions underway across the evolving international TV content supply chain in terms of the relationship between the gamut of representational issues in the production as well as the multinational reach and the potential diversity of intended audiences. By using the spatial metaphors invoked in complexity theory as applied to organisations (Paterson, 2018) and in public sphere arguments (Schlesinger, 2020), I aim to provide a more nuanced approach to issues of representation in the content offered in the new communicative spaces of consumption, which in television are constituted by the multinational reach of leading SVoDs. It suggests the need to take account of the evolving fitness landscape for production companies seeking a competitive advantage within the increasingly international and transnational production sector that has emerged in the multiplatform era and in which multinational SVoDs now co-exist and compete with national broadcasters, both public and commercial, in most territories. Headline Pictures’ experience with this series offers a good example of the need for maximum flexibility and compromise by a small independent production company when unable to secure a commission from the previously dominant national broadcasters. It is also a good example of the impact of the competition for original programming, and of an SVoD’s willingness to commit to a significantly higher cost of production (see Chap. 1), which in turn gives it an advantage in attracting audiences. Issues of representation both of war and of cultural types and artefacts play a significant role in the screen adaptation of The Man in the High Castle and no doubt influenced the audience response and indeed the initial decision by Amazon Prime Video to commission it. The history of the Second World War, as depicted in documentary and fiction, is an enduring element in Hollywood film and television and it enjoys a continuing audience interest. Both Germany and Japan are important markets for Amazon. Spotnitz addressed this question when asked whether he had encountered any hostility at all from Europeans about the way the series co-opts history to put America at centre stage and whether there is any sense from audiences that the fiction was not being responsible enough about the actual realities of World War 2. As Spotnitz observes, “it’s interesting to look at the customer reviews on the Amazon sites. If you look at the UK, US, and German sites, they’re almost identical in terms of the

50 

R. PATERSON

audience response” (Spotnitz in Mellor, 2015). With specific reference to German viewers, he continues, “Just go to the Amazon.de site. I don’t read German, but if you just look at the star ratings. At least the last time I checked, it was similar to the US and the UK” (Spotnitz in Mellor, 2015). In respect of the drama’s Japanese audience response, Spotnitz notes that, “I haven’t seen that yet. I haven’t seen how the Japanese responded. I’m very curious because obviously the culture is so different. I’m really eager to see how it plays” (Spotnitz in Mellor, 2015). In relation to the provocation for American viewers of seeing an American character and actor wearing a Nazi uniform, Spotnitz again offers a framing in terms of contemporary politics: I’d like people to watch the show and think about what they stand for. Those scenes that are so close to our world—that scene in episode two, the scene in episode one where Joe’s truck breaks down and the State Trooper offers him an egg-salad sandwich—they’re very, very close, but they’re different and it prompts you to think about what your values are. (Spotnitz in Mellor, 2015)

If a broader context is introduced to try to understand the way Spotnitz developed the story it seems appropriate to refer to the American view of Japan after the 1980s, developed when Japanese industry competed strongly in world markets, and which continues to be reflected to a large degree in this adaptation, albeit tempered by his upbringing. As Morley and Robins explain: For nearly five centuries Japan has been among the West’s Others. It has been seen as the exotic culture (zen, kabuki, tea-ceremonies, geishas) of aesthetic Japonisme[…] And it has been seen as an alien culture, a dehumanised martial culture (Kamikaze, ninjutsu, samurai) to be feared. Its difference has been contained in the idea of some mysterious ambiguity. Japan is the chrysanthemum and the sword. (Morley & Robins, 1995: 147)

The above characterisation of Japan as a culture and nation is informed by Benedict’s (1974: 2) generalisations about the nature of Japanese people. Here, Benedict contends that “The Japanese are to the highest degree both aggressive and unaggressive, militaristic, and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal, and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways” (Benedict, 1974: 2).

2  MOVING ACROSS PLATFORMS AND CULTURES: FROM BBC TO SYFY… 

51

In developing the narrative of the TV drama, Spotnitz continually deployed tropes of Japonisme, portraying the occupying force as being exploited by some of the now colonised Americans who seek profit from a Japanese fascination with Americana. This is portrayed alongside a Japanese political and military elite in increasing conflict with an Americanised Nazism and fearful of war with Germany. European and American technological superiority over the Japanese remains a dominant narrative theme. There is specific reference to the scientific genius which has built the time shifting alternative reality tunnel—die Nebenwelt (supervised by Dr. Mengele)—as well as the recurring image of a Nazi supersonic airliner connecting Berlin to the US (the latter now part of the Greater Nazi Reich). There is a clever weaving together of historical figures and events into the fictional narrative: the struggle to succeed Hitler as Reichsführer, for example, provides a particularly rich strand through which to develop Smith’s ruthless rise to the top. In this trajectory for Smith, Himmler and Eichmann figure as characters in some storylines, while the Japanese Crown Prince and senior army and navy personnel are important to storylines set in the Japanese zone. Other examples of the drama’s deployment of history include the filming of a documentary about Jahr Null by a young Lebensborn filmmaker. This character implicitly references Leni Riefenstahl and her role in creating Nazi propaganda films, whose work had been introduced to the writing team by Mackinnon. There is also the show’s incorporation of key post-war developments including references to the Cuban missile crisis. Spotnitz’s development of the narrative and the cinematographic design references World War Two and can be seen to propose and confirm the sort of Orientalism identified by Edward Said who defines the Orient “as a place isolated from the mainstream of European progress in the sciences, arts and commerce” (Said, 2003: 206) This trope is further emphasised in the interactions of Childan, who sells Americana (often fake) to the Japanese elite. Mellor asked Spotnitz about the role and influence of Ridley Scott as an executive producer of the series. As noted earlier in this chapter, Scott had helped secure the rights having directed Blade Runner, which Morley and Robins described as replete with techno-orientalism. In reply, Spotnitz explains that, We spoke to him every month or six weeks while we were preparing the pilot and the series. He was very influential in terms of the visual approach, both in the cinematography and the production design. He gave us several refer-

52 

R. PATERSON

ences to look at, films and fine art… Two primary ones for me, anyway, the directors might cite other films, but the ones I found the most influential were Blade Runner, of course, and The Conformist by Bertolucci. And in terms of fine art, it was Edward Hopper. There were Hopper paintings … and…the big thing obviously, was the origami that we gave a character in episodes one and two. (Spotnitz in Mellor, 2015)

A core element of Spotnitz’s screenplay is its articulation of a traditional Western view of European/American technical superiority over the Japanese. At the centre of the narrative is the competition for supremacy between the Nazis and the Japanese; the Occident over the Orient, albeit cleverly acknowledging the tensions and struggle for power between rival groups within both regimes, while also suggesting the critical role of the Black population in the American resistance to the occupation (supplied with arms by the Chinese). From their inception, leading SVoDs have very deliberately commissioned programming in the territories in which they operate, to secure increased penetration in these markets whilst simultaneously trying to ensure the allure of their programming to an international subscriber base. In so doing, they have learned from the practices of national public broadcasters, while at the same time recognising the historic audience appeal of Hollywood-produced fare across the world. Many of Europe’s commercial broadcasters, for example, Berlusconi in Italy (Richeri, 1985), have deployed imported programming, mainly from the US, to build and sustain their audiences. Despite this, research has consistently demonstrated that audiences enjoy and prefer programmes that reflect their culture (often supported by a legislated regulatory framework).8 Accordingly, in commissioning productions from non-US markets, SVoDs have sought to benefit from the creative excellence available in those territories, to gain favourable local reactions, and to avoid unwanted regulatory entanglements. This approach has continued as the streamers have launched in many more territories across the world, extending into Africa in 2022 with multiple commissions by Amazon Prime in Nigeria.9

Conclusions This chapter provides an important case study of transitions to the fitness landscape of the evolving economy and geography of television production, as leading SVoDs began to commission programming from

2  MOVING ACROSS PLATFORMS AND CULTURES: FROM BBC TO SYFY… 

53

independent producers in a range of countries outside the US. The programming created from these ongoing commissions has been a significant factor in establishing the allure of Amazon Prime Video and other SVoD services in many territories and this success is incentivising further increases in their level of investment in non-US TV drama productions. By 2021, the combined SVoD share of investment in European original content had reached 16 per cent of the total investment in this content.10 The SVoD’s strategy has required an interplay of discourses and representations in the programming that is commissioned in order to meet and sometimes challenge the perceived expectations of their multinational subscribers and to pursue cultural authenticity as well as engagement and entertainment. Furthermore, the fitness landscape and industry evolution across the value chain has been driven in part by the need to commission programming which will attract audiences around the world. Headline Pictures, the key production company for Man in the High Castle provides a revealing example of this evolution as experienced in the UK’s production sector because it pioneered the complex negotiations through a direct commission with Amazon Prime, which aimed to create a multi-season high-end adaptation of a complex intercultural narrative; a project that had initially been developed for the UK’s leading national broadcaster, the BBC. The adaptation had to deal carefully with issues of representation from such a significant period of history, employing expert advice to maintain historical accuracy at the same time as striving to avoid alienating audiences, especially in the German and Japanese markets. Headline’s success with Man in the High Castle, led to the company’s acquisition by the French vertically integrated conglomerate, UGC, itself pursuing a policy of acquisitions across territories as a means to satisfy the content appetites of the ever more important and influential SVoD platforms. Acknowledgements  Some of the research reported here was carried out as part of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project “Television Production in Transition: Independence, Scale and Sustainability” (Grant number ES/N015258/1) at the Centre for Cultural Policy Research, University of Glasgow. A related book, Television Production in Transition: Independence, Scale, Sustainability and the Digital Challenge, (by Gillian Doyle, Richard Paterson, and Kenneth Barr) was published in 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan. The author would like to express his particular thanks to Stewart Mackinnon for enduring a lengthy interview and several follow ups online and by phone, to Philip Schlesinger and Gillian Doyle for commenting on the first draft of this article, and to the editors for ensuring greater clarity where this was needed.

54 

R. PATERSON

Notes 1. A request to secure access to the scripts written by Howard Brenton was unsuccessful but would have provided insights into the impact of a globally oriented SVoD on an adaptation originally developed for a British audience. 2. In so doing Amazon went against the standard industry practice in film production, where a major consideration in mitigating the risk of investment relates to the casting of bankable stars (Franklin, 2022: 78–79). 3. This was the practice at Channel Four from its inception until the implementation of the new Code of Practice in 2003 for the Terms of Trade following concerted lobbying by the independent producer’s trade body, PACT (Paterson, 2017a). In contracts of this type between the production company and the commissioning organisation, a percentage of the production cost is added to provide a profit to the production company, but the commissioning company which provides 100 per cent of the finance retains the intellectual property rights. 4. It is noteworthy that with the reduction in subscriber numbers in 2022, and the increasing threat of intervention by regulatory bodies to bolster producer rights. Netflix, one of Amazon Prime’s main competitors, began to alter its business model and was discussing “windowing” of its commissioned programmes thus allowing producers to benefit from secondary sales to terrestrial broadcasters (Barker, 2022). 5. As Dunleavy (2020: 346) notes “‘Cross-platform co-production’ deviates from earlier approaches to international co-production because it involves a partnership between a national broadcaster and a premium network”. 6. As a result of the tie-up with UGC, Headline was selected to do an English-­ language adaptation of the Netflix comedy series Dix Pour-Cent/Call My Agent for Amazon Prime in 2021. 7. Although in 2021 streaming platforms fuelled spending with a record £737 million investment in UK film and TV, by mid-2022 there was a sharp turnaround for the industry, as streaming services began to cut shows a year after a record £5.64 billion (€6.60 billion) spend on British film and TV in 2021, up from £4 billion in 2020. These cuts followed falling subscription levels for the streamer platforms post-pandemic leading to further insolvencies being expected among production companies, as the recent successes had been tied to that spending from streaming giants (Advanced Television, 2022a). 8. See, for example, research reported from across Europe in Musso (1991). 9. See Middleton (2022). 10. According to a report from the European Audiovisual Observatory (Advanced Television, 2022b).

2  MOVING ACROSS PLATFORMS AND CULTURES: FROM BBC TO SYFY… 

55

References Advanced Television. (2022a). Research: UK Prodco Insolvencies Jump 69%. Available at: https://advanced-­television.com/2022a/08/30/research-­uk-­ prodco-­insolvencies-­jump-­69/. Accessed 5 Oct 2022. Advanced Television. (2022b). Report: Streamers 16% of EU Original Content Investment. Available at: https://advanced-­television.com/2022b/09/08/ report-­streamers-­16-­of-­eu-­original-­content-­investment/. Accessed 5 Oct 2022. Barker, A. (2022). Netflix Is Starting to Look More Like Traditional TV. Financial Times. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/06a16b89-­1fea-­4baf-­90b0-­ e518877ac484. Accessed 5 Oct 2022. Benedict, R. (1974). The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. Houghton Mifflin. Blázquez, F., Cappello, M., Milla, J., & Valais, S. (2022). Iris PLUS. European Audio-visuals Observatory. Carter, C. (1995). The Metacolonization of Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle”: Mimicry, Parasitism, and Americanism in the PSA. Science Fiction Studies, 22(3), 333–342. Dick, P. K. (2001). The Man in the High Castle. Penguin. Doyle, G., & Paterson, R. (2008). Public Policy and Independent Television Production in the UK. Journal of Media Business Studies, 5(3), 17–33. Doyle, G., Paterson, R., & Barr, K. (2021). Television Production in Transition: Independence, Scale, Sustainability and the Digital Challenge. Palgrave Macmillan. Dunleavy, T. (2020). Transnational Co-production, Multiplatform Television and My Brilliant Friend. Critical Studies in Television, 15(4), 336–356. Fanon, F. (1961). The Wretched of the Earth. Penguin. Franklin, M. (2022). Risk in the Film Business: Known Unknowns. Routledge. Hassink, R., & Klaerding, C. (2014). Advancing Evolutionary Economic Geography by Engaged Pluralism. Regional Studies, 48(7), 1295–1307. Lobato, R. (2019). Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York University Press. Mackinnon, S. (2018). Author Interview, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2 October. Mellor, L. (2015). Frank Spotnitz Interview: The Man in the High Castle. Den of Geek. Available at: https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/frank-­spotnitz-­interview-­ the-­man-­in-­the-­high-­castle/. Accessed 13 Mar 2023. Middleton, R. (2022). Amazon ups Nigeria Spending with Unscripted & Movie Commissions. Television Business International. Available at: https://tbivision. com/2022/08/08/amazon-­ups-­nigeria-­spending-­with-­unscripted-­movie-­ commissions/. Accessed 5 Oct 2022. Morley, D., & Robins, K. (1995). Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. Routledge.

56 

R. PATERSON

Musso, P. (1991). Regions d’Europe et Television. Editions Miroirs. Paterson, R. (2017a). The Competition Discourse in British Broadcasting Policy. CReaTe. Available at: https://www.create.ac.uk/publications/the-­ competition-­discourse-­in-­british-­broadcasting-­policy/. Accessed 13 Mar 2023. Paterson, R. (2017b). Early Independent Production Entrepreneurs in UK Television: Agents of a Neo-Liberal Intervention. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing, 9(3), 280–298. Paterson, R. (2018). Modelling the Evolution of the TV Drama Production Sector in the UK. CReATe. Available at: https://www.create.ac.uk/publications/ modelling-­t he-­e volution-­o f-­t he-­t v-­d rama-­p roduction-­s ector-­i n-­t he-­u k/. Accessed 13 Mar 2023 Paterson, R. (2021). Handmaidens of Consolidation in the UK Television Production Sector. Journal of Media Business Studies, 19(3), 168–184. Picard, R., Davis, C. H., Papandrea, F., & Park, S. (2016). Platform Proliferation and Its Implications for Domestic Content Policies. Telematics and Informatics, 33(2), 683–692. Richeri, G. (1985). Television from Service to Business: European Tendencies and the Italian Case. In P. Drummond & R. Paterson (Eds.), Television in Transition (pp. 21–35). BFI Publishing. Said, E. (2003). Orientalism. Penguin. Schlesinger, P. (2020). After the Post-public Sphere. Media, Culture and Society, 42(7-8), 1545–1563. Williams, S. (2022). Revising The Scarlet Letter: Race and Motherhood in ’In the Blood’ and ’Little Fires Everywhere’. Adaptation, 15(1), 51–67. Wiseman, A. (2022). Gaumont Chiefs Sidonie Dumas & Christophe Riandee on the Future of Lupin & Narcos and Their New Paramount+ Deal, European Expansion & Talent Deals – MIP TV Interview. Deadline Hollywoodj. Available at: https:// deadline.com/2022/04/lupin-­n arcos-­n etflix-­s pinoffs-­s eries-­g aumont-­ paramount-­deal-­profile-­1234994406/. Accessed 5 Oct 2022.

CHAPTER 3

Netflix and Borgen: A Match Made in…? Jakob Isak Nielsen

Introduction The licensing, co-financing and commissioning activities of globally oriented subscription-video-on-demand (SVoD) services in local media markets are accompanied by a complex set of repercussions depending on the particularities of the respective industry (Nielsen, 2016b; Dunleavy, 2020; Sundet, 2021). This chapter focuses on one such case, namely the new season of critically acclaimed Borgen (subtitled Riget, magten og æren/Power and Glory),1 released in 2022 by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) and subsequently on Netflix. How and why the new season of Borgen came into being exemplifies a wide range of interesting dynamics within a field that is both marked by complex commercial and media political agendas. Borgen is—or rather was—a flagship production of DR’s drama division and central to the international success of Danish TV drama in the 2010s. Borgen was exemplary in terms of being an in-house original drama airing in DR’s historically significant Sunday 8–9 pm drama slot (Degn & Kroager, 2017) and of DR’s so-called production dogmas such as ‘one

J. I. Nielsen (*) Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_3

57

58 

J. I. NIELSEN

vision’, ‘double storytelling’, and ‘cross-over’ kicking into gear (Nørgaard, 2011; Redvall, 2013). However, for the current season, the drama division at DR not only co-financed the series together with Netflix but also outsourced the production to SAM Productions. According to the former Head of Drama at DR, Christian Rank, it is the first time we have entered into such a close collaboration with a big streaming service with those opportunities that it brings with it. On the one hand, it gives us the opportunity to deliver more public service drama of high quality to Danish viewers and on the other hand, this agreement makes it possible for us to bring more funds to the Danish production community. (Rank cited in Mejdahl, 2020, author’s translation)

Omitted from Rank’s account is the thorny side of the deal, namely the challenges of such a collaboration. The new production set-up of Borgen can be understood diametrically opposed to how it is presented by Rank: as representing a low point for DR as a public service institution and a significant sign of crisis within DR’s drama division. As late as 2016, DR’s drama division was awarded an International Emmy Directorate Award presented by Birgitte Hjort Sørenson, star of Borgen, to Maria Rørbye Rønn, Director General of DR. A few years later, DR is crumbling beneath budgetary cutbacks and the same division is now succumbing to sequelising its classic shows such as Riget and Borgen in collaboration with such commercial players as Netflix and Viaplay—something that former heads of drama had consciously avoided (Bernth in Nielsen, 2012b). What are we to make of the Borgen case? Taking a wider media/political context into consideration, this chapter will situate Borgen: Power and Glory within the larger historical development sketched at the outset of the chapter. Borgen: Power and Glory will be shown to represent a “site of conflict” and an “intersection of several discourses” (Gunning, 1990) situated within the transnational television culture of the multiplatform era (Dunleavy, 2020). These dynamics come into play in regard to the financing and production arrangements of the current season and are also reflected in the show itself.

3  NETFLIX AND BORGEN: A MATCH MADE IN…? 

59

The Case of Borgen There is a substantial body of literature on contemporary Danish drama series (Redvall, 2013; Agger, 2020; Waade et  al., 2021) and on Borgen specifically; there are production analyses (Nørgaard, 2011; Redvall, 2013; Grønlund, 2022), analyses of its generic and narrative design (Agger, 2010; Kraglund, 2014; Philipsen, 2018; Hochscherf, 2019); studies of the reception of Borgen amongst audiences, journalists and other cultural intermediaries (Sparre & From, 2017; Jacobsen & Jensen, 2020; McCabe, 2020); studies of its mediatization/fictionalization of politics (Bondebjerg, 2015; Wodak & Forchtner, 2017; Nitsch et al., 2020); analyses of its (presumed) influence on political observation and interest (Kristensen & Gabrielsen, 2011) 2 and analyses of its (presumed) agenda-setting impact (Kraglund, 2014; Boukes et al., 2020). For the purposes of this chapter, publications that discuss the funding of drama series at DR (Hammerich, 2015; Jensen et al., 2016; KPMG and Struensee, 2018) are also important.3 My analyses, discussions and reflections will draw on these sources. The exact details of the co-funding arrangement between DR and Netflix are classified. Nevertheless, the combination of two sources provides enough detail about the collaboration and funding arrangements to discuss them here. The first consists of two sets of questions posed to former Minister of Culture, Joy Mogensen. DR provided comprehensive replies about the collaboration. Returning DR’s replies to the Cultural Committee, Mogensen also supplied her own remarks. The other source consists of interviews with showrunner Adam Price. Beyond his role as showrunner, Price was the most important source because other key personnel had shifted across the first three seasons to the fourth (the producer, key participants in the writing room and the conceptualizing director) and because his positionality had changed. When Borgen was an in-house production, Price was in an employer-employee relationship with DR. Subsequently, Price, Søren Sveistrup and Meta Louise Foldager co-­ founded SAM Productions in 2014, the company that DR commissioned to produce the fourth season. Price’s positionality shift is itself embedded within the larger media systemic shifts brought about by the international success of DR’s drama series as well as the boom in international high-end television production. The process of interviewing Price calls for methodological reflections since it is a central source for the chapter and because the applied methodology sits between different interview techniques and communicative

60 

J. I. NIELSEN

genres.4 The semi-structured qualitative interview (in-person, by phone or online) with exclusive informants (Bruun, 2014) has proven central to production and media industry studies research and has also been important to my own research. Nevertheless, in this case, I chose an interview methodology inspired by moderating panels and Q and As with industry stakeholders. The data generating procedure can be split into two parts: a ‘backstage’ semi-structured qualitative interview (Price, 2022) and a subsequent public event, typically in the form of a panel or—as in this case—a Q and A session (Nielsen, 2022). Individually and in combination, both these interview elements have a number of functions. Price is not only an exclusive informant but also an elite interviewee (Harvey, 2011) within what Moore and Stokes refer to as the Macro-Elite/Celebrity category (2012); being a ‘household name’ in Denmark and a celebrity within niche communities internationally. The combined interview design applied here works particularly well with an elite interviewee such as Price. Researchers not only stand a better chance of getting stronger time commitment and engaged responses from an intensely busy industry professional but also an interesting combination of interview data. The interrelation between the two interview elements can be invaluable. The interviewer can gauge what can be disclosed/not disclosed in front of a public audience and with a professionally trained host and speaker such as Price—who has talked about the success of Borgen at many events both nationally and internationally—the combined interview design gives the interviewer a better chance of going beyond, beside or even behind potential ‘auto-pilot responses’ or what John Caldwell calls “crafted pre-fab sound bites” (Caldwell, 2008: 3).

The Place of Borgen Along with Forbrydelsen (DR, 2007–2012) and Broen (DR/SVT, 2011–2018), Borgen is essential to the ‘Golden Age’ of Danish television drama (Nordstrøm, 2004; Agger, 2020) and the historically unique international success of Danish drama series in the 2010s. However, in order to understand and analyse the challenges of DR’s collaboration with Netflix, it is important to acknowledge the particular place that the first three seasons of Borgen occupy within this era. Jacobsen and Jensen suggest that the international success of Danish drama series in the 2010s can be called “a peripheral counterflow”, arguing that the Danish television industry was not an established exporter of

3  NETFLIX AND BORGEN: A MATCH MADE IN…? 

61

television programming; that the Danish language was disadvantageous in an export context and that a television industry dominated by state-owned public service media does not traditionally generate the type of competitive media environment in which exportable television programming is produced (Jacobsen & Jensen, 2020: 9). This all applies to Borgen. However, the success of Borgen was even more remarkable. The head of the Drama Division, Ingolf Gabold, did not even solicit co-funding for the series outside of the traditional Nordic funding bodies (Hammerich, 2015). Based on DR’s history of co-funding arrangements, crime series were deemed likely to attract international co-funding whereas genres such as period drama and political drama were believed to be less appealing to international audiences and thus less able to generate non-Nordic co-funding (Hammerich, 2015; Jensen et al., 2016). Furthermore, many of Borgen’s references to specific Danish politicians, media outlets, political parties, as well as to real-life political cases, would presumably be lost on international audiences. Considering DR’s cultural-political mandate, it was particularly important that Borgen dovetailed with the public service provision: a drama centring on the machinations of Danish coalition politics can easily be said to “strengthen the ability of citizens to partake in a democratic society”, “further knowledge and understanding”, as well as “bring the Danes together and hold a mirror up to Denmark”, three key formulations in the Public Service contracts that still serve as a guiding framework for DR’s operation and accountability (cited in Nielsen, 2016a). Consequently, the heads of DR’s drama division could refer to Borgen and argue that international success was not at odds with the public service remit but instead a consequence of it. Quintessential aspects of Danish life as represented on screen supposedly drew international attention, for example, the perceived lack of power distance between a female PM bicycling to work and the people, as well as the gender dynamics of the show more generally. The motto of “the more local the more global” used by both Piv Bernth and Reich epitomizes this understanding (Nielsen, 2016a).

62 

J. I. NIELSEN

From Peripheral Counterflow to Transnational Co-current? Viewing the new season of Borgen in the contexts described above, one can easily see how the funding and production arrangements for its fourth season posed a challenge to the role and position held by the first three seasons of Borgen both nationally and internationally. The fourth season belongs to a different tradition of shows commissioned by DR from the private production sector as opposed to being an in-house production. Most critically, DR could be seen to be selling off its public service flagship series and the attached brand value to an American-owned global tech giant—a process that some might see as akin to melting its license fee-­ financed-­PSB heirloom jewellery into gold bars for the benefit of Netflix. As opposed to constituting a peripheral counterflow, Borgen: Power and Glory instead runs with the global flow of Netflix’s international expansion model (Littleton, 2021). This was not lost on Danish politicians even before the new season was aired and it was not lost on DR either. Whereas the first season of Borgen was commented on and also used politically by rightwing politicians even before a single second was shot,5 the reactions amongst Danish politicians to the new season were of a completely different nature. Chief among the critics was left-wing politician Søren Søndergaard of Enhedslisten, the Red-Green Alliance. As media spokesperson of his party and member of the Cultural Committee, Søren Søndergaard initially posed seven questions to the Minister of Culture at the time, Joy Mogensen, regarding the collaboration between DR and Netflix (Cultural Committee, 2020a). Five questions were specific, asking how the rights were negotiated between DR and Netflix, whether or not other DR programmes were part of the deal, and whether Netflix would be liable to pay retransmission fees as do traditional television distributors in Denmark (which feeds back to various creative rights organizations). Two questions concerned more large-scale policy strategies. Søndergaard inquired to what extent the agreement with Netflix marked a change of strategy within DR as regards collaboration with commercial stakeholders concerning the financing and production of TV shows (Cultural Committee, 2020a). Søndergaard also asked if the DR-Netflix deal was to be understood as an outgrowth of the Media Agreement for 2019–23, of which only the three liberal-conservative government parties and their parliamentary backing party, The Danish People’s Party, had

3  NETFLIX AND BORGEN: A MATCH MADE IN…? 

63

been part (and thus not for instance Søndergaard’s Red-Green Alliance, nor the other parties in power after the 2019 election). Joy Mogensen passed Søndergaard’s questions on to DR and added a comment of her own when presenting DR’s answers to the Cultural Committee (2020a). In order to better understand this particular type of document (Karppinen & Moe, 2012), it should be stated that the questions posed by the members of the Cultural Committee and the answers provided by the Minister of Culture are available to the public. In fact, private media stakeholders have noted that if feeding committee members willing to listen with particular questions, they can—in this roundabout way—get answers from DR that DR would otherwise be less willing or even unwilling to disclose (Nissen, 2020: 65). One can assume that DR phrased their reply knowing that interested stakeholders in the media would be ‘reading along’. The combined reply is more than two pages long, however, I discuss some of the key passages below, also adding details revealed by my interviews with Price. Considering the many concerns expressed by Søndergaard, his subsequent reactions indicate that the critical outcry he appeared to be warming up to was somewhat deflated by DR’s responses. A likely reason is that the terms of the deal come across as unproblematic to the typical concerns of Danish viewers and relatively favourable to DR as an institution. The tone of DR’s reply is established in the first sentence which states the following: DR and Netflix have entered into a licensing agreement regarding the funding of a new season of Borgen. DR owns the upcoming series in its entirety, and DR has full editorial and artistic control over the production of the new season produced by Danish production company SAM Productions for DR. (Cultural Committee, 2020a)

The matter of editorial and artistic control was also discussed in my interview with Price. Referring to other responses I had gathered regarding Netflix’s various editorial roles on local-language TV drama series, I had asked Price at an earlier event how Netflix’s editorial ‘touches’ differed from production to production. He replied that in the case of Borgen he would call Netflix’s editorial role a ‘no touch’ but did not go much beyond this. At the Q and A, I asked Price to elaborate on what he meant by ‘no touch’. According to Price, an editorial ‘no touch’ was an ultimate demand on DR’s part:

64 

J. I. NIELSEN

I think it was part of the deal with DR that Netflix could never interfere with the writing process at any time even though they picked up most of the cheque[…] I don’t know of course what Netflix might have said to DR along the way. I’m sure they read the scripts, but I only had meetings with DR. I only got notes from my DR editor, just like in the old days. So, I never got one single note on behalf of Netflix. I only got notes from DR. That was quite particular, very special actually. (Price cited in Nielsen, 2022)

For context, Price mentioned that Borgen both was and is very popular within the leadership of Netflix and that they had already asked about acquiring this series when establishing operations in Europe (Nielsen, 2022). In other words, there was already substantial goodwill within Netflix as regards the DNA of the show and presumably less need for safeguarding the editorial process on their part. Early on in Netflix’s role as a commissioner of original productions they had a reputation for using a ‘light touch’. This was also noted by Netflix’s former Original Content VP, Cindy Holland, in one of the few early interviews with her (Rose, 2014) and is sometimes echoed by certain showrunners, for example, Jon Iver Helgaker and Jonas Torgersen of Norsemen (NRK/Netflix, 2016–20) (Andem, 2019). Netflix’s various editorial roles must be seen within the context of what stage of the production lifecycle (commissioning, co-financing or licensing) Netflix becomes involved. However, considering the scale of Netflix’s investment in this case, an editorial ‘no touch’ is by no means standard. Describing this as “quite particular, very special actually” (Price quoted in Nielsen, 2022), Price is likely referring to the different editorial roles that Netflix had performed in other SAM productions for Netflix, Price’s own Ragnarok (2020–) and Søren Sveistrup’s The Chestnut Man (2021–), examples in which the editorial role of Netflix was far more significant (Halskov & Nielsen, 2022). The deal also appears to respect DR’s interests in terms of exclusivity. DR would not only have an exclusive window for the new season before it became available on Netflix first in the Nordic countries and then later worldwide, but also a substantially longer window compared to, for instance, the NRK/Netflix collaboration Lilyhammer (2012–14).6 The reply also states that after the release of the fourth season on Netflix, it will be available on both DR and Netflix for one year after which the show will be available on Netflix for the remainder of an overall five-year agreement period (Cultural Committee, 2020a).

3  NETFLIX AND BORGEN: A MATCH MADE IN…? 

65

During this final part of the agreement period DR is still able to air the series for limited periods of time on both linear and on-demand TV; as with their other drama series. One of the concerns raised by Søndergaard was whether access to a show that the Danish population had essentially (co)-financed by means of license fees/taxes would be compromised by Netflix’s rights. This would potentially constitute a form of double payment if the Danish public would need to subscribe to Netflix to see a show effectively co-financed by themselves. Judging from DR’s reply, this was not the case. In other words, to Danish viewers Borgen would be available to them in ways similar to any other DR series. The answer by DR also states that the agreement with Netflix only concerns streaming rights and that throughout the licensing period with Netflix, DR has a free hand as regards all other rights in the international market such as linear viewing rights, DVD rights and Transactional Video on Demand (TVoD) rights. After the five-year licensing period on streaming rights, these rights return to DR who can then sell them to other services if they so desire (Cultural Committee, 2020a). Assessing the tone of the reply from DR one must take into account that DR is under substantial pressure because of the very nature of the agreement—even more so than when the deal was made. According to Price, he brought Netflix and DR together stating that this “was[…] almost like trying to mix a Stalinist economy with free world capitalism but [we] actually got a deal going” (Price cited in Nielsen, 2022). There were many within the political sphere and the media industry who were sceptical about the collaboration. These concerns come to light in the last two questions as well as in the added comment by Joy Mogensen. In terms of whether the DR and Netflix collaboration represents a change of strategy concerning DR’s collaboration with commercial stakeholders, DR’s reply suggests that it is in continuation of previous forms of collaboration that have for a long time been central to the way DR operates. This is partly but not completely accurate, since the new season represents the first time DR has successfully collaborated with a globally oriented streaming service such as Netflix regarding drama productions (Nielsen, 2016b). Furthermore, DR had reacted to earlier coproduction invitations rather coldly. When Jakob Mejlhede of Viaplay reached out to DR to co-finance drama series with it, Piv Bernth, then Head of Drama responded: “currently, the strategy is that we only coproduce with other broadcasters similar to ourselves. Both due to rights issues, ethical matters and that public service obligations are not always compatible with

66 

J. I. NIELSEN

commercial demands” (quoted in Lindberg, 2017, author’s translation). In an article published six months later, DR’s Head of Media, Henriette Marienlund, stated that DR had no plans for collaboration with Netflix (Pagh-Schlegel, 2017). Despite DR’s claim to the contrary, some things certainly had changed. One obvious cause of change was the Media Agreement 2019–23, which called for a 20 per cent cut to DR’s budget as well as for closer collaboration with commercial players. This change was the impulse driving Søren Søndergaard’s final question as to whether the DR/Netflix collaboration should be seen in the context of this Media Agreement. DR’s reply was cryptic and did not directly answer Søndergaard’s question. DR again mentioned public-private collaboration as being not only a longstanding practice at DR but also an established part of their ‘framework conditions’. However, DR’s reply also referred directly to an obligation within the Media Agreement to work more closely with commercial stakeholders thus suggesting that the DR-Netflix collaboration was indeed influenced by this new obligation (Cultural Committee, 2020a). Outside of the politically oriented call for strategy changes, the Netflix-­ deal must also be seen within the budgetary context resulting from the agreement. Although the new government cancelled the last part of DR’s budget cuts, DR’s actual cutbacks would still be DKK 1773.4 million out of DKK 2189.6  million or 81 per cent of the proposed cuts (Cultural Committee, 2021). Although the deal with Netflix, as presented by DR, appeared to have been made on DR’s terms, the criticism was not completely silenced. This is evident from a comment that Mogensen added to DR’s extensive reply: I believe DR should think very carefully when they decide to make this type of arrangement[…] DR has great freedom in relation to entering into arrangements with other parties. That is how it should be. But in connection with the media negotiations I would like to discuss the framework for DR’s collaboration with private producers and distributors, including major foreign streaming services. (Mogensen in Cultural Committee, 2020a, author’s translation)

It is unusual that specific partnership arrangements in the Danish media industry are subject to such intense discussions within the political system and even more unusual that a Minister of Culture so directly addresses one particular deal made between DR and a commercial company. Four

3  NETFLIX AND BORGEN: A MATCH MADE IN…? 

67

reasons stand out. First, the controversial nature of a collaboration between two media organizations that could hardly be more different from one another in terms of ownership, funding, institutional/organizational history, organizational form, audience conceptualizations and strategies, publishing models, distribution infrastructure and practices. Second, Borgen as a TV drama has itself always been politicized, going back to the inception of the show. Third, the new government was very critical of the Media Agreement 2019–23 that none of the opposition parties had supported. During the Spring and Summer of 2020, Mogensen had also been the target of substantial criticism for not making sufficient efforts to safeguard the media and culture industries from COVID-19 repercussions. Perhaps in response to the discursive constructions of DR as a “media mastodon” (Nissen, 2020) in connection with the Media Agreement, it seemed that Mogensen saw political tailwind in taking public stances in cases where so-called global media giants stood opposite the interests of local players. Fourth, the controversy surrounding the collaboration is also nourished by many of the discussions about Netflix’s unresolved positionality within national media ecosystems, such as their position vis-à-vis other stakeholders as regards regulatory measures, rights issues, reinvestment obligations, levies, access to funding schemes, and so forth. These discussions have been remarkably polarized in the Danish context—also within the production community.7 For instance, the chairman of the Union of Danish Media Distributors, Jørgen Stensgaard, argued that DR should prioritize collaborations with commercial companies who are “part of and contribute to the Danish ecosystem and that cannot be said for Netflix” (Stensgaard in Konrad Jensen, 2020, author’s translation). Points of criticism voiced in this regard usually refer, for instance, to Netflix not being liable to pay retransmission fees, the drawbacks of the ‘cost-plus’ model (in Denmark often referred to as the ‘buy out’ model), Netflix taking more money out than it invests into a country, Netflix being a catalyst for the collapse of the DVD market not since recuperated in the VoD field by Danish production companies and distributors, the possibility of Netflix-commissioned Danish films and TV shows losing their Danish tonality, and so on. These points of criticism are diametrically opposed to Netflix’s own views and have also been countered by others (Bernt Henriksen, 2022). Unsurprisingly, Netflix sees itself as contributing positively to the Danish screen production ecosystem (Netflix, 2022)8 and can point to the fact that—without government funding—it has invested hundreds of millions DKK in licensing, co-financing and

68 

J. I. NIELSEN

commissioning Danish films and TV series. Outside of co-financing Danish productions such as Borgen: Power and Glory, Rita seasons 3 to 5 (2015–20), The Bombardment (2021), and Toscana (2022), Netflix has commissioned Danish series such as The Rain (2018–20), Equinox (2020), The Chestnut Man (2021-present), Chosen (2022), Elves (2021), Baby Fever (2022–), Copenhagen Cowboy (2022), and Danish films such as Loving Adults (2022) and Against the Ice (2021). Later, Søndergaard posed an additional question to Joy Mogensen. This time, Søndergaard voiced criticism about DR’s collaboration with Netflix suggesting that DR instead use the Nordic12 collaboration as a basis for the production (Cultural Committee, 2020b; Konrad Jensen, 2020). The Nordic12 collaboration was initiated in 2018 amongst the Nordic public service broadcasters and the press release quoted Marie Rørbye Rønn for stating exactly that this initiative was designed to pool resources in the face of intensified competition from globally oriented streaming services. Rønn described Nordic12 as “an ambitious message to suggest how we, as public service providers, can think outside the box, take a strong position against the global giants and deliver quality Nordic content to viewers and users in Denmark and throughout the Nordic region in the best possible way” (Rønn quoted in Nordvision, 2018). Considering the rhetoric used when the Nordic12 collaboration was presented (at DR Koncerthuset), Søndergaard’s question seems logical. I redirected Søndergaard’s question to Price. Price conceptualized the idea for the SAM production The Orchestra (DR 2022), itself part of the Nordic12 collaboration, so he knew Nordic12 well. Price’s answer was, The fact is that we would never have been able to raise the amount of money that was needed for this new season within the Nordic12 [collaboration] and DR was just so far from having the budget to do this. So it would have been completely impossible[…] I would turn the argument around and say, isn’t it nice that[…] once in a while we have done something in Denmark that becomes so popular outside Denmark that we can actually make the rest of the world pay for something which is essentially Danish. And we can basically export Danish culture to the rest of the world and have the Americans paying for it. (Price cited in Nielsen, 2022)

The reply to Søndergaard’s question on Nordic12 was circulated to the Cultural Committee in August 2020. DR’s response presents a historical overview of the Nordvision collaboration and provides data to suggest

3  NETFLIX AND BORGEN: A MATCH MADE IN…? 

69

that it continues to be successful. The reply also noted that DR collaborates with other non-Nordic stakeholders, mentioning Discovery with respect to the Olympic games, and Viaplay (formerly NENT) in connection with the European Cup in football. Finally, the reply underlined that DR remains committed to the Nordic12 collaboration but that “The license agreement with Netflix has made it possible for DR to finance and produce the series, which had not been possible within the framework of the Nordic 12 collaboration” (Cultural Committee, 2020b, author’s translation). Following Søndergaard, would it not be possible to maintain the production budgets of the earlier seasons so that it was feasible within the Nordic12 collaboration? In order to understand why this—at least to Price and SAM Productions—would have been impossible, we need to delve into the core idea behind the new season of Borgen. The new season of Borgen started out as an idea presented to Price by the former foreign secretary of Denmark, Martin Lidegaard (Nielsen, 2022). Lidegaard’s idea centred on Greenland-Denmark relations, the regulation of income from the extraction of raw material in Greenland and in particular paragraph 10 in the Law of Self-Governance. Paragraph 10 addresses a scenario where raw material extraction in Greenland has generated so much income that Danish state subsidy has been reduced to zero. If this comes to pass, the paragraph leaves the distribution of income from mineral activities in Greenland open to negotiations between the Greenlandic and Danish governments. ‘Open to negotiations’ also means an openness to power struggles between Denmark and Greenland as well as to consideration of wider political interests in the arctic region. The new role occupied by Greenland can be positioned within the wider field of location studies and related to production values, aesthetic values, economic values and political values (Hansen & Waade, 2017: 27–101). If one incorporates Havens and Lotz’s “industrialization of culture” framework (2017: 24), it is possible to understand these values as being imposed upon the aesthetic construction of Borgen as text from the ‘outside-in’. Borgen’s style, narrative, genre and themes thus become the destination text of various generative mechanisms pertaining to transnational coproduction cultures including the commercial imperatives of Netflix and the public service values of DR. One could argue that the ‘darkening’ of Birgitte Nyborg and the emphasis on Greenlandic landscapes has moved the series in the direction of Nordic Noir or what Havens refers to as ‘conspicuous localism’ (Havens, 2018). Yet, this is not how

70 

J. I. NIELSEN

Price understood the importance of Greenland to the new season. To Price, the story of the fourth season of Borgen is better described as moving from the ‘inside-out’, as issuing from the kernel of a narrative idea. When Price started developing the idea, he thought he was in the process of developing a political thriller and not Borgen. Only further along in the process of developing the storyline did it become clear to him that he was stepping into Borgen territory (Nielsen, 2022; Price, 2022). Although there were already episodic storylines in season one of Borgen relating to Greenland (Thule Air Base), in season 4 the oil find in Greenland is deeply embedded within the central narrative of the entire season as well as threaded into the season’s thematic and representational concerns. Alongside Price’s interest in showing us a new, darker, more mature, workaholic Birgitte Nyborg, the new role that Greenland occupies was an important motivator for doing a new season of Borgen in the first place. Denmark-Greenland relations are on full display in the title sequence which invites us to read various character-psychological/physiological dimensions of the show against the backdrop of Greenlandic motifs. The dark waters of Greenland are as uncontrollable as are Nyborg’s bodily struggles with menopause; which her doctor calls “a natural condition”, inferring a condition that need not be medicated against. The premise of Borgen can be translated as “can you hold onto power and still stay true to yourself?” (Hammerich, 2015: 57, author’s translation). The answers to this question vary between the first three seasons and across various characters. In the fourth season the answer is more often ‘no’ than ‘yes’ in regard to both Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjorth Sørensen) and Birgitte Nyborg, with the latter’s character arc being closely connected to the oil find as she navigates herself into a position where she is not ‘true to’ herself. Another important function of embedding Greenland within the season’s central story is that Price could better incorporate climate change and climate politics as a key theme: […] every time Danish politicians want to prove a point when it comes to climate change—the tragedies of climate change—they always look to Greenland[…] And I just thought it would be so ironic that not only in Greenland but also in the probably most prestigious area for tourism in Greenland, Ilulissat, that is the very core of the jewel in the crown and that is where they find the oil. (Price in Nielsen, 2022)

3  NETFLIX AND BORGEN: A MATCH MADE IN…? 

71

Price’s reference to the ‘jewel in the crown’ also places the new season of Borgen more squarely within post-colonial discourses than previous seasons. Space prevents me from pursuing this analytic perspective in depth, but suffice it to say that Price could question self-righteous complacency among Danes as to post-colonialist issues being somehow ‘settled’ and ‘distant’. If conceived in relation to the ‘double storytelling’ production dogma of DR this could arguably be the ethical-moral story line so central to the public service provision (Nielsen, 2012b). It follows from the political ideals of the show then that there was essentially no way around actually shooting the scenes taking place in Greenland on location. This is further explained in the following extract from my 2022 interview with Adam Price: JIN: And I guess also indirectly you are saying that you would never shoot this show anywhere but in Greenland. Otherwise, you would betray the political ideals of your very show. So that it was either shooting it in Greenland or not shooting it at all. Am I correct in that? AP: Completely. Because you know some producer assistant could say ‘Do you know, we could do it for half if you do it in Iceland’ where they actually have a thing called infrastructure and they also have a working film industry and stuff like that. And they don’t in Greenland. But that is also the beauty of Greenland. I mean you have a country—or part of the Danish realm—which is the size of Western Europe and the population is 56,000 people […] They have sixteen towns or townships and not even two of them are connected by road. That is the kind of lack of infrastructure. So, everything had to be sailed or flown there, the actors and everything. We had a crew of 45–50 people on the ground and that was just so incredibly expensive. But just like you said, I think it would have been a complete betrayal of the ideals behind this new season if we had shot it on the Faroe Islands, and a bit on Iceland. (Price cited in Nielsen, 2022)

Consequently, as Price revealed, the cost of shooting significant sections of the show in Greenland made the production impossible to realize within the Nordic12 collaboration and instead reliant on Netflix which supplied the majority of the funding (Nielsen, 2022). The emphasis on Greenland could also be said to align well with Netflix’s interests in the show. For instance, shooting in Greenland comes with the aesthetic potential of spectacular settings well-suited to international high-end television drama. The emphasis on Greenland also appeals to Netflix’s representational agendas concerning diversity, as Price explains:

72 

J. I. NIELSEN

Every time you work with Netflix, they will always mention representation—which is completely natural, and I think it is great that they do. They didn’t at any time mention it during this (laughter) because they knew that representation was taken care of, you know, because half the cast almost were Greenlandic actors. We had several scenes in Greenlandic which I very much love. Within the first ten minutes you hear dialogue in Greenlandic. I love that very much because it is spoken within the Danish realm […] (Price cited in Nielsen, 2022)

Finally, the importance of Denmark within the international political landscape to a large extent also rests on the geopolitical importance of Greenland—in recent times most pertinent in the international news in August 2019 when President Trump voiced interest in ‘buying Greenland’ as if this country was for Denmark to sell. Price notes that although it would appear obvious that Netflix had pushed for a stronger presence of an international political arena that would presumably speak more strongly to its global subscriber base, this was not the case (Nielsen, 2022). Issuing from these considerations, Price reflected on Netflix’s interest in the show and offered these assertions: I actually don’t think it is a golden goose for Netflix. I think Borgen is a prestigious show but it is definitely not like Squid Game or Dahmer right now […] So it has never been a show for huge masses but the people that like Borgen are typically quite influential people that are in media, and in politics. I am not saying we are not a show for the general viewer. We are. But it’s not a blockbuster show like that. So I think for Netflix, it was a show they wanted because they also want things like that in their catalogue. (Price in Nielsen, 2022)

A significant benefit for Netflix, according to Price, was also that by way of this deal they gained access to the three earlier seasons. DR’s best known in-house series were not licensed to the burgeoning international streaming market in the 2010s when interest was strongest. Whether Borgen: Power and Glory will be a game-changer in this respect remains to be seen.

Conclusions This chapter starts by positing that Borgen: Power and Glory represents a “site of conflict” and an “intersection of several discourses” (Gunning, 1990). So much should be clear by now. An article published by the union

3  NETFLIX AND BORGEN: A MATCH MADE IN…? 

73

of Danish media distributors even argued that the new season of Borgen was “born out of wedlock” (Konrad Jensen, 2020). However, the mongrel nature of the collaboration and funding mix of new season is best seen as a product of our current transnational media landscape. It evidences the ever-increasing phenomenon of ‘frenemy relations’ involving increasingly complex intersections of private/public, commercial/PSB, linear/VOD and of local/national/regional/multinational interests. The statements from Piv Bernth and Henriette Marienhøj indicate that the collaborative arrangement between DR and Netflix was unlikely just a few years ago. Indeed, DR and Netflix are remarkably different in terms of their raison d’être (PSM/commercial), ownership (state-owned/shareholders), economic model (national tax/subscription revenue), and their main audiences (national or multinational). Yet various developments have brought these two providers closer together. On DR’s part, the Media Agreement 2019–23 gave them both a direct incentive to collaborate more closely with commercial stakeholders and an indirect incentive by drastically cutting their budget and thus increasing the need for external funding. Within the Danish film and television industry and cultural-political establishment there is plenty of scepticism towards Netflix’s overall role including that of being a financier and commissioner in the Danish market. However, according to Price, Netflix’s role in relation to Borgen also holds great promise. He takes Netflix to be supplemental to the market. Without Netflix there would presumably have been no fourth season. Building on Price’s assessment of Netflix’s interest in Borgen, I will add that co-financing Borgen combines two well-established practices on Netflix’s part. First, that of reviving or rebooting series originally premiering on other networks. Second, that of investing in  local-­ language drama series. Netflix’s practice of reviving and rebooting previous series has primarily focused on American series such as Arrested Development (Fox), Gilmore Girls (The WB/The CW), Lost in Space (CBS) or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (Bravo). Consequently, Borgen stands out. A primary reason is that Netflix’s commitment to local TV production has changed drastically. Looking back ten years, Netflix was instrumental in financing seasons three and four of The Killing (2011–14, AMC/ Netflix)—itself a remake of DR’s Forbrydelsen. In theory, Netflix could instead have invested in a fourth season of Forbrydelsen but this would have been very unlikely at the time. From the vantage point of the local production community as well as the local PSB, the remake route is less

74 

J. I. NIELSEN

interesting financially and culturally (Nielsen, 2012b) compared to Netflix co-financing or commissioning local-language drama series. The cultural, creative and financial power dynamics are evasive in Borgen’s case. The new production and financing circumstances cast into doubt its earlier function of constituting a peripheral counterflow. Nevertheless, DR clearly believe to have the long end of the stick regarding rights, as does Price regarding creative control. Borgen’s status as a prestigious TV drama has implications for how these positions of power are negotiated. In our transnational television culture these positions will play out differently from case to case and Borgen is likely to be unusual in this regard. There have always been interesting interactions between the production circumstances of Borgen and Borgen as a text. Hence, it is fitting that the current season highlights cultural and financial power struggles ranging from those of local fishermen to the geopolitical interests of world powers. Nyborg must find ways to wield complex, contradictory political values, interests and ideals into coherent political action. Consequently, how fitting that a showrunner as politically deft as Adam Price finds ways of navigating these complicated political waters, being instrumental in setting up the collaboration and funding arrangements, and telling a story that speaks clearly to DR’s public service provisions while also clearly appealing to Netflix’s strategic agendas and near-global subscriber base. Acknowledgements  This research was conducted within the framework of the ScreenMe project (EU Horizon2020, grant number 952156).

Notes 1. The English title lacks interpretive keys embedded in the Danish title. Riget alludes to the ‘Danish Kingdom’: Denmark, Greenland and the Faroese Islands. Riget, magten og æren is also embedded in the Danish translation of the Lord’s Prayer. 2. The research design and key findings of this study were also presented to DR (Nielsen, 2022) but were never presented in a research publication. 3. Former Head of Fiction, Nadia Kløvedal Reich, mentions 5 million DKK as an estimated episode budget of a DR Sunday series and that only 4–5 per cent of their budget was external funding (Nielsen, 2012a). The precise budgets for Borgen cannot be determined but analyses by KPMG and Struensee & Co of DR’s economy provide yearly budgets for the drama

3  NETFLIX AND BORGEN: A MATCH MADE IN…? 

75

division including 2013, when season 3 of Borgen was produced (KPMG and Struensee 2018: 48). 4. I had conversations with management at both DR (before the premiere) and Netflix (after the premiere) about the recent season of Borgen. Although their input could potentially supply interesting nuances and different points of view, I was mainly confirmed in my assessment that Price was the key source. 5. For example, Søren Espersen (2009) accused DR and then Head of Drama, Ingolf Gabold, of political leftism half a year before the show went into production. 6. The answer from DR does not state length but two months passed from DR’s 13 February 2022 release to the 14 April release on Netflix in the Nordic countries and 2 June release in the rest of Netflix’s markets. 7. The former head of Danish Film Directors, Christina Rosendahl (2022), expressed strong criticism of Netflix’ influence on Danish film, as did film producer Regnar Grasten (Bruun & Christensen, 2022), whereas former Head of Drama at DR, Piv Bernth, countered some of those arguments (Rømer Olsen, 2022). Given Netflix’s activities in Denmark it is unsurprising to a find a split in relation to serial fiction vs film and in relation to having/not having worked for international streaming services. 8. Netflix’s consultation response was kindly provided to me by Jasmijn Touw (Head of Policy Nordics and Benelux, Netflix).

References Agger, G. (2010). Borgen mellem spin og sandhed. Kommunikations forum. Available at: https://www.kommunikationsforum.dk/artikler/borgen-­ mellem-­spin-­og-­sandhed. Accessed 16 Mar 2023. Agger, G. (2020). Det grænseløse tv-drama: danskhed og transnationalitet. Kbh.: Samfundslitteratur. Andem, J. (2019). Norsemen Q and A with Jon Iver Helgaker and Jonas Torgersen. Aarhus Series Festival, 29 October. Bernt Henriksen, T. (2022). Kære Ane Halsboe, din Netflix-skat er naiv, grådig, uigennemtænkt og provokerende  – er du klar til et væddemål, kulturminister? Berlingske. Available at: https://www.berlingske.dk/kommentar/ kaere-­a ne-­h alsboe-­d in-­n etflix-­s kat-­e r-­n aiv-­g raadig-­u igennemtaenkt-­o g. Accessed 16 Mar 2023. Bondebjerg, I. (2015). The Mediatization of Politics in Contemporary Scandinavian Film and Television. Palgrave Communications 1. Boukes, M., Aalbers, L., & Andersen, K. (2020). Political Fact or Political Fiction? The Agenda-setting Impact of the Political Fiction Series Borgen on the Public and News Media. Communications, 47(1), 50–72.

76 

J. I. NIELSEN

Bruun, H. (2014). Eksklusive informanter. Om interviewet som redskab i produktionsanalysen. Nordicom-Information, 36(1), 29–43. Bruun, N., & Christensen, C. (2022). Netflix er en dræber for dansk kultur. Ekko. Available at: https://www.ekkofilm.dk/artikler/netflix-­er-­en-­draeber-­dansk-­ kultur/. Accessed 5 May 2022. Caldwell, J. (2008). Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television. Duke University Press. Cultural Committee. (2020a). General part, Collection 2019–20, Question 287. Folketinget. Question posed 18 May 2020. Final answer provided 15 June 2020. Cultural Committee. (2020b). General part, Collection 2019–20, Question 345. Folketinget. Question posed 25 June 2020. Final answer provided 21 August 2020. Cultural Committee. (2021). General part, Collection 2021–22, Question 1. Folketinget. Question posed 8 October 2021. Final answer provided 21 October 2021. Degn, H.  P., & Kroager, S.  G. S. (2017). Danish Television Drama Series: A Sunday Evening Phenomenon. Critical Studies in Television, 12(4), 362–379. Dunleavy, T. (2020). Transnational Co-production, Multiplatform Television and My Brilliant Friend. Critical Studies in Television, 15(4), 336–356. Espersen, S. (2009). De røde lejesvende manipulerer. Politiken Section 3, 21 March, 1. Grønlund, A. (2022). When Borgen goes to Greenland: Creative Development, Location Work, and Collaboration in Borgen: Power and Glory. CST Online. Available at: https://cstonline.net/when-­borgen-­goes-­to-­greenland-­creative-­ development-­location-­work-­and-­collaboration-­in-­borgen-­power-­glory-­by-­ anders-­gronlund/. Accessed 9 July 2022. Gunning, T. (1990). Film History and Film Analysis: The Individual Film in the Course of Time. Wide Angle, 12, 4–19. Halskov, A., & Nielsen, J.  I. (2022). Kastanjemanden: Interview med Søren Sveistrup. 16:9. Available at: http://www.16-­9.dk/2022/07/soren-­ sveistrup/. Accessed 16 Mar 2023. Hammerich, C. (2015). Bag om Borgen. Frederiksberg: 3 døtre. Hansen, K. T., & Waade, A. M. (2017). Locating Nordic Noir. Palgrave Macmillan. Harvey, W. S. (2011). “Strategies for Conducting Elite Interviews,” Qualitative Research, 11(4), pp. 431–441. Havens, T. (2018). Transnational Television Dramas and the Aesthetics of Conspicuous Localism. Flow. Available at: http://www.flowjournal. org/2018/04/transnational-­television-­dramas/. Accessed 8 May 2022. Havens, T., & Lotz, A.  D. (2017). Understanding Media Industries. Oxford University Press.

3  NETFLIX AND BORGEN: A MATCH MADE IN…? 

77

Hochscherf, T. (2019). Narrative Complexity and Cultural Relevance in the Name of Public Service Broadcasting: The Cases of Borgen and Herrens Veje. European Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 49(1), 156–177. Jacobsen, U. C., & Jensen, P. M. (2020). Unfolding the Global Travel of Danish Television Series. In P. M. Jensen & U. C. Jacobsen (Eds.), The Global Audiences of Danish Television Drama (pp. 9–19). Nordicom. Jensen, P. M., Nielsen, J. I., & Waade, A. M. (2016). When Public Service Drama Travels: The Internationalization of Danish Television Drama and the Associated Production Funding Models. Journal of Popular Television, 4(1), 91–108. Karppinen, K., & Moe, H. (2012). What We Talk About When We Talk About Document Analysis. In N. Just & M. Puppis (Eds.), Trends in Communication Policy Research: New Theories, Methods and Subjects (pp. 179–193). Intellect. Konrad Jensen, I. (2020). Borgen 4 blev født uden for ægteskab. Danske mediedistributører. Available at: https://danskemediedistributoerer.dk/?p=1642. Accessed 2 May 2021. KPMG and Struensee & Co. (2018). Analyse vedr. DR’s økonomi – baggrundsmateriale. Kraglund, R. A. (2014). Foran Borgen – tv-seriens intervention med virkeligheden. Dansk Noter 3. Kristensen, T., & Gabrielsen, G. (2011). Debat: Sæsonklar ‘Borgen’ sender politik ind i stuen. Politiken, 25 September, 14. Lindberg, K. (2017). Dramachef afviser samarbejde med Viaplay om TV-serier. Berlingske sektion 3 (Kultur og Livsstil), 24 February, 3. Littleton, C. (2021). Netflix’s Bela Bajaria on ‘Bridgerton,’ ‘La Casa de Papel’ and Tailoring Shows for Global Audiences. Variety. Available at: https://variety. c o m / 2 0 2 1 / t v / n e w s / b r i d g e r t o n -­l a -­c a s a -­d e -­p a p e l -­n e t f l i x -­b e l a -­ bajaria-­1234990606/. Accessed 3 May 2022. McCabe, J. (2020). Why the World Fell for Borgen: Legitimizing (Trans)national Public Service Broadcasting Culture in the Age of Globalization. In A. M. Waade, E. N. Redvall, & P. M. Jensen (Eds.), Danish Television Drama: Global Lessons from a Small Nation (pp. 43–62). Palgrave Macmillan. Mejdahl, C. (2020). DR genopliver hitserie: ’Borgen’ vender tilbage med ny sæson DR. Available at: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/kultur/film/dr-­genopliver-­ hitserie-­borgen-­vender-­tilbage-­med-­ny-­saeson. Accessed 5 May 2022. Moor, N., & Stokes, P. (2012). Elite Interviewing and the Role of Sector Context: An Organisational Case from the Football Industry. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 15(4), 438–464. Netflix. (2022). Consultation response to “Lovforslag om kulturbidrag”. Nielsen, J. I. (2012a). Den kreative fabrik: Interview med Nadia Kløvedal Reich, 16:9. Available at: http://www.16-­9.dk/2012-­11/side04_interview1.htm. Accessed 5 May 2022.

78 

J. I. NIELSEN

Nielsen, J. I. (2012b). Solen må aldrig skinne, og Sofie må aldrig smile: Interview med Piv Bernth, 16:9. Available at: http://www.16-­9.dk/2012-­11/side06_ interview3.htm. Accessed 5 May 2022. Nielsen, J. I. (2016a). The Danish Way to Do It the American Way. Kosmorama. Available at: https://www.kosmorama.org/en/kosmorama/artikler/danish-­ way-­do-­it-­american-­way. Accessed 16 Mar 2023. Nielsen, J.  I. (2016b). Points of Contact, Points of Distance: DR/TV2 Meet HBO/Netfli. Northern Lights, 14(1), 29–45. Nielsen, J. I.. (2022). Impact Tour: Rethinking Public Service TV Drama – The Remarkable Case of Borgen. Interview with Adam Price, 21 October, Aarhus. Nissen, C. (2020). Politik mellem følelser og fornuft: spillet om danske mediers fremtid. Gyldendal. Nitsch, C., Jandura, O., & Bienhaus, P. (2020). The Democratic Quality of Political Depictions in Fictional TV Entertainment: A comparative Content Analysis of the Political Drama Borgen and the Journalistic Magazine Berlin direkt. Communications, 46(1), 74–94. Nordstrøm, P. (2004). Fra Riget til Bella: bag om tv-seriens golden age. DR. Nordvision. (2018). Nordic12: Collaboration on Nordic Drama Gives Viewers Access to More New Drama Series. Available at: https://www.nordvision.org/ nyheder/nordic12-­collaboration-­on-­nordic-­drama-­gives-­viewers-­access-­to-­ more-­new-­drama-­series/. Accessed 5 May 2022. Nørgaard, T. (2011). Kontraktpolitik: en produktionsanalyse af DR’s Borgen. Unpublished MA thesis, Aarhus University. Pagh-Schlegel, P. (2017). DR afviser kulturministers ønske om samarbejde med Netflix. Altinget. Available at: https://www.altinget.dk/artikel/dr-­afviser-­ kulturministers-­oenske-­om-­samarbejde-­med-­netflix. Accessed 17 Mar 2023. Philipsen, H. (2018). Borgen og samtidsdrama. In G. Agger, J. R. Christensen, & L. B. Jacobsen (Eds.), TV-analyse (pp. 323–340). Systime. Price, A. (2022). Interview with Author, Conducted by Telephone, 13 October. Redvall, E.  N. (2013). Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark. Palgrave Macmillan. Rømer Olsen, E. (2022). Netflix er unik som kunde for produktionsselskab bag ny dansk serie. MediaWatch. Available at: https://mediawatch.dk/Medienyt/ TV/article14084463.ece. Accessed 5 May 2022. Rose, L. (2014). Netflix’s Original Content VP on Development Plans, Pilots, Late-Night and Rival HBO (Q&A). The Hollywood Reporter. Available at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-­news/netflixs-­original-­content-­ vp-­development-­712293/. Accessed 17 Mar 2023. Rosendahl, C. (2022). Streamingtjenesterne smadrer dansk film. Politiken, 31 January, 5. Sparre, K., & From, U. (2017). Journalists as Tastemakers: An Analysis of the Coverage of the TV Series Borgen in a British, Swedish and Danish Newsbrand.

3  NETFLIX AND BORGEN: A MATCH MADE IN…? 

79

In N. N. Kristensen & K. Riegert (Eds.), Cultural Journalism in the Nordic Countries (pp. 159–178). NORDICOM. Sundet, V.  S. (2021). Television Drama in the Age of Streaming: Transnational Strategies and Digital Production Cultures at NRK. Palgrave Macmillan. Waade, A. M., Redvall, E. N. and Jensen, P. M. (eds) (2021). Danish Television Drama: Global Lessons from a Small Nation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (Palgrave European Film and Media Studies) Wodak, R., & Forchtner, B. (2017). The Fictionalization of Politics. In R. Wodak & B.  Forchtner (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics (pp. 572–586). Routledge.

CHAPTER 4

Magnífica 70: HBO’s Portrayal of the Brazilian Boca do Lixo Cinema Maria Cristina P. Mungioli and Christian H. Pelegrini

Introduction At the end of the first episode of Magnífica 70 (HBO, 2015–18), there is a scene in which the producer, Manolo, says to the censor, Vicente, “anyone can be a director”. Manolo refers to directing the films he produces. This, and so many other lines from the high-end TV drama series build, episode by episode, a sketch of the cinema produced in the 1970s in the region commonly known as Boca do Lixo.1 Magnífica 70 is an original high-end series created for HBO Latin America and produced by the Brazilian Conspiração Filmes. The serial, which comprises 33 hour long episodes, depicts an essential part of Brazil’s cinema history for a contemporary, international TV audience. In addition, the show can be analyzed as an example of the recent strategies

M. C. P. Mungioli (*) University of São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] C. H. Pelegrini Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_4

81

82 

M. C. P. MUNGIOLI AND C. H. PELEGRINI

related to the commissioning of TV dramas for international distribution by subscription-video-on-demand providers (SVoDs) such as HBO Max, Netflix, and Disney+. Throughout its three seasons (2015–18), but especially in the first, Boca do Lixo’s cinema acts as a catalyst for the dramatic situations that create the series’ narrative. The main narrative motivation for the story is the fact that the individuals—who become the show’s characters—are lured by the opportunities that can be opened for them by the fictional production company Magnifica Filmes. This provides many situations and interactions between the characters in which their personal goals drive the story forward. The story presents two layers of fictional construction. One presents the personal life of the individuals acting in the story that is being shot while the other layer shows the entire process with its challenges and artistic choices. These two layers open dramatic possibilities to explore the historical conditions of production and work during that period. In addition, the narrative offers the opportunity to understand the aesthetic tendencies of Boca do Lixo cinema. In this story, the Boca do Lixo cinema is not merely a set in which the drama’s narrative unfolds, since Magnífica 70 also devotes attention to explaining what this cinema was and how it worked. Accordingly Magnífica 70 depicts an approach to filmmaking that is regarded as essential to the history of Brazilian cinema (and for Brazilian culture as a whole). In addition to being the name for a group of films, the term ‘Boca do Lixo cinema’ operated as a point of convergence and tension between different creative processes and their articulation with production management structures created and consolidated in a turbulent historical context that left deep marks on Brazil. The decision to dramatize a phenomenon as specific as Boca do Lixo cinema had implications for the development of this multi-season drama. First, there is a stylistic disjunction between the sophisticated production of Magnífica 70 and the aesthetic characteristics of Boca do Lixo films. In order to maintain the stylistic sophistication of the TV drama series, the cinema style of Boca do Lixo becomes a diegetic object, never mixing with or influencing the visual style of Magnífica 70, despite the metalinguistic potential this show offered to use this kind of self-reflexivity. Second, Boca do Lixo is a phenomenon confined to the city of São Paulo, a locale that is less identifiable for an international audience. To ensure that the series would still be perceived as a Brazilian production, elements of the country’s history are inserted into the story. However, both the Brazilian

4  MAGNÍFICA 70: HBO’S PORTRAYAL OF THE BRAZILIAN BOCA… 

83

historical context and the Boca do Lixo cinema style itself are portrayed mainly through scenes of dialogue between the characters as opposed to being part of the drama’s mise-en-scène and representations. The effect of this is a tendency to use dialogue to reconstruct the Boca do Lixo cinema and to deploy markers of Brazilian history in ways that affirm, rather than investigate, the Brazilianness of the story. The analysis presented in this chapter is focused on Magnífica 70’s first season. In later seasons, the series expands its portrait of Brazilian cinema to the rest of the 1970s, including the depiction of milestones in public policy that are aimed at the filmmaking sector. However, it should be noted that the approach observed above is consistent in all three seasons. This approach is important to this chapter’s investigation for what it can reveal about HBO’s original drama production in Brazil in respect of both the multinational context of internet-distributed TV (Lotz, 2018) and the domestic context of Brazilian subscription-funded TV.

Original Brazilian HBO Dramas: Local Flavors for International Consumption Some elements of Brazilian transnational coproductions enhance the capacity for these stories to travel between different countries (Weissmann, 2012). This links with the movements discussed by Castells (2009) that interrelate the local and the global in productions created for an international audience. Castells (2009: 72) argues that “only global networks can master the resources of global media production, but their ability to conquer market shares depends on the adaptation of their content to the taste of local audiences”. Even though it pre-dates today’s multiplatform era, Castells’ assertion remains relevant for its acknowledgment of the potential importance of cultural specificity in TV dramas developed for international distribution. It also suggests that the local details in these shows can assist the profitability of today’s foremost “global networks”, emphatically its multinational SVoDs, as well as contributing to “economies of synergy” (Castells, 2009: 82). TV programs developed for the international arena, as argued by Sinclair (2014: 65), are obliged “to deal with the reality of cultural-­ linguistic differences between one market and the next”. In the case of SVoD-originated TV dramas, productions are under pressure to develop with a multinational audience in mind. Regardless of whether a TV drama

84 

M. C. P. MUNGIOLI AND C. H. PELEGRINI

is exported as a finished program or is coproduced with an SVoD, its success or failure in the international arena is influenced by a range of factors, including its genre, story, themes, and characters. Despite the complexity of constructions of local cultural identity (Robertson, 1995: 26), today’s TV drama producers have new reasons to find some kind of balance between local and international elements in their productions. This chapter now turns to look at the trajectory of production for original HBO TV series in Brazil. HBO Brazil began operation in July 1994 and the first HBO Brazilian original series was released roughly a decade later, with Mandrake (HBO/Conspiração Filmes, 2005–07). However, the volume of HBO Brazil originals has increased since then. Up to 2020, and with a combination of single-season and multi-season dramas, a total of 17 original Brazilian series premiered on HBO Brazil (Ikeda, 2022), most created through partnerships between HBO and local producers. Brazilian producers often brought previous experience in the Brazilian film industry and the international cinema market to this TV drama work. In many of the above series productions, HBO Brazil benefitted from access (which came through its Brazilian production companies), to additional finance from government-funded audiovisual development schemes. In addition, in the context of Brazilian subscription-funded TV, it is important to observe that since 2011 a federal law (referred to as the “paid TV law”) has required Brazilian cable TV networks to air national productions in primetime slots. It is essential to note that when this law was being enacted, a significant increase in the volume of Brazilian cable TV subscribers was already occurring. Ikeda (2022: 197–199) analyzes HBO Brazil’s fiction production from 2005 to 2020 in terms of the categories involved, finding that a majority of these were dramas. These are about urban life and set in cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Importantly, it is these same two Brazilian cities in which leading TV and cinema production companies are located and these cities have the highest concentration of Brazilian cable TV subscribers. Frequently about urban violence and criminality, these Brazilian dramas have also aired on HBO Latin America and are successful in other regions and countries on this subcontinent where there are similar social problems. After ten years of operation, the law introduced to bolster Brazilian TV production, explicitly developing the independent production sector, can be considered a successful public policy. In the case of Brazilian original dramas produced for HBO, the “paid TV law” encouraged a significant

4  MAGNÍFICA 70: HBO’S PORTRAYAL OF THE BRAZILIAN BOCA… 

85

rise in the number of TV drama productions and producers, as noted earlier. One was O Hipnotizador /El Hipnotizador/The Hypnotist (2015–17) which had two seasons and a total of 16 episodes. It is an interesting example of transnational coproduction due to the involvement of producers and creative personnel from three different countries—Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay—under the label of HBO Latin America. Produced in Montevideo (Uruguay) and filmed in both Portuguese and Spanish, this series also demonstrates the borderlines between the Brazilian and Hispanic languages spoken in Latin America. HBO has since aired The Hypnotist in many Latin American countries. The local characteristics of Brazilian society compose the background of most HBO Brazilian original dramas and within these, themes linked to Brazilian culture and so-called Brazilianness are recurrent. Examples include Filhos do Carnaval/Carnival Sons (2006–09), whose two seasons had six and seven episodes respectively, and single-season dramedy fdp (acronym of “Son of Bitch”, 2012), with 13 episodes, about the routine of a Brazilian soccer referee with cameos of famous Brazilian soccer players. Local themes are also foregrounded in the Brazilian anthology drama series Destino (2012–18), each season comprising six episodes. Destino’s first season is set in the city of São Paulo, the second in Rio de Janeiro, and the third in Salvador. Its stories all investigate the challenges for immigrants living in these Brazilian metropolises. Although Brazilian national themes are present throughout this series, it is essential to note that the stories are set in huge cities. One reason for this is that these cities are essential TV subscriber markets in Brazil. However, these cities also evidence the social differences and problems arising from unusual disparities of income and living conditions between people in the different regions of this immense country.

Magnífica 70, An HBO Latin America Original This drama is set in Brazil during the repressive 1970s. The dramatic background of the story is the industry of low-budget films situated in São Paulo (the “Boca do Lixo”). The narrative revolves around Vicente (Marcos Winter), a docile accountant who becomes a federal government censor. He is entrusted with censoring a film from Magnífica Filmes, a Boca do Lixo production company, whose foremost character is a con artist and aspiring actor, Dora (Simone Spoladore), and whose producer is a former truck driver Manolo (Adriano Garib). The production of A Devassa

86 

M. C. P. MUNGIOLI AND C. H. PELEGRINI

da Estudante,2 connects Vicente to the world of Boca do Lixo’s low-budget films and leads him to feel and express a love for this cinema that has no place in his work as a censor. In addition to indulging in his passion for cinema at night, in his daytime life, Vicente maintains ties with a bourgeois routine in an unhappy marriage to Isabel (Maria Luiza Mendonça), an educated and modern woman, but one still repressed by the social conventions of the time. Isabel is the daughter of General Souto (Paulo Cesar Pereio), a conservative military officer who has influence with the dictatorial government and is obsessively concerned with the “communist threat” he believes hovers over Brazil. The dramatic cores still branch out into different characters, each with their quest interfering and colliding with the course of events. Minor characters give an interesting texture to each of the different worlds visited by Vicente. For example, there is the enclosure of puritanism and oppression in the relationship between a catatonic mother-in-law, Lúcia (Joana Fomm) and her seductive dead sister-in-law, Ângela (Bella Camero). The controlling state is the antagonist that needs to be deceived and this tension is embodied by the head of Federal Censorship, Dr. Sueli (Juliana Galdino), and her subordinate, Orestes (Rodrigo Fregnan). The world of Boca do Lixo, with its aesthetic codes and management strategies, comes to life through characters like the owner of Magnífica Filmes, Larsen (Stephan Nercessian), the B-movie actor, Flint Eastwood (André Frateschi), the Director of Photography, Wolf (Charles Friks), and the Production Assistant, Carioca (Leandro Firmino). The dangers of the criminal world, which are brought into the story by Dora’s brother, are represented by such characters as the jealous scam-artist, Dario (Pierre Baitelli), and his former prison companion, the violent Valter (Roney Villela).

The Boca do Lixo Cinema Although it is not our objective to present an exhaustive study of what is conventionally called Boca do Lixo cinema, it is necessary to highlight some of its characteristics in order to examine the representation of its aesthetic conventions by Magnífica 70. Boca do Lixo is a region in the old downtown area of São Paulo, located around the city’s bus and train stations. As is usual in urban dynamics, the surroundings of these stations attracted all sorts of marginalized people: prostitutes, criminals, drug dealers, and gigolos. This local population led the São Paulo press to call this area “Boca do Lixo”. As Xavier (1997: 271) explains, this name references

4  MAGNÍFICA 70: HBO’S PORTRAYAL OF THE BRAZILIAN BOCA… 

87

this area’s contrast “with its Bourgeois counterpart that was so-called Boca do Luxo (‘luxury’s mouth’), the section of the city devoted to the sophisticated nightlife of the middle-class”. The station’s logistical ease also attracted film distribution companies such as Fox, Paramount, and RKO. Departing buses and trains took the films from these companies for distribution within Brazil. Between 1954 and 1967, government regulations favored the exhibition of Brazilian films in theater, including the minimum number of days per year for Brazilian movies and an extra fee paid to producers as a bonus for box office performances. These regulations turned Brazilian film production into a business with good profit possibilities. Although incentive policies have positively impacted all Brazilian cinema, they benefitted Boca do Lixo in particular, due to the synergy this area offered between film production, distribution, and exhibition. Within a relatively short period, these few streets of São Paulo attracted other producers into the city. The region also offered cheap rents for offices and warehouses. Rental opportunities for filming equipment, access to specialized supplies and services, and the permanent presence of technicians looking for work were all available resources. By the end of the 1960s, the few blocks of Boca do Lixo had become a concentration of several companies and, together, they produced a very impressive volume of films. In the 1970s and 1980s, 50 to 60 percent of all films produced in Brazil originated from Boca do Lixo (Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural, 2021). To a less attentive and discerning eye, Boca do Lixo cinema favored two characteristics that may distinguish its productions, which we identify here as the precariousness of production and the erotic appeal of the films. Its precariousness results from an approach to production financing that is very different from the speculative capitalism of large production studios. Especially in the late 1960s, but also in the 1970s, large accumulated sums were not available to finance a film and so investment in film production came from small companies. A large part of the financial flow into film productions came from the incomes earned by films still on the screen. Moreover, since the budget for a production depended on the box office receipts of the film that was being exhibited at the time, films were financed and produced in a situation of considerable risk. This precarious business model required reducing the production costs to a minimum and providing only a spartan cash flow. At the same time, there was practically no room for stylistic concerns or sophistication, which would have involved unnecessary spending on material, personnel, and

88 

M. C. P. MUNGIOLI AND C. H. PELEGRINI

time. Thus, the popular appeal of Boca do Lixo films offered a way to reduce the risk of loss and keep the productions running. It was common for technical and artistic personnel to be paid only when a film generated income from its exhibition. In addition, the payment was often made only when the professionals completed a second film for the same company. There was always previous work to be paid for, forcing people to subject themselves to precarious job security and working relationships. The cast was often amateur and, therefore, cheap, even though stars emerged from Boca do Lixo and built considerable careers. Equipment leasing was often shared between different productions, which pressured the filming work to speed up its use of specific resources. Loans and barters were part of the production dynamics. The style principles of Boca do Lixo’s cinema were, in general, an update of the classic decoupage, with emphasis on the narration. However, due to conditions imposed by low budgets, stylistic choices were influenced by the necessity to minimize costs, as noted above. A scene was not supposed to be shot multiple times, as a way to save money on film stock and processing. Instead of complexity in lighting and photography, a flooded overall light—a practical light or even natural light—reduced the costs in such areas as production time and specialized equipment. Hence in Boca do Lixo cinema, the films’ production values and mise-en-scène bore the markers of budgetary restriction. Although Boca do Lixo produced films of different genres (including horror, adventure, cangaço,3 and police films), at the turn of the 1970s a kind of erotic comedy called pornochanchada, based around the allure of female breasts and bottoms, proliferated (Gamo & Melo, 2018: 327). The eroticism (and appealing titles) that made pornochanchadas so famous was quickly assimilated into other genres, becoming a widespread feature in horror, adventure, and police films. One should note that the dependence on stories based on eroticism established a particular path for Boca do Lixo cinema, culminating in its transition into the pornography market from the late 1970s onward. In the new market, however, the unequal competition with foreign pornographic films precipitated the decline of Boca do Lixo cinema. What is revealed here about Boca do Lixo should not be taken as a faithful historiography. More than the local versions of exploitation films, Boca do Lixo cinema has peculiarities and nuances that require further study. These include experimental productions and even space for ‘authored’ films canonized in Brazilian cinema. However, in this chapter,

4  MAGNÍFICA 70: HBO’S PORTRAYAL OF THE BRAZILIAN BOCA… 

89

there is no reason (and neither discursive space) for any detailed investigation of the history and style of Boca do Lixo. Our main focus is how Magnífica 70 represents this cinema, converting it to brief and general descriptions, verbalized in the dialogues of the characters.

Stylistic Sophistication and Realism Magnífica 70 is a high-end drama with powerful storytelling and is beautifully crafted in terms of its mise-en-scène, cinematography, and soundtrack. The narrative delivers an engaging story, with parallel plots heavily interwoven by the tension between the characters, in the best tradition of an HBO high-end drama. Its production design is stunning, with a highly sophisticated reconstruction of period details. The cinematography goes beyond technical refinement, producing intoxicating images in terms of framing, composition, and colour. Each scene is carefully conceived and executed, evidencing impeccable virtuosity and artistic value. In other words, Magnífica 70 manifests the production values characteristic of high-end period TV drama. Despite this, there is an obvious difference between the production values of Magnífica 70 and those of the Boca do Lixo films. This difference manifests itself in the disjunction between these styles. Magnífica 70 bears the hallmarks of aesthetic sophistication, allowing it to compete in the market as a high-end, differentiated screen product. By contrast, the cinema industry in Boca do Lixo barely supported itself and was notably modest in terms of style. The track record of HBO Latin America’s original productions in Brazil is one of high production value and stylistic sophistication. In this sense, Brazilian productions must aim to mirror the conventions of genre, narrative, and visual style of the US-produced dramas that are aired by HBO Latin America (Lusvarghi, 2013: 25). To better substantiate the specificity of HBO in this scenario, it is important to make a brief digression to discuss the aesthetics of Brazilian TV narratives. Telenovelas, which make up the majority of TV drama productions in Brazil, use a multicamera studio mode of production, with the storylines developing mostly through dialogue between the characters. This approach is consistent with the aesthetics of ‘naturalism’ or “zero-degree style” (Dunleavy, 2018: 134–136). This naturalistic aesthetic is mentioned here because it provides a basis for comparison with Magnífica 70, which uses the aesthetics of ‘realism’ (Dunleavy, 2018: 136–139).

90 

M. C. P. MUNGIOLI AND C. H. PELEGRINI

There is a history of Brazilian serial narratives called “mini-series”. These are serials with considerably fewer episodes than a telenovela (ranging from four to thirty episodes). Unlike telenovelas, these mini-series were closed formats. As with mini-series produced in many other countries, fewer episodes allowed more generous budgets. Usually produced by Rede Globo as a branding strategy and aimed at a discerning late-night audience, Brazilian mini-series were considered a premium product. In the mini-series, it was possible to find a narrative with nuances of a more realistic aesthetic based on single camera and location recordings. This format was consistent with what Dunleavy (2018: 104) describes as “high-end ‘closed’ serials” (in this book also called “limited serials”) some of which provided a space for early experimentation with narrative complexity. In the Brazilian case, mini-series experimented with both narrative and stylistic aspects. Although the Brazilian mini-series showed some traces of realism, the aesthetics of naturalism were predominant. Brazilian TV was still using internal production by broadcast TV networks, which involved a reliance on in-house personnel and resources. For decades, the hegemonic business model in Brazilian TV was based on maximizing the financial results in the program’s original airing (syndication was a rare exception). These institutional characteristics led to the adoption of faster and cheaper production strategies, which left naturalism as the most affordable and logical aesthetic option. In addition to the business model, the internal production of TV networks mobilized professionals—both above the line and below the line—with habits and practices being adjusted to studio shooting and a naturalist aesthetic. The arrival of HBO into the Brazilian industry occurred in a period of significant reorganization. The number of independent TV and film production companies expanded in response to the new incentive laws mentioned earlier in this chapter. As Brazilian TV production came under the influence of the business objectives and house style of HBO, it became possible for more Brazilian TV dramas to be produced with aesthetic qualities that were less conditioned by the naturalist traditions of this country’s domestic TV drama. This change was also assisted by the increased input into Brazilian TV drama of creative personnel who also worked frequently in film production. This combination of HBO and independent production companies brought new conditions for the production of TV dramas in Brazil. New business models and different production strategies allowed for larger

4  MAGNÍFICA 70: HBO’S PORTRAYAL OF THE BRAZILIAN BOCA… 

91

budgets and the more frequent use of the realistic aesthetic characteristic of Magnífica 70. In realism, the camera work, mise-en-scène, soundtrack, and editing operate to create and sustain the illusion of a diegetic world (Dunleavy, 2018: 136). In naturalism, the staging resembles the logic of a theatre play: the cameras follow the verbal interaction and rely on it to develop the drama. In realism, the narration fragments and sutures a certain version of the scene to assign a proposed point of view on what is happening. This is not to say that the realist narration imposes a meaning for the audience (viewers are still able to accept, deny, or negotiate the meanings), but the narration constructs a discursive perspective not subordinated to the verbal interaction. Realism, thus, is not dependent on verbal expression to tell the story (at least, not in the way naturalism is). In order to achieve this effect of an autonomous reality, realism tries to efface its artificiality emulating an “unmediated picture of external reality” to “appear the result of natural rather than cultural processes” (Fiske, 2010: 21). Accordingly, Magnífica 70 uses its characters and stories to maintain the impression of an autonomous, cohesive, and logical reality. For that matter, the narration of Magnífica 70 refuses the easy solutions of actions that occur exclusively through the dialogue of the characters or unmotivated utterances of characters about topics not strictly related to the scenes. However, there are two exceptions to the above use of realism. These occur whenever the characters mention Cinema da Boca do Lixo and whenever they refer to historical details about Brazil.

Talking About Boca do Lixo To maintain the stylistic sophistication in Magnífica 70 the Boca do Lixo cinema rarely appears in the images of the series. The events that occur in the characters’ lives are still constructed according to realistic aesthetics, favoring realism’s capacity to “show” rather than “tell” their stories (Dunleavy, 2018: 135). However, when Magnífica 70 portrays the cinema of Boca do Lixo, this story is effectively told, through dialogue, rather than shown. Passages of dialogue punctuate the narrative, in which characters explain Boca do Lixo to each other. The effect is to create a verbal narration and exposition of the many aspects of this cinema. The line of dialogue mentioned at the beginning of this chapter— “anyone can be a director”—is not an attempt to question the quality of cinema made in the Boca do Lixo context. This assertion is instead a

92 

M. C. P. MUNGIOLI AND C. H. PELEGRINI

reductionist representation of the precariousness and lack of professionalism attributed to this cinema. Such comments explain, in a didactic and summarized way, features of Boca do Lixo cinema that are being identified for characters unfamiliar with them; a narrative strategy that helps to ensure that the explanation of this cinema is clear for viewers of Magnífica 70. In the above scene, Manolo’s words also anticipate the next key turn of the story. This is Vicente’s decision to take over directing the last scene of A Devassa da Estudante and become increasingly involved with the production company, Magnífica Filmes. This scene is highly representative of the larger Magnífica 70 narrative, as it marks the first contact for the hesitant Vicente with a Boca do Lixo film set. After overcoming his own fear of directing the scene, Vicente suggests to Wolf, the Director of Photography (DOP), that the shot could have a camera movement while the ‘student’ character speaks. Wolf reacts impatiently to the request, complaining to the film crew with contempt for Vicente’s preciousness: “Movement? Hey guys, he’s trying to move the camera now. It’s three in the morning![…] Do you want to make a dolly at this time?” This part of the scene caricatures the devaluation of sophisticated style in Boca do Lixo cinema. However, Manolo, the film’s producer, grants the request: “If the man wants a dolly, give him the dolly. I am paying for it!” Manolo is seen to accept the request as a way to persuade the reluctant Vicente to direct the scene of A Devassa da Estudante, rather than because he values the stylish shot. In the same scene, still hesitating about how to instruct the film crew, Vicente speculates about having a foggy set for the shot, framing the character over the tomb. Vicente asks his DOP Wolf, “what if there was fog rising from behind the tomb?” Wolf complains but concedes: “Hey, Rato, burn some coffee grounds over there”. The choice of words seems to reiterate our assertion that dialogue passages like these are used to project a certain interpretation of Boca do Lixo. While it is the DOP’s job to precisely instruct his technicians to achieve the result sought by the film’s director, the request for smoke did not also need to be used to reveal the technique behind its effect. The instruction itself could also have been elided from this scene. Nevertheless, the realistic narration chooses to include it. It is through such a scene that the precariousness of Cinema da Boca do Lixo is conveyed to viewers; there are no professional smoke machines, but rather coffee grounds are burned to create the effect of smoke. Even the inelegant nickname of the technician, the Portuguese word for “Rat”, suggests a low-brow on-set environment. Hence some

4  MAGNÍFICA 70: HBO’S PORTRAYAL OF THE BRAZILIAN BOCA… 

93

dialogue connects effectively with the dramatic development of Magnífica 70, while other dialogue passages don’t contribute to developing this drama’s main story. Yet in both cases, the lines of dialogue do function to explain Boca do Lixo to the audience. The potential metalanguage is diluted in two intermediality operations (Rajewsky, 2010). On the first level, which is a “diegetic” one, the characters convert the codes and practices of Boca do Lixo’s cinema into a verbal discourse through “media transposition” (Rajewsky, 2010: 55). This process is one in which one form of media is taken and adjusted to operate in another, as it does in “film adaptations of literary texts, novelizations and so forth” (Rajewsky, 2010: 55). Although the concept of “media transposition” emphasizes (but does not limit itself to) singular works, Magnífica 70 does it to the whole Boca do Lixo cinema. The outcome of this instance of media transposition—whereby the cinema of Boca do Lixo is converted into verbal discourse—yields a distinctive set of semiotic resources being represented by a different, yet also distinctive set of semiotic resources, the effect of which is to generate a specific medial configuration. The term “medial configuration” is used in the works of intermediality researchers such as Irina Rajewsky and Lars Elleström (2010). It acknowledges that different situations imply peculiar media arrangements and features and demands different categories than conventional media provide (Rajewsky, 2010: 53). The second level, the “supra-diegetic”, is one in which a media text “references[…] a specific film, film genre or film qua medium (that is, so-­ called filmic writing)” (Rajewsky, 2010: 55). It is exemplified, as Rajewsky (2010: 55) explains, by a film’s referencing of a painting or a painting’s referencing of a photograph. Magnífica 70 uses its investigation of the cinema of Boca do Lixo to perform an “intermedial reference” (Rajewsky, 2010: 55). This level entails a specific medial configuration in which Magnífica 70 is a high-end HBO drama that attempts to represent and comment upon another medial configuration, which is Cinema Boca do Lixo. When the lavish style of Magníifica 70 and the sparing style of Boca do Lixo’s Cinema meet, the first exerts its power over and presents a filtered version of the second. During the series’ first season, we see images of the films produced by Magnífica Filmes. A few scenes from Boca do Lixo films A Devassa da Estudante, A Virgem Encarcerada, and Minha Cunhada é de Morte serve to develop the plot and characters. However, this exhibition of ‘legitimate’ films from Boca do Lixo is brief and always reveals the

94 

M. C. P. MUNGIOLI AND C. H. PELEGRINI

heterogeneity concerning the narration of the series. The frame of the diegetic exhibition is always evident, and the images intersperse with reactions from the characters who watch them, so as to remind viewers that what you see is not the series, but a fragment of a film within the series. The narration of Magnífica 70 imposes itself over those films, avoiding visual representations of Boca do Lixo’s Cinema.

Conspicuous Brazilianness Another aspect of Magnífica 70 is its status as a Brazilian cultural product for distribution in an international market. Thus, the series needs to “address the audience’s transnational experiences which they gain both by traveling and via the media themselves” (Weissmann, 2012: 140). Havens (2018) uses the term “conspicuous localism”, referring to the attempt of transnational TV drama productions to “create a strong sense of place”. It is not enough for some shows to have a story set in a specific place; they need to visualize what kind of place it is and, if possible, to invite or allow viewers to vicariously experience that place. The conspicuous localism of transnational TV drama, in those examples in which this localism is foregrounded, is a feature that Havens (2018) suggests is “designed to appeal to a cosmopolitan international audience”. Conspicuous localism can be identified in the attention that a TV drama production devotes to connecting its narrative unequivocally with its place of origin through such key elements as “cinematography, storylines, and languages” (Havens, 2018). Some of these elements are an inextricable part of the setting. In the case of Magnífica 70, the characters speak Brazilian Portuguese (which is also written in the urban landscape of the settings). This is quite different from the awkward tradition of stories set in Brazil but aimed at audiences abroad, with characters speaking Spanish or English with a cartoonish accent. Other elements are not inherent to the settings, but chosen to be an ostensible part of the narration. This is the case with the inhospitable wild landscapes and the gloomy villages in the Icelandic Katla (Netflix, 2021). Although the elements of landscape are not easily recognizable as the Eiffel Tower or the Great Pyramid of Giza, the narration shows the space as an asset to accentuate a certain identity of that country (once again, the realist aesthetics propose meanings). Something similar happens in Derry Girls (Channel 4, 2018–22). The peculiar architecture and the urban landscape of the city of Derry enhances the audience’s experience of a 1990s Northern Ireland. Since

4  MAGNÍFICA 70: HBO’S PORTRAYAL OF THE BRAZILIAN BOCA… 

95

the visualisation of a peculiar landscape is an important element of conspicuous localism, the lack of it may be a problem in Magnífica 70. The problem to overcome is to ensure that the first season of Magnífica 70 is perceived as a story set in Brazil, even though as mentioned earlier, Boca do Lixo is a phenomenon from downtown São Paulo. However, the identification of this narrative space as typically Brazilian comes up against the fact that the city is the country’s economic center, highly urbanized, and is also bereft of the bucolic topoi for which Brazil is recognized abroad. The urban landscape of São Paulo could well be mistaken for that of any other modern urban center, with its tall buildings and busy avenues. An example of this is the US single camera sitcom, Children’s Hospital (The WB/Adult Swim, 2008–16), a series that pretends—with clear comic purposes—to be set in São Paulo. In this series, the comic effect comes from the use of stock footage from the city of São Paulo being  inserted for transitions between scenes, when the filming is obviously taking place in Los Angeles. The similarity between these two urban landscapes is evident, and Children’s Hospital demonstrates it. São Paulo is not easily identifiable as a Brazilian city, a contrast with such iconic and identifiable examples as Rio de Janeiro’s landscapes, the Brazilian Northeast’s beaches, or even the exuberant nature of Pantanal or Amazon. The absence of a recognizably Brazilian landscape in São Paulo required its producers to find other means to connect Magnífica 70 to Brazil. The asset that links this story to Brazil is the country’s history. The story could take place almost anywhere, and a few local low-budget cinemas could replace Boca do Lixo. However, Magnífica 70’s narrative incorporates key characters and events that are unequivocally connected with the situation in 1970s Brazil, an example of which is its military dictatorship. The ties to Brazilian history begin with the lead character: Vicente. He is a federal censor responsible for determining which films meet the government’s accepted moral standards. He is the one who should seek, in the films he watches and classifies, evidence of the “communist threat” that terrified the Brazilian dictators. The narrative opens in Vicente’s office in the public building of Federal Censorship. The first image of the series is a shot of President Médici, the cruel General that suspended all civil rights in Brazil. Vicente’s key antagonist in Magnífica 70 is his father-in-­ law, a general whose assertions and cartoon-like grimaces make him an embodiment of hypocritical puritanism and of the official ideology of Brazil’s military dictatorship. General Solto is always dressed in his military uniform, even at home. Magnífica 70’s historical details make an

96 

M. C. P. MUNGIOLI AND C. H. PELEGRINI

important contribution to its localism, and these are conveyed, as noted, through passages of dialogue between its characters. Examples of this explain the Military Coup of 1964, articulate the fear of Communism, and reveal concerns about the use of ideological propaganda in Brazilian films. Conversations between Vicente and Dr Sueli and between Vicente and his father-in-law, General Solto, are emblematic of these efforts to review the historical context and make this more accessible to an international audience. In the first episode of Magnífica 70 General Solto tells Vicente: “The country is under threat. We are about to crush the Araguaia guerrilla”. The Araguaia guerrilla was a bloody episode involving the military and a guerrilla group in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This assertion from Solto seems to come out of nowhere, yet suddenly the conversation turns to Vicente’s marriage and the lack of children. Magnífica 70’s expository dialogue leads to the construction of scenes with dramatic functions that can be interpreted differently according to the series’ audience: national or international. The dialogues carry explanations of facts that are well-known to an average Brazilian, but are adequately informative for foreign viewers. Through the voices of Sueli and General Solto, viewers can perceive and understand the nature of the authoritarian, conservative, and political order which ruled Brazil in 1973. These characters have critical dramatic roles as antagonists and they connect Magnífica 70’s story to Brazilian history. Both characters only appear in their official roles, dressed for work and exercising their authority, and their assertions echo, rather than question, prevailing political ideologies and discourses. Conversations between Vicente’s wife, Isabel, and other characters communicate a broader social and cultural context. Isabel emblematizes a broader female condition in this pre-feminist era. Her characterization reflects the emerging ‘modern’ woman within a still repressive culture, a generation that suffered the frustrations of regressive gender policies in Brazil and yearned for a degree of sexual liberation that never seemed to reach their country. At the end of the first season, after Isabel attends Reichian Therapy and, through it, attempts to free herself from repression, these female concerns are more often articulated. Isabel expresses these tensions both in the actions she takes and in her interactions and conversations with other characters. In conversations between the characters, the cultural details of a specific time and space are conveyed to the audience. As had already occurred in the representation of Boca do Lixo’s cinema, these lines also explain the

4  MAGNÍFICA 70: HBO’S PORTRAYAL OF THE BRAZILIAN BOCA… 

97

Brazil of 1973. One must observe that these expository dialogues differ from the show’s general approach. Like most shows on HBO, Magnífica 70 has a very well-crafted narrative: things happen in front of the camera, reducing any sense of inauthenticity or artificiality. Nevertheless, the same discourse that ‘shows’ the narrative to the audience allows  characters to ‘tell’ to other characters (and therefore to the audience) the story of Boca do Lixo and Brazilian history. It is symptomatic that the opening theme of the series is the successful song “Sangue Latino” (“Latino Blood”), performed by the Brazilian band Secos e Molhados in the early 1970s. The catchy chorus repeats “Sangue Latino” and echoes the style of HBO Latin America’s originals. The lyrics allude to the resilience and resignation that characterize the colonized people of Latin America. It is possible that, to a foreign audience, both the title of the song and the sophisticated poetics of its lyrics may be less evident than to a Brazilian. However, choosing this song as the opening theme may reveal a decision that adds to a broader attempt to imbue Magnífica 70 with traits that evoke the country. At the same time, the song and the lyrics produce meanings about the context of repression that characterizes Brazil and many other Latin American countries.

Conclusions The interest in an analysis of Magnífica 70 stems from the key functions performed by this multi-season drama series. Produced through a partnership between HBO and the Brazilian production company Conspiração Filmes, Magnífica 70 combines HBO’s own TV drama traditions with the Brazilian company’s portfolio of productions, the latter of which deploys practices established by the Brazilian film and television industries. In 2019, the final season of Magnífica 70 was nominated for the Emmy International Awards in the category of ‘Best Non-English Language US Primetime Program’. Magnífica 70 attests to some breaking down of earlier creative boundaries between the film and television industries. As a production that exemplifies the new dynamics of the Brazilian TV industry, Magnífica 70, throughout its three seasons and 33 episodes, also pays tribute to Brazilian cinema. In a wider sense, through its thematic and/or its discursive elements, the series can be seen as a tribute to construction of Brazilian cinema history highlighting its struggles and difficulties. This is vividly represented by the precariousness of Boca do Lixo cinema, which also

98 

M. C. P. MUNGIOLI AND C. H. PELEGRINI

evokes a sad period of Brazilian history. The story plays with both Brazilian political history and Brazilian cinema history. The verbal explanation of Boca do Lixo introduces this cinema to a far larger audience than researchers and scholars have been able to do. Finally, it is important to underline that Magnífica 70 is a TV drama designed for international distribution, having been aired in various countries as a Brazilian series. By playing all these roles, Magnífica 70 lends itself to a range of approaches by researchers. This chapter has focused on how the series produces meanings about the object of its narrative (the Boca do Lixo cinema) and declares its identity as a Brazilian TV drama production. The analysis of the series reiterates the predominance of realism as an aesthetic in high-end drama, once again blurring the boundaries between the Brazilian televisual aesthetic tradition, and the way stories have been told in Brazilian cinema. However, this approximation between audiovisual forms, with so much potential for metalanguages, chooses to represent the cinema of Boca do Lixo as an element denoted in the characters’ speeches. The use of dialogue between neophyte characters in the production of low-budget films creates opportunities for this cinema to be verbally explained rather than visualized on screen. The construction of an effective and authentic representation of national cultural identity was hampered by the absence of a Brazilian iconography that could be easily recognized by foreign audiences. In addressing this lack, Magnífica 70 investigates the country’s historical context, using characters that can connect the drama with dominant political institutions and allow it to acknowledge the extreme repression and violence that characterized Brazil in the 1970s. The representational strategies adopted by the series raise questions about the cultural specificity of Brazilian TV and film productions that are  designed to reach an international market. Further research could investigate whether or not the strategies deployed in Magnífica 70 are prevalent in other high-end dramas that are coproduced in Brazil. Considering the activity in Brazil of influential players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and even Brazilian Grupo Globo (Globoplay and Globo Filmes), further research into this question may help to shed light on the relationships between local producers and international companies, the development of TV and film productions for an international market, and the approaches of these productions to representing Brazilian history, culture, and places.

4  MAGNÍFICA 70: HBO’S PORTRAYAL OF THE BRAZILIAN BOCA… 

99

Notes 1. Literally translates as “Garbage’s Mouth”. 2. As it is usual in Boca do Lixo films, the title is an erotic double entendre. It means “the student’s inquiry”, but the word devassa also means “probing” and “libertine”. Thanks to the sintax of the Portuguese, the expression “a devassa da estudante” also works as (visual or physical) “probing of the student” and as a qualification (devassa) of the subject (estudante), stating “the student is a libertine”. 3. The “cangaço” is a historical phenomena that mixed local banditism and social insurrections during the nineteenth and the begining of twentieth century, mainly in the northest region of Brazil. It became an important part of Brazilian imaginary. Although historians do not deny the cruelty and the criminal aspects of cançago, the narratives of social justice (echoing Robin Hood or some of the outlaws of US westerns) made it an appealing trope in oral traditions, popular literature, and films. See Hobsbawm (2001).

References Castells, M. (2009). Communication Power. Oxford University Press. Dunleavy, T. (2018). Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television (Kindle ed.). Routledge. Elleström, L. (Ed.). (2010). Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality. Palgrave Macmillan. Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural. (2021). Boca do Lixo. Available at: https://enciclopedia.itaucultural.org.br/termo14351/boca-­do-­lixo. Accessed 10 July 2021. Fiske, J. (2010). Television Culture. Routledge. Gamo, A., & Melo, L. A. R. (2018). Histórias da Boca e do Beco. In F. P. Ramos & S.  Schvarzman (Eds.), Nova História do Cinema Brasileiro (Vol. 2, pp. 322–361). Edições SESC. Havens, T. (2018). Transnational Television Dramas and the Aesthetics of Conspicuous Localism. Flow. Available at: https://www.flowjournal. org/2018/04/transnational-­television-­dramas/. Accessed 20 June 2021. Hobsbawm, E. J. (2001). Bandits. Abacus. Ikeda FSM. (2022). Séries brasileiras na TV paga e nas plataformas streaming: gêneros, formatos e temas em um circuito em transformação. PhD thesis, Universidade de São Paulo. Available at: https://doi.org/10.11606/ T.27.2022.tde-­22112022-­154938. Accessed 2 Dec 2022. Lotz, A.  D. (2018). We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All. The MIT Press. Lusvarghi, L. (2013). Prófugos: novos formatos e regionalização na ficção seriada latino-americana. Ciberlegenda, 29, 8–27.

100 

M. C. P. MUNGIOLI AND C. H. PELEGRINI

Rajewsky, I. O. (2010). Border Talks: The Problematic Status of Media Borders in the Current Debate About Intermediality. In L. Elleström (Ed.), Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality. Palgrave Macmillan. Robertson, R. (1995). Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-­ Heterogeneity. In M.  Featherstone, S.  Lash, & R.  Robertson (Eds.), Global Modernities (pp. 25–44). SAGE. Sinclair, J. (2014). A transnacionalização de programas televisivos na região ibero-­ americana. MATRIZes, 8(2), 63–77. Weissmann, E. (2012). Transnational Television Drama: Special Relations and Mutual Influence Between the US and UK. Palgrave Macmillan. Xavier, I. (1997). Allegories of Underdevelopment: Aesthetics and Politics in Modern Brazilian Cinema. University of Minnesota Press.

CHAPTER 5

British History from a Distance: Transnational and Intergenerational Framings of The Crown Will Stanford Abbiss

Introduction The Crown (Netflix, 2016-present) occupies a pivotal position in television drama’s transnational development. As one of the first direct commissioned Netflix dramas to be produced outside of the US, its debut exemplifies the 2016 turning point for the streaming service’s commissioning strategies (Afilipoaie et al., 2021: 313), coinciding with its achievement of near-global distribution (Lobato, 2019: 1–2). While Mareike Jenner (2018: 227–228) reads this moment—and The Crown itself—as a pivot towards a less politicised “grammar of transnationalism”, I argue in this chapter that the relationship between the drama’s representation of the British monarchy and its strategic commissioning is more complex. This is particularly the case as its narrative moves through the decades of the twentieth century, and through leading cast members as its characters age, pursuing an unusual concept for period drama that aligns with the

W. S. Abbiss (*) Independent Scholar, Bristol, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_5

101

102 

W. S. ABBISS

affordances of direct commissioning by Netflix. This chapter aims to unpack the significance of The Crown’s representation of history using examples from its third and fourth seasons, which encompasses the era starring Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II. In addition to transnational considerations, this chapter’s analysis will also consider the drama’s appeal to diverse generations, who may or may not have first-hand memory of the historical events depicted. The Crown’s commissioning by Netflix, as opposed to its arguably more natural home on the BBC, impacted its production and scope from its inception. As Matt Hills (2019: 219) establishes, The Crown represents “a direct attempt to occupy and challenge the BBC’s role as a source of nationally unifying stories and conversations”, positioning it as a threat to public service broadcasting. Considering the lack of a “defined regulatory regime” (Lotz, 2016: 214) for Netflix at this time requires two recognitions: first, that it is not concerned with “wider public, cultural and socio-­ economic imperatives” (McElroy & Noonan, 2019: 152); and second, that its productions may reap conceptual and aesthetic benefits through their freedom from broadcast regulations. The latter, of course, intersects with The Crown’s unprecedently high budget, which surpasses the capacity of broadcast networks (Pearson, 2021: 190). While the regulation of Netflix and other internet-distributed television services remains a highly charged issue (Lobato, 2019; Lotz, 2021), The Crown’s existence in the meantime reveals the impact of Netflix’s original dramas in both national and transnational terms. The Crown in a sense beats the BBC at its own game, investigating the monarchy in greater depth, over a longer period (in terms of both narrative and the hours of drama produced), and with more willingness to critique than could be achieved if this drama had been commissioned by the public service broadcaster. The representations of history examined in this chapter display the unprecedented breadth of The Crown’s concept, even at times where this potential is not fulfilled. Adding intergenerational considerations to the paradigm of transnational television allows the full breadth of The Crown’s appeal to be acknowledged. The historical events recreated in the drama will be remembered first-hand by some of its viewers; some may be aware of their significance from close family members; others will have little to no awareness of them at all. The significance of these diverse perspectives on televisual representations of history can be glimpsed in the intergenerational reception of BBC documentary series The Great War (1964–65) upon its first broadcast, when its viewers ranged from veterans of the First World War

5  BRITISH HISTORY FROM A DISTANCE: TRANSNATIONAL… 

103

to those learning about it for the first time (Todman, 2002). A similar diversity of association impacts The Crown, and also shifts season by season. A significant moment is reached in season 4, set in the 1980s, as the era depicted comes into closer alignment with the lived experience or knowledge of the core demographic of Netflix viewers. This operates in conjunction with the diversity of its viewers’ cultural makeup, which also informs the intimacy with which The Crown’s depiction of British social history is understood. This chapter does not offer a reception study, aiming instead to recognise the range of potential interpretations afforded by the text. These naturally stem from the drama’s central ambiguity around whether the monarchy should exist in the modern era, which I have discussed elsewhere (Abbiss, 2023). Birgitta Höijer’s socio-cognitive process of viewing television provides a useful framework for understanding The Crown in both transnational and intergenerational terms. Höijer (1992b: 586–587) establishes how universal, cultural, and private experiences inform cognitive responses to television texts. Elsewhere (1992a: 290–292), she identifies various “experience spheres” within socio-cultural experiences, including from the media, private life, occupations and education; within these in turn, “general” and “domain-related” schemas further influence the cognitive process. The importance of generational belonging within these spheres and schemas is confirmed by Göran Bolin (2014), who identifies intergenerational responses to media across individual and socio-cultural experiences. When considering a Netflix-originated drama, the balance between appeal to universal and (diverse) cultural experiences is vital, allowing cognitive responses to be realised across experience spheres. This is reflected by Amanda D. Lotz’s (2017: 26) concept of “Netflix’s ‘conglomerated niche’ strategy”; it is further acknowledged by Hills (2019: 216), who asserts that “transatlantic TV drama’s meanings are consistently articulated through relational combinations of the transnational and the national”. In this chapter, the term “framings” is used to consider the diverse experiences and schemas The Crown appeals to. In accordance with my analytical methodology, this term places the focus upon the drama’s facilitation of a range of responses, rather than assuming any cognitive responses from particular socio-cultural groups or generations. The first section of the chapter establishes how The Crown positions its depictions of history, recognising the key role of socio-political contexts alongside its explorations of the royal family, and comparing this to the equivalent approaches of broadcast television productions. Following this, The Crown’s

104 

W. S. ABBISS

contemporary relevance will be considered, identifying moments that resonate with the tumultuous period for royalty and UK politics in late 2019, both prescient and intentional. The final section explores The Crown’s direct interventions into the discourses around royal history, itself being a media text that arguably has more cultural impact than academic history. Examples from the third and fourth seasons of The Crown will be used to demonstrate the aspects discussed, providing an initial assessment of the era in which the drama begins to move across generational framings.

Framing History Roberta Pearson (2021) establishes the commissioning context of The Crown, and its consequent distinction from BBC drama productions focusing on the monarchy. Asserting Netflix’s competitive advantage over public service broadcasters through “catalogue content, financial resources, and viewer preferences”, Pearson (2021: 90–95) recognises The Crown’s tactical commission as appealing to an older niche previously dominated by broadcast networks. This niche, who, by the drama’s fourth season, are increasingly likely to have first-hand memories of its events, requires specific framings to appeal to their general schema of socio-cultural experiences. While Pearson (2021: 96–97) usefully recognises that The Crown’s focus on the privileged classes may reflect the absence of a requirement for Netflix to encompass the entirety of the nation in its programming, it could also be argued that the breadth of the drama’s scope allows it to at times incorporate British social history to a greater degree than an equivalent broadcast drama. For instance, episodes such as “Aberfan” (season 3 episode 3) and “Fagan” (season 4 episode 5) temporarily shift the drama’s focus onto the lower classes, while questioning the Queen’s effectiveness as a supposed representative of these people. Although these classes are only explored within single episodes, in contrast to the narratively privileged royal characters, The Crown’s intention to appeal to a range of demographics or conglomerated niches, both transnationally and intergenerationally, is reflected by its temporal, geographic, and demographic reach. The drama’s near-global distribution on Netflix also potentially makes these episodic socio-political investigations more culturally significant than a domestic broadcast drama exclusively focused on their subjects would be, despite their ultimate service to The Crown’s serial narrative of the upper classes.

5  BRITISH HISTORY FROM A DISTANCE: TRANSNATIONAL… 

105

“Fagan” also provides an example of the recurring device through which the drama’s socio-political context is centralised: the audience scenes between Elizabeth and her Prime Minister. The Crown is in fact partially based upon Peter Morgan’s stage play The Audience (2013), which imagines the content of these private scenes over the decades. The Netflix drama, of course, expands exponentially upon the play’s concept, but the dramatic function of the regular meetings between monarch and politician remains. “Fagan” depicts the moment Elizabeth was confronted by an intruder in her bedroom, imagining their conversation as influenced by the Thatcherite politics of the day. The episode is bookended by audience scenes, the first of which shows Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) assert the positive progress of the Falklands War. This connects “Fagan” to the preceding episode, where the Falklands conflict began, situating the events of the episode in their historical context. The Prime Minister’s confidence contrasts with scenes of Michael Fagan (Tom Brooke), which dominate the episode’s early stages, showing his poor quality of life and anger at Thatcher’s government. This socio-political framing asserts the episode’s significance; it provides meaning for viewers whose experience spheres do not yield prior knowledge of this context, whether through their age, nationality, or class, while serving as a reminder for those more aware, or even acknowledgement for viewers who experienced a life similar to Fagan’s under Thatcher. At the end of the episode, having learned of Fagan’s troubles during their own private conversation, Elizabeth is able to raise the high unemployment rates and “moral economy” of the country during another audience scene, which Thatcher abruptly leaves to attend a Falklands victory parade. The political context is thus made central to the exploration of Elizabeth’s monarchical role, understood over the course of The Crown through her shifting relationships with various Prime Ministers. The sustained interrogation achieved through the audience scenes distinguishes The Crown from broadcast television, which remains rooted in national ideals. The Crown was an outlier among Netflix direct commissions upon its 2016 debut, with territoriality and national networks remaining vital to the distribution and production of local content at this time (Steemers, 2016). In the subsequent five years, however, the explosion of non-US direct commissions has caused an increased dominance of transnationalism in the way “local” stories are told. While the resultant threat to public service values may be viewed as “a variety of cultural imperialism” (Pearson, 2021: 98), the benefits of a wider perspective may also

106 

W. S. ABBISS

be considered: as The Crown acknowledges identities beyond its upper class focus, so too does it incorporate nationalities and cultures from outside the UK. These are often considered through Elizabeth’s role as Head of the Commonwealth, as seen in “Dear Mrs Kennedy” (season 2 episode 8), “Terra Nullius” (season 4 episode 6) and “48:1” (season 4 episode 8), and to a lesser extent in “Pride & Joy” (season 1 episode 8). These episodes are thematically repetitive: “Dear Mrs. Kennedy” and “Terra Nullius” both focus on the need to prevent a country from leaving the Commonwealth, with the latter including multiple references to Elizabeth and Philip’s tour of Australia as seen in “Pride & Joy”. “Terra Nullius” sees Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Diana (Emma Corrin) travel to Australia and New Zealand, drawing parallels between their marital difficulties and Australia’s inclination towards republicanism. On this occasion, Thatcher is absent from the narrative, leaving the Queen’s insistence on the tour’s political importance unsubstantiated. However, a more thorough investigation of the Commonwealth’s role is undertaken in “48:1”, where Elizabeth and Thatcher’s professional relationship deteriorates due to the latter’s refusal to support sanctions against apartheid South Africa. The recurrence of the Commonwealth theme allows it to be framed in multiple ways, across various nations and time periods, searching for resonance with the widest range of viewers. While some viewers will respond to the politics of racial equality in “48:1”—and may be in or have connections to South Africa—others will recall Charles and Diana’s tour and respond to The Crown’s exposure of the cracks in their marriage at this time. Thematic recurrences are also apparent elsewhere, such as in the numerous episodes depicting Princess Margaret’s (Helena Bonham Carter) desire for a more substantial role in the family, which is repeated to such an extent that she even begins to describe it as “a familiar request” (season 4 episode 7). The Crown also uses its status as a fictionalised account to revise and rearrange historical events. This is frequently considered controversial or even irresponsible by media commentators, with the discourse around the drama’s fictionality intensifying upon the release of its fourth season. This debate was encouraged by the UK’s culture secretary Oliver Dowden proposing that a disclaimer be added to the programme (McPake, 2021: 53–54). Writing for The Guardian, Simon Jenkins (2020) elaborates on the perceived dangers of The Crown’s artistic licence through allusions to the Trump presidency and COVID-19 conspiracy theories: “Fake history is fake news entrenched. To the legions of global cyber-warriors, fakery is

5  BRITISH HISTORY FROM A DISTANCE: TRANSNATIONAL… 

107

legitimate hacking. To the trollers and spinners of lies, to leftwing conspiracy theorists and rightwing vaccine deniers, it is retaliation against power”. These somewhat hyperbolic connections aside, the relationship between truth and history in the drama is important to consider. Jenkins further suggests why this matter has reached such prominence as the fourth season moves into “modern history”: “It is too close to what should be sacred ground—bearing witness to passing events. There cannot be one truth for historians, and journalists, their apprentice draftsmen, and another truth called artistic licence”. The implication here is that fiction is more liable to be confused with fact when the historical events depicted are still being reckoned with in the public consciousness, and for many lie within living memory. Nevertheless, the dramatic function of The Crown’s interpretations and suppositions is frequently made clear by the drama, ensuring that viewers recognise the drama’s fictionality and allowing it to participate in historiographical discourse without overtaking it. For example, the aforementioned “Fagan” begins with a montage of archive news reports on Fagan’s encounter with Elizabeth, culminating in the question of “what did they talk about?” before the episode’s opening titles begin. It is this question that the episode aims to respond to, but the initial framing ensures that the answer given is recognised as a suggestion, not a definitive truth. The same is true of the frequent audience scenes, the non-fictional content of which is equally unknowable. Furthermore, the periodic recasting of every main character—with occasional images of Claire Foy’s younger Elizabeth, and even a flashback appearance in “48:1”, foregrounding the change throughout seasons 3 and 4—ensures the historical figures of The Crown are recognised as interpretations of their true characters. However, the surety that the drama will be recognised as fiction, combined with the continual re-framing of recurring themes, at times engenders a boldness that sees The Crown cross the line into more sensationalist territory. In these moments, the objections of infidelity to history begin to feel more convincing. For instance, “Paterfamilias” (season 2 episode 9) attributes guilt onto Prince Philip for his sister’s death in the 1930s, by imagining that she was travelling to visit him at the time of her fatal air crash. This misleading suggestion, which is factually untrue rather than ambiguous, was the subject of headlines once again following Philip’s death in 2021 (Nugent, 2021). The recurrent exploration of the Queen’s commitment to the Commonwealth results in another lapse in ambiguity in “48:1”, despite the episode’s more thorough explanation of what the

108 

W. S. ABBISS

organisation means to Elizabeth. Objecting to Thatcher’s stance on South Africa, Elizabeth is seen to request that her press secretary leaks reports of her dissatisfaction to the press. In seeking a new angle on Elizabeth’s firmly established constitutional responsibilities, “48:1” shows her following the most scandalous course of action, stretching the credibility of The Crown’s interpretation to an extent that the more usual ambiguous approach would not.

Connecting to Today In addition to its framing of history, The Crown engages with the present through two primary means: depicting the identity crises of royal family members as recurrent across the generations, and direct allusion to contemporary events. These converge, both intentionally and otherwise, in the events of the third season, which expose the familial dysfunctionality caused by Elizabeth’s conflicting private and public roles. The focus on family allows the drama to appeal to universal experiences, across diverse nations and generations. The real-world events of late 2019 and early 2020, concerning the monarchy and UK politics, proved the drama’s resonance with the contemporary moment. This section assesses these matters, recognising how The Crown’s depiction of analogous moments in previous decades can encourage its viewers to reinterpret contemporary events and learn from history. The unpalatable attitudes that continue to lie within the institution of the monarchy were brought to the foreground of the public consciousness from late 2019, first by the allegations surrounding Prince Andrew’s association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, following the latter’s death in prison. Andrew’s much-derided interview with Emily Maitlis on Newsnight was broadcast on 16 November 2019; while the headlines raged, season 3 of The Crown was added to Netflix the following evening. Less than two months later, Prince Harry and Meghan’s announcement that they would step down as senior royals—a decision influenced by press intrusion into their lives—prompted further debate about the monarchy’s role in the modern world. Laura Clancy and Hannah Yelin consider the feminist discourses around Meghan’s entry into the royal family and Andrew’s scandal against the #MeToo era, concluding that the institution’s inequalities remain as strong as ever:

5  BRITISH HISTORY FROM A DISTANCE: TRANSNATIONAL… 

109

Monarchy in a #MeToo era is antithetical to structural change. Indeed, even if Andrew were held appropriately to account, this does not erase the histories of systemic misogyny in elite circles which enabled him. While #MeToo is beginning to expose these misogynist histories, Andrew highlights the monarchy’s current role in this, as well as its reliance upon other forms of exploitation, expropriation, enclosure, and theft. (2021: 7)

Despite this, online news media continued to display favouritism towards the monarchy (Chichon, 2021). While these precise events were of course coincidental to The Crown’s season 3 release, the drama’s point of view on the royal family allows their significance to be understood. In the latter half of season 3, Prince Charles becomes the latest royal to seek a more individualist identity, following the examples of the abdicated Edward VIII and Princess Margaret in previous seasons. Perhaps surprisingly to younger viewers, his bid for independence is to a degree echoed by the tribulations of his son, Harry, 50 years later. Charles confronts Elizabeth over this in the final scene of “Tywysog Cymru” (season 3 episode 6), exposing the Queen’s unmaternal nature through her prioritisation of the monarchical duty to remain impartial. When Charles argues that he has “a voice”, Elizabeth’s response is to answer coldly that “no one wants to hear it”. In light of these words from mother to son, sympathy naturally lies with Charles; the viewer is in this moment put in the “ironic position of pitying the privileged” (Currin & Harris, 2021: 165), rather than blindly accepting the ways of royalty. As the next in line to the throne, Charles’ difficulties are also directly linked to the future of the monarchy. Interestingly, this scene quotes directly from an earlier moment between Elizabeth and Queen Mary (season 1 episode 4), who first told Elizabeth that she must prioritise her role as Queen above any personal feelings; even Elizabeth’s original interjections are here repeated by Charles. This emphasises the recurrence of this tension across generations of the royal family. Later in the season, Charles bonds with Edward VIII (now the Duke of Windsor) shortly before the latter’s death (“Dangling Man”, season 3 episode 8). The Duke (Derek Jacobi) is seen to have cultivated his Parisian home as something of a museum of royal paraphernalia, an act of self-­ branding that is itself prescient to the marketing possibilities ahead of Harry and Meghan in 2020 (Pramaggiore & Kerrigan, 2021: 17). At a similar time, Charles meets Camilla Shand (Emerald Fennell), and the family successfully conspires to separate the couple (“Imbroglio”, season

110 

W. S. ABBISS

3 episode 9). After the Duke of Windsor’s funeral, Charles explains to Camilla how he views his family: It’s funny. I looked at them as I was leaving: my mother, father, grandmother, aunt, even my sister, and I thought, “that’s what they must have looked like to him”[…] The last Prince of Wales, the poor, lost soul we just buried. He wasn’t like them; he was brighter, wittier, more independent of thought, more true to himself. And so, they united against him. And in that moment, as they looked at me in some god-awful way I realised: I have just replaced him. (season 3 episode 9)

In this striking moment, as the soundtrack swells and a tableau of its members in mourning dress are shown looking ominously towards Charles, the unresolved tensions within the royal family are made clear. In the context of 2020, it can be recognised that while Harry was at least able to marry the mixed race, divorced American actor that he wished to—as Charles was eventually able to marry Camilla in 2005—such issues still impacted their wellbeing and influenced their decision to relinquish their senior roles. The allegations that Prince Andrew was involved in sex trafficking are matters of utmost seriousness that cannot be given justice within the scope of this chapter, or—with the possible exception of its sixth season, which will overlap the time period in which the alleged offences took place— within the narrative of The Crown. My consideration of this circumstance will therefore focus on the privileged, compassionless attitude displayed by Andrew in his Newsnight interview (Rawlinson, 2019), and how this mirrors the dysfunctional family portrayed in The Crown. Alongside Elizabeth’s aloof attitude towards Charles, then, it is notable that the young Princes Andrew and Edward only appear once during season 3 (“Moondust”, season 3 episode 7), the Queen’s nuclear family disappearing almost entirely from view. The real-world events that occurred alongside the third season’s release display the severe degree of harm that this absence of maternal compassion, in addition to the family’s status and riches, could result in. When an older Andrew (Tom Byrne) is introduced in “Favourites”, his disregard for protocol—and even his sexual appetites— are made clear, making his eventual designation as Elizabeth’s “favourite” a disturbing revelation in light of the future ahead. As this episode was released the year after Andrew’s Newsnight interview, its awareness of the responsibility to at least in part recognise his renewed controversy cannot be overlooked.

5  BRITISH HISTORY FROM A DISTANCE: TRANSNATIONAL… 

111

Another moment that seems more intentional than the parallels between season 3 and the present day occurs in “War”, the final episode of season 4, which connects the political machinations of 1990 to those of 2019. Thatcher, losing the support of her party, is here shown to ask Elizabeth to dissolve parliament to evade a leadership challenge. While this might be “factual nonsense” (Moore, 2020), we cannot know this for certain; Thatcher’s request takes place within an audience scene, thus carrying a clear caveat that it is not a documented fact. More importantly, this moment seems designed to echo another event from 2019, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson did successfully ask the Queen to prorogue parliament, thus avoiding scrutiny over the implementation of the UK’s departure from the EU. This act was later deemed unlawful (Daly, 2021). In apparent recognition of this, Elizabeth’s response to Thatcher’s request in The Crown is to urge her to consider when it is responsible to yield such power. Thatcher’s actions are framed against the present, drawing political parallels that acknowledge the continued significance of the Queen’s role as impartial head of state. Johnson’s actions in 2019 are, however, perhaps better reflected by another prescient episode. In “Coup” (season 3 episode 5), the mooted uprising against Harold Wilson’s government is depicted, culminating in Elizabeth insisting that only the public have the right to overthrow a Prime Minister. Viewing this alongside the proroguing of parliament, where the Queen followed this line of unquestioning support for Johnson, raises further questions over whether she should ever refuse to follow unconstitutional advice—as she does, to an extent, against Thatcher in “War”. These moments allow the socio-political significance of the events of The Crown, and those of the present day, to be placed in context for viewers around the world.

Intervening in History In addition to framing history and asserting its relevance to the contemporary period, The Crown on occasion engages with the past in a more direct manner. As established above, the drama consciously presents its version of history as an interpretation, not a definitive truth. While this affords it an artistic freedom not enjoyed by documentary history, it is nevertheless a medium through which the past can be understood. As a popular television production, its cultural impact may even be greater than a new biographical account of the royal family would be; it is perhaps a sense of this that contributed to the anxieties around The Crown’s

112 

W. S. ABBISS

fictionality. This gives the drama the potential to revise how the past is seen and remembered, reading retrospective knowledge into its events. An early example is seen in the acknowledgement of Antony ArmstrongJones’ illegitimate daughter at the time of his marriage to Margaret (“Matrimonium”, season 2 episode 7), a fact that only became public knowledge in 2008 (Alderson, 2008). Ascribing such matters into the record of the past is particularly significant given The Crown’s transnational distribution, which allows its interventions to impact a wide range of cultures and generations. Two significant examples from The Crown’s fourth season are explored in this final section, confirming the potential of its framings to influence understanding of history, while also suggesting that this potential is not necessarily fulfilled. In “The Hereditary Principle” (season 4 episode 7), Margaret discovers the existence of her maternal cousins, Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon (Pauline Hendrickson and Trudie Emery), who are institutionalised in a care home for the mentally disabled, in around 1985. The narrative of the cousins is explored in conjunction with Margaret’s own mental health struggles, as she opposes their treatment and—once again—the royal family’s lack of compassion. The Queen Mother (Marion Bailey), conversely, argues that the monarchy is too fragile to survive the exposure of any hereditary mental illness. There is no evidence for Margaret’s discovery of the cousins at this time, or for the Queen Mother’s attitude towards them (Vickers, 2020); The Crown uses the history of 1985 as a vessel through which to expose their existence to its wide viewership. Nevertheless, Nerissa and Katherine were revealed to the world shortly after the narrative of “The Hereditary Principle” takes place (Maclean’s, 1987). Although unacknowledged by the episode, the imminent real-world discovery adds another twist to the tale; the very situation the Queen Mother fears did come to pass soon after, but public interest soon waned and the cousins were all but forgotten again by 2020, requiring The Crown’s intervention for more enduring exposure. The royal family’s reputation may have been preserved, then, by the public’s own indifference to the marginalised. “The Hereditary Principle” neglects to make this point directly, but still reveals The Crown’s historiographical potential through its exposure of the forgotten family members. Further potential for intervention into discourses of history is apparent through season 4’s portrayal of Diana, Princess of Wales. Emma Corrin’s depiction overlays Diana’s 1980s media image with retrospective awareness of her death. While she was consistently popular with the general

5  BRITISH HISTORY FROM A DISTANCE: TRANSNATIONAL… 

113

public in early 1997, amidst the breakdown of her marriage to Charles support for Diana was a matter of debate in the media (Davies, 1998). After her tragic death, though, the media consistently held her in veneration, even to the suppression of more negative viewpoints amongst the population (Thomas, 2008). Nearly 25 years later, The Crown has the opportunity to construct and expose anew the controversial aspects of her character, reminding or revealing these to its viewers of various generations and experiences. However, this potential is not capitalised on as the fourth season continues. Diana’s entry into the fictionalised world of The Crown is conscious of her mythologised status in the public consciousness; she first appears dressed as a forest nymph for a school play, darting between a series of houseplants to coquettishly peer at Charles (“Gold Stick”, season 4 episode 1). Her descent from legend to the real world through the drama is made even more potent by this otherworldly introduction. It is worth recognising, too, that Diana’s public image is largely constructed through televisual images, the mass medium being an important part of her post-­ death valorisation (Kitzinger, 1999). As Anne Cooper-Chen’s (1999) study of five nations’ responses to Diana’s death shows, its impact was not restricted to the UK, bestowing her presence in The Crown with resonance for a broad spectrum of international viewers. While Netflix distribution is a very different prospect to the blanket broadcast coverage of 1997, it still allows Diana’s televisual image to travel far and wide in 2020. The opportunity to deconstruct her mediatised image therefore holds significant potential impact. “Fairytale” (season 4 episode 3) focuses on Diana’s experiences during her engagement to Charles, frequently finding her alone in Buckingham Palace and contemplating her life as a royal. The episode’s intervention can be summarised as revealing that the signs of the couple’s marital problems were apparent even before their wedding, despite the eponymous “fairytale” the public were presented with at the time. Within this, signs of Diana’s unhealthy relationship with this public are shown, with the effusive letters of support from around the world offering the only respite from her isolated existence. Later in the season, as her marriage deteriorates, Diana’s desire to perform resurges in her dance to “Uptown Girl” with Wayne Sleep, and her private recorded performance from The Phantom of the Opera (“Avalanche”, season 4 episode 9). Both of these are offered as gifts to Charles but, at least according to him, they are more accurately acts of self-indulgence. At this point in the drama, however,

114 

W. S. ABBISS

Charles’ jealous rage and continuing affair with Camilla make it hard to sympathise with him, even despite the knowledge of his unhappy young adult experiences from season 3. The drama thus leans more towards the valorisation of Diana, rather than reclaiming the ambiguities around her that characterised her pre-1997 media representation. Consequently, viewers both familiar and unfamiliar with Diana’s post-97 media presence are likely to support her as the narrative unfolds. Unlike elsewhere in The Crown, diverse framings are not in evidence here.

Conclusions As Steemers (2016: 746) predicted, non-US direct commissions have proven to be the “true test” of subscription-video-on-demand services in recent years. While foreign ownership of local content is a concern for the UK television industry, the perceived appeal of British television to niche audiences potentially aids its longevity (Steemers, 2016: 747–748). Identifying the perspectives encouraged by the various framings of The Crown therefore allows the function of international direct commissions, where the national and the transnational co-exist, to be assessed, putting into context the threat posed to the BBC amidst political inclination towards its privatisation (Wright, 2016). The narrative movement through the twentieth century, an innovative premise amongst long-form period drama, makes generational considerations equally important to an understanding of The Crown’s appeal to conglomerated niches (Lotz, 2017: 26). Netflix’s conglomerated niche strategy intersects with Höijer’s socio-­ cognitive structures, revealing how the drama’s textual features are reflective of its commissioning context. This chapter’s analysis has evaluated The Crown’s framing of history through its engagement with documented events, resonance with the contemporary moment, and interventions in discourses of history. It has been shown that, as well as direct appeals to a range of experience spheres, the universality of themes across time and place caused the unpredictable events of late 2019 and early 2020 to resonate closely with the concurrent release of season 3. The centrality of socio-political history to the drama’s concept, in conjunction with its exploration of the British monarchy, aids this approach. However, the desire for such universality also leads to repetitive episodic narratives, as demonstrated by the intermittent appearances of foreign nations. The Crown is in danger of homogenising distinct national cultures and lower classes as simply “other”, a particularly detrimental position considering

5  BRITISH HISTORY FROM A DISTANCE: TRANSNATIONAL… 

115

its near-global distribution on Netflix. The narratives of the Bowes-Lyon cousins and Diana, Princess of Wales also show that the drama at times shies away from fulfilling its potential to interrogate media discourses of history, hindering its transnational and intergenerational impacts. Personally, I will have to wait for The Crown’s final season for it to move into a period I have first-hand memory of. The different viewing experiences this will engender will be worthy of further consideration in terms of the media discourses around the drama as it moves ever closer to the present day, the framings through which the 1990s and early 2000s are depicted, and its reception from diverse cultures and generations. The wealth of opportunity for further study of The Crown upon its conclusion, and its importance to the development of transnational television drama in the 2010s and 2020s, is asserted by the indicative moments analysed in this chapter.

References Abbiss, W. S. (2023). Post-heritage Perspectives on British Period Drama Television. Routledge. Afilipoaie, A., Iordache, C., & Raats, T. (2021). The ‘Netflix Original’ and What It Means for the Production of European Television Content. Critical Studies in Television, 16(3), 304–325. Alderson, A. (2008). Lord Snowdon, His Women, and His Love Child. The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/2059552/Lord-­S nowdon-­h is-­w omen-­a nd-­h is-­l ove-­c hild.html. Accessed 23 Oct 2021. Bolin, G. (2014). Media Generations: Objective and Subjective Media Landscapes and Nostalgia Among Generations of Media Users. Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 11(2), 103–131. Chichon, J. P. (2021). Working Royals, Megxit and Prince Andrew’s Disastrous BBC Interview: The Online Media’s Representation of the British Monarchy Between 2010 and 2020. Journal of Language and Politics, 20(4), 585–606. Clancy, L., & Yelin, H. (2021). Monarchy Is a Feminist Issue: Andrew, Meghan and #MeToo Era Monarchy. Women’s Studies International Forum, 84, 102435. Cooper-Chen, A. (1999). Death of a Media Princess: The Diana Story in Five Nations’ Newspapers. In M.  Meckel, K.  Kamps, P.  Rössler, et  al. (Eds.), Medien-Mythos? Die Inszenierung von Prominenz und Schicksal am Beispiel von Diana Spencer (pp. 141–155). Westdeutscher Verlag. Currin, E., & Harris, C. E. (2021). ‘We Could All Do with Some School’: The Miseducation of Elizabeth and Charles in Netflix’s The Crown. In I.  Kinane

116 

W. S. ABBISS

(Ed.), Isn’t It Ironic?: Irony in Contemporary Popular Culture (pp. 153–168). Routledge. Daly, P. (2021). A Critical Analysis of the Case of Prorogations. The Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law, 7, 256–292. Davies, J. (1998). The Media Iconicity of Diana, Princess of Wales, 1981–1996. In J.  Arnold, K.  Davies, & S.  Ditchfield (Eds.), History and Heritage: Consuming the Past in Contemporary Culture (pp. 51–64). Donhead. Hills, M. (2019). Black Mirror as a Netflix Original: Program Brand “Overflow” and the Multidiscursive Forms of Transatlantic TV Fandom. In H. M. Hills & R. Pearson (Eds.), Transatlantic Television Drama: Industries, Programs, Fans (pp. 213–238). Oxford University Press. Höijer, B. (1992a). Reception of Television Narration as a Socio-cognitive Process: A Schema-Theoretical Outline. Poetics, 21, 283–304. Höijer, B. (1992b). Socio-cognitive Structures and Television Reception. Media, Culture & Society, 14, 583–603. Jenkins, S. (2020). The Crown’s Fake History Is as Corrosive as Fake News. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/16/the-­c rown-­f ake-­h istory-­n ews-­t v-­s eries-­r oyal-­f amily-­ artistic-­licence. Accessed 22 Oct 2021. Jenner, M. (2018). Netflix and the Re-invention of Television. Palgrave Macmillan. Kitzinger, J. (1999). The Moving Power of Moving Images: Television Constructions of Princess Diana. In T. Walter (Ed.), The Mourning for Diana (pp. 65–76). Oxford and New York. Lobato, R. (2019). Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York University Press. Lotz, A.  D. (2016). The Paradigmatic Evolution of U.S.  Television and the Emergence of Internet-Distributed Television. Icono, 14(2), 122–142. Lotz, A.  D. (2017). Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. Maize Books. Lotz, A. D. (2021). In Between the Global and the Local: Mapping the Geographies of Netflix as a Multinational Service. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 24(2), 195–215. Maclean’s. (1987). A Royal Family Secret. Available at: https://archive.macleans. ca/article/1987/4/20/a-­royal-­family-­secret. Accessed 23 Oct 2021. McElroy, R., & Noonan, C. (2019). Producing British Television: Local Production in a Global Era. Palgrave Macmillan. McPake, A. (2021). Boundaries of (Dis)belief: Past and Present in Period Television Drama and Its Cultural Reception. eSharp, 29, 47–59. Moore, C. (2020). This Is the only Convincing Performance I Have Seen of Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister. The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/on-­d emand/0/convincing-­p erformance-­h ave-­s een-­m rs-­ thatcher-­prime-­minister/. Accessed 22 Oct 2021.

5  BRITISH HISTORY FROM A DISTANCE: TRANSNATIONAL… 

117

Nugent, A. (2021). Netflix Urged to Apologise over ‘shockingly malicious’ Prince Philip Scene in The Crown Following Duke’s Death. The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-­entertainment/tv/news/netflix-­ the-­crown-­prince-­philip-­b1832630.html. Accessed 24 Nov 2021. Pearson, R. (2021). “The biggest drama commission in British television history”: Netflix, The Crown, and the UK Television Ecosystem. In L.  Barra & M.  Scaglioni (Eds.), A European Television Fiction Renaissance: Premium Production Models and Transnational Circulation (pp. 86–100). Routledge. Pramaggiore, M., & Kerrigan, P. (2021). Brand Royal: Meghan Markle, Feuding Families, and Disruptive Duchessing in Brexit Era Britain. Feminist Media Studies, 22, 2037–2057. Rawlinson, K. (2019). Prince Andrew, Jeffrey Epstein and Newsnight: Anatomy of a PR Disaster. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-­ news/2019/nov/20/prince-­andrew-­jeffrey-­epstein-­and-­newsnight-­anatomy-­ of-­a-­pr-­disaster. Accessed 22 Oct 2021. Steemers, J. (2016). International Sales of U.K. Television Content: Change and Continuity in “the space in between” Production and Consumption. Television & New Media, 17(8), 734–753. Thomas, J. (2008). From People Power to Mass Hysteria: Media and Popular Reactions to the Death of Princess Diana. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 11(3), 362–376. Todman, D. (2002). The Reception of The Great War in the 1960s. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 22(1), 29–36. Vickers, H. (2020). How Accurate Is The Crown Season 4? What’s True and False in the Netflix Series. The Times. Available at: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/ article/how-­accurate-­is-­the-­crown-­season-­4-­true-­false-­netflix-­bz6b7gpcd. Accessed 23 Oct 2021. Wright, O. (2016). BBC Faces Privatisation Calls from Influential Conservative Think-Tank to Combat Left-Wing Bias. The Independent. Available at: https:// www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-­radio/influential-­think-­tank-­call-­ wholesale-­p rivatisation-­b bc-­c ombat-­i ts-­l eft-­w ing-­b ias-­a 7004546.html. Accessed 19 Nov 2021.

CHAPTER 6

It’s a Sin: Cross-Platform Coproduction, Cultural Specificity, and Conflicting Cultures Trisha Dunleavy

Introduction This chapter examines cultural specificity in the context of a ‘cross-­ platform’ approach to transnational coproduction (Dunleavy, 2020). The case study is British high-end drama It’s a Sin (Channel 4/HBO, 2021)—a limited serial, comprising five hour-long episodes. Beginning its development trajectory as an ‘authored drama’ commissioned for Channel 4, It’s a Sin became a transnational coproduction following the commissioning, financing, and/or distribution deals it secured with All3Media International and HBO. Conceived and scripted by Russell T Davies,  and executive-­ produced by Nicola Shindler and Davies for Red Production Company, It’s a Sin tells a tightly focused, authentic story about the experiences of gay men in London between 1981 and 1991, during which a deadly new virus, HIV/AIDS arrived in the UK. While London in these years was a mecca for young gay men who moved there to escape rejecting families

T. Dunleavy (*) Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_6

119

120 

T. DUNLEAVY

and/or homophobic communities, it was also the epicentre of Britain’s HIV/AIDS crisis. This chapter examines elements of cultural specificity in It’s a Sin using four avenues of inquiry. First it investigates how cultural specificity is encouraged and facilitated by public service objectives, foregrounding the significance of It’s a Sin’s development for British public service broadcaster, Channel 4. Second it assesses It’s a Sin’s trajectory as a transnational coproduction (including its potentials for direct creative influence on the emerging text), following deals with All3Media and HBO. Third, it explores It’s a Sin’s genesis as ‘authored drama’, a tradition in which cultural specificity, combined with narrative and/or aesthetic innovation, and often involving the ‘limited serial’ form, have enhanced this drama’s capacity “to bring cultural prestige to television”(Caughie, 2000: 128). Fourth, as an area in which national specificity is expressed via an instance of prolonged cultural conflict, this chapter examines It’s a Sin’s probing explorations of how gay men (as represented by this drama’s foremost characters) were impacted by a mishandled, misunderstood HIV/AIDS epidemic in the same period that marked “the very peak of anti-gay sentiment in the UK” (Nicholls, 2021).

The Significance of It’s a Sin’s Commissioning by Channel 4 Reviewing the outstanding success of It’s a Sin for Channel 4, Orlando Parfitt (2021) registers that “[d]espite Davies’ status as one of the best-­ known TV writers in the UK … it took five years and rejections from all the major UK broadcasters” before it finally launched on Channel 4  in 2021. The three years between Davies pitching of the project (in 2015) and Channel 4’s decision to greenlight it (in 2018), demonstrates how much of a commercial risk this drama was perceived to be. Even if it took time to come to the decision, Channel 4 did initiate It’s a Sin’s writing and pre-production, its greenlight allowing the drama to enter development rather than linger in a commissioning editor’s drawer. Channel 4’s commissioning of It’s a Sin highlights the importance to the British TV drama industry of UK PSBs, evidencing the continuing reliance of the UK’s independent drama producers on commissions from the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, and Channel 5 (McElroy & Noonan, 2019: 46). Even though this reliance is not total, with Netflix currently commissioning more

6  IT’S A SIN: CROSS-PLATFORM COPRODUCTION, CULTURAL… 

121

UK-produced drama than other multinational subscription-video-on-­ demand providers (SVoDs) are doing (Pearson, 2021), McElroy and Noonan (2019: 46) contend that without the continued commissioning of British PSBs, “few UK drama series would get made”. It’s a Sin is by no means the first screen drama to examine the 1980s and 1990s HIV/AIDS crisis. In high-end TV drama, its closest precedents are the limited serial Angels in America (2003) and feature film The Normal Heart (2014), both commissioned by HBO. Although all three of these dramas unfold against the outbreak of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the early 1980s, with the two HBO examples both set in New York, key features separating It’s a Sin from these precedents are that it was written for television rather than adapted from literature, that it offers a distinctly British counterpart to these New York stories (Haynes, 2021), and that its characters are “ordinary people” rather than HIV/AIDS activists, “whose stories aren’t often told” (Davies cited in Wise, 2021). Russell T Davies acknowledges that It’s a Sin, a story about HIV/ AIDS in which two of the five foremost characters die, was a “hard sell” to prospective UK broadcasters, “tough to talk about” and this may well have been because, as Davies also admitted, there was no “guarantee that people [would] watch it” (Davies cited in Scott & Milton, 2021). Registering that because of Channel 4’s reservations It’s a Sin might never have been made, Davies recalled being “shocked” at Channel 4’s change of heart because after years of effort he and Shindler had “said goodbye to it…” (Davies cited in Parfitt, 2021). As is not unusual with TV drama ideas perceived as unusually risky, Davies’ concept for the drama that he initially titled ‘The Boys’ was put aside for a time. The project’s institutional champion was Lee Mason (Davies & Shindler, 2020) Channel 4’s commissioning editor who, exploiting the new opportunity that arose from a staffing change above him in Channel 4’s commissioning hierarchy, took the idea to Ian Katz, the broadcaster’s Director of Programmes from 2018, who immediately gave his assent. Channel 4 was clearly nervous about It’s a Sin, a response that underlines its necessary focus on ratings, as an advertiser-funded broadcaster. However, its greenlight acknowledged the capacity of this particular story to embody and progress the public service objectives that continue to distinguish Channel 4’s PSB contribution from that of other UK broadcasters. Even though there was no obligation for Channel 4 to devote significant production funding to a drama whose audience appeal was impossible to predict, Channel 4 was the most appropriate host for It’s a Sin for two reasons. First

122 

T. DUNLEAVY

It’s a Sin is a strong fit with Channel 4’s brand and core audience. Channel 4 had earlier commissioned two acclaimed and successful dramas about gay urban men, Queer as Folk (1999–2000) and Cucumber (2015), both written by Davies. Second is It’s a Sin’s capacity to deliver to all key facets of Channel 4’s public service remit. Channel 4, whose ‘publishing house’ model obliges it to outsource its commissioned shows from the UK’s independent production sector, is required under this remit to “demonstrate innovation, experiment and creativity”, “appeal to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society”, include programmes of “an educative value”, and “exhibit a distinctive character” (Communications Act, 2003 1). Yet even before it was released to become one of Channel 4’s “biggest successes of 2021” (BARB, 2021: 4), It’s a Sin’s poster child potential in respect of this broadcaster’s perceived PSB performance was acknowledged by its inclusion in prominent pages of Channel 4’s 2020 Annual Report (Channel Four, 2020). A final element of Channel 4’s commissioning of It’s a Sin is that it was this broadcaster’s prerogative to decide what the drama’s format should be and how many episodes it would have (Scott & Milton, 2021). While there was some discussion of It’s a Sin being developed as a multi-season drama, Davies favoured the limited serial form, hoping for eight episodes in which to narrate the story, with Channel 4 proposing just four episodes, and Davies holding out for the final five (Scott & Milton, 2021). As evident in examples such as HBO’s Sharp Objects (2018) and BBC/Hulu’s Normal People (2020), the limited serial form is one that has long been conducive to cultural specificity, this potential assisted by its foregrounding of a single ‘overarching’ story, its related tendency to foreground just a few characters, and its detailed construction of a particular time and place. It is possible that It’s a Sin’s limited serial form may also have made the production more enticing to All3Media International and HBO. While both companies have a recent history of co-financing limited serials from the UK in particular, television’s transition from linear to on-demand delivery, Jeanette Steemers (2016: 749) suggests, has increased the appeal of limited serials relative to that of multi-season dramas. Registering the benefits for British drama as a paradigm in which limited serials have maintained a valued, consistent presence in PSB schedules, Steemers (2016: 748) makes the important observation that on-demand delivery is encouraging the production of high-end drama in “short, serialized runs with irregular length episodes that can be consumed at leisure or as ‘binge viewing’”.

6  IT’S A SIN: CROSS-PLATFORM COPRODUCTION, CULTURAL… 

123

It’s a Sin as a Transnational Drama and Cross-Platform Coproduction Its British producers opted for two forms of foreign investment for It’s a Sin, changing its status from that of domestic public service drama to that of transnational ‘cross-platform’ coproduction. It’s a Sin’s trajectory as a coproduction is useful to examine because it demonstrates the increasing influence of foreign financing and coproduction on UK-produced TV drama and highlights key repercussions of the ‘deficit’ model that remains dominant in this drama’s financing. As observed in Chap. 1, the necessity to create drama that can compete for viewers in the multiplatform era has increased production costs beyond what individual broadcasters alone can afford, especially in non-US markets. Maureen Ryan and Cynthia Littleton’s analysis of rising budgets at the high-end of the production value spectrum shows that the highest drama budgets are being facilitated by US-owned premium providers (Ryan & Littleton, 2017). While Netflix’s The Crown season 4 (US$13 million), and HBO’s Game of Thrones season 8 (US$15 million) have been indicative examples of this development, their episode budgets are dwarfed by the reputed US$465 million cost of the first season of Amazon Prime’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power which averages US$58.1 million per episode. Writing in 2017, Ryan and Littleton noted a deepening divide in the US TV industry between the budgets of broadcast-commissioned and premium cable- or SVoD-commissioned high-end dramas. Demonstrating that this divide is even more pronounced in UK TV production, Roberta Pearson (2021: 90) suggests that “Netflix alone has greater spending power” in terms of its commissioning than the “combined budgets” of UK PSBs. The budget differentials for UK-produced drama are evidenced by Pearson’s assertion that “each episode of The Crown’s first season cost roughly ten times more than an episode of Downton [Abbey]” (Pearson, 2021: 94). Mitigating this sizeable budget difference is the contrast between ‘cost-plus’ financing, as the model preferred by US-based premium providers, “which requires the first-run distributor to pay the full cost of production plus a percentage meant as its profit” (Lotz, 2019: 930) and the more prevalent model, ‘deficit’ financing; the most affordable one for broadcasters, in which the commissioning network meets a majority percentage of the production cost, leaving its producers and their indies to meet the shortfall by pursuing pre-sales and/or coproduction financing from one or more third parties.

124 

T. DUNLEAVY

The above financing arrangements explain the incentives for It’s a Sin’s producers to acquire investment deals with both All3Media International, as its distributor for non-UK and non-US markets, and HBO/HBO Max, respectively, the show’s co-commissioner and exclusive host in the US. In exchange for its financing, All3Media International gained the rights to pre-sell the show in five continents: Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Australasia (All3Media Press Release, 2020). HBO’s role as coproduction partner for Channel 4 allowed its influence to extend beyond finance and distribution and into creative decisions. Yet, from the viewpoint of its producers, HBO’s involvement did not reduce It’s a Sin’s ability to narrate “a very British story” (Shindler cited in All3Media, 2020), with Davies underlining that he enjoyed “enormous freedom” as the show’s creator-writer (Davies & Shindler, 2020). The different contributions of All3Media International and HBO to It’s a Sin’s co-financing and distribution provide additional evidence of the investment appeal of culturally specific non-US high-end drama and the influence of new strategies for transnational coproduction. Headquartered in London, All3Media International’s pre-sales agreement for It’s a Sin exemplifies the importance of leading TV distributors to drama financing due to higher budgets and the higher level of deficit funding that drama producers need to obtain through coproduction and/ or distribution deals (Steemers, 2016: 747). As explained to Steemers by Nadine Kohl, former CEO of Shine International, “the job of distributor” in today’s globalising and multiplatform contexts “is increasingly to segment rights and extract value across each possible platform … there are a lot more of those slices of the pie now” (Kohl cited in Steemers, 2016: 738). HBO announced its partnership with Channel 4 on It’s a Sin in October 2019, a few months prior to the launch of HBO Max, an SVoD that would start as a US-only service but which, as WarnerMedia’s Kevin Reilly underlines, was intended to become a multinational service (Reilly cited in Hazelton, 2019). It is the pairing of Channel 4 as public broadcaster and HBO as multinational premium network, an approach characterised by the reconciliation of national public service and international commercial imperatives, that qualifies It’s a Sin as a ‘cross-platform’ coproduction (Dunleavy, 2020). Unique to television’s multiplatform era and a strategy increasing in prevalence, the significance of a cross-platform coproduction is its demonstration of converging, rather than conflicting commissioning objectives for providers as different as these types. Cross-platform coproduction

6  IT’S A SIN: CROSS-PLATFORM COPRODUCTION, CULTURAL… 

125

has been important to the international circulation and critical success of Anne with An E (CBC/Netflix, 2017–19), My Brilliant Friend (Rai/ HBO, 2018–) and Small Axe (BBC/Amazon Prime, 2020), among other examples. As evidenced by these dramas, cross-platform coproduction entails the capacity to encourage cultural specificity rather than any necessity to negotiate its reduction, a contrast with earlier models of international coproduction, in which “delocalization” (Gray cited in Straubhaar, 2007: 169) has been a feature. Especially where a new drama is conceived for and initially greenlit by a national public service broadcaster, a cross-platform approach to transnational coproduction is one in which cultural specificity—if this is encoded into the concept design from the beginning and is considered important to the articulations of cultural identity expected by and from the PSB partner—is more likely to be preserved. Assisting Channel 4’s facilitation of It’s a Sin and allowing the cultural specificity of its story to be accentuated in ways that enabled this drama to progress Channel 4’s PSB objectives, the involvement of both HBO and All3Media International also ensured that its release in early 2021 would be both a multinational and multiplatform endeavour.

It’s a Sin as ‘Authored Drama’ In the history of British television, authorship discourses have most often been applied to short-form dramas with an ‘art television’ sensibility, as exemplified by the idiosyncratic and critically acclaimed collected works of such celebrated TV dramatists as Dennis Potter (Cook, 1998; Caughie, 2000) and Stephen Poliakoff (Nelson, 2007, 2011). For Potter and Poliakoff, whose combined works are emblematic of the ‘authored drama’ tradition discussed here, this ‘auteur’ status has not only involved a body of TV dramas that is attributed to them individually through the evidence of a common thematic and stylistic ‘signature’, but also the successful challenging within these dramas  of narrative, generic and/or aesthetic conventions. Crucial to this achievement for Potter and Poliakoff, and continuing to support newer UK TV auteurs; a leading example of which is Michaela Coel, has been the philosophical support for risk-taking that PSB objectives have permitted. PSB ideals and resources have helped to ensure British TV dramatists a succession of opportunities by means of what Caughie (2000: 128) describes as “a certain power, a freedom of manoeuvre which allows the truly creative artist to rewrite the rules”.

126 

T. DUNLEAVY

Important to this has been the BBC’s prominence as a commissioner of high-end drama, the formal and/or aesthetic experimentation of which can be supported by the non-commercial outlets for which its drama is created. A key form for UK-produced ‘authored drama’ has been the ‘limited serial’, one distinguished by its telling of a discreet overarching story within a small number of episodes. Suggesting that individual authorship and/or creative primacy can be maximised in the context of the limited serial’s fewer episodes is that such iconic BBC examples of ‘authored drama’ as Potter’s The Singing Detective (BBC, 1986), Poliakoff’s Dancing on the Edge (BBC, 2013), and Coel’s award-winning I May Destroy You (BBC/HBO, 2020) each comprise less than 7 hours of screen-time. Authorship has been a more overt facet of high-end TV drama produced in the multiplatform era. This is because while ‘authored drama’ (this term traditionally referring to productions involving the creative primacy of an individual creator-writer-producer) has retained its longstanding capacity to “bring cultural prestige to television” (Caughie, 2000: 128) and the cultural elevation that authorship discourses afford in the multiplatform era has acquired a significant commercial value. The deployment of authorship discourses has been a conspicuous, consistent strategy for ambitious premium providers who use it to entice new subscribers and to justify the cost of their services through the perceived “quality” of the original dramas they offer. With HBO retooling US TV drama’s authorship discourses and strategies from the late 1990s, both elements being widely emulated by other premium providers (Dunleavy, 2018), authorship now functions, Newman and Levine (2012: 42) suggest, as “a marker of quality and distinction” and as “branding to attract a desirable upscale audience to programming constructed as authentically artistic”. Newman and Levine (2012) examine several key characteristics of the discourses and/or strategies that are important to the cultural legitimation and audience recognition of ‘authored drama’ in today’s multiplatform context, of which two can be exemplified by Russell T Davies as a TV writer, producer and considered ‘auteur’. One is that authorship discourses provide “a guarantee of value” in the context of a body of works that constitutes an authorial “oeuvre” because it is attributable to an individual creator-writer-producer and linked in ways that provide an identifiable and consistent “vision” across the productions that comprise it (Newman & Levine, 2012: 50). The other is that authorship discourses draw from and reflect the “personal experience” of an individual

6  IT’S A SIN: CROSS-PLATFORM COPRODUCTION, CULTURAL… 

127

creator-writer-producer (Newman & Levine, 2012: 48), evident to audiences through “the identification of autobiographical elements” (2012: 48) in the stories being told. The following discussions examine It’s a Sin’s manifestation of these two elements of authored drama. Winning a special BAFTA award in 2008 for his TV writing and awarded an OBE for this in 2008, Russell T  Davies has executive-produced and written for a sizeable volume and diversity of UK TV dramas to date. In many cases, Davies also created the concept and, with larger multi-season dramas, assumed the role of showrunner. As both creator-writer and executive producer, Davies led such significant long-running productions as Doctor Who (BBC1, 2005–), which he retooled and revived, along with Torchwood (BBC3, 2006–11), and The Sarah Jane Adventures (CBBC, 2007–11), which Davies conceived by drawing from the vast Who universe. Alongside these popular multi-season drama series, Davies has created, scripted and produced successive limited serials, including Casanova (BBC3, 2005), Banana (E4, 2015), and Years and Years (BBC1, 2019).1 Intersecting with the LGBTQ stories of Years and Years and Banana, in particular, Davies’ authorial oeuvre in drama is most strikingly evidenced by three additional serials—Queer As Folk (Channel 4, 1999–2000), Cucumber (Channel 4, 2015), and It’s a Sin (2021), each of which constructs and examines a different dimension of “the lives of gay men in the city” (Davies & Shindler, 2020). Foregrounding his own perception that, of all his different TV works, it is this trio of dramas that is most strongly interconnected and indicative of a unified body of works, Davies explains that: I think in a way they’re all AIDS dramas … Queer as Folk in 1999 was deliberately turning its back on that … and saying we will not be defined by the virus. It’s a very AIDS-based piece of work. Cucumber is actually exploring a middle-aged reaction to being told sex kills you, in the 1980s. And now here we are, in the 1980s, with It’s a Sin. I like to think that it’s a genuinely consistent body of works. (Davies & Shindler, 2020)

Uniting this trio further, all three were produced by the same Manchester-­ based indie, Red Production Company, they all paired Davies as writer-­ producer with Red’s then CEO and leading producer, Nicola Shindler, and all three were commissioned for the same UK broadcaster, Channel 4. The extent to which each of these dramas also draws on Davies’ own life not only unites them as oeuvre, but also foregrounds their adherence to

128 

T. DUNLEAVY

the second key element of TV authorship; the underpinning in personal experience that is identified by Newman and Levine above. Although all three dramas were inspired by Davies’ own sensibilities and experiences as a gay man in a homophobic late Twentieth Century Britain, it might be suggested that the most overtly autobiographical of the three dramas is It’s a Sin. Davies, who was just 18 when he left Swansea for Manchester in 1981, emphasises two key respects in which It’s a Sin’s story reflects his own life. One is that this story, although set in the 1980s, draws its details from the far longer period during which Britain remained a notably homophobic society, a situation that required gay men to conceal their sexuality from their biological families and colleagues, this increasing their social marginality and their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.  Revealing that he used the 1980s as a metaphor for events and experiences that continued well beyond this decade, Davies admitted, “I’ve compressed this story into a decade just to keep the same cast. But as we know, these events covered twenty, thirty years. Some of these events are still ongoing now…”(Davies cited in Miller, 2021). Another is that, since the events depicted in It’s a Sin were still prevalent in the late 1990s, Davies did not want to directly reference any of them in Queer as Folk, aiming to avoid any further stigmatisation for gay men by linking them with HIV/AIDS. It took time and distance from the HIV/AIDS crisis that dominated Davies’ own adulthood and claimed the lives of his friends and lovers, for him to be able to write about it so directly in It’s a Sin. As he explains, I have spent a lot of my life looking away from it. You can imagine being 18 in 1981 and being told that sex kills you… Every strange thing you see in [It’s a Sin] is true. I’ve had to invent nothing. In Episode 2, the hospital medical questionnaire asks people with the virus, “Have you had sex with animals?” That’s a real thing … It actually happened. (Davies & Shindler, 2020)

It’s a Sin and the Rejection of Gay Men by Biological Families The tendency in this era for gay men to be rejected by their biological families or feel compelled to conceal their sexuality from parents is the catalyst for It’s a Sin’s story. Episode One introduces key characters by means of a taut succession of ‘leaving’ and/or ‘arrival’ scenes which

6  IT’S A SIN: CROSS-PLATFORM COPRODUCTION, CULTURAL… 

129

foreground and contrast the family circumstances of three key characters: Ritchie (Olly Alexander), Roscoe (Omari Douglas), and Colin (Callum Howells). Having opted to hide his sexuality from his parents and thus avoid the rejection that he expects, Ritchie leaves his Isle of Wight home for university, a change that brings with it a long-awaited opportunity for sexual freedom, which he wastes no time enjoying, as evident in the ‘Ritchie sex montage’ that features later in this episode. Having grown up on an implicitly homophobic Isle of Wight, Ritchie has never felt able to ‘come out’ to his family nor, as is evident when he returns to the Island in Episode Four, to anyone else there, even his closest school friend. In contrast, the urban Nigerian immigrant family of Roscoe already knows he is gay; his father’s disapproval and concern indicated by his chaperoning of Roscoe from his job as a building labourer to prevent him from meeting men. Roscoe’s sudden departure from home becomes imperative due to the ‘intervention’ staged by his devoutly religious parents, convinced, as they are, that their son’s deviance is a curable condition. While his mother waves the latest copy of Gay News in Roscoe’s face and his closest relatives gather to pray for his ‘salvation’, escape becomes a matter of urgency given the family’s plan for Roscoe to be escorted back to Nigeria where, as his sister privately warns, he risks execution. Despite the seriousness of his situation, Roscoe’s defiant exit yields one of It’s a Sin’s most striking comedic moments. Dressed in brightly coloured drag and carrying a suitcase, Roscoe announces: “I’m going now. So, thank you very much. And if you need to forward any mail, I’ll be staying at 24 Piss Off Avenue, London W Fuck. Thank you and goodbye”. Young Welshman, Colin, the most naïve and vulnerable It’s a Sin character, enters the story on his arrival at the London boarding house where he has rented a room. Although Colin’s challenges begin with the unwelcome advances of the landlady’s gay son, this running in tandem with the sexual harassment he faces as an apprentice at a Savile Row tailor’s, his nightly phone calls to his mother in Wales provide the only instance among It’s a Sin’s foremost gay male characters of an accepting, supportive parental relationship. While It’s a Sin could have been set in any large British city, including Manchester, where the production was filmed, the largest city, London, was the more prevalent destination for young gay refugees from homophobic British families. Although London did allow them a useful distance from their disapproving parents, it was also tempting for some to simply leave and disappear rather than ever confront their parents and face their

130 

T. DUNLEAVY

rejecting responses. The decision to estrange themselves paved the way for especially challenging circumstances in cases where the parents of men who contracted AIDS were unaware that their son was even at risk. Lisa Power, a leading HIV/AIDS activist, recalls that We were in a situation where some people found out that their son was gay when they saw him in a hospital bed, wasting away. And that provoked all kinds of reactions. Some parents were brilliant and incredibly supportive, and actually started to volunteer with the organisations that were trying to help people with AIDS. And then you got others who didn’t want to tell anyone what their son had died of (Power cited in Anthony, 2021).

It’s a Sin examines these circumstances in relation to two of its key characters and in both cases, the reactions are negative, with the parents travelling to London to take their sons home and refusing further contact between their AIDS-afflicted children and their closest friends in London. The first example occurs in Episode Two, when Gloria/Gregory (David Carlyle), a gay man estranged from his Scotland-based family, contracts AIDS. The setting is 1984, a point still early in the developing crisis, in which Gloria becomes too ill to work and asks Jill (Lydia West) to buy his groceries, this request instigating Jill’s ongoing efforts to care for other AIDS victims. As Gloria relates his shock at being asked “Have you had sex with animals?”, a question derived from the hospital medical questionnaires then operating (Davies & Shindler, 2020), his conversation with Jill reveals how little he knows about the virus, even after his hospitalisation and the confirmation that he has AIDS.  Having discharged himself, he hopes to “shake it off” but instead quickly deteriorates. When Gloria’s parents arrive to take him back to Scotland, Jill bears the brunt of their shame, outrage, and hurt. Back in Scotland with their dying son, Gloria’s parents and sibling burn his possessions, a move ostensibly motivated by their fear that AIDS is contagious, but whose effect is to obliterate remaining evidence that Gloria/Gregory ever existed. It’s a Sin’s second and most confronting example occurs in Episode Five, by which point lead character Ritchie is dying of AIDS. Unaware of his condition, his parents Valerie (Keeley Hawes) and Clive (Shaun Dooley) surprise him with a pre-Christmas visit but find him in an intensive care ward. Although it takes only seconds for Ritchie to admit “I’m gay. I’m homosexual. I contracted HIV and I’m sorry, but now it’s AIDS”, the dramatic power of this scene is its depiction of Valerie’s response. In

6  IT’S A SIN: CROSS-PLATFORM COPRODUCTION, CULTURAL… 

131

deep shock, she giggles about the presents she has bought then suddenly snaps into disbelief and denial that her son is dying: “Well it’s infectious, isn’t it? AIDS? It’s completely infectious. It’s like smallpox. It’s like leprosy. It kills you, that’s what it does. So, this isn’t AIDS, is it? They let us walk right in. So it can’t be, can it?”. Provoked further by the uncomfortable questions put to her by another parent in the tearoom where Jill is trying to console her, Valerie’s response turns to explosive anger, the undeserving focus of which is Jill. Valerie’s unhinged accusations and irrational blaming of Jill for Ritchie’s condition foreshadow her next and most troublesome decision, to disallow visits from either Jill or Ash, Ritchie’s closest friend and boyfriend respectively, as he dies in his parents’ Isle of Wight home.

It’s a Sin and the Formation of a ‘Logical Family’ Rejection by the biological families of gay men is effectively counterbalanced in It’s a Sin through the construction of an accepting, nurturing surrogate London family for the characters. ‘Logical family’, a term used in the title of the 2017 memoir of US writer, journalist, and gay rights activist, Armistead Maupin, seems the most apt label for the familial relationship that It’s a Sin’s characters form in the large flat that Ritchie, Roscoe, and Colin share with Jill and Ash. As Maupin explains, “sometimes your biological family won’t accept you at all and you have to form your own circle of friends and loved ones who are logical for you” (Maupin cited in Daqqa, 2018). It’s a Sin’s logical family develops in the context of the home they build at the so-called ‘Pink Palace’. Formed from a multitude of meticulously designed smaller sets built inside a disused school, its interior resembles a jaded, yet rambling and spacious two-storeyed Victorian-style house. Important as the setting for many key It’s a Sin scenes, the fictional ‘Palace’ recreated a real-life predecessor, the original Pink Palace in Hampstead, which was home to Davies’ long-time friend, Jill Nalder, Davies’ inspiration for the fictional Jill. Demonstrating how Jill Nalder and her home influenced not just the shared domestic space in which the characters would function as each other’s logical family, but also the ways in which Jill’s character supports this as ‘family’ leader, advisor, and nurturer-in-chief, Davies (2021) explains that: [Jill Nalder] moved into a flat which she called the Pink Palace, and it felt like an endless party, the rooms filled with gay men and drag queens and

132 

T. DUNLEAVY

show tunes. Jill met the crisis head on. She stood at the heart of the storm. She went to the hospitals and the funerals and the marches. She held the hands of so many men (Davies, 2021).

It’s a Sin’s core characters and the shared spaces of the Pink Palace combine to produce a close-knit community ‘inside’ for the drama. This ‘inside’ is an integral element of the community construct that TV soaps, sitcoms, and dramas all deploy to draw boundaries of community belonging and establish a system of “shared values” (Geraghty, 1991: 85). In It’s a Sin the community ‘inside’ is additionally important in providing an accepting, embracing contrast to the homophobic, frequently hostile ‘outside’ that shapes the public lives of the characters. The Pink Palace proves to be the show’s most vital space, as the most regular setting for the successive It’s a Sin scenes that accentuate the freedom, companionship, and fun its characters find. One example is ‘La’, the addictive catchphrase that Ritchie coins at a Palace party in Episode Two, and which the other characters adopt in acknowledgement of their belonging to a like-minded, close-knit LGBTQ community. Such scenes imbue It’s a Sin with moments of celebration, frivolity, and comedy, which together underline that gay men in 1980s London also enjoyed colourful, joyful lives.

It’s a Sin, Britain’s HIV/AIDS Crisis and the Significance of ‘Clause 28’ I was literally going to bed thinking, God, I think I pulled my punches on the show. I don’t think it’s strong enough. I think I’ve held back a bit. I know, because I did try to keep the temperature under control, keep the anger under control, because I wanted it to be not fuelled by anger, I wanted it to be a more accessible and more open show, to find different things to say other than anger. I was really thinking, gosh, I haven’t quite landed this because it’s not quite shocking enough. (Russell T Davies cited in Miller, 2021)

It’s a Sin interrogates a notable instance of a contemporary Britain in conflict with itself through its referencing and representations of the “deeply homophobic society” (Haynes, 2021) that Britain was widely considered to be both during and after the period 1981–91 that frames the story. An important indication of the Thatcher-led government’s attempts to reject and stigmatise homosexuality was its passing of ‘Clause 28’ (hereafter

6  IT’S A SIN: CROSS-PLATFORM COPRODUCTION, CULTURAL… 

133

‘Section 28’) in 1988, an addition to the UK’s Local Government Act that remained unchanged until its repeal in 2003. Under Section 28 it became illegal to refer to homosexuality or promote any acceptance of it in British schools. Writing about the socio-political context for the passing of Section 28 and describing this as “the very peak of anti-gay sentiment in the UK”, Nicholls (2021) notes that its introduction followed the findings of a 1987 British Social Attitudes Survey that an estimated 75 per cent of Britons believed that being gay was “‘always wrong’ or ‘mostly wrong’”, with only 11 per cent registering that it was “‘never wrong’” (Nicholls, 2021). As a “vaguely-worded law” (Godfrey, 2018), the repercussions of Section 28 extended to local councils, which were thenceforth prohibited from pursuing “much-needed lesbian and gay initiatives” (Godfrey, 2018). Assessing the impacts of Section 28, some 30 years later, Chris Godfrey (2018) concluded that it would have been difficult “to find a recent British law more controversial and more reviled”. For Godfrey, Section 28 was also indicative of “the Conservative government’s response” to those “who believed ‘they have an inalienable right to be gay’”(Godfrey, 2018). Moreover, given the struggles of gay men with the HIV/AIDS epidemic at this very moment, Section 28 can fairly be classified as “a callous attempt to suppress an already marginalised group” (Godfrey, 2018). The new law was ‘deadly’ for young gay men in particular, Davies recalls, because it restricted students, teachers, and whole communities from talking about homosexuality, related safe sex practices, or the risks of HIV/AIDS. As a socio-political context whose consequences inform all It’s a Sin episodes and key events in the story, Section 28 was clearly a cornerstone of the national context in which the British HIV/AIDS crisis played out, a very significant indicator of a nation in conflict with itself over homosexuality, and a primary contributor to “the anger” to which Davies (2021) refers above. Section 28 is explicitly referenced in Episode Four whose 1988 setting coincides with the inception of the new law. Ash (Nathaniel Curtis) gets temporary employment in a local high school where he is openly ridiculed by staff who recognise him as gay before setting him to work in the school library. Ash’s task, which he later explains to his flatmates and attributes to “Clause 28”, is to “remove any books or material that may be promoting a homosexual lifestyle”. Episode Four also features a protest and ‘die-in’ scene that is highly evocative of the demonstrations against Section 28 that were occurring in different UK cities during the months leading up to its introduction in May 1988. Coinciding very closely with the date of It’s a Sin’s fictional demonstration scene in

134 

T. DUNLEAVY

London, the Manchester protest against Section 28 on 20 February 1988 remains the largest LGBTQ demonstration ever held in the UK (Godfrey, 2018). Finally, Section 28, along with the homophobic culture that it legitimated rather than challenged, provides the moral underpinning for Jill’s well-justified yet stinging reproach of Valerie late in Episode Five. The context is an Isle of Wight beachfront, and Jill has just learned that her long-time friend, Ritchie, whom she has been prevented from visiting since he left London, has died. Jill tells Valerie, The wards are full of men who think they deserve it. They are dying and a little bit of them thinks, “Yes this is right. I brought this on myself, it’s my fault because the sex that I love is killing me”. I mean, it’s astonishing. The perfect virus came along to prove you right. So that’s what happened in your house. He died because of you. They all die because of you.

As part of a longer monologue that also functions as a powerful rejoinder to Valerie’s verbal attack on Jill earlier in this same episode, Jill accuses Valerie, and by extension all homophobic Britons of being directly responsible, because of their responses to homosexuality and to the HIV/AIDS crisis, for the deaths of Ritchie and other victims.

Conclusions It’s a Sin debuted from January 2021, its international release and circulation being broadened and accelerated by its tendency to play first on online platforms (IMDbPro, 2021). Although its total international audience is impossible to quantify, It’s a Sin has received critical acclaim in a number of key markets and the Canneseries Excellence Award it won in March 2021 testifies to the prestige it has earned within the international screen industry. The most detailed indicator of its immediate audience appeal was its record-breaking performance on All4, the Channel 4 BVoD service on which two-thirds of its domestic audience watched it (BARB, 2021), with a tendency for on-demand viewers to ‘binge’ the serial weeks before its broadcast run finished. On 1 March, Channel 4 announced that It’s a Sin had amassed 18.9 million views on All4 and become its most watched show ever (Channel 4 Press Release, 2021). It’s a Sin exhibits cultural specificity through its story, setting, and characters, the conflicts that unite these elements foregrounding a prolonged,

6  IT’S A SIN: CROSS-PLATFORM COPRODUCTION, CULTURAL… 

135

still resonant instance of a society divided by its responses to homosexuality and AIDS. There are two broad ways in which It’s a Sin’s story, setting, and characters intersect to foreground the specificity of this national cultural conflict. First, its story not only confronts the devastation and deprivation that Britain’s HIV/AIDS epidemic unleashed on gay men in the 1980s and 1990s, but also connects the inadequacy of political and medical responses to the virus with the reviled position of all LGBTQ people in British society at this time. Second, it focusses on the coming-of-age experiences of young adult (18- to 30-year-old) characters, this facilitating a probing, yet carefully nuanced and balanced investigation of gay men’s lives. Pivotal to this is It’s a Sin’s narrative juxtaposition of the extreme challenges of being a young gay man in this situation with the delights of the self-discovery, sexual emancipation, and companionship that its characters find in the city through the formation of a nurturing ‘logical’ family. Channel 4 was reticent about commissioning It’s a Sin when first approached, but its 2018 greenlight provided an appropriate acknowledgment of the capacity of this particular drama to embody this broadcaster’s distinctive public service objectives. Pursuant to these objectives, and well-­ justified by the innovation, critical acclaim and/or popular success that has characterised Davies’ work to date, Channel 4 granted him the individual autonomy to conceive and construct an authentic, political, and personal story that makes an important addition to Davies’ oeuvre of TV shows about gay men’s lives in urban Britain. Encouraging rather than stifling It’s a Sin’s narrative risk-taking and idiosyncrasies, its development as ‘authored drama’ allowed cultural specificity to be encoded into the production even as it followed the international trajectory now essential to the financing of UK-commissioned high-end dramas (Doyle et al., 2021: 171). One avenue to this was pre-sales financing from All3Media International, this given to It’s a Sin in exchange for first-window distribution rights in a large range of non-US markets. The other was a full coproduction agreement with HBO, under which It’s a Sin would contribute to the allure and success of the network’s then newly established SVoD service—HBO Max—this initially US-only but intended to be extended to other markets. Although HBO’s role as coproduction partner for Channel 4 could have seen it exert creative influence upon It’s a Sin, HBO’s own tradition of maximising the autonomy of proven writer-producers (Dunleavy, 2018: 35) disposes it towards rather than away from cultural distinction in the drama it commissions. Instead, its co-commissioning

136 

T. DUNLEAVY

acknowledged the capacity for distinction and thus strategic value in the “very British” story that It’s a Sin tells (Shindler cited in All3Media, 2020). It’s a Sin’s accentuation of cultural specificity testifies to the benefits and innovation of a cross-platform approach to transnational coproduction. This specificity suggests that converging objectives for national PSBs and multinational premium networks in high-end drama—a category of programming that is vital for both types of providers; albeit for different reasons—can bridge expected differences in their respective commissioning priorities to make culturally distinctive drama a mutually beneficial proposition. It’s a Sin’s demonstration of the cultural repercussions of this convergence of interests joins those of other recent high-end drama coproductions—including L’Amica Geniale/My Brilliant Friend, Anne with An E, and Small Axe—to suggest that cultural specificity can be enhanced by a cross-platform approach to transnational coproduction, a notable deviation from the ‘international co-production’ practices that existed before television’s multiplatform era, which encouraged “delocalization” (Gray cited in Straubhaar, 2007: 169). Acknowledgement  This research was supported by a University Research Grant from Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. This was awarded in 2020 for a research project developed in collaboration with Elke Weissmann and titled ‘New Directions for Transnational High-End Drama in TV’s Multiplatform Era’.

Note 1. A related contribution, this released in tandem with the 2015 dramas Banana and Cucumber, is Tofu, a documentary series created for All4. Even though the three were commissioned as ‘sister’ shows (this indicated by their related and suggestive titles) they differ in thematic coverage, as well as form and genre, with Cucumber focussing on “the lives of gay men in the city” (Davies & Shindler, 2020), while Banana and Tofu incorporate a wider range of LGBTQ experiences and perspectives.

References All3Media. (2020). International Announces Pre-sales to Five Continents for New Russell T Davies’ Drama It’s a Sin. Available at: http://www.redproductioncompany.com/news/all3media-­international-­announces-­pre-­sales-­to-­five-­ continents-­for-­new-­russell-­t-­davies-­drama-­its-­a-­sin/. Accessed 10 Aug 2021.

6  IT’S A SIN: CROSS-PLATFORM COPRODUCTION, CULTURAL… 

137

Anthony, A. (2021). ‘We Were So Scared’: Four People Who Faced the Horror of Aids in the 80s. The Observer. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/ society/2021/jan/31/we-­were-­so-­scared-­four-­people-­who-­faced-­the-­horror-­ of-­aids-­in-­the-­80s. Accessed 28 July 2021. BARB. (2021). The Viewing Report, June 2021. Available at: https://www.barb. co.uk/download/?file=/wp-­c ontent/uploads/2021/06/Barb-­V iewing-­ Report-­June-­2021.pdf. Accessed 5 Aug 2021. Caughie, J. (2000). Television Drama: Realism, Modernism, and British Culture. Oxford University Press. Communications Act. (2003). Section 271. Available at: https://www.legislation. gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/271/2003-­09-­18. Accessed 10 July 2021. Cook, J. (1998). Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen (2nd ed.). Manchester University Press. Daqqa, H. (2018). Logical Family vs. Biological Family. Fairfax County Times. Available at: https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/logical-­family-­vs-­ biological-­family/article_9b54c0b8-­d2e8-­11e8-­97a1-­db6d2d991967.html. Accessed 11 Aug 2021. Davies, R.  T. (2021). I Looked Away for Years. Finally I Have Put Aids at the Centre of a Drama. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian. com/tv-­and-­radio/2021/jan/03/russell-­t-­davies-­i-­looked-­away-­for-­years-­ finally-­i-­have-­put-­aids-­at-­the-­centre-­of-­a-­drama. Accessed 12 July 2021. Davies, R. T., & Shindler, N. (2020, November 16). C21Media Interview. Content London On-Demand. Doyle, G., Paterson, R., & Barr, K. (2021). Television Production in Transition: Independence, Scale, Sustainability and the Digital Challenge. Palgrave Macmillan. Dunleavy, T. (2018). Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television. Routledge University Press. Dunleavy, T. (2020). Transnational Co-production, Multiplatform Television and My Brilliant Friend. Critical Studies in Television, 15(4), 336–356. Geraghty, C. (1991). Women and Soap Opera: A Study of Prime Time Soaps. Polity Press. Godfrey, C. (2018). Section 28 Protesters 30 Years on: ‘We Were Arrested and Put in a Cell Up by Big Ben’. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/27/section-­28-­protesters-­30-­years-­on-­we-­were-­ arrested-­and-­put-­in-­a-­cell-­up-­by-­big-­ben. Accessed 12 Aug 2021. Haynes, S. (2021). How the New British Drama It’s a Sin Is Telling the History of the 1980s AIDS Crisis—And Sparking Change in the Present. Time. Available at: https://time.com/5939522/its-­a-­sin-­history-­hiv-­transphobia/. Accessed 17 July 2021. Hazelton, J. (2019) HBO: Max Launch Will Not Impact International Co-pros. Broadcast. Available at: https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/international/hbo-­

138 

T. DUNLEAVY

max-­launch-­will-­not-­impact-­international-­co-­pros/5141516.article. Accessed 26 July 2021. IMDbPro. (2021). Profile: Russell T Davies. Available at: https://www.imdb. com/name/nm0203961/. Accessed 2 Aug 2021. Lotz, A. D. (2019). Teasing Apart Television Industry Disruption: Consequences of Meso-level Financing Practices Before and After the US Multiplatform Era. Media, Culture and Society, 41(7), 923–938. McElroy, R., & Noonan, C. (2019). Producing British Television Drama: Local Production in a Global Era. Palgrave Macmillan. Miller, L. S. (2021). It’s a Sin Creator Russell T Davies Thought He Didn’t Go Far Enough with His Heartbreaking AIDS Drama—He Was Wrong. Collider. Available at: https://collider.com/russell-­t-­davies-­interview-­its-­a-­sin-­hbo-­ max/. Accessed 20 July 2021. Nelson, R. (2007). State of Play: Contemporary ‘High-End’ Drama. Manchester University Press. Nelson, R. (2011). Author(iz)ing Chase. In D.  Lavery, D.  L. Howard, & P. Levinson (Eds.), The Essential Sopranos Reader (pp. 41–53). The University of Kentucky. Newman, M. Z., & Levine, E. (2012). Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. Routledge. Nicholls, J. (2021). Growing Up in Silence: A Short History of Section 28. Twenty-Six Digital. Available at: https://www.twentysixdigital.com/blog/ growing-­up-­silence-­short-­history-­section-­28/. Accessed 25 July 2021. Parfitt, O. (2021). Emmys Spotlight: How It’s a Sin Became Channel 4’s Most-­ Binged Show Ever. Screen Daily. Available at: https://www.newsbreak.com/ news/2291469597579/emmys-­spotlight-­how-­it-­s-­a-­sin-­became-­channel-­4-­s-­ most-­binged-­show-­ever. Accessed 26 July 2021. Pearson, R. (2021). ‘The Biggest Drama Commission In British History’: Netflix, The Crown and the UK Television Ecosystem. In L.  Barra & M.  Scaglioni (Eds.), A European Television Fiction Renaissance: Premium Production Models and Transnational Circulation (pp. 86–100). Routledge. Ryan, M., & Littleton, C. (2017). TV Series Budgets Hit the Breaking Point as Costs Skyrocket in Peak TV Era. Variety. Available at: https://variety. com/2017/tv/news/tv-­series-­budgets-­costs-­rising-­peak-­tv-­1202570158/. Accessed 25 July 2020. Scott, D., & Milton, J. (2021). Russell T Davies’ Seminal AIDS Drama It’s a Sin Was Almost Never Made After Being Turned Down by TV Bosses. Pink News. Available at: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2021/01/25/its-­a-­sin-­russell-­t-­ davies-­olly-­alexander-­channel-­4-­itv-­bbc-­one/. Accessed 6 July 2021. Steemers, J. (2016). International Sales of U.K. Television Content: Change and Continuity in ‘the Space in Between’ Production and Consumption. Television and New Media, 17(18), 734–753.

6  IT’S A SIN: CROSS-PLATFORM COPRODUCTION, CULTURAL… 

139

Straubhaar, J. (2007). World Television: From Global to Local. Sage. Wise, L. (2021). It’s a Sin: If COVID Was an STD It Would Be Hidden Too. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-­and-­radio/2021/ jan/09/its-­a -­s in-­i ts-­n ot-­a bout-­d eath-­i ts-­a bout-­v ibrant-­b eautiful-­l ives. Accessed 10 July 2021.

CHAPTER 7

Unseen Particles in Time: Co-producing Transcultural Memory as a Discourse of TV Legitimacy Within the Sky/HBO Miniseries TV Event, Chernobyl (2019) Janet McCabe

Introduction I see Chernobyl as the beginning of a new history: it offers not only knowledge but also prescience, because it challenges our old ideas about ourselves and the world. (Alexievich, 2016: 24)

Chernobyl (2019) tells a fictionalised version, almost as witness, as collective memory based on what HBO tell us is “an untold true story.” This chapter asks what it means to constitute within a transnational co-­ producing TV context a mediated transcultural memory of an historical event, especially one as contested as the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility in Ukraine, at that time part of Soviet Union. In bringing to light this question, I am especially curious about the role of “transcultural

J. McCabe (*) Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_7

141

142 

J. MCCABE

memory” (Crownshaw, 2014)1 in consecrating a new TV transnational partnership between Sky in association with HBO Miniseries. My purpose is to explore what Astrid Erll calls “mnemonic processes unfolding across and beyond cultures” (2014: 14, emphases in original). Highlighting the way in which a transcultural memory transcends borders, I adopt this perspective to stress how idioms of witness testimony shaping the televisual of this past cataclysmic event contributes to legitimising a contemporary high-end TV miniseries designed for a specific television circuit with high cultural ambitions. 26 April 1988—The miniseries starts with the voice of Professor Valery Alekseyevich Legasov (Jared Harris) musing on the ‘cost of lies’ (episode 1). Legasov is a real-life character: he was the First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy known for his work in containing the Chernobyl disaster. He took the scientific lead on the commission, and later compiled a special report detailing the scale of the fallout, which he presented to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Alone, at home in his Moscow flat, the Soviet nuclear physicist speaks his “truth” of events into a tape recorder. “Well, I’ve given you all I know,” he wearily concludes. “They will deny it, of course. They always do … I know you’ll do your best.” Only the whirl of the tape machine is heard, stopping and rewinding, an aural trace of a historical materiality awakened in the TV present: six audio cassettes, five TV episodes. Out with the trash to evade the ever-watchful state gaze which keeps him under constant surveillance, the clandestine recordings are hidden in a safe place for someone else to collect later. His testimony complete, cat fed, Legasov takes his own life. He is a dead man anyway, politically, but also physically, evidenced by a blood-stained handkerchief, a tell-tale sign of the radiation-related illness slowly claiming his body. Yet his memory work has a future-oriented, agentive quality destined to travel across borders, a counter witness to contest the official version offered by a state keen to retain sovereignty over its “national” tragedy. In the production and transnational circulation of Legasov’s testimony Chernobyl makes visible what Rosanne Kennedy conceptualises as “moving testimonies” (2014), as “travel” (moving from one geographical location to another) and as “affect” (53). Legasov’s affective testimony—“there was nothing sane about Chernobyl”—is carried into the world in this transnational TV miniseries, a form of drama also termed “limited serial” (and introduced in Chap. 1). This cross-border coproduction mobilises a cultural memory, a “travelling memory” (Erll, 2014), that speaks to an audience elsewhere, to awaken

7  UNSEEN PARTICLES IN TIME: CO-PRODUCING TRANSCULTURAL… 

143

the world to what happened at Chernobyl. 6 May 2019—HBO premiered the five-part historical TV miniseries event. In just over a month Chernobyl, co-produced by subscription-based TV companies as a scripted-premium miniseries aimed at a transnational (niche) audience, had circulated internationally, traded into Europe (7 May), then Central and South America (10 May) and later South Africa (22 May). Drawing on theories of memory studies and the sociology of culture, I ask what is it to produce transcultural memories of this unparalleled disaster flowing through a transnational coproduction 30 years after the fact: which history, whose memories? My thesis is about the production of a new TV canon to bulwark the reputational legacy of TV production companies like HBO and Sky, with Chernobyl as a symptom of something new. Chernobyl is about creating contemporary commemorative TV drama, the making of important television in the world today: a high-profile miniseries like Chernobyl speaks to the unification of what I call a restricted cultural field of TV production, in which the uniqueness of such a TV project consecrates the international reputation of such a transnational enterprise and its politics of storytelling, as this new cross-border collaboration enters the field. Acting as connective tissue weaving through the chapter are ideas of time and memory as a language of time, in relation to the reputation building of a transnational coproduction. Not only in terms of how mediated history, memory and time— from the series’ time codes to the life of the radionuclides that settled on the land2—act as reputational themes in the miniseries. But also, in terms of the role played by time in consecrating the cross-border coproduction: why Chernobyl, why tell Chernobyl now? This is why, in the space of this restricted cultural field, distance involving history and representation, reputation and creativity is best measured in terms of time and time-lag (Bourdieu, 2009: 106–7; 124). Simply put, I look at how time and memory as time in Chernobyl contributes further to a global memory culture around the nuclear disaster of 1986 mediated in 2019. But I start by theorising the field of cultural production which made such a project possible in the first place. For transnationalism in this context extends the significance of the national frame (US/HBO, UK/Sky) alongside a field of cultural production to reinforce and transcend borders. For me, as this chapter will argue, the “transnational” and “memory” together facilitate an analytical space for television studies to consider transnational TV as cultural intervention and its reputational role in cultivating relevancy, a durational interplay between cultures and institutions.

144 

J. MCCABE

Falling from the Sky: Reframing the National in the Transnational Landsat 5, a low Earth orbit satellite launched in 1984 and jointly managed by the US Geological Survey and NASA, was the first satellite to confirm the disaster near Pripyat, in the agricultural heartland of the former Soviet Union. Three days after the explosion, data from Landsat 5’s near-infrared Band 7 confirmed a big red spot within the plant complex. Pressed by evidence from Landsat as well as early detection from the Forsmark nuclear plant in Sweden, reticent Soviet officials struggling to contain the disaster, even at first denying it, had to acknowledge the accident. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev finally spoke publicly about Chernobyl for the first time on 14 May 1986, declaring on Russian State TV that “the worst is behind us.” Witnessed here is the rise of a new generation of satellite technology able to deliver high quality data about the world, a mode and aesthetic of observing, capturing and transmitting images generated by non-state actors. Such satellite technology resulting from new strategic alliances with a facility to transgress national boundaries in favour of globalised knowledge and “time-space compression” (Giddens, 1991) implied that the national frame was no longer so self-­ evident and instead the technology materialises as a symptom of an emerging post-national consciousness. This ability to collect data, to generate and circulate different kinds of evidence about the world, had the capacity to challenge traditional state-controlled narratives and institutions and contest the legitimacy of the nation-state as the “natural container, curator and telos of collective memory” (De Cesari & Rigney, 2014: 1). Alongside Earth observation satellites conducting geological surveys, international TV channels with supranational goals also emerged. Where the local, often regional flows into the global is as old as the TV medium itself (Fickers & Johnson, 2012; Hilmes, 2012), new global communications networks and media industries were being constituted in the technological infrastructure. The first, named Satellite Television, launched in April 1982 and was transmitted from the OTS, the first communications satellite launched by the inter-governmental satellite operator, Eutelsat (Chalaby, 2005: 44–8). The pioneering cross-border TV initiative at first struggled, because of slow take-up rates, but also regulatory philosophy restricting the access of transborder commercial television into national territories. Satellite Television was acquired in 1983 by Rupert Murdoch, someone based “literally on the periphery of the English-speaking world”

7  UNSEEN PARTICLES IN TIME: CO-PRODUCING TRANSCULTURAL… 

145

(Sinclair et al., 1996: 24) and renamed Sky Channel. Despite European ambitions and half its programming by 1987 being European in origin (Collins, 1992: 83), accumulated debt saw Sky pull back (albeit temporally) to the British market in 1989 (Tallantire, 1989). Reimagining the structures of the media ecology (Chalaby, 2005, 2009) was furthermore prompted by changes in the geopolitical axis (Sinclair et  al., 1996: 1), including the partial dismantling of national boundaries following the fall of communism in eastern Europe and the demise of the Soviet Union which Chernobyl hastened, or so the series tells us (episode 5). Sky’s selection of this event from 1986 is therefore telling, where a new transnational high-budget, high-concept co-­produced TV event collides with its remembering through older national medias and “traditional” broadcasting cultures. Chernobyl mnemonically evidences such a media archaeology in episode 2. After 30 hours or so the whole world has learnt what happened at Chernobyl, played initially as an interior drama between Legasov and Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) set in a hotel room (a place of transience), with a phone call interrupting the silent recognition that their lives will be cut short by staying close to Chernobyl. Yet the mise en scène articulates the macro, mapping the global scenario and communications drift. Viewed from a civic square in Pripyat, behind a utilitarian-style residential block, belching smoke from the reactor depositing radioactive particles into the atmosphere is aurally overlaid with the voice of US TV news anchor Peter Jennings from 1986. His voice from far, far away, both temporally and spatially, mingling with the fallout cloud confronts the politics in the geopolitical shift from the national to transnational frame. Cut to inside the Kremlin where Gorbachev (David Dencik) sits watching the actual 1986 TV news footage from ABC World News Tonight. This footage from another broadcast era sees Jennings announcing that an atomic reactor at Chernobyl near the city of Kiev had been damaged, locating the disaster in the world for the US audience at the time, a place no one had heard of before. This material trace of news footage from the US network channel ABC, with its textual qualities and aspect ratio from 1986, authenticates historical time, almost bearing witness to it; a representation of US media democracy breaking into the Soviet national frame (however illusionary). Later is the turn of the Soviet broadcast, a restaging of the original newscast made on 28 April 1986, almost as a cross-reference. This time with a female newsreader (Natasha Radski) sitting in front of a large blue screen, as the report broke into the scheduled Vremya (“Time”) news programme. From behind a desk, she

146 

J. MCCABE

calmly reads a 14-second official announcement from the Council of Ministers of the USSR, with its contemporary translation subtitled over the original scripted Russian-spoken words. As much as Jennings addresses the US public sphere so she constitutes the Soviet one, illustrating what Nancy Fraser defines as “a bounded political community with its own territorial states” (2013: 13). These textual media traces belonging to seemingly opposing nation-based broadcast traditions are being picked up at a different time, and in a separate place, where something of value is found in the old analogue media. This archaeological expedition into remembering media pasts constructs a transcultural memory, to situate what happened in time, a materiality of remediated memory as time, to reframe what happened as a transnational disaster. Memory does not so much exist in these recycled media materials as much as flows through them, material awakened to authenticate the memorative value of this contemporary cross-border TV project. Chernobyl recognises the significance of national frameworks while opening a transnational dialogue with history in the interplay and tension of old (nation-based) broadcast media layered into new cross-border produced scripted-content. In this way Sky, Europe’s leading direct-to-consumer media and entertainment company, asserts its agency within that media history. Choosing to remember Chernobyl makes it possible to see retrospectively the paths in the formation of Sky as breaking the national frame, its role in the expansion of multi-channel television and the “ability of satellite delivery to transgress borders” (Sinclair et al., 1996: 2). Revealed is a media archaeology of Sky, its media culture as sedimented and layered, a fold of time and materiality, where its origins are suddenly discovered anew in its remediated reawakening of the 1980s in 2019. Chernobyl as institutional memory of Sky allows the company to affirm its role as “pioneering” in transforming the media landscape, namely: Sky’s entry into a field before its maturation, its legitimatising of the Sky Original brand and its reputation for innovation in telling stories with a relevancy that promises to transcend borders.

7  UNSEEN PARTICLES IN TIME: CO-PRODUCING TRANSCULTURAL… 

147

(Trans)national Original Programming, Legitimatising Television and the Creation of TV Value Within the Field of Restricted Cultural Production Understanding the “legitimisation” of original programming and its value for the cultural economy of television has preoccupied scholars for a while now (Jancovich & Lyons, 2003; McCabe & Akass, 2007; Nelson, 2007; Newman & Levine, 2012). Argued across the decades, as digitalisation and convergence reshaped the media landscape further still (Jenner, 2018; Lobato, 2019) is how the reputation of television as having a distinct value found visible expression in the materiality of highly complex and elaborate forms of serial narrative (Dunleavy, 2018), or what Jason Mittell (2015) called the “poetics” of contemporary television storytelling. Able to arrest time through new digital screens and devices (Mulvey, 2006) scholars have been able to scrutinise the television text as never before (Kompare, 2006; Newman & Levine, 2012: 100–152). Removing the TV text from its broadcast flow, holding the image and story as a freeze-frame, repeating it, returning to it (Mulvey, 2006), has allowed for new thinking about the textual properties of the televisual, its construction of story and storytelling, and its signifying aesthetic value (Hills, 2007). Discovered in the very materiality of the TV form, which invites intense and repeated scrutiny, has been a new definition of television as self-reflexive art, a thick description understood by scholars as articulating an entire field of contemporary television production. The rise of complex serial drama must therefore be read not only as a moment which is part of a political and cultural economy of “premium” television fiction (Dunleavy, 2018; Lotz, 2018; Barra & Scaglioni, 2021), but also of its meaning and its value, where television scholarship emerges as another consecrating agent, which in turn legitimatises standing in the academic field (Newman & Levine, 2012: 153–171). No other TV company better articulates the legitimatising discourse of television than one of the co-producing companies behind Chernobyl, the US pay-television network HBO (Home Box Office). The reason why is not because HBO has necessarily re-defined what we mean by originality and the new in television, as much as compelled us to talk and think about television in a particular way. Specifically, this relates to television series and seriality and what we understand by innovation and creativity in TV

148 

J. MCCABE

drama. Its immense enterprise in communicating a way of thinking about television originality involves a conviction shared amongst media agents and companies engaged in a specific field of TV cultural production. HBO has come to normalise what we have come to think of as important television in terms of critical acclaim, ways of evaluating television and a certain kind of aesthetic standard (DeFino, 2014). But it is also how the company has sustained certain beliefs and practices of TV culture and television art in a habitus fashioned within its structures (McCabe & Akass, 2008). HBO has systematically set about legitimatising a discourse of television distinction and prestige through its Original Programming and one upheld and extended far beyond the United States (Szczepanik, 2021; Imre, 2018). Latitude to tell stories differently, creative personnel given the autonomy to work with minimal interference and without compromise is the HBO trademark. Its definition of originality and creativity finds HBO placing a high premium on the kind of authorship associated with European art cinema (Feuer, 2007), where achievements are assessed and careers made within a restricted, or at least small-scale production defined by a relatively large degree of autonomy (see Bourdieu, 2009: 264–265). Taking seriously television as a medium in definitions of the TV auteur, of the “artistic” TV work, brings the auteur closer to that of an intellectual. This is further dependent on consecrating agents, implicating enthusiastic critics and journalists (Zoller Seitz & Sepinwall, 2019), philosophers (Žižek, 2012), political theorists (Jameson, 2010) and academic scholars, including (dare I say) me. Each consecrating the other, each legitimatising the enterprise of the other. In such a braided rhetoric, reference is made in the interaction to an already established language of Western culture and philosophy, canonical art and “classic” storytelling forms (McCabe & Akass, 2008; Newman & Levine, 2012: 45–48). At stake is how HBO put these television works into the TV market and contributed to making known the value of TV seriality as art (Santo, 2008). HBO’s pursuit of symbolic capital—artistic recognition, awards, prestige—elevates the company in the ranking, where it becomes the market leader defined in its “Original Programming” philosophy. This logic has turned HBO from a small enterprise situated at the very fringes of the US TV industry, barely registering in the media when launched 50 years ago, into an international cultural phenomenon. Yet this positionality is more than HBO. Instead, the emergence of the HBO enterprise describes the formation of an entire television ecosystem with implications far beyond one company.

7  UNSEEN PARTICLES IN TIME: CO-PRODUCING TRANSCULTURAL… 

149

Pierre Bourdieu talks of a “production of belief” (2009: 74–111), explained “as a system of objective relations between[…] agents or institutions and as the site of the struggles for the monopoly of power to consecrate, in which the value of works of art and belief in that value are continuously generated” (2009: 78). In following this logic, I search out acts of consecration in the field as I chart the reputation building of Chernobyl, starting with its media production context. Chernobyl as a transnational media artefact represents the first full coproduction, part of a US$250m (£193m) high-end drama deal between HBO and Sky reached in 2017, with the expressed aim to produce “engaging stories with international points of view and casting” (Whittock, 2017).3 This in turn represents a maturation, the deepening of a relationship started in 2010, with an output agreement in which BSkyB bought the exclusive rights to the entire HBO catalogue (its archive and forthcoming shows) (Robinson, 2010), with original programming destined for its “exclusive” flagship channel Sky Atlantic launched in February 2011. 2014 saw Sky extend its multi-year deal for the exclusive domestic rights to HBO shows, first in the UK and Ireland, then a year later across the pay TV operators in European territories (including Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia). The agreement was renewed for an additional five years in 2019 (Middleton, 2019) and included a new coproduction partnership with HBO Max (Sky, 2019). Chernobyl reiterates the alliance, another timely reminder to reassert and (re)endorse the value chain of what Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni distinguish as “a vertical integration in the market”, which is “becoming more and more integrated, producing exclusive content to sustain recognizable brands [and] foster customer/subscriber loyalty” (2021: 14). Identified here is the latest development of pay TV (satellite, cable and digital), “with the aforementioned need to commission high-­ budget, high-concept scripted products with supranational ambitions” (Barra & Scaglioni, 2021: 15). In the time-lag between agreements, which reaffirm old deals and include new ones, the field gains in autonomy, where agents and institutions over time become strengthened in a sense of purpose, commercially and symbolically. Yet the “position-taking” of Chernobyl must be “defined in relation to the space of possibles” (Bourdieu, 2009: 30, emphasis in original), in which the miniseries is the outcome of a logic obeying “the dialectic of cultural distinction” (2009: 115). Suggested is that institutions, producers and consumers define themselves in the selection of Chernobyl, but also in how they use it and think about it to position themselves within the field.

150 

J. MCCABE

Firstly, there is the writer, Craig Mazin. Yet the value of Mazin as the auteur behind Chernobyl is determined in that recognition and thus the sponsorship of his idea. This is about those who champion his project, put together the finance and forge creative alliances (including with production companies, The Mighty Mint and Word Games) to realise the “scale” of such a transnational enterprise. Part of the $250m production deal is a panel of executives from HBO and Sky charged with greenlighting the pitches (Whittock, 2017), which translates into the production company behind Chernobyl: the “independent, modern studio” Sister Pictures, with its founding partners Elisabeth Murdoch (ex-Sky), Carolyn Strauss (exHBO) and Jane Featherstone (ex-Kudos/Sky/Shine UK, now part of Endemol Shine Group). Recommending the project, having faith in its relevance and staking one’s reputation on it, leads to the commissioning of the screenplay by HBO. While at the same time this “position-taking” is about cultivating and affirming the standing of the “‘discoverer’ or ‘creator of the creator’” (Bourdieu, 2009: 77). The process “introduces” the project to a select company (Bourdieu, 2009: 77), those possessing a specific “cultivated disposition” (2009: 121)—critics, juries for awards—who fulfil a consecrating function and ensure the miniseries is well-received. In July 2019, Chernobyl was nominated for 19 Emmy awards and won 10, including three for the Primetime Emmy Awards: Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special, Outstanding Limited Series and Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special. In addition, the miniseries collected other major TV awards, such as a Golden Globe for Best Miniseries or Television Film and, in January 2020, the National Television Award for Best New Drama. Alongside this verdict of valuing Chernobyl as important TV is the audience, “the consumer capable of consuming” (Bourdieu, 2009: 121) the miniseries as important contemporary TV work. In the words of Bourdieu, there emerges “the sense of presence in the same present” (2009: 107), where the importance of Chernobyl as the contemporary TV moment is defined in the mutual recognition between various agents (critics and audiences). The memory work of Chernobyl as a transcultural process, as defining contemporary TV relevancy, must therefore be situated within this restricted field, its beliefs and cycles of consecration. Argued is how a specific transnational TV ecology generates a circulatory infrastructure for the production, authentication and cultural transmission of stories as testimony, out of which a distinct politics of storytelling emerges,

7  UNSEEN PARTICLES IN TIME: CO-PRODUCING TRANSCULTURAL… 

151

encapsulating HBO/Sky’s “leading brands in worldwide television” (Whittock, 2017). Issues of time and timeliness are in play into which the agents and institutions “involved in the game” position themselves as appearing to be capable of “making history” (Bourdieu, 2009: 107): the first HBO/Sky coproduction; the first Sky Original to reach an audience of over four million, “the biggest ever audience for a Sky original drama” (Sky, 2020). Chernobyl allows these agents to define the contemporaneousness in “high quality drama” (Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch, quoted in Whittock, 2017) and situate transnational coproduction at the vanguard: “together we represent the best in television and combined we will raise the bar even higher in pay TV programming,” says HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler (quoted in Whittock, 2017). Defining the time of the field, its timely presence to lead it, is what I claim here.

Producing Transcultural Memories as TV Legitimacy: Mnemonic Forms and as Affect Memory studies scholarship has long understood collective memory as crucial for identity formation, and how, in contemporary times, a self-­ reflexive cultivation of the past has played into the formation of imagined communities (Anderson, 1991; Assmann, 1995). Chernobyl shares similar concerns with identifying images and narratives that awaken humanity to what happened at Chernobyl, the suffering and collective sacrifice which saved the European Continent from being left uninhabitable. The paradigm, founded on the principle that testimony and bearing witness act as a moral and social conscience in the world, recognises events with consequences that extend far beyond any single territorial state. Memory work in this respect establishes a creative and cultural agenda for the first cross-­ border collaboration between Sky and HBO. It signals a televisual identity for the project; but also, legitimacy for the Sky/HBO alliance to build a transnational public who recognise themselves as such within the creative ambition, described by Roberta Pearson as “global ‘taste communities’, defined by cultural preferences rather than demographics or geography” (2021: 87). This is television designed to appeal to a cosmopolitan, international audience with shared cultural and intellectual capital, with similar liberal sensibilities. Those who will share in the moral outrage at the silence of the nation-state, leading to empathy and a trans-ethical solidarity with the suffering of the victims of Chernobyl.

152 

J. MCCABE

The world may know of Chernobyl: much written of the tragedy is published internationally, often in English (Higginbotham, 2019; Plokhy, 2019), but a sense pervades in the need to tell this story to the world in 2019 as a humanitarian one. In this regard the miniseries solicits the support of a global audience to hold nation-states and individuals accountable for their actions. The reason for this de-territorialising is given in the first episode by the elderly Communist official Zharkov (Donald Sumpter), as the politics of the Soviet state mobilise to conceal the truth of Chernobyl. “We seal off the city,” Zharkov says during an emergency meeting of the Pripyat ispolkom (the town’s governing council). “No one leaves. And cut the phone lines. Contain the spread of misinformation.” In many ways Chernobyl draws on familiar Cold War tropes, of a political class maintaining its power through censored control of the media, and restricting free speech, as well as a Soviet-style containment enacted by the KGB. Yet in the structuring logic of the TV miniseries, while the Soviets seek to limit the spread of information, often expressed in the time codes which convey the delayed response, or at least an attempt to buy time, this cross-border coproduction teases out the character and role of witness—what Kennedy (2014) defines as “moving testimonies”—to break (national) silence and take the story into the global public realm. What emerges as transcultural memory in Chernobyl has a multi-layered, multi-sited dynamic. It involves various movements (people, locations, perspectives) that cut across while at the same time bind together diverse spatial and temporal sites in the production of a memory of Chernobyl. In this transborder context, I am reminded of what Michael Rothberg (2009) has said about memory as “multi-directional”, or nœuds de mémoire (knotted memory): “as subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing; as productive and not privative” (Rothberg, 2009: 3). This concept is about different, entangled historical memories and draws attention “to the dynamic transfers that take place between diverse places and times during the act of remembrance” (2009: 11). Such a framework of multi-directional memory enables me to think about how Chernobyl assembles its politics of remembering, collecting witness as commemorative acts heavily conditioned by a nation-state unable to admit the truth and true scale of the disaster. The close-up becomes a key tool in this regard, as the camera shadows individual characters. It lingers on facial reactions, often without words. In the immediate aftermath, there is a slow track into the face of Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Dyatlov (Paul Ritter), the man in charge of the room (episode 1).

7  UNSEEN PARTICLES IN TIME: CO-PRODUCING TRANSCULTURAL… 

153

A man calling his name, a distant whine, accompanies a spiralling track into a close-up of his face finally bleached out by light from above, before a series of cuts to other workers registering shock and disbelief: “What just happened?” News that the core has gone delivered by Valera Perevozchenko (Jay Simpson)—“I saw it”—is ruled by Dyatlov as impossible, scientifically and politically (given the supremacy of the Soviet nuclear programme): “RBMK reactor cores don’t explode.” After dispatching orders, Dyatlov leaves the control room with the camera trailing behind defining his perspective. The camera stays with him moving along the corridor, taking him/us to another location and sight/site of significance. On arrival the close-up of his face is less about what he sees as much as about his reaction to it, where from his birds-eye vantage he can see burning graphite. His silent reaction registers the truth—he knows the core has exploded (conveyed in a wide-shot, literally showing the whole picture)—which will remain officially denied for as long as possible. The difficulties of bearing witness, the impossibility of bringing certain truths into the political realm are thus established. Yet this transnational coproduction will shatter the (repressive) national frame, in how it conceptualises memory strategies as a way to do so. A sense of cross-referencing pervades. No one person can bear direct witness, articulate the truth of what they have seen without political censor. Witnessing thus emerges as a series of subjective perspectives and reaction shots, and these articulations bind a community together across diverse spatial and temporal sites. Episode 1 is structured through shifting perspectives—from plant workers, firemen, local citizens, Soviet bureaucrats (otherwise known as apparatchik) and hospital workers—almost in real time as each new person encounters the event for the first time. Initially inside the building, one plant worker wandering through the debris is replaced by another, one man looking for another: as Perevozchenko becomes sick, Yuvchenko (Douggie McMeekin) resumes the search, only to find Viktor Degtaryenko (Karolis Kasperavičius), whose face is covered in skin burns and blisters. Dust particles are falling, a trapped bird fluttering through a door leads Yuvchenko to survey the horror in wide screen. Back inside the control room the team enact procedures as if the core remains intact, where colleagues like Unit Shift Chief Alexandr Akimov (Sam Troughton) and Engineer Leonid Toptunov (Adam Emms) can do little but look in confused disbelief. Next it is the turn of the firemen, who arrive outside the facility. It is Vasily Ignatenko (Adam Nagaitis) who takes the viewer into the disaster zone. More

154 

J. MCCABE

unsteady camerawork, accompanied by wailing alarms, sirens and muffled voices, define a perspective of not quite being able to comprehend what he sees. Perspective becomes a mnemonic device to trace personal experience. Each one builds across the five episodes into what Avishai Margalit calls “a shared memory,” meaning that which “integrates and calibrates the different perspectives of those who remember the episode[…] into one vision” (2002: 52). Chernobyl collects these witness testimonies, of experiences not quite digested, and embeds personal recollection deep into the very memory structure of the miniseries as the common ground on which the series condenses multiple perspectives into a succinct remembrance of Chernobyl. Distinguishing Chernobyl are its high production values and cinematography, a clarity of image and sound that shades its textures of transcultural mnemonic production. The way in which sound and image mediate a subjective perspective make it possible to experience a past never directly lived as affect (Landsberg, 2004). Episode 2 concludes with three divers— Ananenko (Baltasar Breki Samper), Bezpalov (Philip Barantini) and Baranov (Oscar Dyekjær Giese)—entering the reactor to manually open sluice gates and drain the bubbler tanks to avert nuclear disaster. Entering the basement, the divers start their descent into the duct system with the camera tracing their every step. Sounds of water dripping and the low crackling of the dosimeter accompany the three as they step into the radioactive water. As they move further along the duct way, the experience becomes increasingly claustrophobic told in sound design and tight, almost constricting cinematography coloured in cloying sepia shades. Stark light from the torches flicker on the dark toxic water, sometimes blinding us. The crackling intensifies, muffled speech from behind masks, and the sloshing of water communicates a visceral dread, as the men become disoriented in an almost suffocating panic. Torches start to fail, the crackling grows stronger, then silence as the episode ends. Breathe. This three-­minute sequence in high-definition strives for a real-time verisimilitude, producing what Alison Landsberg calls a “prosthetic memory” (2004). The sound and cinematography work on the body of the viewer, transporting us into this location, positioning us to feel what they felt, to “take on memories of a past through which [we] did not live” (Landsberg, 2004: 8). In so doing the “prosthetic memory” produces further empathy and establishes “a political connection” (2004: 48) with those far beyond our own experiences.

7  UNSEEN PARTICLES IN TIME: CO-PRODUCING TRANSCULTURAL… 

155

Another memory trace crafted in Chernobyl is rooted in its production design. Attention to meticulous period detail to authenticate, to bear witness in objects and set design (set decoration, building, wallpaper), leads Marsha Gessen to write that the material culture “seems to come straight out of nineteen-eighties Ukraine, Belarus, and Moscow” (2019). Production designer Luke Hull drew on primary historical references, including photographs, particularly those of Igor Kostin (one of the first to take pictures of the disaster), to give the series its distinctive look (Carponen, 2019). A replica of the control room was built entirely from scratch. The mosaic depicting the Soviet ambition for their nuclear programme adorning the Byelorussian Institute for Nuclear Energy in Minsk (episode 2), the carpet mural resembling a fractured power plant, designed for Viktor Bryukhanov’s (Con O’Neill) office (episode 5): each illustrates Soviet modernist design, a shorthand for the period design that travelled far beyond the nation. This extends to the modular furniture which appears in so many rooms—apartments, hotel rooms, offices—bearing material witness to Soviet-state investment in the furniture industry. A design for modern Soviet living remediating utilitarian function as a televisual “language” of a historical time. Props were sourced directly from the former Soviet bloc—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia: a historical materiality used and recycled but also transformed, expanded and rethought as a contemporary “image bank” from which memories of the Soviet Union are retrieved and awakened in a new transnational TV context to communicate its memory discourse. From the vacated spaces 56  hours after the explosion—an empty classroom (school books on a desk, a name carved into it), an abandoned restaurant (a pair of spectacles left on a table), blankets draped on a communal washing line, the vacated hospital ward (a single shoe and ceramic bowl)—to the interior of the Byelorussian Community Party HQ in Minsk and the hotel in Pripyat with its patterned carpets and stylish bar (episode 2), this mnemonic awakening of a culture through images, props and set design has the purpose of legitimatising and making legible the investment in such a TV history project. The series draws consecrating nourishment from such materiality reimagined and defined as “authentic,” an indexical trace of a time, space and society inscribed in the very language of cultural style and design.

156 

J. MCCABE

Moving Testimonies and Awakening Justice: Female Witness as Mnemonic Transcultural Memory Forms The end of Legasov’s life returns us to Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, two years and one minute earlier (episode 1). A woman is heard retching. As she emerges from the toilet it quickly becomes apparent that she is suffering from morning sickness rather than radiation poisoning. She pads through the intimacy of her domestic present, the bedroom where her husband sleeps, into the kitchen for a drink of clean water. Through the living room picture window, in the far distance, the Chernobyl plant explodes. The woman wanders into the room, as the aftershock violently shakes the building. This nuclear accident with global implications is initially experienced in the private realm, situated firmly in the domestic, of the here and now. Awakened by the blast a man joins her as the couple look through the widescreen of the picture window to the tall flames of Chernobyl faraway, illuminating the night sky. The woman is Lyudmilla Ignatenko (Jessie Buckley), the wife of the fireman Vasily. Her character is based on the real-life Lyudmilla, “a lone human voice” who gave testimony to Svetlana Alexievich, the first to appear in Chernobyl Prayer (2016: 1–23). Alexievich, who collected interviews over several years, and working closely with her interviewees, wrote the book not as history but literature, as a conversation with those “whose world was Chernobyl” (Alexievich, 2016: 27). Craig Mazin adopted the oral history strategy for the Chernobyl script and used the book as source material (Gessen, 2019). The choice to retell Lyudmilla’s testimony is, therefore, telling. In part because there is something inherently televisual in the way her “moving testimony” spatially plots the Chernobyl story as affect and empathy; and in part because of the deliberate selection of her story, the first monologue of Chernobyl Prayer, the book which won Alexievich the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. This is a prized memory, a prize-winning one. Lyudmilla’s act of remembering taken from the literary page takes a distinct televisual form for this specific transnational production and is used by specific agents for a specific purpose. No victim, but strong and stoical, this newly married and recently pregnant young woman is a character type rooted deep in the DNA of a global television storytelling tradition. Yet her suffering, sacrifice and loss takes an extraordinary turn: a journey from domestic life in Pripyat, travelling from Kievskaya oblast to Hospital Number 6  in Moscow (episode 3), where Vasily has been taken to a special radiation ward; returning to Chernobyl,

7  UNSEEN PARTICLES IN TIME: CO-PRODUCING TRANSCULTURAL… 

157

she sees him interned in the earth, sealed in a zinc coffin, and buried in liquid concrete. Finally, she moves to Kiev, evacuated from the exclusion zone, only to give birth to a child who had absorbed the radiation and dies soon after (episode 4). In hiding her pregnancy, bribing her way into the hospital (despite having a permit), being told not to touch her dying husband—a contaminated object—but doing so anyway, Lyudmilla becomes a heroine of an ideal, paying for her undying love with the life of their daughter. “Here, even Shakespeare bows out, even Dante,” writes Alexievich of Lyudmilla’s story (2016: 33). Illuminated in those words is the agency (and this includes Mazin) involved in mobilising Lyudmilla’s testimony, to hear it, collect it, contextualise it as an important “authentic” voice of Chernobyl, and invest it with symbolic value as a “travelling memory” (Erll, 2014). Her “moving testimony,” as a series of geographical movements (from home to exile), but also as affect, awakens a trans-­ ethical empathy claimed through bodily and psychological suffering, as well as in the grief for a series of cruel losses (a beloved husband, a home, a child). Simply put, Lyudmilla as an affective character, produced in new transnational flows, creates a memory of Chernobyl that viewers, at whatever distance (spatial, temporal) from the events, can almost touch. Another dimension of memory and witness testimony merits attention for its transnational reach. Episode 4 begins with the sound of liquid squirting, part of the clean-up possibly. Instead the image reveals the hands of an old woman milking a cow, a simple action, a repetitive, timeless labour. Over the Babushka (June Watson) stands a young soldier (Josef Altin). “It’s time to go,” he tells her: it is time for her to leave her village, a world she’s inhabited, for almost the entire twentieth century: “I’m 82. I’ve lived here my whole life, right here, that house, this place.” To the rhythmic sound of the milking the Babushka gives unsolicited testimony. Over her words are a series of images of her rural home haunted by absence—the kitchen, sleeping area, a table covered with an oilskin cloth, a washing line, with pillowcases and table linen blowing in the gentle spring breeze. Scenes almost out of time, as it has always been. He’s not the first soldier to stand in this place with a gun. When she was 12, the Revolution came (1917): first the Tsar’s men, then the Bolsheviks. “Boys like you marching in lines,” telling them to leave. Another living space, with an old photograph on the wall bears witness to lives lived in this location. “Then there was Stalin and the Holodomor,” a man-made famine experienced in Soviet Ukraine from 1932–33. Weaved with pictures of family members long gone, she narrates the passing of time as repeated

158 

J. MCCABE

tides of history engulf her home. Memory is sedimented, tiers of the local, national and global layered as historical trauma (revolution, famine, the Great War [1939–1945]) and personal loss and private grief (the death of parents, two of her sisters, a brother who never came home from war). Her memories of what has gone before—“German boys, Russian boys. More soldiers, more famine, more bodies”—conceptualise history as flows of outside forces reorienting territories and its thickening effect on a place. Her site of memories, or lieux de mémoire (Nora, 1989), speak of dislocation and displacement: evacuated villagers, locals leaving for somewhere else, cut to the latest evacuees forced to move from the land, sitting in an army truck awaiting departure. Her history lesson casts a retrospective light on the transnational cross currents of the latest disaster, as the radioactive cloud drifts across the land rendering it uninhabitable, denoted by the milk thrown away and her cow slain. Her recollections are a proximity of the intimate with history mapped into the now contaminated earth. Memory created in the context of this transnational co-produced TV miniseries demonstrates fidelities with multiple events and historical legacies, near and far, past and now. Yet at the same time the absence of the old blind woman in the telling, told only as a disembodied voice over a series of images, almost as photographic stills, gives a sense of an imagined future of the space abandoned, as well as an indexical trace of a time already long passed. The person who will ultimately bear witness to the above, especially the fate of Lyudmilla, is Ulana Yuriyvna Khomyuk (Emily Watson), chief physicist at the Byelorussian Institute for Nuclear Energy based in Minsk (now the capital of Belarus). Unlike Lyudmilla, Khomyuk is a purely fictional character, conjured in the transnational co-produced imaginary, created to represent the scientists who worked alongside Legasov (as revealed in the final credit sequence of episode 5). Khomyuk emerges as the collector of testimony, documented in numerous notebooks. Her investigation takes her on a journey from Minsk to Chernobyl and onto Moscow, along hospital corridors and into the National Archive via a night in a KGB cell (episode 4), before returning to Chernobyl to give expert testimony at the trial of Dyaltov, Director Bryukhanov and Chief Engineer Nikolai Fomin (Adrian Rawlins) (episode 5). In so doing Khomyuk constructs the timeline, “minute by minute, second by second in some places, [every] decision, every button pushed, every turn of a switch” (episode 4), evidence which will facilitate the transit of a truth. Her assemblance of the “facts”—collecting testimonies, researching the science, amassing

7  UNSEEN PARTICLES IN TIME: CO-PRODUCING TRANSCULTURAL… 

159

evidence—collates into a coherent vision of what happened that night presented at the trial. Gone are the close ups and unsteady camera work defining diverse subjective perspectives, these replaced instead with a linear reconstruction paralleling her testimony, a new transnational, transcultural mise en scène that tells of Chernobyl. So moved is Khomyuk by the testimonies of the dead, specifically the story of Lyudmilla—“We live in a country where children have to die to save their mothers” (episode 4)—she becomes fiercely uncompromising in her dedicated service to “truth and humanity” (episode 5). As a fictional character made within a transnational TV paradigm, Khomyuk emerges as mnemonic form, embodying an ethics of memory and the obligation to remember, which goes to the very heart of the legitimacy of this transnational TV enterprise as important television drama. As she is not based on any real character (only a composite), she remains unburdened by the real-­ world complexities and concessions that shaped the very real lives of men like Legasov and Shcherbina. Narratively she has come from afar, from Byelorussia, but structurally she embodies an ethical impulse to awaken a global conscience. Her narrative function is to generate a transnational public opinion in her reframing the question of justice beyond national parameters and its politics. She is the one who arrives unexpectedly at Legasov’s apartment, almost as a ghost-like apparition, where she reasons with him to speak publicly and bear witness in front of the Soviet scientific community and force the authorities to reform the industry (episode 5). If not in Vienna (not shown), then in Chernobyl at the closed (national) trial in an English-language (transnational) TV miniseries the “truth” will be told. It is to Legasov, not her, that the Soviet scientific community will listen. Yet Khomyuk provides the transcultural lens for the imagined transnational audience, to mobilise opinion as she personifies the moral standard of a global civic society.

Conclusions Erll (2014) contends that memory must travel to stay alive. There is a recognition in her argument that crossing a border also produces amnesia, a forgetfulness about roots and origins left far behind. Yet Chernobyl has allowed a memory of the disaster to move across borders, assuming a new mnemonic language that enables the first transnational coproduction between Sky and HBO to travel as reputation. A Ukrainian rendition of Vichnaya Pamyat (“Memory Eternal”) by Homin Lviv Municipal Choir

160 

J. MCCABE

concludes the miniseries. The Orthodox/Eastern Catholic hymn sung at funerals and memorial events accompanies a series of images, photographs and films of the real people and events recorded at the time. A solemn farewell to the end of the miniseries maybe, but the liturgical chant bears witness to the shift in time of knowledge about Chernobyl into the transnational public realm. Including those audiotapes of Legasov’s memoirs, which the epilogue tells us circulated among the Soviet scientific community, impossible to ignore after his suicide in 1988, finally forcing, in turn, the state to retrofit other reactors to prevent another Chernobyl. Yet the resonating monophonic sound communicates the lost lives (Shcherbina, Valery Khodemchuk), the fate of others (the sentencing of Dyaltov, Bryukhanov and Fomin to 10 years hard labour, Lyudmilla, who eventually had a child), the abandoned spaces (where nature has reclaimed its place) and communal sacrifice (the miners from Tula, the divers, the conscripts), and finally, how Gorbachev believed Chernobyl had contributed significantly to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet these “old” mnemonics in the form of past medias (photographs, TV news footage, black-and-­ white films, videotape recordings) are recycled and reused to make sense of a “new” and truly global television experience. Stripped of the original context (produced by Russian state media), these objects of memory are detached from the national to emphasis the scale of remembering. Displaced these new mnemonic forms function as a reminder of what happened here has wider implications for a global humanity and for repositioning the sacrifices beyond a nation (one which no longer exists) for the world. The final images are of the New Safe Confinement at Chernobyl, completed in 2017 and designed to last 100 years, as well as the monument to the victims. Memorial legacies caught in these material and mediated remnants contribute to canons of cultural memory that anchor a national past. Many of the images, particularly the Exclusion Zone (empty apartments, the railway bridge known as “The Bridge of Death”), have over time become shorthand for Chernobyl. These aesthetics and images become “the privileged subject of debate among producers (or their interpreters)” (Bourdieu, 2009: 117). Repurposed for use as transcultural memory within this cross-border coproduction and travelling through the routes taken by the miniseries, positioned in different territories across the world, these images thus legitimatise a new canon of transnational TV, a transnational television heritage possibly.

7  UNSEEN PARTICLES IN TIME: CO-PRODUCING TRANSCULTURAL… 

161

Notes 1. See also Bond and Rapson (2014). 2. “Every gram of U-235 holds over a billion trillion of these bullets,” says Legasov, “[…] Most of these bullets will not stop firing for 100 years. Some of them not for 50,000 years” (episode 2). 3. See also Baughan (2019), Middleton (2019) and Tate (2019).

References Alexievich, S. (2016). Chernobyl Prayer (A. Gunin, & A. Tait, Trans.). Penguin. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections in the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Verso. Assmann, J. (1995). Collective Memory and Cultural Identity. New German Critique, 65, 125–133. Barra, L., & Scaglioni, M. (2021). Introduction: The Many Steps and Factors of a European Renaissance. In L. Barra & M. Scaglioni (Eds.), A European Television Fiction Renaissance: Premium Productions Models and Transnational Circulation (pp. 1–10). Routledge. Baughan, N. (2019). Bringing Chernobyl to the Small Screen – It’s Like Monster Film. Screen Daily. Available at: https://www.screendaily.com/features/ emmys-­2 019-­b ringing-­c hernobyl-­t o-­t he-­s mall-­s creen-­i ts-­l ike-­a -­m onster-­ film/5140124.article. Accessed 22 Dec 2022. Bond, L., & Rapson, J. (Eds.). (2014). The Transcultural Turn: Interrogating Memory Between and Beyond Borders. de Gruyter. Bourdieu, P. (2009). The Field of Cultural Production. Polity Press. Carponen, C. (2019). Inside Chernobyl: How the TV Show’s Atmospheric Sets Were Created. The Spaces. Available at: https://thespaces.com/inside-­chernobyl-­ how-­the-­tv-­shows-­atmospheric-­sets-­were-­created/. Accessed 2 Jan 2023. Chalaby, J. K. (2005). The Quiet Invention of a New Medium: Twenty Years of Transnational Television in Europe. In J.  K. Chalaby (Ed.), Transnational Television Worldwide: Towards a New Media Order (pp. 43–65). I.B. Tauris. Chalaby, J.  K. (2009). Transnational Television in Europe: Reconfiguring Global Communications Networks. I.B. Tauris. Collins, R. (1992). Satellite Television in Western Europe. John Libbey. Crownshaw, R. (2014). Introduction: Transcultural Memory. In R. Crownshaw (Ed.), Transcultural Memory (pp. 1–8). Routledge. De Cesari, C., & Rigney, A. (2014). Introduction. In C. De Cesari & A. Rigney (Eds.), Transnational Memory: Circulation, Articulation, Scales (pp.  1–25). Walter de Gruyter. DeFino, D. (2014). The HBO Effect. Bloomsbury.

162 

J. MCCABE

Dunleavy, T. (2018). Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television. Routledge. Erll, A. (2014). Travelling Memory. In R.  Crownshaw (Ed.), Transcultural Memory (pp. 9–23). Routledge. Feuer, J. (2007). HBO and the Concept of Quality TV. In J. McCabe & K. Akass (Eds.), Quality TV: Contemporary US TV and Beyond (pp.  145–157). I.B. Tauris. Fickers, A., & Johnson, C. (2012). Introduction: Transnational Television History: A Comparative Approach. In A. Fickers & C. Johnson (Eds.), Transnational Television History: A Comparative Approach (pp. 1–12). Routledge. Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. Verso. Gessen, M. (2019). What HBO’s Chernobyl Got Right, and What It Got Terribly Wrong. The New  Yorker. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/news/ our-­c olumnists/what-­h bos-­c hernobyl-­g ot-­r ight-­a nd-­w hat-­i t-­g ot-­t erribly-­ wrong. Accessed 2 Jan 2023. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Polity. Higginbotham, A. (2019). Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster. Corgi. Hills, M. (2007). From the Box in the Corner to the Box Set on the Self: TVIII and the Cultural/Textual Valorizations of DVD. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 5(1), 41–60. Hilmes, M. (2012). Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting. Routledge. Imre, A. (2018). HBO’s e-EUtopia. Media Industries, 5(2), 49–68. Jameson, F. (2010). Realism and Utopia in The Wire. Criticism, 52(3–4), 359–372. Jancovich, M., & Lyons, J. (Eds.). (2003). Quality Popular Television: Cult TV, the Industry and Fans. BFI Publishing. Jenner, M. (2018). Netflix and the Re-Invention of Television. Palgrave Macmillan. Kennedy, R. (2014). Moving Testimony: Human Rights, Palestinian Memory, and the Transnational Public Sphere. In C. de Cesari & A.  Rigney (Eds.), Transnational Memory: Circulation, Articulation, Scales (pp.  51–78). Walter de Gruyter. Kompare, D. (2006). Publishing Flow: DVD box sets and the Reconception of Television. Television and New Media, 7(4), 335–360. Landsberg, A. (2004). Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. Columbia University Press. Lobato, R. (2019). Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York University Press. Lotz, A. D. (2018). We Now Disrupt This Broadcast. How Cable Transformed television and the Internet Revolutionized It All. MIT Press.

7  UNSEEN PARTICLES IN TIME: CO-PRODUCING TRANSCULTURAL… 

163

Margalit, A. (2002). The Ethics of Memory. Harvard University Press. McCabe, J., & Akass, K. (Eds.). (2007). Quality TV: Contemporary US TV and Beyond. I.B. Tauris. McCabe, J., & Akass, K. (2008). It’s Not TV; It’s HBO’s Original Programming: Producing Quality TV. In M. Leverette, B. L. Ott, & C. L. Buckley (Eds.), It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era (pp. 83–94). Routledge. Middleton, R. (2019). Sky in Five-Year Output Deal with HBO. Digital TV Europe. Available at: https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2019/10/29/sky-­in-­ five-­year-­output-­deal-­with-­hbo/. Accessed 22 Dec 2022. Mittell, J. (2015). Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Storytelling. New York University Press. Mulvey, L. (2006). Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image. University of Chicago Press. Nelson, R. (2007). State of Play: Contemporary “High-End” TV Drama. Manchester University Press. Newman, M. Z., & Levine, E. (2012). Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. Routledge. Nora, P. (1989). Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations, 26, 7–24. Pearson, R. (2021). ‘The Biggest Drama Commission in British Television History’: Netflix, The Crown and the UK. In L. Barra & M. Scaglioni (Eds.), A European Television Fiction Renaissance: Premium Productions Models and Transnational Circulation (pp. 86–100). Routledge. Plokhy, S. (2019). Chernobyl: The History of a Tragedy. Penguin. Robinson, J. (2010). BSkyB Buys Complete HBO TV Catalogue. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/jul/29/bskyb-­ buys-­hbo-­tv-­catalogue. Accessed 23 Dec 2022. Rothberg, M. (2009). Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford University Press. Santo, A. (2008). Para-Television and Discourses of Distinction: The Culture of Production at HBO. In M. Leverette, B. L. Ott, & C. L. Buckley (Eds.), It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era (pp. 19–45). Routledge. Sinclair, J., Jacka, E., & Cunningham, S. (1996). New Patterns in Global Television: Peripheral Vision. Oxford University Press. Sky. (2019). Sky Extends Multi-Year Programming Partnership with WarnerMedia. Available at: https://www.skygroup.sky/article/sky-­extends-­multi-­year-­ programming-­partnership-­with-­warnermedia. Accessed 22 Dec 2022. Sky. (2020). Sky Original Drama Chernobyl Becomes Most Awarded British Series Ever – Picking Up Nine BAFTAs® Including Mini-Series and Leading Actor. Available at: https://www.skygroup.sky/article/sky-­original-­drama-­ chernobyl-­becomes-­most-­awarded-­british-­series-­ever-­picking-­up-­nine-­baftas-­ including-­mini-­series-­and-­leading-­actor. Accessed 18 Jan 2023.

164 

J. MCCABE

Szczepanik, P. (2021). HBO Europe’s Original Programming in the Era of the Streaming Wars. In L.  Barra & M.  Scaglioni (Eds.), A European Television Fiction Renaissance: Premium Productions Models and Transnational Circulation (pp. 243–261). Routledge. Tallantire, M. (1989). Falling from Sky. Cable and Satellite Europe, 32. Tate, G. (2019). Chernobyl, Sky Atlantic. Broadcast. Available at: https://www. broadcastnow.co.uk/drama/chernobyl-­s ky-­a tlantic/5139006.article. Accessed 22 December 2022. Whittock, J. (2017). Sky, HBO in $250m High-End Drama Deal. Television Business International. Available at: https://tbivision.com/2017/04/20/sky-­ hbo-­250m-­high-­end-­drama-­deal/. Accessed 23 Dec 2022. Žižek, S. (2012). The Wire or the Clash of Civilisation in One Country. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsf4rAGlR5s. Accessed 10 Mar 2022. Zoller Seitz, M., & Sepinwall, A. (2019). The Sopranos Sessions. Abrams Press.

CHAPTER 8

Les de l’Hoquei/The Hockey Girls: From a Catalan Bachelor’s Degree Project to Netflix Marta Lopera-Mármol, Ona Anglada Pujol, and Manel Jiménez-Morales

Introduction In this multiplatform era in which broadcast, cable, satellite, and online television services all co-exist, coproduction partnerships, which have become undeniable and normal, show significant complexity and diversity. The global market is becoming an important factor in high-end television drama series, with notable changes in relation to the emphasis on aesthetics (Wadia Richards, 2021: 2) and narrative complexity (Mittell, 2015). In addition, costs have increased, which has led to a need for coproduction, not just at the distribution level but also during production. In fact, the new scenario redefines our understanding of transnational coproductions in this platformization context (Evens & Donders, 2018). This is particularly notable in the case of Netflix, which is bringing to the fore

M. Lopera-Mármol (*) • O. A. Pujol • M. Jiménez-Morales Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_8

165

166 

M. LOPERA-MÁRMOL ET AL.

non-English-language TV series (though English-language dramas are still the predominant ones), which is contributing to the broader expansion of non-English language and of cultural specificity in internationally distributed TV drama (Dunleavy, 2020: 327). Consequently, there are changes in the areas of finance and funding, as seen in the case of Squid Game (Netflix, 2021–present), Lupin (Netflix, 2021–present), Dark (Netflix, 2017–20), and La Casa de Papel/Money Heist (Netflix, 2017–21). In fact, the latter is one of the reasons Netflix doubled its spending on original content in Europe (Meyers, 2018). Undoubtedly, the streaming platform has brought significant growth in non-US TV series production. This situation can be perceived as a double-edged sword, both an opportunity and a threat to local screen production industries (Neira, 2020: 21). However, often, international coproduction offers  ways to connect nationally-­produced TV series with international audiences. In a sense, this could be framed as a glocalization effect, a linguistic hybrid popularized by the sociologist Roland Robertson (2000), in which independent local players help international services align with the domestic culture in this new media ecosystem, which brings exciting constellations of cultural engagement. In this context, coproductions have created two new trends. One can be described as cultural homogenization, in which coproductions opt to reduce the cultural traces of the country of origin and break with certain local strategies by deploying more standardized visuals, aesthetics, and narratives, in addition to using universal linguistics (accents, terms, and expressions). The adoption of English as lingua franca even in multilingual coproductions, such as The Name of the Rose (Rai/Tele München, 2019), can be considered in this context. For some countries, such as the USA and the UK, it is important to note that coproductions build upon a long history of convergence that has impacted production processes, format adaptations, and the ease with which creative personnel move between the two countries (Plunkett, 2011). According to Elke Weissmann, “these co-productions also increasingly address the audiences’ transnational experiences which they gain both by travelling and via the media themselves” (2012: 140). McCracken (2020) demonstrates this in her assertions about Sex Education (Netflix, 2019–present) and its British-­ American duality, which is also evident in the series The End of the F***ing World (Netflix, 2017–19). The other trend can be described as cultural heterogenization, in which transnational coproductions also maintain local characteristics; they involve a partnership in which national interests must be combined and

8  LES DE L’HOQUEI/THE HOCKEY GIRLS: FROM A CATAL… 

167

reconciled, and different audiences and backgrounds are considered as a means to achieve better audience figures. However, viewers don’t always care about the behind-scenes aspects of production, specifically about how the finance for a TV drama series is raised. High-end dramas often need multiple investors and funding sources, but this does not necessarily mean that multinational or transnational networks will have the final creative input. Many TV series opt to maintain cultural specificity yet foreground it in ways that are seen to hold international appeal. This entails the use of what might be termed “universal” narrative strategies. These involve elements of storytelling (the use of recognizable themes, characterizations, dialogue, and accents), as well as the deployment of aesthetics and mise-en-­ scène elements to achieve a certain style, tone, and/or look. Together, these strategies determine the success or the failure of a TV drama series. Some drama genres are considered to work better than others for international audiences, such as sci-fi stories, thrillers, or period works. Those that focus more strongly on universal perspectives still have the capacity for greater international appeal, however, in today’s context, contemporary TV drama can also succeed internationally by deploying elements of cultural specificity. Some countries have become renowned for their success in producing high-end drama in specific genres, such as noir-esque police drama in the Nordic regions, and historical or social realism—also known as “Brit-grit”—in the UK. Hence by making local elements profitable in foreign markets, national broadcasters can also benefit. Commissioning dramas that can reflect national identity is a broad requirement for public sector broadcasters. Important to it in Spain are the public broadcasters, Televisión Española (TVE) and Catalan’s Televisió de Catalunya (TVC). In such cases, there needs to be a reconciliation between public service and commercial goals and expectations. This has historically been a touchy issue because, while nationally funded producers argue that their coproductions should not be compromised by public service goals, their “commercial partners [are required to] assure their investors that, in fact, [a] programme made with their public service coproducer has broader audiences firmly in mind and will not be held captive to a narrowly national address” (Hilmes, 2014: 12). In other words, the medium of television exploits the parameters of the “here and now” in its general state, even with its heterogeneous nature. However, as Mareike Jenner points out, “often forced to adapt to national culture through media policies, Netflix

168 

M. LOPERA-MÁRMOL ET AL.

also actively seeks integration into national media systems to fend off accusations of cultural homogenization” (Jenner, 2018: 188). In a global marketplace that is still dominated by English-language content, could this era of transnational coproduction further homogenize the high-end drama output of national broadcasters? Or conversely, does the fact that production entities of English-speaking countries (especially the US) bring their money to other countries with fewer resources facilitate more cultural diversity in television drama content for international audiences? As mentioned above, two trends can be observed and the battle between opting for cultural homogenization or cultural heterogenization is ongoing. Especially in instances where coproductions involve such different types of television networks as public broadcasters and US-owned subscription-video-on-demand providers (SVoDs), there is a necessity for both partners to support cultural arrangements and agreements that might help to boost cultural specificity.

From a Bachelor’s Degree Thesis to Netflix: Les de l’Hoquei/The Hockey Girls This chapter will analyze the case study of the feminist Catalan coming-of-­ age TV drama series Les de l’Hoquei (hereafter referred to as LDH). The series revolves around eight female teenage hockey players’ characters who are played by virtually unknown young actresses: Florencia (Asia Ortega), Lorena (Mireia Oriol), Berta (Natàlia Barrientos), Raquel (Júlia Gibert), Emma (Dèlia Brufau), Gina (Clàudia Riera), Laila (Yasmina Drissi), and Janina (Laia Fontán). The series’ narrative revolves around them fighting to save the club’s women’s team after a match defeat in the bottom league and then learning of the resignation of their coach Germán (Marc Clotet), who is leaving for a better-paid position. In this situation, the club’s managers cannot afford to hire new staff, and they decide to drop the girls’ team in favor of the boys’ first team. The girls are trying to find their feet, both in the team and in their everyday lives. The series has been lauded for its commitment to fourth-wave feminist ideals (Tous-Rovirosa et  al., 2021) as demonstrated by its stories and representations. It has received awards from the CIMA (Association of Women Filmmakers Audio-visual Media) for its contribution to gender equality and parity in the audiovisual sector and for the quality of its writing. Created and written exclusively by four young women, the series offers new perspectives in terms of its

8  LES DE L’HOQUEI/THE HOCKEY GIRLS: FROM A CATAL… 

169

themes, plot, and its character development. All these elements are linked with intersectional feminism and yield barely explored models of femininity on television, a medium in which female writers and producers remain in the minority. The series works well in an international context because it connects with modern global debates regarding coming-of-age narratives. LDH, like many other current coming-of-age TV dramas, focuses on the protagonists’ psychological and moral growth from youth to adulthood. By accentuating certain styles of dress that are associated with established stereotypes, such as the hippie (Lorena), the skater (Laila), the snob (Raquel), the sporty girl (Florencia), the alternative type (Gina), the nerd (Berta), the sexy girl (Janina), and the urbanite (Emma), the series echoes US narratives, which tend to have the jock, the girl-next-door and the mean girl, all of which are used in 13 Reasons Why (Netflix, 2017–20), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Netflix, 2018–20), and Riverdale (The CW, 2017–present). Furthermore, LDH depicts behaviors, attitudes, themes, and character struggles that are highly characteristic of coming-­ of-­age drama series, whose examples also include Euphoria (HBO, 2019–), The Carrie Diaries (The CW, 2013–14), Grown-ish (ABC, 2018–), and Grand Army (Netflix, 2020). Common to all these shows are themes of self-consciousness, gender and sexual identity, religion, family problems, body issues, mental disorders and addiction, financial difficulties, feminism, and, finally, generational conflict. In these ways, LDH offers some typical features of the coming-of-age TV drama genre which are reinterpreted by the conditions of the local context. Its uniqueness does not derive so much from its narrative elements but rather from how these elements are applied to a specific cultural environment.

The Transnational Collaboration Between TV3 and Netflix LDH represents a departure from the development and production processes that are characteristic of previous Catalan TV dramas. The series was part of a final degree project for a BA degree in Audiovisual Communication at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain). It was written by Ona Anglada (one of the authors of this chapter), Laura Azemar, Natàlia Boadas, and Marta Vivet. At first, these writers managed to create a pilot by crowdfunding through the platform Verkami. Later, the group

170 

M. LOPERA-MÁRMOL ET AL.

presented the pilot at a pitching workshop organized by the Clúster Audiovisual de Catalunya (Catalan Audiovisual Cluster); a space in which new creators from Catalan universities can exhibit their audiovisual projects to different producers. The creators’ youthful perspectives offered a fresh, up-to-date, and empathetic exploration of the problems experienced by Generation Z, as the first generation of so-called digital natives. The writers’ inventive approach to LDH’s coming-of-age themes soon caught the attention of Brutal Media (the production company) and TV3, the main public TV channel in Catalonia that forms part of the CCMA (Catalan Media Corporation). Hence, the cultural specificity of LDH stems from its initial commissioning for TV3 (the national broadcast network), which is a tendency for dramas involving cross-platform coproduction. LDH was originally produced by and for Catalan public television and had Catalan as its primary language. Netflix became interested in the show firstly because of the success of similar shows with young adults, which are a big part of its subscriber base. Netflix was attracted secondly, by LDH’s potential to increase its Spanish-speaking subscribers with a show that had the support of a Spanish broadcaster and was already in development. Hence, TV3 and Netflix engaged in a transnational co-production process in the first season. As Tous-Rovirosa et al. point out, Netflix’s acquisition of the series, but only for season 1, was part of “a global framework agreement with TV3, signed in 2017, and serves to manage the purchase of local productions and broadcast them internationally” (Tous-Rovirosa et al., 2021). This relationship was, in the beginning, beneficial for both actors. On the one hand, Netflix had already been available in Spain since October 2015, but it did not start to produce original Spanish content until 2017, and it did not open its production hub in Madrid until 2019. In fact, this deal for the coproduction of LDH with Netflix, as mentioned, happened when LDH was in the development stage (in 2018) before Netflix established its production offices in Spain. Thus, to quickly penetrate the Spanish industry, Netflix started coproducing television series with local players and/or acquiring some Spanish TV dramas by way of pre-sales agreements and rights with their production companies. Unsurprisingly like many others, the streaming platform signed a pre-sale and a co-financing deal for the first season (Iordache et al., 2022). LDH offered the capacity to emulate the international success of several earlier Catalan coming-of-age TV series, from Polseres Vermelles/Red Band Society (TV3, 2011–13) to Merlí/Merlin (TV3, 2015–18). Also, Netflix

8  LES DE L’HOQUEI/THE HOCKEY GIRLS: FROM A CATAL… 

171

has made the provision of high-end teen fiction one of its priorities (Quintana-Fernández, 2019). Meanwhile, TV3 was experiencing problems with its budget, which was severely reduced following the 2008 crisis and the resulting cuts (Casado Del Río et al., 2016). This meant that TV3, which used to produce three high-end dramas per year, was having trouble financing its productions. In this context, collaborating with Netflix allowed TV3 to finance new shows while the resulting productions could be exported worldwide. Before LDH, Netflix had bought the rights to air other Catalan high-end drama productions in certain territories, including Benvinguts a la família/Welcome to the Family (TV3, 2018–19) and Si no t’hagués conegut/If I Hadn’t Met You (TV3, 2018). However, these series were produced and financed exclusively by TV3, and Netflix bought the rights after the production stage. Thus, these series present clear instances of acquisition for Netflix as opposed to either commissioning or coproduction. However, in the case of LDH, the funds obtained by TV3 from Netflix were used to finance the production in advance (Besalú, 2020), which means it qualifies as a coproduction. However, it must be noted that the budget for LDH was no higher than the budget of other TV3commissioned high-end dramas. LDH had a budget of €2.7 million, compared to those of Merlí (€2.5 million) and Benvinguts a la família (€2.6 million). This is significant because Netflix’s transnational coproduction deals with other TV networks and/or production companies usually significantly increased their budget (Castro & Cascajosa, 2020). In LDH’s case, Netflix put the money up before the production started, enabling its production through a pre-sales agreement. Yet, this series is an unusual example of Catalan TV drama because of the degree of creative freedom that was extended to the writers, with only the public broadcaster placing limits on the series. In other words, for LDH, most of the creative control was maintained by the local producers, as had been the case with previous transnationally coproduced high-end TV dramas, including Broen/Bron (SVT1/DR1, 2011–18), Downton Abbey (ITV/PBS, 2010–15), Normal People (BBC/Hulu, 2020), and Killing Eve (BBC/BBC America, 2018–). LDH‘s creative team (its writers and directors) was comprised exclusively of Catalan professionals who had built their careers working for TV3 and other Spanish broadcasters. Thus, Netflix did not need to bring in any of its own personnel and left all the decisions regarding the team’s composition to TV3 and the production company, Brutal Media. Unfortunately, Netflix and TV3’s partnership came to an end after the coproduction of the first season. As a result,

172 

M. LOPERA-MÁRMOL ET AL.

Netflix did not participate in the second season of LDH since they did not fund it nor even acquire the rights to air in foreign territories. For this reason, the second season of LDH is only available on TV3 and has not yet been exported. Nonetheless, TV3 decided to renew LDH for a second season instead of cancelling it. Assisting this decision was that the first season ended with a compelling cliff-hanger which provided an impetus to continue for a second one. LDH was suitable for renewal partly because it offered seasonal continuity by way of its continuing characters and serial narrative progression. At the same time, as is expected from series drama, it also offered resolving episodic stories, indicatively those that focused on hockey. TV3 was motivated to continue the show because of its demonstrated appeal to teenagers. It helped, too, that LDH’s production costs were not as high for season 2 as they were for season 1. However, with the departure of Netflix for season 2, adult storylines gained a more significant presence. This change aimed to attract a slightly older audience and increase total audience size enough to meet rating targets for the broadcaster (Castellví Roca, 2020). Neither TV3 nor Netflix has publicly explained the reasons for the withdrawal of Netflix after season 1. Given that the series seemed to be doing well in terms of audience numbers and had engagement on social media, particularly Twitter and Instagram, and within the LGBTQ+ community (which celebrated the portrayal of lesbian relationships), Netflix’s withdrawal was surprising. However, TV3’s director during that period, Vicent Sanchís, explained that the relationship between TV3 and Netflix had changed, underlining that “Netflix stopped buying our programs when it started producing its own” (Besalú, 2020). Also, at play for LDH was a very significant power imbalance in the relationship between its commissioning networks, in which multinational SVoD Netflix holds a privileged position and Catalan broadcaster, TV3, holds a considerably weaker role. As McElroy, Nielsen, and Noonan point out, “the availability of resources predicates power, and broadcasters from smaller countries have fewer resources on which to draw”(2018: 184). Several authors have identified the potential long-term risks of the arrival of streaming platforms in European markets (Lobato & Scarlata, 2018; Albornoz & García-Leiva, 2019; García-Leiva & Hernández-­ Prieto, 2021; Iordache, 2022), focusing mainly on the loss of cultural diversity, the power imbalances between national and US-owned providers, and the precarious situation of independent production companies. This is a clear feature of coproduction in the multiplatform environment;

8  LES DE L’HOQUEI/THE HOCKEY GIRLS: FROM A CATAL… 

173

some of the reasons for this disparity are differences in wealth and resources, particularly if funds are coming from US-owned conglomerates. A longstanding risk in these cases has been the expectation that a show can be made more accessible to US viewers with modifications to its cultural specificity. Nonetheless, extending the creative autonomy of the non-US national networks and their local producers has been an increasing characteristic of multiplatform era TV drama. Currently, coproducing networks—especially US-owned networks—can be expected to place a much higher value on cultural authenticity in today’s television since they can profit from this as a form of distinction (Dunleavy, 2020: 352). This imbalance between local independent production companies, which are often supported by public television networks, and the activities of multinational SVoDs that are US-owned, is being reproduced with specific productions underway inside Spain. Netflix situated its production hub in Madrid and has mainly been working with larger production companies. This has resulted in the marginalization of smaller or independent production companies located outside of Madrid and threatened the sustainability of the Spanish screen production ecosystem (García-Leiva & Hernández-Prieto, 2021: 863). After the first season of LDH, Netflix and TV3 only worked together on one other occasion: they coproduced Isabel Coixet’s film Elisa i Marcela (2019). They were not the only actors involved since Televisión de Galicia (Galicia’s public broadcasting service) and Canal Sur (Andalusia’s public broadcasting service) were also partners, along with the production companies. In addition, Netflix was the primary partner in the coproduction team for Elisa i Marcela and led all the creative decisions (Salvà, 2019). Currently TV3 is facing a critical situation in this new media landscape: without bigger budgets, its high-end drama production has been reduced. Since LDH, TV3 has produced three high-end dramas: Moebius (2021, 10  ×  45  minutes), Buga Buga (2021, 6  ×  20), and L’última nit del karaoke/The Last Night of the Karaoke (trans. authors, 2021, 6 × 50). It must be noted that these series are shorter than the average TV3 show (which is 13 × 50 minutes), and they only have one season, whereas the average TV3 series is at least two seasons long. This single-season duration is derived especially from financial insecurities. However, Netflix continues to increase its production of Spanish originals every year, possibly because of the success of TV series such as La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, which in 2019 was ranked as Netflix’s third most-watched TV series. It bodes well for Spanish TV drama production since the Spanish language is spoken by

174 

M. LOPERA-MÁRMOL ET AL.

more than one fifth of the world’s population. Even though LDH was coproduced by Netflix, we can argue that it offers an authentically Catalan drama series, even though it did consider and respond to the necessity to cultivate international appeal. In the following sections, we explore the key characteristics that define LDH as a Catalan TV drama, which are its language, style of narration, portrayal of gender and feminist struggles, and its cultural distinctions.

Gender Conflict and the Identity of Women Since its first episode, the depiction of feminist struggles has been a hallmark of LDH, connecting it with broader mainstream debates over gender justice in Spain and worldwide (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Martínez-Jiménez, 2020). The first season is structured around the female hockey team’s survival since the club’s president wants to close the team, allegedly for financial reasons. However, the girls fight back and speak out against this outcome and finally succeed in keeping the team alive. The second season is focused on the conflicts that arise between the girls, as by this stage the team has become much more competitive. LDH, like many recent TV dramas, takes an anti-discriminatory stand and portrays the struggles of oppressed collectives (Quintana-Fernández, 2019: 334). However, many of those feminist discourses tend to be underpinned by neoliberal notions of individual choice and personal empowerment (Gallagher, 2014: 26). But LDH touches on collective empowerment. Throughout the series, the team’s chant and mantra is “juntes!,” the feminine form of the word “together!” in Catalan, thereby accentuating the team’s gender. They are deeply committed to the sisterhood that has developed between them. In the series finale (season 2 episode 13), they decide to leave the Minerva team, which is named after the Roman goddess of wisdom and war based on its extreme competitiveness. LDH adopts an intersectional perspective (Crenshaw, 1989) since issues of racism and homophobia are also addressed as axes of oppression. For example, in season 2 episode 5, Laila is a victim of a racist and Islamophobic attack because of her hijab. This attack reminds Lorena of past homophobic aggression she has suffered, generating a response of solidarity with her teammates. There is little ethnic diversity, however, in that Laila is the only non-white regular character. As Ferrera (2020: 35) has pointed out, this follows the same pattern as other European teen drama series, in which the representation of non-white characters seems to be informed by

8  LES DE L’HOQUEI/THE HOCKEY GIRLS: FROM A CATAL… 

175

the migratory context of each country. Spain was relatively late in developing its multiculturality, as the primary migratory wave happened at the end of the twentieth century, with the significant arrival of people from Latin American countries. Influenced by this history, migrant characters in Spanish television fiction are usually underrepresented and relegated to secondary character roles (Marcos Ramos et al., 2019: 296). Nonetheless, a more prominent and diverse ethnic representation occurs in Spanish teen dramas. An example is the format adaptation, Skam Spain (Movistar+, 2018–20). Despite its references to local ways of addressing and narrating feminist issues, LDH still invokes the transnational liberal value systems that Jenner (2018: 230) refers to when talking about Netflix’s original series, especially those of anti-sexism, anti-racism, or anti-homophobia.

Cultural and Linguistic Distinctions for LDH LDH was shot mainly in Palau-solità i Plegamans (a town located 30 km from Barcelona), though there is no reference to the place itself in the series. LDH is set in an imaginary Catalan town, focusing on the stories rather than the territory, as is the case with other TV3 shows (Castelló, 2010: 213). In this sense, the town in LDH remains nameless throughout the two seasons, and there are no visual or verbal references to any landmarks. It could be any Catalan town, therefore. Many TV dramas avoid geographical specificity, thus creating a sense of generalization that offers the international audience greater opportunity for accessibility and identification (Pastina & Straubhaar, 2005: 274). Various Catalan dialects are used in the series which could indicate to local audiences the town’s location. It is important to note that the standard dialect is the one most spoken by LDH’s characters. Catalan is a language spoken by 12 million people (less in the territory of Catalonia) and is highly dialectalized for such a moderately sized community of speakers. Most of the scenes happen indoors, while outdoor scenes are set in the imagined town’s urban area, mostly outside the character’s homes. The only exception is Pela’s house. He lives in a masia, a ubiquitous rural construction in Catalonia that is typically isolated and surrounded by farmland. It should be noted, however, that the characters are not farmers, nor do they perform any sort of work related to the land, unlike in other TV3 shows, such as Ventdelplà (TV3, 2005–10), which is the name of a fictional town. Generally speaking, no other towns are mentioned in LDH except for Barcelona, which is frequently referred to by the characters as a

176 

M. LOPERA-MÁRMOL ET AL.

destination for work or study. Barcelona is generally referenced as the “big city” as opposed to their “small” town, which Lorena even calls “suffocating.” She leaves to travel, since staying would be like “keeping her in a cage” (season 1 episode 13). In the first season, Anna has returned to the town from Lisbon, and she feels embarrassed to be back, seeing it as a sign of failure (season 1 episode 3). Barcelona is also the city that offers the best job opportunities. For example, Raquel’s father, Toni Alcober (David Selvas), a successful music producer, works in Barcelona (season 2 episode 11). LDH depicts universal tensions between urban and rural places, imbuing these with meaning through its coming-of-age narrative. Leaving the countryside to move to the city is an archetypical trajectory for young adult characters in television fiction. It is usually portrayed as the realization of their desires for independence and personal growth, for example, as evident in It’s a Sin (Channel 4/HBO, 2021), a UK-produced limited serial that serves as a case study in another chapter of this book. Catalan is the normalized language spoken by the characters in LDH, just like in other previous TV3 series, albeit with different accents and dialects occurring, such as Andorran (as spoken by the character of Gina). At the same time, Spanish and other languages only appear sporadically through specific characters, mostly from outside Catalonia. Hence, LDH showcases a multilingual phenomenon, with the prevalence of Catalan as the main language. However, the use of the Catalan language in high-end screen productions is considered to constitute a “cinematic practice” (Epps, 2013), in recognition of its position as a strong identity marker of recent Catalan film and television productions (Losilla, 2014). There are characters known for not speaking Catalan, such as Lorena’s father, who is referred to as “El Pela” (Xúlio Abonjo). This nickname is a common variant of “pelacanyes”, a term commonly used to refer to a generation of immigrants from all over Spain, usually with limited financial resources, who had their heyday in the 1960s and stayed on afterwards. In this case, “El Pela” is an immigrant from Galicia, a musician with little money, a well-­ loved but carefree father whose romantic relationships come and go. Even though the other characters respond to him in Catalan, he speaks solely in Spanish. This exemplifies the phenomenon of passive bilingualism, which occurs when a person understands two languages but only uses one in response. This type of language relationship was previously explored by Castelló (2010: 213), who, referring to other Catalan TV series, suggested that this “implicitly encourages an attitude of linguistic resistance on the part

8  LES DE L’HOQUEI/THE HOCKEY GIRLS: FROM A CATAL… 

177

of Catalan speakers, but at the same time, does not show linguistic substitution on the part of the immigrant, who continues to speak in Spanish.” Hence, here the language plays a role in defining a minor figure by referring to a stereotypical character: the low-income Spanish immigrant in Catalonia. Like “El Pela,” Florencia and her mother, Paulina (Romina Cocca) and Florencia’s ex-girlfriend (Valeria) are from Argentina and speak in Spanish, while the others reply to them in Catalan. Moreover, in season 2 episode 1, when Anna talks to Maria, her Portuguese ex-team member, they speak Spanish. This choice corresponds to a domestic phenomenon: Catalan speakers immediately switch to Spanish as a form of protocol and polite concession whenever there is a foreigner, particularly if they are aware that they share Spanish as the common language, it is particularly notably with Latin American immigrants. Nonetheless, it sometimes happens as a triple unconscious association: physical stereotype-­ origin-­linguistic competence being a form of micro-aggression. Curiously, in season 1 episode 3, Melo Moreno, a YouTube personality, speaks solely in Catalan. She is from Perpignan and the daughter of Spanish immigrants, and her presence places the spotlight on the conflict between Northern Catalonia and France. While Northern Catalonia is a French territory, Catalan culture and language are present there since it is a former Catalan territory. Thus, the fact that this young woman speaks Catalan indicates the show’s attempt to champion a subsidiary culture. Laila’s father, who is from Morocco and has a strong accent, speaks only Catalan. Even so, in season 2 episode 5 the girls find a teenage Moroccan boy in their house—Jamal—who tells Laila in Arabic that he has just left a youth center for refugees. The use of Arabic here points to the multilingual and multicultural nature of Catalonia, influenced by the proximity of Morocco and Spain’s position as the country with Europe’s second-highest immigration rate from Morocco. In LDH, the migrant boy is played by an 18-year-old called Jamal Ahmed (Omar Ahaidar), who has run away from Morocco to live in Spain. This plot tackles specific issues relating to racism, immigration, refugee movements and these young people’s integration into Catalan society. As he has sneaked into Lorena’s masia, she, together with Raquel, Nil (Pablo Hernandez) and Ricard, decide to call the police. However, Laila confronts them, highlighting their hypocrisy of openly giving support to refugees in Catalonia and then judging them in real life, and so finally, they decide to let him stay overnight. When they wake up, they find that Jamal/Ahmed has fled, leaving behind a drawing and a message in Arabic: “Thank you, friend.” Such a rapid resolution to

178 

M. LOPERA-MÁRMOL ET AL.

the conflict opened the program to criticism, namely that the topic of the refugee crisis was not dealt with in sufficient depth. Aside from the element of language, cultural allusions are used to mark an identity, mainly through sport, through media references and, unquestionably, through music. In season 2 episode 5, Laila mentions the Catalan music group Txarango. Catalonia’s current cultural imaginary is expressed through this band that sings in Catalan and epitomizes the integration of cultures through music and through the championing of specific social causes. Moreover, the TV series marks a solid cultural identity by placing the Catalan language at the forefront of the series’ musical soundtrack. For example, in season 1 episode 1, the girls sing the main song Dones (“Women” in English) by Tesa, a Valencian rapper, featuring Andrea, Jazzwoman and Ery, as part of their feminist message, and it features different Catalan accents and dialects. Also, in season 2 episode 2, there is a cameo appearance by the band 31 Fam, who are Catalan national youth idols. Other Spanish music genres are also featured, such as urban, reggaeton, rap, and trap, owing to their current popularity. Hence, through its soundtrack and other features, the series demonstrates a desire to represent a multilingual and multicultural reality that is hard to reproduce in a monolinguistic context but is easily decoded in international contexts by the cosmopolitanism present through the narrative. Finally, one of the main elements is roller hockey, which is used to send out a message championing women’s sport and to spotlight a shift in both socio-cultural aspects and screen representations. Roller hockey is played in Catalonia (as well as in Galicia and some Latin American countries), and while it has a robust local component, it is not as media friendly as other sports and is consequently not given the same degree of media attention.

Coproduced Television Drama and Genre The coproduction of TV series can lead to changes in three main areas: the episode and season length, target audience, and genre. As Castro and Cascajosa (2020) have pointed out, the first area (episode and season length) derives from the fact that public and private television broadcasters in Spain both use a specific standard length for episodes and seasons. These standard lengths are significant since they create viewing habits for linear television (Buonanno, 2008: 122) and on-demand audiences. On TV3, primetime series consist of thirteen 50-minute episodes per season,

8  LES DE L’HOQUEI/THE HOCKEY GIRLS: FROM A CATAL… 

179

but this standard has started to change recently, due in part to the advent of streaming platforms and the necessity to explore new formats and appeal to larger audiences. Longer episode duration is a characteristic of Spanish TV and is not exclusively related to fiction. Even transnational programs and franchises are adapted to fit into Spain’s linear TV schedules because of this longer duration. However, on streaming platforms such as Netflix and Movistar+, this standard length is usually shorter: eight episodes per season and episodes lasting from 30  minutes for comedy and 60 minutes for drama (Castro & Cascajosa, 2020: 157). In LDH, though, episode and season length maintained the format used for other original TV3 series. The second area involves the audience that is being targeted by a program and decisions arising from this. TV3, as a publicly funded television broadcaster, must serve a diverse national audience, as distinct from the narrowcasting strategy used by premium services and streaming platforms (Buonanno, 2008: 25). Even though the main characters of LDH are teenage girls, in its second season (as with many other Netflix shows), adult storylines take on a more significant role to target and deliver a larger adult audience (Castellví Roca, 2020). The third area, genre, foregrounds the influence of certain narrative traits and strategies. In LDH an important example is that of soap opera, the aim of which is to achieve a more youthful appeal. Here it is important to emphasize that both Spanish and Catalan TV drama production and storytelling are deeply influenced by soap opera (Castelló et  al., 2009; Castelló, 2010). Even though for TV3 there is a clear difference between the continuing soap opera that is broadcast daily in the afternoon slot, for example, Com Si Fos Ahir/As If It Was Yesterday (2017–), and the highend dramas that are broadcast at night-time, many of the narrative and aesthetic characteristics of soap operas are present in high-end dramas. However, in LDH a clear effort was made to move away from defining and traditional soap opera conventions, especially sentimental characters, narratives based on intrigues, deceit and confusion, and very plain aesthetics. For example, most of the series is shot with handheld cameras, creating a more fresh and dynamic appearance than the static shots typical of TV3’s continuing soaps. Another difference from soap conventions is the significant presence of outdoor settings and location scenes. While this is expected for high-end soap operas, indicatively “supersoaps” (Kilborn cited in Dunleavy, 2009: 102), daytime soap operas emphasize interior scenes and studio shooting. However, LDH deals with a lot of current

180 

M. LOPERA-MÁRMOL ET AL.

social issues and anxieties (such as underage migrants, teenage abortion, and drugs), which are common traits in TV3 soap operas (Castelló, 2010).

Conclusions The transnational coproduction between TV3 and Netflix did not end up entirely successful because at the time this took place, both network partners were headquartered in different places and seeking different goals. While TV3 was in the middle of budget cuts and trying to meet local and linguistic duties, Netflix was trying to penetrate the Spanish market. Yet, at the time, the collaboration was profitable for both. Nonetheless, the same pattern of coproduction has not been reproduced since then, and there are no indications that it will recur in the foreseeable future. However, it is undeniable that this partnership helped TV3 to showcase its high-end dramas worldwide, an opportunity that otherwise would have been very difficult for a small public service broadcaster to achieve (McElroy et  al., 2018: 182). Furthermore, in this specific case, Netflix cannot be accused of “cultural homogenisation” (Jenner, 2018: 188) since, as this chapter has established, LDH is a show that reflects and represents the cultural and aesthetic specificities of Catalan TV drama. LDH did not dilute its strong cultural roots, it remained identifiably Catalan, and if certain things are taken into consideration, it can be seen as a somewhat positive step in preserving this cultural minority and its language. As we have seen, Catalan is the predominant language in LDH, which has helped create a national identity that is consistent with earlier Catalan TV dramas and reflects Generation Z’s liberal values and issues in a localised manner. However, we must also consider the potential dangers of the penetration of Netflix and other SVoDs in Catalan and Spanish markets. TV3 is in a vulnerable position as this chapter has observed: it is a poorly funded public service broadcaster in a small nation, and Catalan, its language, is a minority language in Spain. TV3 has been able to produce high-quality series and programs and export them in the past, either through SVoD platforms or through sales of the original idea for format adaptation (Merlí, for example,  has been format-adapted in Italy and France). A coproduction with Netflix may make international sales and distribution more manageable, but with the change in Netflix’s coproduction strategy, TV3 is struggling to finance its shows. Nevertheless, with the arrival of streaming platforms into Spain, TV3 is attempting to maintain its

8  LES DE L’HOQUEI/THE HOCKEY GIRLS: FROM A CATAL… 

181

relevance while still serving the community and public interests. The profile of a Catalan cultural and linguistic community may be significantly reduced in the international television market in the coming years. Even though Netflix is increasing the number of original shows it produces in Spain every year, neither Netflix nor any other SVoD has produced shows in any of the minority languages present in Spain (Catalan, Basque, or Galician). The 2018 European Audiovisual Media Services Directive requires streaming platforms to feature 30 percent of European content in their catalog (Wukovits, 2018). Likewise, the draft Spanish audiovisual legislation is set to make it mandatory for these platforms to reinvest 5 percent of their revenue into the European audiovisual industry. However, there is concern over this policy and about the protection of content produced in minority languages (Consell Audiovisual de Catalunya, 2020; Pérez Pereiro & Deogracias Horrillo, 2021). TV3 and other small actors in the Spanish television market, such as independent producers, national SVoD platforms like Filmin, and public broadcasters, must all assert their cultural specificity, through narrative, aesthetic, and other characteristics, in the face of a perceived fear that foreign SVoD platforms will increase the homogenization of Spanish high-­ end drama production (García-Leiva & Hernández-Prieto, 2021: 863). It means that Spanish writers, producers, and networks must all be creative and must seek out and find new coproduction partners, either with Spanish companies, such as IB3 or À Punt, with Catalan public broadcasters (Besalú, 2020) or through transnational collaborations involving certain linguistic and regional communities (Mitric, 2020). In the face of the much higher budgets that are afforded by multinational SVoDs, the US-centric Netflix catalogue, and the resulting power imbalances between different multinational and national TV services, there is reason to celebrate TV3’s achievement in managing to facilitate and produce LDH, a Catalan high-end teen drama series that portrays many young adult issues through a feminist lens.

References Albornoz, L.  A., & García-Leiva, M.  T. (2019). Audiovisual Industries and Diversity: Economics and Policies in the Digital Era. Routledge. Banet-Weiser, S. (2018). Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Duke University Press.

182 

M. LOPERA-MÁRMOL ET AL.

Besalú, R. (2020). Entrevista a Vicent Sanchís, director de Televisió de Catalunya. Observatori de la Producció Audiovisual. Available at: https://www.upf.edu/ w e b / o p a / i n i c i / -­/ a s s e t _ p u b l i s h e r / N S G l 4 p I B B H K h / c o n t e n t / id/240355869/maximized#.X-­N3SelKidY. Accessed 9 Dec 2022. Buonanno, M. (2008). The Age of Television: Experiences and Theories. Intellect Books. Casado Del Río, M. A., Guimerà i Orts, J. A., & Miguel de Bustos, J. C. (2016). The Impact of the Cuts to Regional Public Service Broadcasters on the Audiovisual Industry: The Basque Country and Catalonia (2007–2014). Communication and Society, 29(4), 9–27. Castelló, E. (2010). Catalan Television Drama: A Turning Point. Critical Studies in Television, 6(2), 24–36. Castelló, E., Dobson, N., & O’Donnell, H. (2009). Telling It Like It Is? Social and Linguistic Realism in Scottish and Catalan Soaps. Media, Culture and Society, 31(3), 467–484. Castellví Roca, A. (2020). ‘Les de l’hoquei’ es fan grans. Ara. Available at: https://www.ara.cat/media/hoquei-­grans-­segona-­temporada-­serie-­public-­ adult-­jove_1_1125724.html. Accessed 9 Dec 2022. Castro, D., & Cascajosa, C. (2020). From Netflix to Movistar+: How Subscription Video-on-Demand Services Has Transformed Spanish TV Production. Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 59(3), 154–160. Consell Audiovisual de Catalunya. (2020). El CAC reclama que l’Avantprojecte de llei general de comunicació audiovisual fomenti més producció en llengua catalana. Available at: https://www.cac.cat/actualitat/cac-­reclama-­que-­ lavantprojecte-­llei-­general-­comunicacio-­audiovisual-­fomenti-­mes. Accessed 9 Dec 2022. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1, 139–167. Dunleavy, T. (2009). Television Drama: Form, Agency, Innovation. Palgrave Macmillan. Dunleavy, T. (2020). Transnational Co-production, Multiplatform Television, and My Brilliant Friend. Critical Studies in Television, 15(4), 336–356. Epps, B. (2013). Echoes and Traces. Catalan Cinema, or Cinema in Catalonia. In J. Labanyi & T. Pavlovic (Eds.), A Companion to Spanish Cinema (pp. 50–82). Wiley-Blackwell. Evens, T., & Donders, K. (2018). Platform Power and Policy in Transforming Television Markets. Palgrave Macmillan. Ferrera, D. (2020). Construcción del personaje adolescente en la ficción seriada europea. Las series originales de Netflix como caso de estudio. Fonseca: Journal of Communication, 21, 27–41.

8  LES DE L’HOQUEI/THE HOCKEY GIRLS: FROM A CATAL… 

183

Gallagher, M. (2014). Media and the Representation of Gender. In C.  Carter, L. Steiner, & L. McLaughlin (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender (pp. 23–31). Routledge. García-Leiva, M.  T., & Hernández-Prieto, M. (2021). Plataformas y política audiovisual: Netflix en España. Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico, 27(3), 855–866. Hilmes, M. (2014). Transnational TV: What Do We Mean by “Coproduction” Anymore? Media Industries, 1(2), 10–15. Iordache, C. (2022). Netflix in Europe: Four Markets, Four Platforms? A Comparative Analysis of Audio-Visual Offerings and Investment Strategies in Four EU States. Television & New Media, 23(7), 721–742. Iordache, C., Raats, T., & Afilipoaie, A. (2022). Transnationalisation Revisited Through the Netflix Original: An Analysis of Investment Strategies in Europe. Convergence, 28(1), 1–19. Jenner, M. (2018). Netflix and the Re-Invention of Television. Palgrave Macmillan. Lobato, R., & Scarlata, A. (2018) Australian Content in SVOD Catalogs: Availability and Discoverability. Australian and Children’s Screen Content Review. Available at: https://apo.org.au/node/134926. Accessed 9 Dec 2022. Losilla, C. (2014). Com fer-se invisible sense desaparèixer. Una reflexió sobre el cinema català a la contemporaneïtat. In C.  Losilla, A.  Rodríguez, J.  Costa, E. Ortega, & J. J. Caballero (Eds.), La Identitat Projectada: Cinema Català (pp. 17–28). UOC. Marcos Ramos, M., González de Garay, B., & Portillo Delgado, C. (2019). The Representation of Immigration in Contemporary Spanish Primetime TV Series. RLCS, Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 74, 285–307. Martínez-Jiménez, L. (2020). Neoliberal Postfeminism, or Some Other, Sexier Thing: Gender and Populism in the Spanish Context. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 23(6), 998–1004. McCracken, G. (2020). Is Netflix’s Sex Education US/UK Mashup the Future of TV? The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/29/netflix-­sex-­education-­us-­uk-­british-­american. Accessed 9 Dec 2022. McElroy, R., Nielsen, J. I., & Noonan, C. (2018). Small Is Beautiful? The Salience of Scale and Power to Three European Cultures of TV Production. Critical Studies in Television, 13(2), 169–187. Meyers, M. (2018). Netflix Said to Be Doubling the European Content Budget to 1 Billion. CNET. Available at: https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-­ entertainment/netflix-­s aid-­t o-­b e-­d oubling-­e uropean-­c ontent-­b udget-­ to-­1billion/. Accessed 9 Dec 2022. Mitric, P. (2020). Empowering the Minority Co-Producer Through European Financial Co-productions: The Case of DFI International. Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 10(2), 151–167.

184 

M. LOPERA-MÁRMOL ET AL.

Mittell, J. (2015). Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York University Press. Neira, E. (2020). Streaming Wars. La nueva televisión. Libros Cúpula. Pastina, A.  C., & Straubhaar, J.  D. (2005). Multiple Proximities Between Television Genres and Audiences. Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies, 6(3), 271–288. Pérez Pereiro, M., & Deogracias Horrillo, M. (2021). Barriers and Opportunities for Cinema Distribution in European Minority Languages. The Case of O que arde in the Digital Single Market. Language & Communication, 76, 154–162. Plunkett, J. (2011, January 17). Here’s to Television’s Special Relationship. The Guardian, 3. Quintana-Fernández, B. (2019). La articulación política feminista desde la comunidad. Análisis interseccional de Las escalofriantes aventuras de Sabrina. Investigaciones Feministas, 10(2), 333–350. Robertson, R. (2000). Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. SAGE Publications Ltd. Salvà, N. (2019). Isabel Coixet: ‘Cada cuál debería poder casarse hasta con su perro’. El Periódico. Avalaible at: https://www.elperiodico.com/es/ocio-­y-­ cultura/20190523/entrevista-­isabel-­coixet-­estreno-­elisa-­y-­marcela-­7470663. Accessed 9 Dec 2022. Tous-Rovirosa, A., Prat, M., & Dergacheva, D. (2021). The Hockey Girls. The Creation of a New Collective Subject: Sisterhood and the Empowerment of Women. Feminist Media Studies. Available at: https://doi.org/10.108 0/14680777.2022.2029526. Accessed 10 Feb 2023. Wadia Richards, R. (2021). Cinematic TV: Serial Drama Goes to the Movies. Oxford University Press. Weissmann, E. (2012). Transnational Television Drama: Special Relations and Mutual Influence Between the US and UK. Palgrave Macmillan. Wukovits, N. (2018). Transposition of the 2018 Audiovisual Media Services Directive. European Parliamentary Research Service.

CHAPTER 9

Gender and the Youthification of German Television: Zeit der Geheimnisse/Holiday Secrets and Generational Change in High-­End TV Drama Elke Weissmann

Introduction Particularly since HBO started to develop its own ‘quality TV’ fiction, high-end television productions have been praised for their engagement with feminist politics (Jermyn, 2009; Gjelsvik & Schubart, 2016). Of course, the scholarly focus on high-end productions belies that in America, broadcast television, and in particular the often critically derided sitcom (Mills, 2009), has provided spaces to showcase progressive feminist politics as much as conservative ones (Sayeau, 2010). Similarly in the UK, while high-end productions written by female authors such as Lynda La Plante (Jermyn, 2003, 2010; Hallam, 2007), Kay Mellor (Hallam, 2007) and Sally Wainwright (Gorton, 2016; Johnson, 2019) have often been

E. Weissmann (*) Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_9

185

186 

E. WEISSMANN

celebrated as providing progressive representations of women and women’s concerns, the soap opera has also been central in engaging women in feminist politics (Brunsdon, 2000; Geraghty & Weissmann, 2016). Nevertheless, it is important to recognise the role that high-end television drama plays in offering more progressive representations of women and feminist politics (see Chaps. 4 and 8 in this volume). This is also the case for German television drama where high-end multiplatform coproduced television fiction has offered a key site for the representation of multi-­ dimensional female characters, including Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) in Babylon Berlin (ARD/Sky Deutschland, 2017-present) whose character, Hilary Potter (2022) argues, has been augmented and enhanced significantly in the adaptation from book to television in order for it to appeal to a transnational audience. In this chapter, I will examine the development of these multi-­ dimensional female characters in German television drama, with a focus on the case study of Zeit der Geheimnisse/Holiday Secrets (Netflix, 2019). I will argue that while these developments are partially the result of a more international outlook for high-end German TV drama, as Potter (2022) argues, they are also connected to specifically national developments which revolve around the increasing recognition of the economic value of a younger audience and a shift of focus towards this audience. This entails notable change in the representation of women, involving feminist politics, and is part of a generational shift in German television and in Germany as a whole. Accordingly, representational change in German TV drama can be connected to much larger socio-political developments in this country. This chapter will outline these developments and consider them first within their historic contexts before moving on to a discussion of the changes in the television industries in Germany. These sections will then be followed by a close textual analysis of Zeit der Geheimnisse.

Gender Equality in Germany Despite the recent visibility of powerful German women in international politics, specifically Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen, Germany still lags behind other countries in terms of gender equality (Ahrens et al., 2022). Petra Ahrens, Phillip M. Ayoub and Sabine Lang (2022: 2) chronicle a history in which Germany has been slow to adopt gender equality legislation and, even as recently as 2019, was still only middling in the index of European countries in terms of gender equality. Myra Marx

9  GENDER AND THE YOUTHIFICATION OF GERMAN TELEVISION: ZEIT… 

187

Ferree pinpoints West Germany, a region that is generally conservative and in which politicians have not stood out “in taking measures to enable women to enter the paid labor force, combat stereotypes of women and men or reform family law and social services to be gender neutral” (2012: 2). She goes on to argue that “the EU’s[…] directives, along with the incorporation of the different political culture of East Germany [has] challenged the state to change its approach to women’s welfare” (2012: 2). Such a description of German policy highlights significant gender disparities in terms of lived experiences. In part, as Ferree (2012) points out, this is due to the largely Christian-Conservative political context which structures German society as one in which liberal ideas of equal rights have less traction. Such a context also enables the continuation of traditional attitudes such as the ‘just gender pay gap’: a label that describes and supports the continuation of the ‘male breadwinner’ model and its core belief that men who have children should earn up to eight per cent more than women because of their ‘breadwinner’ role (Lang & Groß, 2020). This model is underpinned by another core belief; that women should be the main homemakers and, as such, charged with looking after children. The continuation of such patriarchal gender roles, particularly in the Western states of Germany, is echoed in limitations evident in the representation of women on screen. Thus, Cornelia Krauss (1997) notes that women are largely depicted as mothers when they reach a certain age, and if they are permitted to become sexual agents at all, their representation follows the traditional stereotypes of good friend or femme fatale (1997: 262). In general, women in German television drama, particularly in popular melodramas, tend to be cast as secondary characters who are largely imagined and depicted as either the protagonist’s love interest or mother. It is perhaps for this reason that German television series have attracted little feminist analysis, while American television has been widely discussed by German scholars (Schicke-Schäfer, 2003; Knoll, 2011). It is only in recent years, particularly in the context of what Florian Krauß (2020) calls the ‘Youthification’ of German television, that female characters have gained more diverse representation, including the “ambivalent representation of protagonist Lenora Rauch (Maria Schrader)” (2020: 170) in Deutschland 83 (RTL/Sundance TV, 2015). Importantly, such changing representations also need to be contextualised by wider social discourses which point to a resurging feminist consciousness, which has become more visible in the last few years, as well as significant social and political gains. Ferree (2012: 206) draws specific

188 

E. WEISSMANN

attention to the role of the election of Angela Merkel in bringing about changing attitudes to women’s social and political role: during the 2005 election campaign, both men and women learnt to embrace the idea of a woman in politics (with changes in opinion recorded as a shift of approval of a woman as chancellor from 56 to 84 per cent for women and 37 to 70 per cent for men). Thus, Merkel’s election campaign and chancellorship clearly brought with it positive shifts for women, even if her policies rarely challenged prevailing Christian-Conservative attitudes. Changing attitudes in regard to women have been well-documented in the context of two major debates that occurred in Germany before Merkel’s chancellorship and after it. These debates point to an increasing self-awareness and confidence among young German women. The first focused on the childlessness (Kinderlosigkeit) of German women with degree-level education (Schmitt & Winkelmann, 2005). As Christian Schmitt and Ursula Winkelmann indicate, this debate raged in the context of decreasing birth rates and rising life expectancy in Germany. The Kinderlosigkeit of degree-level educated women entered political debate after the release in 2002 of a national report on ‘Demographic Change’ (Deutscher Bundestag, 2002). Importantly, the Kinderlosigkeit issue was debated in the national press purely by considering the agency of women, not that of men. As Schmitt and Winkelmann write, “generally speaking, the debate is limited to the birthing behaviour of women. The view onto men is missing” (2005: 9, author’s translation). The blaming of women, according to Schmitt and Winkelmann (2005: 10), is not surprising at this point, as the patriarchal structures built on the ‘male breadwinner’ model had maintained the responsibility for childrearing with women. Thus, this debate is helpful in enabling us to understand the national imagination in relation to gender roles, circa 2004. This was a time in which women were still defined primarily in relation to their role as potential and actual mothers, which inevitably relegated them to the domestic setting because of their duty to care for children. In addition, the absence of feminist voices in this debate maintained a situation in which women were spoken about, but rarely able to speak for themselves, thus consigning them to the margins and passivity (Diehl, 2018), relative to men. At the same time, a woman’s decision not to conform to the gender role of mother tended to be perceived as troubling. This contrasts significantly with the #IchBinHanna campaign of 2021 and indeed the earlier #95vsWissZeitVG (2019) campaign which can be understood as examples of the changing gender norms, albeit amongst

9  GENDER AND THE YOUTHIFICATION OF GERMAN TELEVISION: ZEIT… 

189

highly educated and hence privileged women. Both campaigns responded to a law passed by the federal government (‘Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz’; WissZeitVG) to reduce the number of years that researchers could be employed on short-term contracts at universities. While such a law was meant to reduce the precariousness of working conditions in higher education, it led to even greater pressures on early career researchers because there was no accompanying incentive to create more permanent positions at universities (Bahr et  al., 2021). The #IchBinHanna campaign specifically responded to a video released under the same name (YouTube, 2021) by the federal government explaining in cartoon form why the law was necessary to facilitate innovation in research as otherwise these postdocs would “clog up” the system. What the video failed to mention is that only those researchers who have written up another research project—a habilitation which usually takes a minimum of six years to complete—were deemed qualified enough to apply for a permanent position. For women, who are still considered Rabenmütter (raven mothers) when they leave their young children in care (Ferree, 2012: 209), this entails an obligation to choose between a scientific career and looking after their children, rather than doing both. Marco Wedel therefore agrees with the campaigners that the law is “synonymous with low chances of long-term career, life and family planning [and] discrimination against women and other marginalised groups (because not everyone can afford this long period of insecure employment)” (2021: 274). The response to the campaign included over 60,000 Tweets or a “veritable shitstorm on social media” (Dirnagl, 2022). Ulrich Dirnagl shows that much of the underlying assumptions of the video (such as the idea that permanent positions make researchers lazy) came under criticism and are indeed scientifically untenable. But his analysis does not take into consideration the gendered dimensions of the debate and is representative of the fact that the campaign was handled in inclusive ways to such an extent that the outcry against the specific discrimination of women was rendered largely invisible. Nevertheless, it is noticeable that it is primarily women who speak out about the problems that such precariousness is causing them and their colleagues. This may well be because women continue to struggle to gain access to permanent academic positions: Marco Schröder (2021) shows that only 22.6 per cent of permanent (professor) positions were held by women in Rhineland Palatinate in 2020 and more women than men were working on temporary contracts. Similar statistics affect other Länder (‘states’, Tagesschau, 2022). In addition, during the

190 

E. WEISSMANN

employment process for professors (Berufungsverfahren), women still encounter discrimination as is made evident by the fact that the professors making the decision to employ see the two factors they need to consider— excellence and gender—as mutually exclusive (Petrova-Stoyanov et  al., 2020). The campaign #IchBinHanna is therefore centrally concerned with issues of (gender-based) discrimination. While this is often not quite as explicitly expressed as we may expect in other national contexts, the fact that women are now the key speakers in the campaign (rather than the spoken about) and draw (some) attention to this discrimination points to significant changes in the public discourses about women and therefore gender relations. It is these changes—in which German women demand agency in and control over their lives—that new high-end German television dramas commissioned by SVoDs and by German broadcasters are responding to.

The Youthification of Television and Netflix in Germany The German-speaking television market is one of the largest in Europe (Mikos, 2021) and also one of the most lucrative. German viewers have remained relatively loyal to traditional broadcast television (Krauß, 2020), though the average age of the German television viewer, particularly of the public service providers ARD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunkanstalten Deutschlands, consortium of public service broadcasters in Germany) and ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, second German television), is relatively high (around 60-years of age), with a share of only 8.1 per cent and 7.3 per cent of the 19–49 year-old demographic respectively (Spiegel, 2022). Indeed, Krauß (2020: 164) observes that during the 1990s, the public service broadcasters shifted their focus to a “50 plus” audience. While this was partially in response to their competition with commercial channels targeting younger demographics, it also acknowledged that viewers over 50 were more loyal to public service television. Indeed, it is only ProSieben and RTL II that have traditionally attracted younger adults, doing so largely via the appeal of US imports (Mikos, 2016). In addition, this same demographic is proficient at using both illegal and legal means to access high-end television drama online (Bock, 2017).

9  GENDER AND THE YOUTHIFICATION OF GERMAN TELEVISION: ZEIT… 

191

The noticeable interest of young audiences in American ‘quality television’ and their online consumption of this content have enticed German broadcasters to focus on online services as a means to attract younger audiences. This includes the development of a German version of the internationally successful SKAM (SHAME, NRK, 2015–2017) (Krauß & Stock, 2021). The broadcasters’ wider strategy has included the development of online platforms and channels, such as ZDF Neo which aims to reach a primarily female audience of 25–40-year-olds (Bilke, 2019). In the context of these shifts, youth and young adult audiences have become more important for German television production. Florian Krauß and Moritz Stock (2021) identify a new category of youth-oriented television drama and dramedies that have been created as part of this drive, both for online broadcast portals and for Netflix and Amazon Prime, the two leading SVoD services in Germany (Rahe et al., 2021). As Krauß (2020) highlights, the commissioning of television drama for streaming services as well as the more general interest of young audiences in ‘quality TV’, from the US especially, has instigated significant changes in German television drama production. These also embrace a transnational element, including the consideration of how stylistic decisions may be understood by international audiences. Krauß (2018, 2019) explores these developments in a number of publications. One of the key changes is the increasing closeness of television and film in Germany, one feature of which is a clearer delineation between high-end television drama production (which is now grouped together with film production) from lower-budget TV fiction forms. At UFA Fiction, this development happened because high-end television drama is perceived to come with similar levels of risks and budgets as those of film (Krauß, 2019). This change also responds to the increasing involvement of film production companies in the production of television, such as Constantin Film, UFA Fiction, and Bavaria Film GmbH. All of them are placed in different media clusters which have emerged in or outside the four main cities in Germany, namely, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, and Cologne. While Cologne has traditionally been the site of studio-based productions such as quiz shows (Mossig, 2004) and Hamburg is mostly associated with video games (Komorowski, 2017), both Berlin (Eichner & Mikos, 2017) and Munich (Zademach, 2009) are traditional centres of film and television production which have matured significantly over the last twenty or so years. This maturity is primarily evident in the increasing transnational outlook of these two screen production clusters which entails

192 

E. WEISSMANN

them operating and competing internationally (Zademach, 2009; Weissmann, forthcoming). Accordingly, the youthification of German television is occurring in conjunction with an increasing focus on online delivery and the development of high-end television drama as a German form of what Krauß (2020) terms ‘quality TV’. As I will now show with the example of Zeit der Geheimnisse, this youngification process is enabling the development of significantly more diverse female characters, pointing indeed to the generational shifts in society and German television’s evident resolve to respond to these shifts through the dramas they produce.

Zeit der Geheimnisse Between the National and Transnational Zeit der Geheimnisse is a limited serial commissioned by Netflix. It was the first TV drama produced by Sommerhaus Film which had previously focused on film production. CEO Jochen Laube who established the production company in 2006, worked at UFA Fiction between 2008 and 2015 after which his colleague Fabian Maubach joined Sommerhaus Film as co-CEO. It is since then that the company has been busy with a number of television productions, including an episode of the television crime drama Tatort/Crime Scene (ARD/ORF/SRF, 1970 -present) as well as other TV dramas primarily for ARD and Netflix, including Die Kaiserin/The Empress (Netflix, 2022) which, with its modern take on a traditional subject, combined with extremely lavish production values, follows in the footsteps of dramas such as Bridgerton (Netflix, 2020-present) and Marie Antoinette (BBC/Canal+, 2022). While these productions point to the television pedigree of the company, according to showrunner Katharina Eyssen (Eyssen cited in Schultze, 2019), it was Zeit der Geheimnisse that initiated this flow of TV drama successes: the production company only became involved because she liked their films, received recommendations about their work by some friends, and directly phoned them. This suggests that it was the combination of high-end production expertise initially for film, combined with the good reputation that their CEOs had achieved through their work at UFA Fiction, that enabled the company to attract prestigious commissions from Netflix and ARD. ARD has preferred Sommerhaus Film for productions that are decidedly

9  GENDER AND THE YOUTHIFICATION OF GERMAN TELEVISION: ZEIT… 

193

youth-­focused, including an Instagram-based adaptation of the story of Sophie Scholl (Ich bin Sophie Scholl/I am Sophie Scholl, ARD, 2021). As a direct commission by Netflix, Zeit der Geheimnisse needs to speak to both national and transnational audiences. As Trisha Dunleavy writes: Even though ‘direct commissioning’ simulates TV drama’s traditional relationship between a given national TV network as ‘buyer’ and the one or more domestic indie companies who act as ‘producer’, it also fulfils one of the traditional purposes of TV drama co-production by connecting foreign finance with domestic creative industries. What is new in the multiplatform era and re-defines ‘direct commissioning’ in the transnational environment for which high-end TV drama is now created, is that this approach to co-­ production is motivated by international rather than national outcomes. (Dunleavy, 2020: 346)

This motivation for international outcomes for an SVoD-commissioned TV drama, as observed in other chapters of this book, does not preclude the capacity for it to serve the domestic audience or to foreground cultural specificity. Indeed, Netflix’s decision making in the German market at that time was also partially determined by stiff competition with Amazon Prime which initially had larger subscriber numbers in Germany and greater success with You Are Wanted (2017–18) (Mikos, 2021). It took Netflix a number of years to cement its leading position in the German market, largely facilitated by its other direct commissions Dark (2017–20) and How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) (2019-present). While the English titles of these productions still strongly point to a greater focus on the international, Zeit der Geheimnisse, with its German title and its references to specific details of German politics, suggests a shift whereby the national might play as important a role as the international, in the design of a new high-end drama. The drama is about three generations of women—perhaps even four— whose secrets have alienated them from each other over time, but who are brought back together by the revelation of truth during one Christmas holiday which they spend together in their ancestral family home next to the North Sea. The narrative switches largely between three time periods—1989, 2004, and 2019—with one scene also showing the arrival of the matriarch, Alma (Barbara Nüsse) with her daughter Eva (Corinna Harfouch), shortly after the Second World War. The narrative follows an associative structure which is determined by the memories of the four

194 

E. WEISSMANN

main characters. With its focus on one location, it follows in the tradition of the Kammerspiel which, together with expressionist film, dominated 1920s German cinema. Inga Pollmann argues that these two film traditions located the vitality of film in its ability to create a dense, atmospheric surrounding world that a spectator might inhabit by attuning herself to its qualities[…] In discussions of these films, filmmakers, scriptwriters, critics, and theorists turned to the aesthetic concept of Stimmung[…] which captures simultaneously the tonal quality of what surrounds us (atmosphere), our own tonality (mood), and the process of attuning to a mood or atmosphere. (Pollmann, 2018: 42)

Similarly, Zeit der Geheimnisse uses one location and a limited cast to create a “dense, atmospheric surrounding world” that the audience can attune themselves to. In part, this is facilitated by carefully chosen period detail which imagines the same space as one that changes over time while also containing several props that stay the same. This includes the landscape which is largely seen through wide shots of the waves crashing against the seashore and the house settled amidst the sand dunes. But it also includes the wooden Christmas pyramid: a traditional German Christmas decoration. Similarly, a pair of headphones becomes the representation of the passing of time. The drama opens with Vivi (Svenja Jung) arriving by bus, wearing a pair of big Bluetooth headphones. When the drama cuts back to 1989, we see her mother Sonja (Emilie Neumeister), then a young woman herself, wearing Walkman headphones around her neck. These props have the ability to trigger nostalgic memories for viewers who may themselves have possessed such a Christmas pyramid or Walkman. While many such memories may be shared by an international audience, some of the political references to earlier times, in particular to the murder of a Soviet Army officer in the immediate post-war period and the political language of the Red Army Fraction/Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF), a German terrorist group, is part of a specific German cultural memory. Nevertheless, the drama sits squarely within the transnational field as Giselinde Kuipers (2011) describes it: as a cultural field of transnationally operating television personnel, who operate in and between the different countries they are involved with. That the producers and writers of Zeit der Geheimnisse similarly operate in this transnational field is evident here too as the title sequence draws our attention to the fact that the drama was

9  GENDER AND THE YOUTHIFICATION OF GERMAN TELEVISION: ZEIT… 

195

inspired by Días de Navidad/Three Days of Christmas (2019) by Pau Freixas, another Netflix Original Series which, interestingly, premiered on Netflix a month after Zeit der Geheimnisse. Thus, for Eyssen to have been able to create and write such a story inspired by the Spanish series, some form of international exchange must have occurred. In addition, Eyssen was also only approached by Netflix as a result of her friendships with the production team of Dark which included the director Baran bo Odar who had directed the US-produced Sleepless (2017) before working on Dark. Thus, Eyssen is part of a community of film and television makers who are internationally networked and, hence, like the international television sellers Kuipers (2011) has researched, operate in the same array of national, transnational and international contexts that the screen production clusters in Berlin and Munich are also part of. Thus, Zeit der Geheimnisse is part of the increasing internationalisation of German high-end television drama while also addressing a specifically German audience. This is also evident in the conceptualisation of the female characters which respond to an increased international visibility of complex female characters as well as to changes in the conceptualisation of women in Germany.

Zeit der Geheimnisse as Drama About and for Women of Different Generations According to Eyssen, the drama was commissioned by Netflix as a result of Netflix searching for ‘female content, stories with female characters’ (in Schultze, 2019, author’s translation). At the same time, she sees the drama pushing boundaries because, unlike other German Netflix productions of the time, it wasn’t only targeting young people: “Our drama could be watched by my mother as much as by my [female] cousin” (Eyssen cited in Kilian, 2019, author’s translation). This generational appeal is evident not just in the characters themselves—great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and daughters—but also in the gender roles and the narratives developed around these characters. While Alma as original matriarch remains relatively marginal, her role as a war widow who somehow manages to keep her children fed despite extreme poverty is a well-known narrative in Germany (Kolbe, 2017). Eva represents the traditional Hausfrau (homemaker) who not only takes care of her children but also the needs of her husband. Her role of Hausfrau is so complete that she

196 

E. WEISSMANN

even continues to take care of children when they are no longer hers: she raises her daughter’s children, Vivi and Lara (Tilda Jenkins and Leonie Benesch). Her homemaking role is also emphasised by the fact that we never see her go out to or speak about work, meaning that she is entirely defined in her relation to the home and her children. Her character is interesting for another reason: like the other characters, she harbours a secret, namely that she murdered her violent and controlling husband when he called the police on her daughter’s RAF-aligned boyfriend Peter (Merlin Rose and Michael Fritz). This brings her character into contact with a key concern of Germany’s second feminist wave, namely the issue of domestic violence (Ferree, 2012), thus speaking to women of her generation not just in relation to the critique of the role of the Hausfrau but also in relation to a key campaign focus of the 1970s and 1980s, about which younger generations of women may not be so aware. In contrast, the characterisation of her daughter Sonja (Christiane Paul) will be well-known to German women of all ages, particularly as it was described by the German press: they largely discussed Sonja as Rabenmutter (Bartels, 2019) because she is seen to irresponsibly leave her children behind while searching for fulfilment first in political protest, then through a lesbian relationship, and finally, for a way out of alcoholism which she foregrounds through a constant recourse to “the twelve steps”. This characterisation and the resulting critique of it in the press suggests that women are still idolised in German society when they give up any hope of personal fulfilment in order to care for their children (Diehl, 2018). This points to the perception of a continued value system that prioritises females’ self-sacrifice over their potential non-childrearing contributions to society. This sexist value system is also evident in Gunda Bartels’s review which discusses the character and the drama with an element of disdain for its women-centric approach. In contrast, Paul (in Bartels, 2019) emphasises that it gave her, as actor, the opportunity to play a complex and multi-dimensional character that she compares to women-centric films, such as The Family Stone (2005). Of course, such a claim by an actress in an interview needs to be understood within the context of a PR campaign for the programme. However, it nevertheless draws attention to the fact that Sonja cannot simply be reduced to her (non-existent) relationship with her children. Indeed, we learn that much of her inability to take care of her children stems from an exchange with her father who blames her for the death of his son. Thus, rather than representing just the topos of the Rabenmutter with her negative effect on her daughters, the drama

9  GENDER AND THE YOUTHIFICATION OF GERMAN TELEVISION: ZEIT… 

197

constructs Sonja’s character and story arc as a critique of the female stereotype of the Rabenmutter: Sonja is castigated for her inability to look after children even before she has any children herself and hence, through a vicious circle, spends most of her adult life unable to look after her children, until the death of the parental generation leaves her responsible for looking after them. Finally, the two younger adult female characters, Vivi and Lara, present us with contemporary dilemmas of young German women: one, Lara, unable to interject in her boyfriend’s plans for their future, thus proving herself surprisingly unliberated despite holding down a good job, and the other, Vivi, hoping to make a career in music but finding herself being rejected in a male-centric cultural industry. Vivi’s character is largely marked by her discovery that her assumed father, Peter, is still alive, only to later find out that he isn’t actually her father. Thus, both of these young women are defined initially, at least, strongly by their relationships to men. During the course of discovering the family’s secrets, however, it becomes clear that it is their relationship to the other women rather than with the men that have influenced their life stories, allowing the continuation of the matriarchal lineage that the image of the Rabenmutter assigned to Sonja had initially disrupted. In the end, Sonja stays in the house as the third matriarch, and we can assume her children will return there every Christmas at least. Thus, Zeit der Geheimnisse creates a multi-generational panorama of a family in which each character increasingly becomes defined by their relationships with other women. As their secrets are revealed, the women also gain agency, especially in challenging or rejecting the stereotypes imposed on them as women whose roles remain defined in relation to men. Through its foregrounding and development of unusually rounded female characters, Zeit der Geheimnisse can be seen as simultaneously national and international. It sits alongside other high-end dramas that have been successful or influential in the international sphere by focusing on female characters and their relationships with each other, including Killing Eve (BBC America/BBC, 2018–22) and L’Amica Geniale/My Brilliant Friend (RAI/HBO, 2018-present), and this was likely part of why Netflix commissioned it. Yet, by engaging with some key German stereotypes regarding gender roles and bringing a multi-generational feminist angle to these (however quietly), Zeit der Geheimnisse also speaks to the nation, especially to the different generations of women in Germany, the youngest of which offers the strongest potentials for increased agency and self-determination.

198 

E. WEISSMANN

Conclusions The example of Zeit der Geheimnisse thus points to significant shifts in German television and society: German society has changed as far as the imagination of female gender roles is concerned. No longer are German women primarily defined by their work within the home and in relation to their male partners and/or relatives, but they have emerged as important contributors to national politics and debate and have thus claimed agency for themselves. However, the lack of ability to frame this debate and indeed the political contribution of women explicitly in relation to issues of gender and even less feminism, as the case of #IchBinHanna made evident, points to the continued limits of this emancipation. German television has seen significant shifts in its high-end TV drama production as the result of a number of developments. This includes the convergence of film and high-end television production, the maturation of the two key screen production clusters in Berlin and Munich, the embeddedness of high-end television drama production personnel in the transnational and international contexts for high-end TV drama production, the online consumption of American TV drama by young, well-educated German viewers, and the response by both local broadcasters and SVoDs through the increased commissioning of high-end, internationally distributed TV drama. Thus, while it was the influx of imported television drama, especially from the US, that provided the stylistic and narrative precedents for the development of German high-end TV drama, it was the consumption of this imported TV drama by young Germans, through legal and illegal means, that generated the new conditions that required German television drama production to change. In this situation, broadcasters and SVoDs both realised the opportunity within Germany for an underserved group of viewers to become a key domestic audience market via productions which could also address and appeal to an international audience. This was possible because the young German audience’s viewing preferences were already being shaped by the above external, international forces. Not only due to their consumption of imported television but also because conditions have materially changed for young Germans as far as gender roles are concerned, German television now has greater capacity and incentive to develop female characters that are considerably more complex than before and are notably less defined by their relationships to men.

9  GENDER AND THE YOUTHIFICATION OF GERMAN TELEVISION: ZEIT… 

199

Zeit der Geheimnisse embodies this capacity for significant change by deprioritising the story of a family marked by secrets that bind the women to different men, in favour of an interest in how the women in this family relate to each other, to foreground a sense of matri-linearity. Other recent German television dramas also offer similarly complex characters. Parfum (Perfume, ZDF Neo/Netflix, 2018) for example, features a young, somewhat troubled female detective as its central character. Another example, Bad Banks (ZDF/Arte, 2018-present) centres on a young female banker who, together with a group of friends, crashes the European banking system. Accordingly, German high-end television drama is part of a process of increasing transnationalisation for wider German society. By responding to the changes in the international sphere, both in terms of politics and production processes, German high-end drama also opens up the cultural imagination in regard to women’s social roles so that they can emerge with greater agency over their representation as well as over their political, social and cultural contributions. Acknowledgements  This chapter is an outcome of the British Academy-funded project ‘Transnational TV Drama in Television’s Multi-platform Age’, reference: SRG1819\190605.

References Ahrens, P., Ayoub, P.  M., & Lang, S. (2022). Leading from Behind? Gender Equality in Germany During the Merkel Era. German Politics, 31(1), 1–19. Bahr, A., Blume, C., Eichhorn, K., & Kubon, S. (2021). With #ichbinhanna, German Academia Protests Against a Law That Forces Researchers Out. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(9), 1114–1115. Bartels, G. (2019). Deutsche Netflix-Serie “Zeit der Geheimnisse”. Ist das Frauenleben nicht schön? Tagesspiegel. Available at: https://www.tagesspiegel. de/gesellschaft/medien/ist-­d as-­f rauenleben-­n icht-­s chon-­4 119703.html. Accessed 6 Feb 2023. Bilke, N. (2019). Author Interview with, Mainz, Germany, 18 December. Bock, A. (2017). “Wir, die Serienjunkies”. (Il)legaler Serienkonsum im Internet als Form digitaler Vergemeinschaftung. In O. Jandura, M. Wendelin, M. Adolf, & J.  Wimmer (Eds.), Zwischen Integration und Diversifikation. Medien und gesellschaftlicher Zusammenhalt im digitalen Zeitalter (pp. 155–169). Springer. Brunsdon, C. (2000). The Feminist, the Housewife, and the Soap Opera. Clarendon Press.

200 

E. WEISSMANN

Deutscher Bundestag. (2002). Drucksache 14/8800. Schlussbericht der Enquête Kommission: ‘Demographischer Wandel – Herausforderungen unserer älter werdenden Gesellschaft an den Einzelnen und die Politik’. Available at: https:// dserver.bundestag.de/btd/14/088/1408800.pdf Accessed 6 Feb 2023. Diehl, S. (2018). Die Uhr, die nicht tickt. Kinderlos Glücklich. Arche. Dirnagl, U. (2022). #ichbinhannah and the Fight for Permanent Jobs for Postdocs: How a Fictitious Postdoc (Almost) Triggered a Fundamental Reform of German Academia. EMBO Reports. Available at: https://www.embopress. org/doi/pdfdirect/10.15252/embr.202254623. Accessed 6 Feb 2023. Dunleavy, T. (2020). Transnational Co-Production, Multiplatform Television and My Brilliant Friend. Critical Studies in Television, 15(4), 336–356. Eichner, S., & Mikos, L. (2017). Berlin in Television Drama Series: A Mediated Space. SERIES – International Journal of TV Serial Narratives, 3(1), 41–49. Ferree, M.  M. (2012). Varieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics in Global Perspective. Stanford University Press. Geraghty, C., & Weissmann, E. (2016). Women, Soap Opera and New Generations of Feminists. Critical Studies in Television, 11(3), 365–368. Gjelsvik, A., & Schubart, R. (Eds.). (2016). Women of Ice and Fire. Gender, Game of Thrones and Multiple Media Engagements. Bloomsbury Academic. Gorton, K. (2016). Feeling Northern: “Heroic Women” in Sally Wainwright’s Happy Valley (BBC One, 2014-present). Journal for Cultural Research, 20(1), 73–85. Hallam, J. (2007). Independent Women: Creating TV Drama in the UK in the 1990s. Critical Studies in Television, 2(1), 18–34. Jermyn, D. (2003). Women with a Mission: Lynda La Plante, DCI Jane Tennison and the Reconfiguration of TV Crime Drama. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(1), 46–63. Jermyn, D. (2009). Sex and the City. Wayne State University Press. Jermyn, D. (2010). Prime Suspect. British Film Institute. Johnson, B. (2019). Leading, Collaborating, Championing: Red’s Arresting Women. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 16(3), 327–345. Kilian, J. (2019). “Zeit der Geheimnisse”: Netflix visiert neue Zielgruppe an. Kurier. Available at: https://www.kurier.de/inhalt.zeit-­der-­geheimnisse-­ netflix-­visiert-­neue-­zielgruppe-­an.91628ab9-­ec90-­40bd-­af92-­3a5d3a9373a1. html. Accessed 2 Feb 2023. Knoll, K. (2011). Frauenbilder und -rollen. Eine diskursive Betrachtung der Gilmore Girls und des Genres der Fernsehserie. In M.  A. Kreienbaum & K. Knoll (Eds.), Gilmore Girls–mehr als eine Fernsehserie?: Sozialwissenschaftliche Zugriffe (pp. 79–98). Verlag Barbara Budrich. Kolbe, W. (2017). Trauer und Tourismus: Reisen des Volksbundes Deutsche Kriegskräberfürsorge 1950–2010. Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, 14, 68–92.

9  GENDER AND THE YOUTHIFICATION OF GERMAN TELEVISION: ZEIT… 

201

Komorowski, M. (2017). A Novel Typology of Media Clusters. European Planning Studies, 25(8), 1334–1356. Krauss, C. (1997). “Unsere Mutter Bleibt die Beste”. Zum Familienbild in Fernsehserien. In R.  Möhrmann (Ed.), Verklärt, Verkitscht, Vergessen. Die Mutter als ästhetische Figur (pp. 261–275). J.B. Metzler. Krauß, F. (2018). ‘Quality Series’ and their Production Cultures: Transnational Discourses Within the German Television Industry. SERIES  – International Journal of TV Serial Narratives, 4(2), 47–59. Krauß, F. (2019). “All Is Changing”: Interview with Joachim Kosack on Deutschland83 and Transformations of the German TV Series Industry. SERIES – International Journal of TV Serial Narratives, 5(1), 69–74. Krauß, F. (2020). Teen und Quality TV: Deutschland 83 und Transformationen der deutschen Fernsehserie. In F.  Krauß & M.  Stock (Eds.), Teen TV (pp. 163–183). Springer Fachmedien. Krauß, F., & Stock, M. (2021). Youthification of Television Through Online Media: Production Strategies and Narrative Choices in Druck/SKAM Germany. Critical Studies in Television, 16(4), 412–432. Kuipers, G. (2011). Cultural Globalization As the Emergence of a Transnational Cultural Field: Transnational Television and National Media Landscapes in Four European Countries. American Behavioral Scientist, 55(5), 541–557. Lang, V., & Groß, M. (2020). The Just Gender Pay Gap in Germany Revisited: The Male Breadwinner Model and Regional Differences in Gender-Specific Role Ascriptions. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 65, 100473. Mikos, L. (2016). Germany as TV Show Import Market. In L.  Powell & R. R. Shandley (Eds.), German Television: Historical and Theoretical Approaches (pp. 155–174). Berghahn. Mikos, L. (2021). TV Drama Series Production in Germany and the Digital Television Landscape. In L. Barra & M. Scaglioni (Eds.), A European Television Fiction Renaissance: Premium Production Models and Transnational Circulation (pp. 177–190). Routledge. Mills, B. (2009). The Sitcom. Edinburgh University Press. Mossig, I. (2004). The Networks Producing Television Programmes in the Cologne Media Cluster: New Firm Foundation, Flexible Specialization and Efficient Decision-Making Structures. European Planning Studies, 12(2), 155–171. Petrova-Stoyanov, R., Altenstädter, L., Wegrzyn, E., & Klammer, U. (2020). Exzellenz oder Frauenförderung? Gleichstellungswissen und -handeln von Professorinnen und Professoren in Berufungskommissionen. Beiträge zur Hochschulforschung, 42(4), 50–69. Pollmann, I. (2018). Cinematic Vitalism: Film Theory and the Question of Life. Amsterdam University Press.

202 

E. WEISSMANN

Potter, H. (2022). The (Trans)National Appeal Within Babylon Berlin? Modern Languages Open 1. Rahe, V., Buschow, C., & Schlütz, D. (2021). How Users Approach Novel Media Products: Brand Perception of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video As Signposts Within the German Subscription-Based Video-On-Demand Market. Journal of Media Business Studies, 18(1), 45–58. Sayeau, A. (2010). As Seen on TV: Women’s Rights and Quality Television. In J. McCabe & K. Akass (Eds.), Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (pp. 52–61). I.B. Tauris. Schicke-Schäfer, R. (2003). Desires Everywhere: Die Rolle der Frau in den US Fernsehserien: Ally McBeal und Sex and the City. GRIN Verlag. Schmitt, C., & Winkelmann, U. (2005). Wer bleibt kinderlos? Was sozialstrukturelle Daten über Kinderlosigkeit bei Frauen und Männer verraten. Feministische Studien, 5(1), 9–23. Schröder, M. (2021). Besetzung von Professuren: Genderspezifische Ungleichheiten im Wissenschaftssystem. Statistische Monatshefte Rheinland-­ Pfalz, 8, 585–596. Schultze, T. (2019). Katharina Eyssen über “Die Zeit der Geheimnisse”: ‘Eine extrem positive Erfahrung’. Blickpunkt: Film. Available at: https://www.blickpunktfilm.de/produktion/katharina-­eyssen-­ueber-­zeit-­der-­geheimnisse-­eine-­ extrem-­positive-­erfahrung-­bffa5f2a6c44ef54811346154f9c931e. Accessed 2 Feb 2023. Spiegel. (2022). TV-Zuschauerzahlen 2022: ZDF liegt beim Publikum vorn. Der Spiegel. Available at: https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/tv/tv-­ zuschauerzahlen-­2022-­zdf-­liegt-­beim-­publikum-­vorn-­a-­05a20bfd-­fec9-­4422-­ b8b2-­fb7f0c3bc9e2. Accessed 19 Feb 2023. Tagesschau. (2022). Professorinnen noch immer in der Minderheit. Available at: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/universitaeten-­professorinnen-­101.html. Accessed 30 Jan 2023. Wedel, M. (2021). Ways to Foster the Scientific System: It’s the People, Stupid! Innovation, 34(3), 273–277. Weissmann, E. (forthcoming). From Traditional Regionalism to National Distinction: German Coproductions Through Time. Critical Studies in Television. YouTube. (2021). Ich Bin Hanna. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=PIq5GlY4h4E. Accessed 30 Jan 2023. Zademach, H.  M. (2009). Global Finance and the Development of Regional Clusters: Tracing Paths in Munich’s Film and TV Industry. Journal of Economic Geography, 9, 697–722.

CHAPTER 10

Atiye/The Gift: Narrating Cultural Diversities as Spiritual Fantasy in an Authoritarian Climate Deniz Zorlu

Introduction The Gift (Netflix, 2019–21)1 stands out in contemporary media productions in Turkey for being a female-led fantasy/mystery TV drama that emphasizes the diversity of cultures, peoples, identities, and languages in Turkey’s history. While portraying the diversity of identities, it constructs a historical narrative in which female characters are positioned as the main architects and guardians of human civilization, portrayed as the essential and yet forgotten founders of human social life and history. It is on the basis of its sustained narrative emphasis on historically based national, religious, and cultural differences that The Gift distinguishes itself from most Turkish TV dramas of recent years. Several storylines reference the ancient pre-Muslim and pre-Christian people of Anatolia. The violence endured

D. Zorlu (*) Ankara Bilim Üniversitesi, Ankara, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_10

203

204 

D. ZORLU

by minorities and groups of people who are not in compliance with social norms is also addressed on occasion. Turkish TV dramas, especially female-centered examples, have attained remarkable global success in the last decade, particularly across the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South America (Bhutto, 2019). Yet, despite the flow of female-centered stories on Turkish TV, the country’s historical past and national identity are typically constructed through male characters and male-centered stories. The growing authoritarianism of the country in recent years has corresponded with a significant increase in overtly xenophobic TV series about the nation’s past, which typically emphasizes masculinity and Islamism as the essential markers of Turkish identity (Zorlu, 2021). Hence, The Gift’s significance comes from its deviations from other TV dramas created in the contemporary Turkish mediascape due to the emphasis it gives to both the depiction of cultural diversity and the centrality of female characters in the story world. The Gift, however, presents this diversity in the form of exotic markers that contextualize and color the Westernized central character’s journey of personal transformation and self-realization. The serial’s commitment to exploring historically based cultural identities takes a secondary position so as to facilitate a universal narrative about finding one’s true self. Consequently, the cultural diversities The Gift refers to are ultimately homogenized so that they appear merely as different iterations of the same human history. In effect, the progressive potential of depicting a multiplicity of cultures, religions, and languages is subsumed to create a universally appealing narrative about a young character’s journey of self-realization and fulfillment. Because of this framing, the serial suggests that Turkey’s cultural differences can ultimately boil down to entail the same set of essential shared features and that the various ancient civilizations are interconnected in a single human history. The popularity of spiritualism in contemporary international media is often associated with the neoliberal age. It is argued that in espousing a “cult of the self” (Tucker, 2002), spiritual discourses help to foster a “new age capitalism” (Dobrovolskiy, 2021: 63) and that they can be seen as “consumer religions” (Possamai, 2003: 31–2). In contrast, the increasing appeal of spiritual discourses can also be considered as a reaction to the neoliberal emphasis on hyper-competition (Park, 2016: 378–9). In that vein, while depicting life in modern cities as soulless and depthless, which prompts the lead character, Atiye, to pursue internal peace and greater contentment by getting away from them, The Gift still posits that full

10  ATIYE/THE GIFT: NARRATING CULTURAL DIVERSITIES AS SPIRITUAL… 

205

personal satisfaction is achievable without making any structural changes in today’s societies. Thus, although it does take a critical stance against neoliberal capitalism and the type of human relationships this ideology fosters, The Gift postulates that the solution to the problems of the contemporary world can be found by turning inward. Thus, the drama espouses the idea that all is achievable through individual will alone with no need for larger structural changes. Despite these shortcomings, The Gift offers an alternative view of Turkey’s historical past in the contemporary authoritarian context of the country because of its narrative interest in showcasing historically-based, yet different, national, cultural, and religious identities in Turkey’s history. Thus, as a Netflix-commissioned drama that was created for an international audience, The Gift provides a useful case study for examining how a TV drama can incorporate universally relevant issues or concerns as well as offering elements of cultural specificity that are refreshing for Turkish TV drama and of particular value to Turkish audiences. I focus on indicative, recurring visual and narrative elements of The Gift, aiming to ascertain their common thematic points of emphasis. I examine how the narrative and visual features of the text interact with each other, and with that objective, pinpoint the visual and narrative elements of cultural representation that viewers can encounter in virtually every episode of the serial in its three-season run.

Turkish TV Dramas and Netflix Turkey Netflix Turkey was launched in 2016 as part of the platform’s global expansion that year into 130 countries. Following its localization efforts, which began with its acquisition of existing Turkish TV serials and feature films, Netflix has given more emphasis in recent years on the commissioning of original drama serials in Turkey. The Gift is the second instance of Netflix’s direct commissioning of high-end drama from Turkey, a country in which there are currently more than 3.5 million subscribers to the network (Sarıkaya, 2021). In 2019, the year its first season was released, it became the most-watched TV drama on Netflix Turkey (Eyüboğlu, 2020) and continued to have a significant audience following throughout its three-season run. The serial is loosely based on a novel by Turkish author Şengül Boybaş, titled Dünyanın Uyanışı (‘The Awakening of the World’). It has been criticized for its orientalist tendencies, arguably in projecting an image of Turkey tailored according to Western desires (Ildir & Rappas,

206 

D. ZORLU

2021: 11; Tanrıvermiş, 2021). Since The Gift, several more Netflix Turkeycommissioned drama serials have been produced and released on this service. A major advantage of these drama commissions is that they can build on the established transnational popularity of Turkish TV dramas that have attained significant success, especially in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South America. Multiple Turkish-produced TV dramas have been screened in about 150 countries and have been watched by an estimated number of over 500 million people across the globe in the last decade (Pinto, 2020). In recent years, some also started to use the Turkish word ‘dizi’ as a separate genre of television in reference to the growing international popularity of Turkish TV dramas (Bhutto, 2019). The leading markets for Turkish TV series were initially the Middle East and Eastern Europe, regions that share elements of historical and cultural proximity with Turkey. Yet, Latin American countries emerged as the main markets for Turkish TV dramas in recent years (Pinto, 2020). It is sometimes argued that female-centered TV dramas produced in Turkey have positively affected gender relations. Accordingly, Turkish dramas are hailed as “game-changers” for their capacity to inspire women to separate from their dissatisfactory marriages and demanding more egalitarian societies, especially in the Middle East (Janmohamed, 2016: 180). As a primary source of their audience appeal, it is argued that Turkish series “conjure up an accessible modernity” (Kraidy & Al-Ghazzi, 2013: 17). Yet, despite often featuring strong female leads, Turkish TV dramas are also criticized for ultimately reproducing patriarchal power structures (Akınerdem & Sirman, 2019). The Turkish television market is exceptionally competitive and the majority of broadcast TV drama series get canceled due to lower-than-­ expected ratings before the end of their first season (Deloitte, 2014: 17). The number of episodes in a season varies from 20 to 40 for a successful project. The length of episodes has gradually increased from about 60–90 minutes to nearly 150 minutes. This change has aimed to increase advertising revenues to match higher costs for the production of TV dramas. By law, Turkish TV productions must run uninterrupted for 20 minutes at the minimum, thus extending the overall length of an episode allows more time for commercials. In export markets, these Turkish dramas are typically screened by cutting a single episode into two parts. The length of Turkish TV series naturally affects their narrative structure,

10  ATIYE/THE GIFT: NARRATING CULTURAL DIVERSITIES AS SPIRITUAL… 

207

which is often criticized for its slow pacing and predictable plots (Vitrinel & Ildır, 2021). An increasing number of SVoDs have started operating in Turkey in the past couple of years. Turkey’s first major SVoD, BluTV was launched in 2015. In 2021, Discovery Channel has become a 35 percent shareholder in BluTV (Vitrinel & Ildır, 2021). Amazon Prime Video started in September 2020; announcing its plan to produce its first Turkish original serial, whereas Netflix announced in 2021 that it would open its own production hub in Turkey (Vivarelli, 2021). Exxen, another major streaming platform, was introduced in 2021 (Vitrinel & Ildır, 2021), and Disney+ started to screen its first Turkish drama originals in June 2022. All of these developments demonstrate the appeal of the Turkish market to multinational and transnational SVoDs. A central aim of these online platforms is to engage audiences who are rather averse to dramas on mainstream Turkish TV by introducing different genres, edgier storylines, and more inventive production techniques than are currently available on broadcast television (Sharpe, 2019).2 A notable characteristic of SVoDs in Turkey is the length of their serials, which typically last from 45 minutes to an hour, and a season consists of 8 to 13 episodes in total, aligns with international norms for linear and broadcast television (Vitrinel & Ildır, 2021). These TV serials often differentiate themselves from dramas on Turkish broadcast TV with their non-linear narratives, the use of dramatic lighting, and inventive camera angles, as the latter often refrain from adopting unconventional approaches partly due to the difficulty of producing over two hours of content on a weekly basis (Yanardağoğlu & Neval, 2021: 198). SVoDs also operate in a relatively less regulated and restricted environment, allowing them to represent topics that are harder to engage with on broadcast television. The separation between Turkish broadcast dramas and Turkish dramas produced for SVoDs is far from being absolute, as these new productions continue to draw from the conventions of the Turkish drama industry. Netflix Turkey dramas are produced by the same few companies and creative teams that have previously produced television dramas for Turkish broadcast TV (Aydemir, 2020). It is common for transnational co-­ productions to “sit largely at the borders between internationalization and localization” (Weissmann, 2012: 142), thus, Netflix-commissioned dramas (usually serials) can be seen as a new amalgam of international productions and Turkish TV drama, as a new iteration of Turkish ‘dizi’ (Bhutto, 2019), regarding their production values and thematic preoccupations.

208 

D. ZORLU

Netflix Turkey has quickly become embroiled in debates concerning governmental authoritarianism, declining freedoms, and the desire to control and regulate social life according to the government’s conservative beliefs. Notably, the production of a planned serial was canceled by Netflix after Turkish government agencies requested that a gay character be written out of the script (Beswick, 2020). High-ranking government figures have also criticized Netflix as a source of moral corruption and the platform is listed among online services that the government might move to shut down (Tremblay, 2020). However, no such development has occurred, and Netflix continues to expand its operations in Turkey. Moreover, in 2020, Netflix was granted a ten-year license by government agencies (Tan, 2020) and it will likely remain as a major SVoD operating in the Turkish market. This attests to the extent to which Netflix, despite its ostensibly liberal outlook, still finds ways to cooperate with conservative governments in negotiating their demands (Jenner, 2018: 214). Despite this, Netflix Turkey has been criticized for silently bowing to political pressures. For example, since the brief confrontation with the Turkish government about the inclusion of a gay character, Netflix has refrained from allowing any open portrayal of LGBTQ characters in its Turkish drama commissions. For the first Netflix Turkey original serial, The Protector (2018–20), it was reported that about 85 percent of its over 10 million viewers live outside Turkey (Vitrinel & Ildır, 2021; Yanardağoğlu & Neval, 2021: 201). The Protector shares some thematic similarities with The Gift, especially as it connects the present-day modern world with past ages. Yet, despite featuring elements of fantasy, The Protector is in more alignment with representations of the historical past on broadcast Turkish television, as the central character is male, and it is Turkey’s Ottoman imperial past that is connected with the contemporary world. The poster for The Protector carries strong orientalist influences: the central titular character stands in the middle of the frame with an ancient dagger in his hand, on the left we see skyscrapers from modern-day Istanbul, and on the right, a historic mosque is visible with a golden background to indicate either sunset or dawn. The character embodies a neatly separated duality between the west and east, as well as the old and new. This poster portrays the modern city in foreboding cloudy darkness and the Ottoman past with a contrasting beauty of warmth and vividness, thus, the past is invested with an air of superiority over the present.

10  ATIYE/THE GIFT: NARRATING CULTURAL DIVERSITIES AS SPIRITUAL… 

209

The Gift is thematically differentiated from other recent Turkish historical productions through its foregrounding of ancient pre-Turkish and pre-­ Islamic history from 12,000  years ago. Set in Göbeklitepe, it tells a female-centered story that recurrently emphasizes ethnic, national, and religious diversities. The Gift also deploys the characteristics of what Trisha Dunleavy (2018) calls ‘complex serial drama’ as it tells an overarching story, and within this investigates the morality and related conflicts of its lead characters. These characters are also afflicted by moral dilemmas. It is often the interactions between these morally conflicted characters and their individual flaws that drive The Gift’s narrative forward. Unlike Turkish broadcast dramas, which rely on linear storytelling, The Gift is marked by its non-linearity in both temporal and spatial dimensions. The narrative moves between the past, present, and future, as well as between distinct locations. Flashbacks and flashforwards interweave with the narrative present in each episode, their juxtaposition yielding a highly fragmented narrative style. The duration of its episodes is shorter, and these are fast-paced compared to the episodes of Turkish broadcast dramas, with relatively more inventive camera angles being a feature. Yet, ultimately, it is The Gift’s thematic differentiation from Turkish broadcast dramas that primarily warrants its scholarly examination. Arguably, The Gift plays a role in opening a pathway for Netflix to more directly explore contentious contemporary issues regarding identity and diversity in Turkey.

Televisual Diversity in Turkey As the successor state to a once large empire that spanned large parts of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, which included a multiplicity of people from various religious and ethnic identities, the modern Turkish Republic was built on the notion that there is a single homogenous Turkish nation populating the country. This state-sanctioned view has come under increasing criticism in the context of globalization, leading to the increased representation, since the 1980s, of cultural diversity and minority identities (Kadioğlu, 1996: 192). Yet, in recent years, the authoritarian climate of the country has made the expression of minority identities considerably more difficult. This is reflected in television and other popular media, as these have increasingly distanced and self-censored themselves in their depiction of diversity, instead, increasing their use of xenophobic narratives. A rather common characteristic of authoritarian regimes is the emphasis given to using memories of the past as a means to legitimate political

210 

D. ZORLU

actions taken in the present moment. This so-called restorative nostalgia aims to re-envision the present through constructions of history, which it claims to re-vitalize (Boym, 2001). Hence, the Turkish government often references the country’s Ottoman imperial past in ways that aim to justify its regional ambitions and the internal policies it pursues. In recent years, there has been an upsurge of historically-based popular TV series, some of which are directly supported by the government, as a means through which to legitimize and justify contemporary political agendas, in which minority identities are often represented in a denigrating manner (Zorlu, 2021). ‘Meaningful diversity’ can be seen as the kind of representations that go beyond the tokenized conceptions about minority identities (Kohnen, 2015: 88). The term ‘minority’ here refers to the markers of national, cultural, religious, and linguistic differences from the hegemonic identities ̇ that exist within a country (Içduygu & Soner, 2006: 447), thus it is here used for the expression of such non-hegemonic markers of belonging that are rarely encountered in contemporary popular Turkish media in a meaningful way. Even though its depictions of minority identities are not beyond the reach of clichéd conceptions, The Gift distinguishes itself from contemporary television drama in Turkey by giving centrality to characters who belong to minority communities.

Theoretical Background on Popular Spiritualism In the last decade, an increasing number of popular film and television productions dealing with spiritual themes has been produced for international audiences, which often provide “inspiration for believer/consumers” to improve their lives (Possamai, 2003: 37; Noonan, 2011: 730). Due to their increasing popularity, discourses of spiritualism and religiosity have also been increasingly scrutinized, especially in regard to their connections with neoliberalism (Sullivan & Delaney, 2017). As it is often argued, neoliberalism is far more than a system of economics: it is an ideology that permeates all aspects of our lives, especially in its promulgation of competitiveness and hyper-individualism as the utmost values (Amable, 2011; Read, 2015; Ventura, 2016). It is argued that discourses of spiritualism play a notable role in the contemporary operation of neoliberal capitalism (Possamai, 2003: 31–2; Dobrovolskiy, 2021: 63). Popular spiritualism is criticized for entailing the belief that it is in the hands of individuals to change and improve their lives through spiritual

10  ATIYE/THE GIFT: NARRATING CULTURAL DIVERSITIES AS SPIRITUAL… 

211

means, sidelining questions about societal inequalities and injustices. Accordingly, so-called new age spiritualities foster a “cult of the self” (Tucker, 2002), pushing people to believe that anything is achievable; that they have the ultimate and complete power over their own destinies. In other words, popular spirituality implicitly suggests that it is in the hands of individuals to alleviate the problems in their lives and there is no need for larger societal change (Sullivan & Delaney, 2017: 847–8). However, it is also argued that popular spiritualities provide coping mechanisms for people who are disturbed by the pressures of the neoliberal world (Park, 2016: 378–379). As Jin Kyu Park (2016: 383) argues, excessive inducements to be competitive can cause chronic anxiety for many people, and the appeal of spiritual discourses is linked to a desire to find refuge from these burdens. Park (2016: 386) posits that spiritualism and popular “mediated religion” can provide an impetus for people to imagine that an alternative life with different values and principles is possible. Similarly, Chia Longman (2018: 1) suggests that spiritualism provides “sites of sisterhood, solidarity, and dissent”, which can cultivate alternative and oppositional identities working against hegemonic neoliberal values. Popular spiritualism refers to a diversity of beliefs and practices and thus can take different forms depending on who uses the term (Knoblauch & Graff, 2009: 693). Spirituality discourses typically offer an “inward-­ oriented mode of experience” (Knoblauch & Graff, 2009: 693) and bring a “more personal connection” with religiosity (Possamai & Possamai-­ Inesedy, 2014: 108). Accordingly, spiritualist discourses are “less fixed or institutional and [are] perceived as more subjective and personal than traditional belief systems” (Noonan, 2011: 728). In their lack of institutional affiliation, they typically involve “pastiche styles of belief and practice” (Roof, 1993: 165). Finally, popular spiritualist beliefs and practices often entail an attempt to distil what people believe are the constitutive essences of various religious traditions in an eclectic and often shallow manner (Possamai, 2003: 34). In The Gift, there is a similar tendency to combine references to multiple myths and belief systems in an eclectic manner, combining references to Pagan, Christian, and Islamic religious traditions. While seemingly opposing neoliberal principles of competition and individualism by suggesting that true satisfaction in life comes from within and through connection with the earth, The Gift also shares with neoliberal doctrines a belief in the individual willpower in achieving one’s desires. This chapter

212 

D. ZORLU

argues that the political effects of spiritual discourses can take different forms according to where and when they are uttered. Set in the context of contemporary Turkey, The Gift’s spiritualism functions to create an alternative, non-hegemonic frame through which Turkey’s historical past is explained.

Three Interwoven Thematic Frames: Diversity, Self-­Discovery, and Matriarchal Power The Gift foregrounds themes that are broadly similar to those of several other popular high-end drama serials in circulation today, especially Netflix dramas Dark (2017–20) and The OA (2016–19), and Amazon Prime Video’s Undone (2019–present). Recurring themes in these dramas are the notion of self-discovery through spiritualism and the existence of parallel universes. The Gift’s story centers on Atiye, a successful artist and painter, who lives in an upscale Istanbul neighborhood and who is about to marry her handsome boyfriend who is the son of a wealthy businessman. On the surface, Atiye seems to have a fully satisfactory and happy life. Her friends and family often remark that there are probably millions of women who would have wanted to be in her place. Yet, Atiye herself seems discontented. The Gift shows her life slowly unraveling and she begins to see frightening visions and omens which are visible to no one else. Atiye’s detachment from normalcy is shown to initiate her journey of personal development, during which she realizes that she is blessed with special powers. Hence, as her life appears to turn upside down, she finds herself embarking on a quest to attain a more satisfying and meaningful life. The Gift deploys three concurrent story ideas. One is Atiye’s undertaking of a life-changing journey that will reveal her real identity. Another is the assumption of an innate connection between women and the earth/ nature. This also provides a historical narrative where female characters are represented as the main creators, as well as watchful guardians of human civilization, thanks to their spiritual powers resulting from their connection with the earth. A third, which operates through its visits to historic locations and repeated references to events in the past, is that The Gift examines and reveals the wide diversity of peoples, cultures, languages, and religions that have historically existed in Turkey.

10  ATIYE/THE GIFT: NARRATING CULTURAL DIVERSITIES AS SPIRITUAL… 

213

A Narrative of Self-Discovery Through Spirituality The Gift foregrounds the story of Atiye’s self-transformation, a process fueled by her long journey of self-discovery which reveals who she really is and what she really wants. A repeated assertion that Atiye hears, or articulates, along the way is, “Do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?”3 This is first uttered in the opening episode by the central male character Erhan, a young archeology professor and Atiye’s future lover, in an effort to persuade Atiye to follow her desires. Hence, the show’s advice is not to fear moving beyond routines and expectations to attain lasting bliss. Similarly, on multiple occasions throughout the serial, Atiye asks herself, or is asked by other major characters, “who are you?” In the final episode, and as the last spoken words of the serial, Atiye poses the same question directly to the audience. She breaks the fourth wall for the first time, looks directly into the camera and tells viewers: Don’t be afraid to live, let time make you yourself. Don’t try to be anyone else. Just find out who you are and open your wings to life … As long as you don’t stop asking, never get tired of asking that question again and again for the rest of your life: who are you?

In this last speech, Atiye also tells the audience that by exploring life as a journey and trading it for a more natural one: “you are going to be one and the same with the earth and yourself, with the universe and everything that surrounds us”. It is primarily by turning away from the exigencies of city life and delving into the past and the natural environment that Atiye discovers her true self, and the same advice is given to the audience to achieve a more satisfying life. As she utters these concluding lines, Atiye stands right below the ceaseless flow of a large waterfall, while the camera cuts back and forth to major characters who are shown enjoying the company of their family and close friends. Throughout the series, we hear multiple references to water flows as the symbolization of the passing of human life. In this last scene, this intercutting likewise suggests that life entails a constant flow like water and needs to be lived and experienced as a part of that ceaseless flow. These final words invite the audience on a journey of self-discovery. The Gift reiterates the “journey metaphor”, which is frequently encountered

214 

D. ZORLU

in contemporary spiritual narratives (Noonan, 2011: 730). In a fitting visualization of this metaphor, Atiye is repeatedly filmed from above in lingering drone shots, as she prepares to leave for her next destination. Narratively, each journey discloses a key piece of information about the mysteries that surround Atiye, while revealing hidden aspects of her personality and contributing to her understanding of who she really is. Atiye’s journeys to these distant historic locations also serve to increase her belief in her capabilities. A good example of this, from season 1 episode 6, is her comments to the man she once planned to marry, made when she returns to Istanbul after a daring journey. She tells him “Now, my life’s control is fully in my hands … I have the power to do things I used to fear in the past and unearth the secrets that were hidden from me”. By touching other characters’ hearts Atiye can know their desires and anxieties, as well as see their distant memories. In certain scenes, it is by laying her hands on a piece of ground she can see or visualize what happened in that location many years ago. In season 6 episode 1 her wise grandmother assures Atiye that “The earth has its own memory, it has its own language […] if you can understand that language, it has many stories to tell you”. Similarly, in a different scene, Atiye’s touching of still water allows her to see some story-wise significant visions. Accordingly, Atiye’s power is evident in her ability to connect intimately with nature and with other human beings. As noted earlier, the academic literature often associates the rising popularity of contemporary popular spiritualism with the influence of neoliberal ideology. Popular spiritualism is conceptualized as an extension of neoliberalism’s celebration of self-centeredness and self-reliance, while sometimes being considered as a reactionary search for life beyond ideals of competitiveness. Both approaches hold true for The Gift, as it criticizes neoliberalism while also acknowledging and affirming its continuing existence. Another one of the serial’s frequently repeated mantras is “impossibility is only your will”, the idea that only a lack of willpower can prevent people from achieving their aims. Yet in subscribing so fervently to this idea, and even though it ostensibly opposes neoliberalism’s emphasis on competitiveness, The Gift effectively reproduces neoliberalism’s celebration of hyper-individualism, of the centrality of willpower in achieving personal satisfaction, and the necessity for individual over collective agency and responsibility.

10  ATIYE/THE GIFT: NARRATING CULTURAL DIVERSITIES AS SPIRITUAL… 

215

Matriarchal Power The ancient town of Göbeklitepe, which is located in southeast Turkey, occupies the central stage in Atiye’s journey of self-discovery. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as the location of the world’s oldest known temple structures from 12,000 years ago (UNESCO, 2018). In The Gift, Atiye repeatedly uses a particular symbol in her paintings without knowing why. When this same symbol is discovered in Göbeklitepe, this marks Atiye’s direct connection with this distant civilization. In later episodes, The Gift specifies Göbeklitepe as the point of origin for human civilization and Atiye discovers she is a direct descendant of a long line of women, extending back 12,000 years and located in Göbeklitepe, who possess special powers. The serial also makes a reference to the naming of Göbeklitepe, which means ‘the hill with a belly’ in Turkish. In The Gift’s narrative world, this name signifies a pregnant woman, forging links between the birth of human civilization, motherhood, and femininity. While often emphasizing Atiye’s connection with nature, The Gift represents it as a specifically female proclivity, as she cultivates her special talents through her spiritual interactions with apparitions of other women from different epochs of time. As evident in this example, The Gift deploys an essentialized and problematic narrative dichotomy of feminine versus masculine, inferring that women are inherently closer to nature than men are, and drawing close parallels between femininity, motherhood, and the earth with its life-giving powers. In one of the parallel universes that Atiye visits, women can no longer give birth and many pregnant women lose their lives. An unnamed woman, who can only be seen by Atiye and who is presumably from ancient times, appears on occasions to speak to her, offering wise and important advice. In season 2 episode 2 the same woman tells Atiye that her pregnancy will restore fertility to the world, but for this to happen she needs to go back to “earth’s womb”, which is Göbeklitepe. The wise woman asserts that, “for all the women, their well-being, the birth will take place when you meet up with the earth’s womb … Go to the beginning, to the source, where everything has started”. The special powers of Atiye originate from her close links with the earth and Göbeklitepe, whereas Göbeklitepe, as the serial’s point of origin for human civilization, is likened to a woman, the link between place and gender being the capacity to initiate life. In these ways, The Gift celebrates a human connection with nature and the earth as real sources of power, suggesting that people have lost contact with their spirituality and the

216 

D. ZORLU

earth. It also posits that spiritual connections with nature and other living beings are specifically feminine attributes and ultimate sources of power.

Markers of National and Religious Diversity The third narrative/thematic element of The Gift is its recurrent depictions and markers of Turkey’s diverse national, cultural, and religious identities. The Gift has several characters in central or notable roles, as representatives of different national and religious identities, from Atiye’s Kurdish family roots to the Christian Assyrian protectors of her family line. There are positive depictions of Christian and Pagan religious rituals and symbols. While moving from one historic site to another, as well as through Atiye’s supernatural capabilities of getting in touch with distant times, the serial repeatedly portrays Turkey’s history as constituted by its hosting of a large diversity of peoples, beliefs, and cultures. In a notable flashback scene, it is revealed that an angry mob has attacked and tried to kill Atiye’s mother and entire family, believing that it was cursed and evil. This occurred long before Atiye’s birth, a period in which the family lived in a small village. Atiye’s grandfather and aunt, the latter being a child at the time, were brutally murdered by the mob, and her mother (also a child) barely escapes death. This scene references national identity, shared memory, and collective amnesia in the Turkish context. It has long been argued that Turkish society suffers from collective amnesia, especially when it comes to the traumatic events of the past (Kadioğlu, 1996). It has also been suggested that narratives about national identity in Turkey have been written and formed partly through deliberate omissions; an important example being the violence suffered by minority communities (Kadioğlu, 1996: 189). This also means that there is a significant gap between official historiographies about the national past and the memories of minority communities regarding the violent deeds concealed therein. In this vein, it can be argued that because of the challenges entailed in directly mentioning the traumatic events of the Turkish past, The Gift consigns them to the realm of fantasy. Memories of collective deeds of violence and suffering are narrated in an intertwined manner with individual memories of pain, allowing slippage between them. The gradual unearthing of past traumas also serves a personal therapeutic function, while preparing the way for Atiye’s spiritual awakening. In season 1 episode 5, Atiye confronts her own long-repressed personal memories in the form of short visions, as seen by her, in different

10  ATIYE/THE GIFT: NARRATING CULTURAL DIVERSITIES AS SPIRITUAL… 

217

rooms of an underground cave system in which she gets trapped and cannot find her way out. Hence each ‘room’ reveals a piece of painful memory that Atiye has chosen to forget. One example reveals that Atiye was sexually assaulted many years ago by the man she planned to marry. In another room, Atiye is shown to have had mistreated her adopted younger sister when they were both children and inadvertently played a role in her death. The unnamed woman from ancient times appears beside Atiye, counseling her: “when you embrace yourself for who you are, you will get out of darkness”. After this, Atiye’s deceased grandmother appears and tells her with a smiling face: “you faced secrets you’d hidden even from yourself; you saw how strong you are”. The narrative implication of such moments is that the secrets of the past need to be remembered and revealed no matter how hurtful they may be, to enable personal development. Later in the same episode, Atiye emerges from the underground cave to the earth in the form of a baby in the womb, indicating that she is reborn anew after encountering her traumatic memories.

Emphasizing Historical Unity Through Diversity As The Gift approaches its last episodes, the narrative emphasizes the idea of one common history for Turkey. Thus, cultural differences are postulated as different iterations and expressions of what are in essence the same meanings that repeat themselves in different times and spaces. The symbol that Atiye sees since her early childhood resembles an emblem of continuity and perpetuity in its circular form, referring to cycles of birth, life, and death that repeat themselves endlessly. Thus, the life of single individuals, as well as of various ancient cultures, entail the same cycles of birth and death, of encounters with similar conundrums, and the discovery of similar answers. Atiye and Erhan encounter this same symbol in every historic location they visit. The Gift’s story and themes suggest the inherent unity of these distinct historic locations as part of one common history. In The Gift’s third season, a new female character, who belongs to the line of Assyrian protectors of Atiye’s family line, is introduced. Her message for Atiye is that her visions, dreams and various spiritual concepts “are all different words for the same thing”. As the three characters visit a historic site that they believe is the repository of spiritual powers, they engage in a discussion about how the site used to be the Temple of Sun in ancient times, then became a Roman castle and is now an Assyrian monastery. Accordingly, its value is recognized by different cultures, in different

218 

D. ZORLU

epochs, even if these have expressed their beliefs in varied ways. Hence, despite its representation of cultural diversity, The Gift emphasizes cultural commonality and similarity, entailing a tendency “for cultural inclusiveness that erases all difference” (Possamai, 2003: 33). The result is that different cultures are not being valued for their distinctive attributes, but rather for their capacity to contribute to an essentialized sense of a shared cultural identity.

Conclusions The Gift provides Turkish viewers with a historical narrative that differs from those of contemporary Turkish broadcast dramas. This is due to its emphasis on national, cultural, and religious diversities and the centrality of female characters in its story about the rise of human civilization. Deviating from the kind of xenophobic narratives of recent popular historical dramas produced especially for Turkish broadcast TV, The Gift draws attention to the different national, religious, and cultural identities that have existed in Turkey. Unlike most current historical dramas on Turkish broadcast TV, The Gift also de-emphasizes male characters to foreground female characters. Even though Netflix commissioned The Gift for a multinational audience, it is possible to argue that there is a competitive advantage in its positive depiction of national and religious differences within the Turkish context, as these depictions cannot easily be provided by mainstream broadcast TV channels due to the current authoritarian context of the country. As can be observed in The Gift, popular spiritual narratives tend to reproduce as well as challenge neoliberal values of competitiveness, hyper-­ individualism, and self-reliance. While rejecting neoliberalism’s emphasis on competitiveness in favor of a capacity to live a happier life in alignment with nature, The Gift still suggests that all problems can be resolved through individual effort and willpower alone and without the necessity for larger societal change. Hence, while being critical of neoliberalism’s ideal of competitiveness, The Gift still upholds neoliberal insistence on self-reliance and individualism as the ultimate means to achieve personal fulfillment. This chapter also demonstrates that The Gift’s political work cannot be reduced to debates about neoliberalism, as the serial entails an implicit criticism of hegemonic ideologies in contemporary Turkey. In The Gift, however, the display of Turkey’s national and religious differences is used to substantiate and validate the central heroine’s journey

10  ATIYE/THE GIFT: NARRATING CULTURAL DIVERSITIES AS SPIRITUAL… 

219

of self-realization. The serial showcases various customs and beliefs of different people as diverse iterations of the same universal messages, and Atiye’s grasp of these timeless truths open her path to personal development. Thus, diversities are celebrated not so much for their distinct characteristics, but rather for their alleged universality. This shifts the focus from cultural differences within Turkey to the kind of unity that is claimed to have existed in Turkey’s history. Thus, while spiritualism serves as the narrative frame in which to tell a counter-hegemonic story, it also works against a more critical representation of cultural diversity and differences in Turkey’s history. Netflix Turkey has continued to accentuate questions about history, identity, and diversity in Turkey with its subsequent Turkish original series. The Gift was followed by a docudrama, Rise of Empires: Ottoman (2020), which started to feature its second season in 2023. A string of popular dramas has followed this, including Ethos (2020), The Club (2021–22), and Fatma (2021). Despite their differing historical settings and subject matter, all these productions examine aspects of Turkish history and cultural diversity, demonstrating further the appeal of dramas that dwell on these topics. The Gift occupies a particularly significant space for its offer of an implicitly counter-hegemonic narrative about the Turkish context, as it gives emphasis to different national, cultural, and religious identities while foregrounding female characters as the main agents in a historical narrative about Turkey’s past.

Notes 1. The Turkish title of this serial is Atiye, the name of its central character. 2. The head of BluTV dramas claimed that BluTV aims for producing alternative content because “Turkish dramas are stuck in the same format”, and they “don’t move beyond certain safe topics” (Sharpe, 2019). 3. This line belongs to twelfth Century Persian poet Shams Tabrizi, who was a mentor and friend to internationally renowned poet Rumi. Often wrongly attributed to Rumi, the English translation of a longer version can be widely encountered on social media. It should also be indicated that especially “Islamic-oriented self-help literature” makes substantial use of Rumi’s work (Sayan-Cengiz, 2020: 5449).

220 

D. ZORLU

References Akınerdem, F., & Sirman, N. (2019). Kadın Cinayetlerinin Sorumlusu Diziler midir? Sendika. Available at: http://sendika63.org/2019/08/kadin-­ cinayetlerinin-­s orumlusu-­d iziler-­m idirfeyza-­a kinerdem-­n ukhet-­s irman-­ recel-­559618/. Accessed 12 May 2022. Amable, B. (2011). Morals and Politics in the Ideology of Neo-liberalism. Socio-­ Economic Review, 9(1), 3–30. Aydemir, Ş. (2020). Netflix fırsat mı sunuyor, tekelleşmeyi mi körüklüyor? Duvar. Available at: https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/netflix-­firsat-­mi-­sunuyor-­ tekellesmeyi-­mi-­korukluyor-­makale-­1502317. Accessed 24 Jan 2022. Beswick, E. (2020). Turkish Authorities ‘Told Netflix to Remove Gay Character from Script to Get Licence for Filming’. Euronews. Available at: https://www. euronews.com/2020/07/23/turkish-­authorities-­told-­netflix-­to-­remove-­gay-­ character-­from-­script-­to-­get-­licence-­for-­fi. Accessed 14 May 2022. Bhutto, F. (2019). How Turkish TV Is Taking Over the World. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-­and-­radio/2019/sep/13/ turkish-­tv-­magnificent-­century-­dizi-­taking-­over-­world. Accessed 10 Apr 2022. Boym, S. (2001). The Future of Nostalgia. Basic Books. Deloitte. (2014). World’s Most Colorful Screen TV Series Sector in Turkey. Available at: https://www2.deloitte.com/tr/en/pages/technology-­media-­ and-­telecommunications/articles/turkish-­tv-­series-­industry.html. Accessed 12 Aug 2022. Dobrovolskiy, M. (2021). Reflection on New Age Spirituality in Television and Cinematic Narratives. International Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Society, 11(1), 63–78. Dunleavy, T. (2018). Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television. Routledge. Eyüboğlu, A. (2020). Atiye nasil 2019’un en çok izleneni oldu? Milliyet. Available at: https://www.milliyet.com.tr/cadde/ali-­eyuboglu/atiye-­nasil-­2019un-­en-­ cok-­izleneni-­oldu-­6113622. Accessed 24 July 2021. ̇ Içduygu, A., & Soner, B. A. (2006). Turkish Minority Rights Regime: Between Difference and Equality. Middle Eastern Studies, 42(3), 447–468. Ildir, A., & Celik Rappas, I.  A. (2021). Netflix in Turkey: Localization and Audience Expectations from Video on Demand. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 28(1), 1–17. Janmohamed, S. (2016). Generation M: Young Muslims Changing the World. IB Tauris. Jenner, M. (2018). Netflix and the Re-invention of Television. Palgrave Macmillan. Kadioğlu, A. (1996). The Paradox of Turkish Nationalism and the Construction of Official Identity. Middle Eastern Studies, 32(2), 177–193.

10  ATIYE/THE GIFT: NARRATING CULTURAL DIVERSITIES AS SPIRITUAL… 

221

Knoblauch, H., & Graff, A. (2009). Popular Spirituality, or: Where Is Hape Kerkeling. In What the World Believes: Analyses and Commentary on the Religion Monitor (pp. 691–712). Verlag Bertelsmann Stiftung. Kohnen, M. (2015). Cultural Diversity as Brand Management in Cable Television. Media Industries Journal, 2(2), 88–103. Kraidy, M.  M., & Al-Ghazzi, O. (2013). Neo-Ottoman Cool: Turkish Popular Culture in the Arab Public Sphere. Popular Communication, 11(1), 17–29. Longman, C. (2018). Women’s Circles and the Rise of the New Feminine: Reclaiming Sisterhood, Spirituality, and Wellbeing. Religions, 9(1), 1–17. Noonan, C. (2011). Big Stuff in a Beautiful Way with Interesting People: The Spiritual Discourse in UK Religious Television. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(6), 727–746. Park, J.  K. (2016). ‘Healed to Imagine’: Healing Discourse in Korean Popular Culture and Its Politics. Culture and Religion, 17(4), 375–391. Pinto, I.̇ (2020). Turkish TV Series Export Race to the Top. Business Diplomacy. Available at: https://businessdiplomacy.net/turkish-­tv-­series-­export-­race-­to-­ the-­top/. Accessed 23 Feb 2023. Possamai, A. (2003). Alternative Spiritualities and the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Culture and Religion, 4(1), 31–45. Possamai, A., & Possamai-Inesedy, A. (2014). Cultural Framing of Risk and Religion Within Science Fiction Narratives. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 27(1), 94–113. Read, J. (2015). The Politics of Transindividuality. Brill. Roof, W.  C. (1993). Toward the Year 2000: Reconstructions of the Religious Space. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 527, 155–170. Sarıkaya, K. (2021). Türkiye’deki Netflix abone sayısı açıklandı. Tekno Safari. Available at: https://teknosafari.net/turkiye-­deki-­netflix-­abone-­sayisi-­ aciklandi/. Accessed 10 Apr 2022. Sayan-Cengiz, F. (2020). Gender in Turkey’s Islamic-Oriented Self-Help Literature: Constructing Self-Regulating Female Subjectivity. International Journal of Communication, 14, 5499–5517. Sharpe, K.  B. (2019). Streaming Revives Turkey’s TV Industry. Al-Monitor. Available at: https://www.al-­monitor.com/originals/2019/01/turkeys-­tv-­ audience-­turns-­blue.html. Accessed 23 Feb 2023. Sullivan, K.  R., & Delaney, H. (2017). A Femininity That ‘Giveth and Taketh Away’: The Prosperity Gospel and Postfeminism in the Neoliberal Economy. Human Relations, 70(7), 836–859. Tan, E. (2020). Netflix ve Amazon Prime, RTÜK’ten lisans aldı. Filmloverss. Available at: https://filmloverss.com/netflix-­ve-­amazon-­prime-­r tukten-­lisans-­ aldi/. Accessed 18 Aug 2022.

222 

D. ZORLU

Tanrıvermiş, Ş. (2021). Oto-Oryantalizm Bağlamında Atiye Dizisi. International Social Mentality and Researcher Thinkers Journal, 7(52), 2980–2986. Tremblay, P. (2020). Is It Time for Turks to Bid Farewell to YouTube, Twitter, Netflix? Al-Monitor. Available at: https://www.al-­monitor.com/originals/2020/07/turkey-­twitter-­netflix-­new-­social-­media-­bill-­set-­off-­uproar. html. Accessed 23 Feb 2023. Tucker, J. (2002). New Age Religion and the Cult of the Self. Society, 39(2), 46–51. UNESCO. (2018). Four Sites Added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1572/. Accessed 7 Oct 2021. Ventura, P. (2016). Neoliberal Culture: Living with American Neoliberalism. Routledge. Vitrinel, E., & Ildır, A. (2021, March). Turkey. Global Internet TV Consortium. Available at: https://www.global-­internet-­tv.com/turkey/. Accessed 14 Aug 2022. Vivarelli, N. (2021, February 24). Netflix Turkey Originals Chief on Istanbul Office Launch and Shaping a Global-Facing Slate. Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/netflix-­turkish-­originals-­chief-­pelin-­ distas-­on-­istanbul-­office-­launch-­1234912216/. Accessed 14 Apr 2022. Weissmann, E. (2012). Transnational Television Drama. Special Relations and Mutual Influence Between the US and UK. Palgrave Macmillan. Yanardağoğlu, E., & Neval, T. (2021). From TRT to Netflix: Implications of Convergence for Television Dramas in Turkey. In Y. Kaptan & E. Algan (Eds.), Television in Turkey: Local Production, Transnational Expansion and Political Aspirations (pp. 189–204). Palgrave Macmillan. Zorlu, D. (2021). Hegemonic Masculinities in Popular Culture and the Appeal of Authoritarian Rule: A Comparative Examination of Magnificent Century (2011–2014) and Resurrection: Ertuğrul (2014–2019). Masculinities Journal of Culture and Society, 14, 28–65.

CHAPTER 11

Freedom of Defection: The Representation of Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Netflix’s Unorthodox Eik Dödtmann

Introduction In the final episode of Netflix limited serial Unorthodox (2020), Esty (Shira Haas) sits on a bench in a playground somewhere in the city of Berlin. Moishe (Jeff Wilbush), the cousin of Esty’s husband Yanky, stands next to her. They speak in their mother-tongue, Yiddish. Moishe is giving Esty a lecture: This place is full of Jewish souls, Esty. The souls of a million dead! You want to raise a child among all these dead? […] What will you do here? With no skills, no money, no experience, no contacts. The world is a scary place. […] Give it a few months. Talk to me when you’re cold and hungry, a world away from anyone who ever cared for you! […] You’ve made your bed. And now you’re all alone in it. Eventually, you’ll come crawling back to the community, of course. But then it will be too late. Things will never be the same.

E. Dödtmann (*) Independent Scholar, Potsdam, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_11

223

224 

E. DÖDTMANN

[…] Come back now, Esty! Or you’ll always be the Jew who lost their way, waiting for God’s final judgement. There is one other way out. (Unorthodox episode 4)

He then pulls a gun out of his black coat. She reacts in shock: “Moishe. Put it away”. He replies, “I’m not going to shoot you”. He lays down the weapon next to her on the bench and tells her, “if you don’t come back, you’ll do it yourself”. Moishe leaves, and Esty remains, trembling, on the bench. With the release of Unorthodox in March 2020, Netflix landed a big hit. It was only the second time a high-end drama series about an ultra-­ Orthodox Jewish experience had been shown on the platform. And it was only the second time Netflix had commissioned a series with German production companies. Unorthodox exemplifies transnationality in two respects: one being that the ultra-Orthodox Jewish protagonists, the Satmar Hasids, are themselves a transnational community, and the other, that this production was completed transnationally with a cast of Jewish Israeli, American and European actors. In this chapter, the environment of the production of Unorthodox will be examined and the origins of the ultra-Orthodox subject in US television, having strong ties to Israeli television production, will be traced. Unorthodox sparked a lively debate especially among Jewish representatives in the US and Germany, including accusations of anti-Semitism. This chapter will also discuss the background of this debate, which was influenced by the transnational setting of this narrative and production.

Representations of Ultra-Orthodoxy Originals

and the Contribution of Netflix

The speech by Moishe, which is designed to prick Esty’s conscience, aims to pressure and ultimately intimidate her to return to her ultra-Orthodox community. It contributes to the dramatic climax of the outstanding Netflix production Unorthodox, which debuted in March 2020. Adapted from Deborah Feldman’s 2012 novel, Unorthodox tells the story of a young Jewish woman who is trying to escape her lot within the close-knit, isolated community of Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg, New York, and, in taking this action, faces disconnection. Of all things, she flees to Berlin, where 80 years ago, the Holocaust, the murder of European Jewry, was orchestrated. Unorthodox consists of four episodes, each 60  minutes in

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

225

length, which depict the young woman’s departure from the strictly religious, so-called ultra-Orthodox sect in New York and the first steps towards her new life in the German capital. The process of defecting from Orthodox Jewry to become a secular or progressive Jewish individual is a widely debated phenomenon within the Jewish world. In the American Jewish environment, the process of leaving the fold is called ‘off the derekh’, with ‘derekh’ meaning ‘the right way’. In popular culture such as literature and film, it is a commonly occurring topic in representations of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish world (Endelman, 2015). In fact, a major part of modern Jewish literature has been dedicated to the conflict between the traditionalists on the one side and the liberals or the secularists on the other (Zierler, 2011). In film, the ultra-Orthodox Jew has been assigned a variety of attributes. As Hammerman elaborates, Hasidic fantasies signal racial difference and whiteness, Jewish particularism and national belonging, Jewish authenticity and Jewish performativity. Hasidic imagery’s power lies in this opaqueness (we cannot see beyond the [men’s] beard, hat, peyos, and caftan), a characteristic that opens up compelling representational options for Jewish women. (2018: 132)

Additionally, through the history of film, as Laura Mulvey argues, the depiction of strictly religious women has become a subject of the “voyeuristic and scopophilic gaze, that fetishizes the religious woman’s body, which is otherwise hidden from view” (Mulvey, 1981: 23). The topic of ultra-Orthodoxy was a central subject in the early Yiddish cinema of the 1910s to 1930s. After the Holocaust and with the ultra-­ Orthodox Jews being the most recognizable victim group of Germany’s genocide, representations of the ultra-Orthodox were apt to be rather nostalgic and the topic of disaffiliation by individuals from ultra-Orthodox communities was not addressed. This changed in the 1990s, when portrayals of Orthodoxy were once again evident in literature and film. Since the beginning of the twenty-first Century, stories of Orthodox defectors have regularly been told in feature film form. An example is the drama Disobedience (GB/IRL/USA, 2017), which adapted the 2006 autobiography of British-Jewish author, Naomi Alderman. Netflix offered programs about this subject as early as 2017, an example being its original documentary One of Us, by filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. In this documentary, Ewing and Grady follow the lives of three former members of Hasidic communities from Brooklyn, each of

226 

E. DÖDTMANN

whom tells their own stories of domestic violence and child abuse when growing up in the ultra-Orthodox society. One of Us reveals the challenges for former ultra-Orthodox Jews of finding their way in mainstream US society, hindered by the low level of education that characterizes the Haredi school system. The dichotomy of close-knit, collectivist, religious fundamentalist society and the decision of an individual to break out was also the central story for a nine-episode reality-styled TV miniseries, My Unorthodox Life, a Netflix production released in 2021. It tells the story of Julia Haart, a former ultra-Orthodox Jewess who turned secular and became the CEO of a modelling agency and fashion company. Notwithstanding the innovation of these productions, Unorthodox makes an important contribution to Netflix’s array of programmes about off the derekh activities. With this limited serial, the Berlin-based American-­ British screenwriter Anna Winger and German-Jewish producer and filmmaker Alexa Karolinski (who lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles) have created an off the derekh narrative, which combines drama and suspense with socio-cultural content and transcends prevailing clichés about Jewish-German relations. Unorthodox, adapted from the 2012 autobiography of the same name by the American novelist Deborah Feldman offers fresh perspectives on Jewish experiences. Like Feldman, an émigré to Berlin, many young Israeli and American Jews have decided that Berlin is the place to be, such that the city has in some sense come to represent the center of a new Jewish diaspora. A young, liberal Jewish generation relates to the German capital as a place of openness and tolerance, a place in which to ask questions, to search for and find oneself, and a place where everyone can express their views. In 2012, the publication of Feldman’s novel Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots evoked strong reactions. On the one hand, the book became a bestseller and Feldman became a media personality in the US and was able to financially stabilize. On the other hand, she was ousted from her community, getting abusive letters and even death-threats (Feldman, 2014). An anonymous blog defaming and inciting action against Feldman was established which aimed “to expose the lies of Deborah Feldman and reveal the bias of her publisher” (RS/anonymous, 2012). Still, Feldman continued her literary emancipation process by writing another autobiographical novel that was published in 2014. In Exodus: A Memoir she tells the story of the search of a young single mother for a new home and life, who finally ends up in Berlin.

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

227

Unorthodox constitutes a prominent example of transnationalism and a transnational coproduction in the multiplatform era. This can be seen on two levels. One is the subject of Jewish ultra-Orthodoxy, so-called Haredi Jewry (the Hebrew term ‘Haredi’ stems from the biblical passage “trembling before the words of God”, Book of Isaiah 66:5) as a transnational community. The other, is the transnational production environment of the serial. It is to these elements of cultural representation and transnational production, beginning with the former, that the chapter will now turn.

The Transnationalism of Satmar Ultra-Orthodox Judaism The ultra-Orthodox Jewish community is transnational by definition. Like other contemporary religious movementst, Haredi Judaism is flourishing within transnational spaces, forging “a kind of cosmopolitanism, based on new exchanges of ideas, sentiments, rituals and images” (Stolow, 2004: 111). Since the Second World War, Haredi Judaism has developed into a vibrant constellation of communities, institutions, and networks of communication and finance. As a transnational religious community, Haredi Jews have sustained complicated and seemingly contradictory relationships of competition and exchange, engagement and withdrawal, along with identification with and exclusion from both their fellow Jews and the world at large. By defining themselves as “the authentic legatees of God’s covenant with the Jewish people at Sinai” (Stolow, 2004: 111) and as the exclusive interpreters of legitimate practice in defiance of a morally degenerate modernity, ultra-Orthodox Jews “have eschewed all non-Orthodox forms of Judaism and all moderate tendencies within Orthodoxy itself, refusing to recognize the legitimacy of other Jewish institutions and cultural formations, both within and outside Israel” (Stolow, 2004: 111). Haredi Jewry consists of communities from different backgrounds. One group is Hasidic Jews originally from Central and Eastern Europe, who adhere to spiritual and dynastic leaders, so-called Admorim. Another group is Litwak or Yeshivish Jews, originally from Eastern Europe, who embody the nineteenth century invention of the Yeshiva, a religious total institution where strict religious norms are formed. The third group comprises Sephardic Orthodox Jews originally from Northern Africa and the Middle East, who adopted the norms of their European Haredi compatriots. Ironically, while the Holocaust caused the annihilation of the

228 

E. DÖDTMANN

ultra-Orthodox European Jewry, it also injected new vigor into various strands of the Haredi movement. In the post-war decades, new host societies (such as the United States and Canada) offered Haredi elites the benefits of social mobility and “a deregulated religious marketplace, allowing for the accumulation of new forms of economic, political and cultural capital” (Stolow, 2004: 122). In Israel, due to the entanglement of State and Orthodox Jewish religions, Haredi communities advanced to the status of a privileged cultural minority with considerable judicial influence over the civil status matters of Israel’s citizens and over Israeli politics (Dödtmann, 2021). Although Israel and the United States are the centers of Haredi Jewry today, the ultra-Orthodox world is constituted as a deterritorialized social imaginary, spatially concentrated in metropolitan urban neighborhoods— in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak/Tel Aviv, New York, Philadelphia, London, Toronto, Moscow, Antwerp, Melbourne, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires and elsewhere. These communities are linked “by steady flows of people and texts, and sustained through adventures in the broader realms of international commerce that make up a bustling Haredi economy of scribes, kosher licensors, book publishers, diamond merchants and real estate developers” (Stolow, 2004: 123). Common ground between these communities is also evident in the full range of techniques upon which Haredi activists depend to distribute social goods such as education, housing, health care, childcare or family counselling, or “to marshal … strategies for maximizing success and governing risk that mimic [the] work of the modern state apparatus” (Stolow, 2004: 129). The New  York-based Satmar Hasids  – which is the ultra-Orthodox community depicted in Unorthodox – combines all these aspects and characteristics. Satmar was founded as a Hasidic offshoot in 1905 by its first Admor, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum (1887–1979), in the Romanian city of Satu Mare, then part of Hungary. After the Holocaust, with most members of the community killed, the shattered group was rebuilt by Teitelbaum in the USA with its new centers in Williamsburg, New York and in the village of Kiryas Joel, Monroe/New York. But the transnational community of Satmar was not limited to the USA. It became one of the biggest Hasidic groups in the world with more than 100,000 members estimated to be living in urban centers such as Antwerp, Montreal, London, Manchester, Melbourne and Jerusalem. Materially, the Satmar group is reliant on the ethno-religious economy that operates within it, and on

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

229

financial support from parishioners’ successful businesses, for example, Brooklyn’s Satmar real estate entrepreneurs (Deutsch & Casper, 2021). Among the different transnational Hasidic communities, Satmar Jews have attained cultural peculiarity by building their own educational institutions, by arranging marriages within members of the worldwide community, and by avoiding intermarriage with other Jewish strands. In contrast with many Orthodox Jews, who have been coming to terms with parts of modernity (for instance through secular education, or via the Jewish nationalist movement of Zionism), the majority of Satmar Hasids are still driven by a staunch opposition to secularism and to the idea of Jewish nationhood. On the basis of his influential writings, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum rose to become leader of the anti-Zionist Haredi grouping, denouncing the State of Israel as a violation of the traditional Jewish religious perception that the Land of Israel must not be forcefully reclaimed by the Jews before Messianic times. Teitelbaum’s second legacy was his conviction that the Holocaust was a punishment for Jewish secularism and Zionism, and that Judaism needs to be recreated in the image of nineteenth Century Eastern European Jewish isolationism. As a means of controlling their own society, Satmar Jews pursue the biblical concept of “purity” and “impurity” with strict rigidity (Douglas, 1966). Achieving the former entails an excessive preoccupation with the bodies of the community’s members through meticulous observance of food taboos, touching prohibitions, and clothing regulations. Through these rules, the boundaries between the private and the political body become blurred, and the Haredi individual eventually loses autonomy over both (Aran, 2006: 89). As in other puritan societies, Satmar Hasids consider the body to be the source of a so-called evil inclination, which in Judaism is called Yetzer haRa. Both genders must therefore dress in such a way that the sexual drive is not provoked. Their clothing is an inseparable part of an Ultra-Orthodox man or woman’s identity, a uniform that signals belonging. The female body is sexualized in Haredi society, which helps to ensure that the basic rights of women are severely curtailed (Okin, 1999). Female blood is considered ‘impure’, which means that during the time of their monthly period and after giving birth, women are not allowed to be touched by their husbands. The Niddah regulations shape a strict regime for the sexuality of women and couples. In the public sphere, all Satmar Hasids practice a strict separation of the sexes: touches between men and women (who are not members of the family) are forbidden. Women must keep a certain distance from men; for instance, in

230 

E. DÖDTMANN

synagogues women must be seated in a separate gallery where they cannot be identified by the men. Women are not entitled to represent the Ultra-Orthodox community in public, including politics. Women’s voices are literally silenced by the prohibition based on Talmudic sources, which maintain that the “voice of the woman is shame” (Berakhot 24a). Ultra-Orthodox women are not allowed to sing in the presence of men who are not members of the immediate family. Arts in the Haredi society like music, theatre, cinema, and painting, must all be related to the Jewish faith and have the capacity to portray the Jewish way of life uncritically. Language itself is a characteristic for the demarcation mechanisms of the ultra-Orthodox population between ‘pure’ and ‘impure’. Exceptional inside the Haredi world, the majority of Satmar Jews in the US, Canada, Great Britain, Belgium, Israel and Australia still use Yiddish, the traditional language of the Eastern European Jews, which is considered the “Holy language of the Martyrs of the Shoah” (Baumel, 2006: 96). Self-censorship in a Satmar household in terms of media is severe. Officially, there are no ‘impure’, meaning entirely non-religious, books or newspapers. Television is forbidden due to its perceived ‘dangers’ and due to the impossibility of controlling a viewer’s behavior. Still, modern media do exist also in this insular society. The use of ‘kosher telephones’, or phones without access to what are deemed ‘problematic’ internet pages, data, video, or messenger services, have become a widely accepted norm in the Haredi public. However, in reality the rules are circumvented by many. Yet going to the mainstream movies or watching television are still taboo activities for most Haredi Jews.

The Transnational Production of Unorthodox The multinational (Lotz, 2021) activity of Netflix and the larger arena of transnational high-end drama have been widely examined and discussed (Jenner, 2015; McDonald & Smith-Rowsey, 2016; Barker & Wiatrowski, 2017; Bondebjerg et  al., 2017; Hills et  al., 2019; Lobato, 2019;). Unorthodox is a unique example of recent high-end drama in this TV production environment. When asked about the creation of Unorthodox, co-­ writer Alexa Karolinski explained that the show, based on Deborah Feldman’s autobiography, had been planned by herself and co-writer, Anna Winger, right after having read the book (Karolinski in European Union of Jewish Students, 2020). The two screenwriters met with

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

231

Deborah Feldman, having already known each other as members of a small American-Jewish community in Berlin (the sons of Winger and Feldman attending the same high school), and they “got the blessing” of the author (Karolinski in European Union of Jewish Students, 2020). When looking for financing and distribution, the issue of language was central. Productions receiving money from European film fund providers must use the producing country’s national language. “A show half in Yiddish is not the sexiest pitch in today’s TV landscape, as Netflix sees it. […] We wanted to make the show in Germany […] To have Hasidic Jews speaking German was a non-starter for us”, explained Karolinski (in European Union of Jewish Students, 2020). These issues informed the decision to create the drama for Netflix. Yet Netflix’s preferred format of four episodes, which Anna Winger favored from the very beginning (instead of the typical six or more), presented another obstacle for them, since most German public funding bodies require at least six episodes (Grünenberg, 2016). Unorthodox was commissioned by Netflix’s Director of International Originals, Rachel Eggebeen. It is an international coproduction that used German, American, and Israeli crew and actors. The show’s budget was not disclosed but was described as having “an okay European budget” of well under the level of $3 m per episode (Kamm cited in Mitchell, 2020). From start to finish, the entire production took only a year and a half, with the editing being completed during November 2019 (European Union of Jewish Students, 2020). The filming was mostly completed in Berlin, with the German production companies of Anna Winger’s Studio Airlift GmbH and the Real Film Berlin GmbH in charge. Shooting in Berlin took 45 days, with an additional, scaled-down shoot of five days in New York. Interiors, including those involving the Satmar community of Williamsburg, were shot in Germany. A good example is the elaborate wedding scene, which was filmed over three days at a Palestinian wedding hall in Berlin. In the quest for authenticity in the Hasidic Jewish costumes, Yiddish dialect and idioms, and body language, the team was advised and assisted by cultural consultant and actor, Eli Rosen, who grew up as a Hasid before leaving the ultra-religious world. Rosen also played the Satmar’s rabbi in Unorthodox. Another turned-secular ex-Hasid, Jeff Wilbusch, the actor playing Moishe, also helped to flesh out the details of Orthodox life. Actress Shira Haas had previous experience of playing a Haredi female character from her role as Ruchama Weiss in the Israeli TV series Shtisel (Yes Oh/Channel 1/KAN11, 2013–16). As can be seen, the cast of

232 

E. DÖDTMANN

Unorthodox was unusually international, with the majority of actors being Jewish. The actors came from Israel (including Shira Haas, Amit Rahav, Dina Doron, Tamar Amit-Joseph, and Ronit Asheri), the US (Laura Beckner, Daniel Mandelbaum, Eli Rosen, and Harvey Friedman), the United Kingdom (Alex Reid), Germany (Aaron Altaras and Safinaz Sattar) and Switzerland (Felix Mayr and Delia Mayer). Some actors came with multiple national and religious identities. One was Jeff Wilbusch, who grew up in Israel, studied in the Netherlands and Germany, and later moved to Los Angeles. Others included the British-German actor Langston Uibel, the Syrian-German Aziz Dyab, the Ethiopian-born German actress, Dennenesch Zoudé, the Russian-born German actor Lenn Kudrjawizki, and the Russian-Israeli actress, Gera Sandler. The show’s director, the German Maria Schrader, had gained plenty of experience derived from acting in Jewish roles while working with her ex-­partner, the Swiss-Jewish German director Dani Levy. Schrader also acted in the first German-language TV series to be broadcast on US television, the SundanceTV and RTL coproduction Deutschland 83, created by Anna Winger. When asked about the requirements of the US-owned streaming service, Unorthodox co-writer, Alexa Karolinski, explained that Netflix’s Rachel Eggebeen, had been “very much involved in the writing process” (Karolinski in European Union of Jewish Students, 2020). Karolinski describes the collaboration as “a little bit like a client: we are making something for them to host”. She suggests that any notes from Netflix executives had “to be taken seriously” (Karolinski in European Union of Jewish Students, 2020). Although Netflix was not “very involved in the production stage”, its executives had a major say as to the show’s editing (Karolinski in European Union of Jewish Students, 2020). German producer, Henning Kamm, has also underlined the intensive involvement of the streaming giant in any productions it commissions. He observes that “if you work for a broadcaster and you do commissioned work, they have a great influence into what you’re doing based on the metrics that they have with audiences, and Netflix is more precise with all their data” (Kamm cited in Mitchell, 2020). The formula that Netflix wanted proved to be the right one. While Karolinski supposed that Jewish viewers, especially in the US, Canada and Israel, would be the core audience for the show (Karolinski in European Union of Jewish Students, 2020), things got much bigger – clearly triggered by the increasing number of Netflix subscribers and by longer hours

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

233

of consumption over the first period of worldwide lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the spring of 2020, when the four episodes were released to its subscribers, Netflix’s multinational audience spanned about 200 million people from 190 countries. Unorthodox received a great deal of praise from audiences and TV reviewers alike. Columnists from markets as different as the US, India, and Argentina, emphasized the accurate and sensitive depiction of a young woman’s process of emancipation from a repressive environment into freedom, even labelling the character of Esty a “new feminist hero” (Adlakha, 2020; Fienberg, 2020; Guerrin, 2020; Poniewozik, 2020; Seth, 2020; Stuever, 2020; Yaccar, 2020). Unorthodox was nominated for eight Emmy Primetime Awards and two Golden Globes. For her work, the German director Maria Schrader got the Emmy 2020 for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special. The actress Shira Haas was nominated for, though not awarded, an Emmy. Still, after her role in Unorthodox, Haas was considered a rising star, compared by many to the young Natalie Portman (Seth, 2020). In its release year, 2020, Unorthodox became something of a media phenomenon. Its creators were invited to numerous festivals and panels. For the production team this worldwide success came as a surprise. In a ‘Virtual House’ panel, co-writer and producer Anna Winger acknowledged Unorthodox’s unexpected cultural impact by noting that, “One thing that has been incredible is how people in so many parts of the world have responded to the show. […] In particular, people in parts of the world we haven’t expected”, such as Saudi Arabia, India, and Latin America (Winger cited in Ramos, 2020).

A New Wave of Haredi TV Series and Linkages Between Israel and US TV Formats with Jewish or Israeli themes have the potential to attract a mainstream multinational, as well as a specifically Jewish, audience. While Israeli formats appeal to a Western audience on the basis of “cultural proximity” (Straubhaar, 1991, 2007), the depiction of religious Jewish realms attracts both secular and religious viewers, as well as both Jewish and non-Jewish viewers, worldwide. While in the US, there is a tradition of TV series featuring secular or moderately religious Jewish characters (including Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Goldbergs, Broad City, Transparent, and The

234 

E. DÖDTMANN

Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), ultra-Orthodox Jews have been largely absent as a subject in mainstream US TV fiction. Unorthodox was the second TV drama serial depicting traditional Jewish customs and culture that Netflix had commissioned. The issue of Haredi Jews became prominent for the first time, when the SVoD bought the rights to stream the first two seasons (each including twelve episodes) of the Israeli production Shtisel. Netflix released this globally in December 2018. Set in the petit bourgeois environment of Jerusalem’s ultra-­ Orthodoxy, this drama chronicles the life of an average family in Jerusalem’s Ge’ulah neighborhood, where the characters speak only Hebrew and Yiddish. It revolves mainly around the relationship life of its two male protagonists: the widower Schulem Shtisel (Dov Glickman), head of a Kheyder, a religious elementary school, and his son Akiva (Michael Aloni), who also works as a religious teacher, but would rather turn his hobby, painting, into a profession. Both scriptwriters of Shtisel, Ori Elon and Yehonatan Indursky, come from the Haredi world, which they left as young men. In the series, they touch on various themes of the society: the search for partners through professional matchmakers, the teenage marriage, the social pressure to have as many children as possible, the problem of genetic diseases, surrogacy, the intra-Jewish racist structures that make marriages between European and Oriental Jews difficult, the problem of religious laws on divorce that discriminate against women, and the economic problems resulting from a precarious lifestyle. When distributed on Netflix, Shtisel became the first international success for a new ultra-Orthodox Jewish genre, making the Haredi community culturally visible to a large, near-global audience. The depiction of a gentle twenty-something ultra-Orthodox character whose romantic and artistic yearnings conflict with his father’s expectations and the strict norms of the religious world, enlisted the engagement of Jewish and non-­ Jewish viewers alike, worldwide. Within the American Jewish audience, this drama triggered a kind of “Shtisel mania” (Beinart, 2019). Shtisel’s success stemmed from presenting Haredi Jews as regular people, focusing on the personal lives of the members of an ultra-Orthodox community, while omitting most of the controversial issues associated with them (Peleg, 2015: 114) such as misogyny, homophobia, speciesism, censorship and politics. Shtisel was praised for showing positive relationships between ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews and for avoiding discussion of politics (Schweizerhof, 2021). The first two seasons of Shtisel center on the unfulfilled love of Akiva and Elisheva, which turns these protagonists into

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

235

quintessential lovers in the great nineteenth Century romantic tradition. Under the “gaze of love, everything ordinary becomes extraordinary, the ordinary becomes unusual, Jewish tradition and modernity intermingle harmoniously” (Peleg, 2015: 114). In 2020, already under the streaming network’s auspices and directly commissioned by Netflix, the third season of Shtisel was produced and launched. Shtisel, the first Israeli-produced high-end drama set exclusively in the ultra-Orthodox milieu, came to be known as a blueprint for Haredi representation on TV. It is not by chance that Israel was the pioneer for this new subject as one styled for the entertainment industry. With the demographic rise of the Haredi Jewry in Israel (to more than 1 million) and the increasing socio-political role of the Haredi parties and religious decision-­ makers in the theocratic realms of Israeli jurisdiction, the topic of ultra-­ Orthodoxy gained momentum in the Israeli film industry. Before the year 2000, dramas on Israeli TV covering the ultra-religious community in the country were non-existent. But by the mid-2010s, shows about Haredi Jews had become the “the hottest thing” on Israeli TV (Berger, 2018). Between 2000 and 2020, nearly a dozen Israeli TV dramas with ultra-­ Orthodox Jewish characters in the leading roles were produced. They included To Catch the Sky (Channel 2, 2000–05), The Court (Tchelet, 2003), A Touch Away (Channel 2, 2006–07), Iron Dome (Channel 2, 2017–18), Autonomies (HOT3, 2018), The New Black (HOT3, 2018–19), Unchained (KAN11, 2019), and Fire Dance (Yes, 2022). Some of these TV series gained ratings of up to 35 percent on Israeli television. In addition to their popularity with the national audience, there were other reasons why Haredi Jews became increasingly prominent in Israeli television and cinema. Firstly, there was the increasing number of filmmakers and actors, who had transitioned from (ultra-) Orthodox to secular, or vice versa, and who were willing to talk about their experience, when now filming religious material. Secondly, Jewish Unity foundations such as the Avi Chai Foundation (ACF) co-financed and promoted a positive portrayal of religious Jewry. Galeet Dardashti has examined how the ACF, founded by the Orthodox-turned American Jewish investor Salman Bernstein, had actively influenced the writing and completion of film productions, aiming to avoid negative portrayals of religious Jews (Dardashti, 2015: 94). Instead, it was considered the relationship between (ultra-) Orthodox and secular Jews should be depicted as compatible and harmonious in a Jewish multicultural world. And the results were soon to be seen. The miniseries A Touch Away, a Romeo-and-Juliet style romance

236 

E. DÖDTMANN

between a Haredi girl and a Russian Jewish teenager, became the first national TV hit to be co-financed by ACF. (HBO bought the format, but never completed an adaptation of this). Produced primarily for the private Israeli TV channels YES, HOT3, Keshet12, Channel 2, and Reschet13, dramas about ultra-Orthodox Jews have been and continue to be major audience successes in Israel, regularly receiving awards from national film academy, the Ofir Award. The biggest success of a production co-financed with Avi Chai funding was Shtisel.

‘Is Netflix Good for the Jews?’: Controversies in Germany and the US To date, Netflix has not disclosed the number of people watching their shows. Thus, there are no figures to reveal how many of the approximately 200 million Netflix subscribers streamed the limited serial in 2021–22. Yet the show received an overwhelmingly positive reception from international critics, whose reactions appeared in the press and media magazines. In Israel, the country with the world’s largest ultra-Orthodox population and the TV audience that was most accustomed to seeing a fast-growing list of Haredi representations on screen, the serial was launched under a rather suggestive title, The Rebel. Yet reviews in Israel were mostly positive, with Unorthodox described as the “the escape from the personal ghetto”, a “hypnotising watching experience” (Wolf, 2020), a “soft balance between drama and suspense” (Shiloni, 2020), and, most significantly, as “a balanced and reasonable series that depicts the complexity of the Haredi world from the female point of view” (Hadad, 2020). This response to the show has a context in the long cultural struggle of secular Zionism against traditional Judaism, a high level of awareness about off the derekh complexities, and a sympathy among the liberal Jewish public towards ultra-Orthodox defectors, who are considered potential new supporters of the Jewish national ideology. So even the religious Zionist press, although emphasizing that the serial was “aligned for an American audience” and “not perfect”, referred to Unorthodox/The Rebel as “fascinating” (Munic, 2020). Against this, the debate in the US and in Germany turned out to be rather controversial, with certain political, religious and media agents scandalizing the show. In the US-Jewish press and internet media, the recurring question was asked about whether or not the representation of

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

237

the Satmar Hasidic community was favorable for the appearance of Judaism. Modern Orthodox Jewish media personalities, journalists and activists – mostly, but not exclusively – rejected Unorthodox in anger. A common complaint has been that narratives about Haredi Jews who have left their communities are the easiest to find and their stories are overrepresented (Bernstein, 2020). Allison Josephs, activist for the Orthodox non-profit lobby organization ‘Jew in the City’, asserted that the structural misogyny within Orthodox Jewish communities, as depicted in Unorthodox, is “a vicious lie” and she even invoked a perception that is not uncommon in anti-Semitic rhetoric of there being rather “too many Jews in Hollywood” (Josephs cited in Bernstein, 2020). Scholar Sonya Michael suggests that for “liberals” and “especially [for] feminists” the fundamentalist enclaves of Haredi Judaism have become “convenient whipping boys, their communities the embodiment of all the values and practices liberals reject” (Michael, 2020). Other commentators deny the authenticity of the show (Joanes, 2020). The idea that connects these criticisms is that a negative portrayal of an unrepresentative sect of a small minority is bad for all the members of that minority (Bernstein, 2020). Haredi blogger, Eli Spitzer, criticizes the portrayal of sexuality in Unorthodox. He slams the depiction of the unfeeling and painful intimacy between the young, unexperienced Satmar couple of Esty and Yanki as “dehumanizing” and as a “a hateful libel” (Spitzer, 2020). Spitzer describes the co-writers Winger and Karolinski “willing dupes for a woman [Deborah Feldman] whose twisted fabrications are now beamed into the homes of anyone with a Netflix subscription” (Spitzer, 2020). Criticism of Netflix increased once again after the company released the reality docusoap My Unorthodox Life in summer 2021. The show portrays Julia Haart, the CEO of a modelling agency and fashion company, and her children’s decision to leave the Haredi Jewish community in Monsey/New York. The show was accused of being “a vicious form of hatred” (Hoffman, 2021). With this comment implying an accusation of anti-Semitism by My Unorthodox Life, the question of ‘Is Netflix good for the Jews?’ was incited, inviting a Jewish boycott of the streaming platform (Bernstein, 2020). The above disappointment with Netflix and the extreme reactions from a particularly vocal element of the conservative American Jewish public have several causes. After having seen and enjoyed Shtisel, a drama that bypassed contentious political issues and addressed unfulfilled yearnings for Jewish unity (Beinart, 2019), some American Jewish viewers were

238 

E. DÖDTMANN

shocked by Unorthodox. This is not only because the serial articulates a strong criticism of Jewish traditions and fundamentalism, but because it also seems to support the idea of a better life outside the Jewish community. Shtisel appeals to the eagerness of so many American Jews to find universality in representations of ultra-Orthodoxy, which, in the past, they may have found deeply unpleasant (Beinart, 2019). Unorthodox reminds them of the continuing and significant deficiencies of Haredi culture: including its isolation, misogyny, and lack of education. The American Jewish response to Shtisel has been rapturous perhaps because it is set so far away from suburban America, in Israel. Beinart argues that Shtisel, despite featuring Haredi Jews who do not identify as ideological Zionists themselves, “constitutes a form of cultural Zionism, providing an easier way to connect to the Jewish state, despite this state presenting ethical problems that many American Jews are struggling with” (Beinart, 2019). In contrast, Unorthodox breaks with the options of a life within a close-­ knit religious (Haredi) or nationalist (Zionist) Jewish society as a whole and details a pathway to an individually determined life as a Jew. As Netflix confirmed to the German Press Agency and to the German public in June 2020, interest in Unorthodox was extraordinarily high, the limited serial being one of “the biggest hits” with German Netflix subscribers (Deutsche Presseagentur, 2020). The two novels by Deborah Feldman had already been widely covered in the German press, radio, and television. The sensation of having a new US-born Jewish writer and intellectual with a dramatic life story has added a new perspective into the complex German-Jewish relationship. In addition, watching ultra-­ Orthodox Jews on German screens offers something new and novel. Before Unorthodox, German productions representing Jewish Orthodoxy were extremely rare. While completely absent on television, a few coproduced German feature films had explored the experiences of Orthodox Jews. The most famous examples were the comedies Meschugge (1998) and Alles auf Zucker! (2004), both of which were led by the Swiss-Jewish-­ German director, Dani Levy. In Meschugge, Levy’s partner at the time, the actress Maria Schrader, who would later become the director of Unorthodox, played a leading role. However, in both films, most actors are non-Jewish. Unorthodox’s deviation from this use of non-Jews to play Jewish characters, has been repeatedly emphasized to German viewers by the drama’s co-writer Alexa Karolinski, who underlines that the cast of this Netflix production was almost exclusively Jewish (Karolinski cited in Hulverscheidt, 2020).

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

239

Reactions in the German media and from political officials have varied widely. The German liberal press praised Unorthodox for depicting the “double-standards in the balancing act between tradition and modernity[…] while resisting to serve clichés or even ridicule the faithful [community]” (Hulverscheidt, 2020) and providing a “balanced view into a patriarchal, hermetical religious community” (Busche, 2020). Of special interest for German observers is the show’s setting in Berlin. This places the emancipation process of a traditionally raised Jewess in the territory of the German capital, within which the memories and impacts of German Nazi anti-Semitism and the Holocaust are still present. Interestingly, it was the representation of Berlin as “bright and friendly, open for people from all over the world”, almost a “fairy tale city”, which drew criticism from liberal German commentators (Weidermann, 2020). Conservative voices in Germany reacted predominantly negatively to the serial, blaming it for encouraging anti-Semitic resentments. In the state-financed official Jewish newspaper, Jüdische Allgemeine, two authors criticized the overly positive representation of Berlin in the face of current anti-Semitism and the fact that the German audience, as one without knowledge about Jewish rituals (a position also held by non-German viewers of this Netflix drama), gain a rare opportunity to see behind the curtain of a normally closed community (Baier & Cazés, 2020). German-Israeli sociologist, Nathan Sznaider, was notably irritated by the portrayal of Berlin “as the place where a young Jewess is saved from the claws of the ultra-Orthodox” (Sznaider, 2020). In the conservative daily, Die Welt, one author accused Unorthodox of deploying the anti-Semitic clichés of Jews being rent sharks, of dominating whole neighborhoods of New York, of being sinister and bigoted. In addition, the screenwriter’s decision to portray an international orchestra where Jews and Muslims play classical music together aroused criticism. Winger explained that “There’s a real music academy called the Barenboim-Said Akademie where Jews and Muslims play classical music together, like a whole utopia” and recalled, “We were inspired by this idea, as the sort of institution that could only begin in Berlin” (Winger cited in Bramesco, 2020). For their engagement in reconciliation between Jewish Israelis and the Palestinian people both initiators of the academy – the late iconic American-Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said, and the international conductor, Daniel Barenboim – have been accused of demonizing Jews and Israel (Posener, 2020). The scathing criticism from Die Welt has a certain background. The newspaper is part of the German publishing house Axel Springer SE with its flagship

240 

E. DÖDTMANN

tabloid Bild. Springer, in its corporate principles declaring the support for the reconciliation of Jews and Germans and for the State of Israel, has regularly denounced any arguments it considers are too critical of Israel by accusing them of being anti-Semitic (Zuckermann, 2018). Another characteristic of Germany’s public discourse on Unorthodox is the role of the newly installed state officials in the struggles against anti-­ Semitism. By 2022, Germany had appointed one state anti-Semitism commissioner and 15 regional commissioners. In many cases, these officials are affiliated with the German-Israeli society (DIG), an organization promoting economic and political relations between the two countries. It was such an official, Uwe Becker, president of the DIG from 2019 to 2022 and Anti-Semitism commissioner of the State of Hesse since 2019, who joined the debate by publicly denouncing Unorthodox. Becker criticized Unorthodox for “exaggerations and stereotypes, which are likely to reinforce rather than dissolve prejudices” (Becker cited in Dobra, 2020). Inherent in this warning is the belief that critical portrayals of Jewish characters or communities might activate anti-Jewish thought patterns among the general German public. On the one hand, this fear can be explained in the wake of violent anti-Semitic attacks like the one in October 2019, when a German far-right gunman (unsuccessfully) attacked the synagogue on Yom Kippur in the town of Halle and later murdered two passers-by. On the other hand, the special relationship between the country and the Jewish people has led to a new political reality. In her speech in March 2008 in Jerusalem, the former chancellor, Angela Merkel, acknowledged both the “historical responsibility of Germany as part of [the] raison d’état of my country” and “the security of Israel [as being] non-negotiable” (Bundesregierung, 2008), which translates into support for the politics of the state of Israel. German politicians also subscribe to the ideals of the Zionist movement, which aims to unite all Jewish communities and Jewish religious variants under its national umbrella, including the transnational and anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews. In 2017, the German government adopted the working definition of anti-Semitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), according to which “attacks on the state of Israel, which is thereby understood as [a] Jewish collective” can be classified as anti-Semitic. As a result, the discourse about anti-­ Semitism in Germany narrowed between the late 2010s and early 2020s. In this atmosphere, artistic criticism of the expression of fundamentalist elements of Jewish religion, an important feature of Unorthodox, could be easily misinterpreted as criticism of Judaism itself, as shown above.

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

241

Conclusions Jewish life is not monolithic. Jews are not monolithic, and the more complicated characters we show, the more flawed people we show, the more people will understand that we’re like everyone else. (Karolinski in Forward, 2020)

The above comment is included in the response of Unorthodox co-writer, Alexa Karolinski, to the accusation that her show discredited Jews. Speaking in an online panel with American Jewish off the derekh activists, Karolinski also asserted that we as Jews also need to say that some people are being wronged within our community. What will other people think if we silence the people within our community who are suffering? Then, that will cause more suffering on a larger scale than admitting to the outside world that that is happening in and of itself. (Karolinski in Forward, 2020)

Having denounced the idea of Jewish exceptionalism, Karolinski emphasizes the universal dimensions and appeals of Esty’s story in Unorthodox. Her viewpoint is that people can “underestimate, how many people on earth feel repressed by their religious communities. The fact, that so many people from different religions love [Unorthodox] shows us, that it is not only about Jews and not only about a specific community” (Karolinski cited in Bernstein, 2020). Although they have foregrounded the individual and transnational character of Jewish experience (following the narrative thrust of Feldman’s novel) the makers of Unorthodox see themselves as part of an international artistic community that is progressive, feminist, and anti-racist. Its decision to commission Unorthodox suggests Netflix was reasonably confident of its potential to appeal to its multinational audience. In its commissions during the last decade, Netflix has reacted to the appeal of shows about faith communities; this turn being somewhat consistent with a longer-standing practice of the commodification of religious material for a global film and television market (Smith, 2001; Cohen & Hetsroni, 2020). Accordingly, alongside its Christian, Muslim, and Hindu family original shows, Netflix acquired and then commissioned Shtisel, an Israeli drama set in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish milieu. Following the huge success of Shtisel, Netflix saw great potentials in Unorthodox, the TV drama adaptation of the life story of American-Jewish-German public intellectual, Deborah Feldman. Circumstances for a high-end screen realization of this

242 

E. DÖDTMANN

story were ideal. The emergence of a “new wave of ultra-Orthodox Jews on screen”, especially driven by productions in Israel since the beginning of the twenty-first century, had brought numerous directors, actors, and professional staff, who have inside knowledge about the subject. It is the transnational character of the production that brought together a predominantly international Jewish cast. For Netflix’s American and Western European viewers, Unorthodox provides probing and authentic insights into a community that is living geographically close to them, yet culturally, is very distant. Moreover, this drama’s story of emancipation from religion, offers self-assurance. For those subscribers in the US, Israel, or in other parts of the world who are living in strictly religious or otherwise repressive societies, Unorthodox, whose protagonists exist in a transnational community that transcends a specific national identity, provides an interesting object for investigation and/or identification. In the last scene of Unorthodox, a drunken Moishe meets Esty at the hotel lobby in Berlin, where he and Yanky are staying. Once again, he threatens her: “Ester Shapiro. You haven’t seen the last of us. We’ll be back for the baby.” He tries to stop her, but she frees herself from his grasp and walks off to the Boulevard Unter den Linden, passing through groups of tourists, shedding tears. At the end, Esty sits in a café, watching the remnant of her Williamsburg life – a pocket compass. Her new friends, the young international musicians from the academy, are just about to arrive and wave at her from afar. Esty smiles, confidently.

References Adlakha, N. (2020, April 4). ‘Unorthodox’ Review: A Spectacular Story of a Woman Finding Her Voice in a Deeply Orthodox Community. The Hindu. Available at: https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/ unorthodox-­review-­a-­spectacular-­story-­of-­a-­woman-­finding-­her-­voice-­in-­a-­ deeply-­orthodox-­community/article31257932.ece. Accessed 28 Aug 2022. Aran, G. (2006). Denial Does Not Make the Haredi Body Go Away: Ethnography of a Disappearing (?) Jewish Phenomenon. Contemporary Jewry, 26(1), 75–113. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 24a. Baier, J., & Cazés, J. (2020, June 16). ‘Unorthodox’ in deutschen Wohnzimmern. Jüdische Allgemeine. Available at: https://www.juedische-­allgemeine.de/kultur/german-­gaze-­unorthodox-­in-­deutschen-­wohnzimmern/. Accessed 28 Aug 2022.

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

243

Barker, C., & Wiatrowski, M. (2017). The Age of Netflix: Critical Essays on Streaming Media, Digital Delivery and Instant Access. McFarland. Baumel, S. (2006). Sacred Speakers: Language and Culture Among the Haredim in Israel. Berghahn Books. Beinart, P. (2019, June 20). Unpacking the Immense Popularity of Shtisel. The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/ archive/2019/06/netflix-­s htisel-­i sraeli-­t v-­s how-­p opularity/591883/. Accessed 24 Feb 2023. Berger, M. (2018, October 25). The Ultra-Orthodox Are the Hottest Thing on Israeli TV. Global Post. Available at: https://theworld.org/stories/ 2018-­10-­25/ultra-­orthodox-­are-­hottest-­thing-­israeli-­tv. Accessed 24 Feb 2023. Bernstein, J. (2020, October 29). Is Netflix Good for the Jews? Buzzfeed News. Available at: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/ netflix-­unorthodox-­jewish-­shows/. Accessed 2 Dec 2022. Bondebjerg, I., Novrup Redvall, E., Helles, R., Sophus Lai, S., Søndergaard, H., & Astrupgaard, C. (Eds.). (2017). Transnational European Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences. Palgrave Macmillan. Bramesco, C. (2020, March 26). Unorthodox: Behind the Deutschland 83 Co-creator’s New Netflix Series. The Guardian. Available at: https://www. theguardian.com/tv-­a nd-­r adio/2020/mar/26/unorthodox-­b ehind-­t he-­ deutschland-­83-­co-­creators-­new-­netflix-­series. Accessed 2 Dec 2022. Bundesregierung. (2008, March 18). Speech by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel to the Knesset in Jerusalem. Available at: https://m.knesset.gov.il/EN/activity/Documents/SpeechPdf/merkel.pdf. Accessed 2 Dec 2022. Busche, A. (2020, March 24). Netflix-Serie: Die Geschichte der Deborah Feldman ‘Ich bin normal. Aber anders’ Tagesspiegel. Available at: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/medien/ich-­bin-­normal-­aber-­anders-­4155547.html. Accessed 3 Dec 2022. Cohen, Y., & Hetsroni, A. (2020). Monotheism and Television: A Comparative Content Analysis of Religion in Prime-Time Programming in the USA, Israel, and Turkey. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 28(2), 103–114. Dardashti, G. (2015). Televised Agendas: How Global Funders Make Israeli TV More Jewish. Jewish Film & New Media, 3(1), 77–108. Deutsch, N., & Casper, M. (2021). A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hassidic Williamsburg. Yale University Press. Deutsche Presseagentur. (2020, June 1). ‘Unorthodox’ gehört zu den Netflix-­ Hits 2020. Die Zeit. Available at: https://www.zeit.de/news/2020-­06/01/ unorthodox-­gehoert-­zu-­den-­netflix-­hits-­2020. Accessed 24 Feb 2023. Dobra, C. (2020, May 2). Streamingdienste: Auf Erfolgskurs. Jüdische Allgemeine. Available at: https://www.juedische-­allgemeine.de/kultur/auf-­erfolgskurs/. Accessed 2 Dec 2022.

244 

E. DÖDTMANN

Dödtmann, E. (2021). Die Charedim in Israel im 21. Jahrhundert. Der Status quo zwischen Staat und Ultraorthodoxie. Bebra Wissenschaftsverlag. Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Praeger. Endelman, T. (2015). Leaving the Fold. Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History. Princeton University Press. European Union of Jewish Students. (2020, June 18). 01/06 Alexa Karolinski Unorthodox Feminism & Women in the Film Industry. YouTube Online Panel. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKMygD3Esmw. Accessed 2 Aug 2022. Feldman, D. (2014). Exodus – A Memoir. Penguin. Fienberg, D. (2020, March 25). ‘Unorthodox’: TV Review. The Hollywood Reporter. Available at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-­reviews/ unorthodox-­review-­1286246/. Accessed 30 Aug 2022. Forward. (2020, April 27). Unorthodox: Reality vs. Fiction. Livestream. YouTube Online Panel. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=qHb0tVbxnzU. Accessed 8 Sept 2022. Grünenberg, R. (2016, January 27). Tagung: ‘Let’s get series’: Die Hoffnung auf deutsche Serien wächst. Fortsetzung.tv. Available at: http://fortsetzung. tv/2016/01/27/tagung-­lets-­get-­series-­die-­hoffnung-­auf-­deutsche-­serien-­ waechst/. Accessed 9 Jan 2023. Guerrin, S. (2020, March 26). “Unorthodox” sur Netflix: une bouleversante quête de liberté. Le Parisien. Available at: https://www.leparisien.fr/culture-­ loisirs/series/unor thodox-­s ur-­n etflix-­u ne-­b ouleversante-­q uete-­d e-­ liberte-­26-­03-­2020-­8288142.php. Accessed 24 Feb 2023. Hadad, C. (2020, March 26). ‘The Rebel’: Even Those Who Think They Know the Ultra-Orthodox World Will Be Drawn to This Series. Haaretz. Available at: https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/television/tv-­r eview/2020-­03-­26/ty-­ article-­review/.highlight/0000017f-­f6b7-­d887-­a7ff-­fef73a290000. Accessed 3 Dec 2022. Hammerman, S. (2018). Silver Screen, Hasidic Jews: The Story of an Image. Indiana University Press. Hills, M., Hilmes, M., & Pearson, R. (2019). Transatlantic Television Drama: Industries, Programs, and Fans. Oxford University Press. Hoffman, Y. (2021, July 21). ‘My Unorthodox Life’ – Is It Racism? Five Towns Jewish Times. Available at: http://www.5tjt.com/my-­unorthodox-­life-­is-­it-­ racism/. Accessed 3 Dec 2022. Hulverscheidt, C. (2020, March 30). Diesmal sollten Juden Juden spielen. Süddeutsche Zeitung. Available at: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/ netflix-­serie-­unorthodox-­1.4855373. Accessed 24 Feb 2023. Jenner, M. (2015). Netflix and the Re-Invention of Television. Palgrave Macmillan.

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

245

Joanes, J. (2020, April 30). Everything ‘Unorthodox’ Gets Wrong About Being Orthodox. The Forward. Available at: https://forward.com/culture/445173/ everything-­unorthodox-­gets-­wrong-­about-­being-­orthodox/. Accessed 30 Sept 2022. Lobato, R. (2019). Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York University Press. Lotz, A. D. (2021). Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals and Streaming Wars. MIT Press. McDonald, M., & Smith-Rowsey, D. (2016). The Netflix Effect. Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century. Bloomsbury Publishing. Michael, S. (2020, April 30). The Roots (and Risks) of Netflix’s Unorthodox. The American Interest, 15(6). Available at: https://www.the-­american-­interest. com/2020/04/30/the-­roots-­and-­risks-­of-­netflixs-­unorthodox/. Accessed 2 Dec 2022. Mitchell, W. (2020, August 18). How the ‘Unorthodox’ Team Thrived on Limited Time and Budget. Screen Daily. Available at: https://www.screendaily.com/ n e w s / h o w -­t h e -­u n o r t h o d o x -­t e a m -­t h r i v e d -­o n -­l i m i t e d -­t i m e -­a n d -­ budget/5152364.article. Accessed 24 Feb 2023. Mulvey, L. (1981). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In L.  Mulvey & M. Merck (Eds.), The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality (pp. 22–34). Routledge. Munic, S. (2020, April 8). A Small Window into the Complex World of Defactors from the Haredi Society. Makor Rishon. Available at: https://www.makorrishon.co.il/culture/motsash/217439/. Accessed 2 Dec 2022. Okin, S. M. (1999). Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Princeton University Press. Peleg, Y. (2015). On Shtisel (or the Haredi as Bourgeois). Jewish Film & New Media, 3(1), 113–117. Poniewozik, J. (2020, March 25). Review: ‘Unorthodox’, a Stunning Escape from Brooklyn. The New  York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes. com/2020/03/25/arts/television/unorthodox-­r eview-­n etflix.html. Accessed 30 Aug 2022. Posener, A. (2020, April 3). Warum Unorthodox antisemitische Klischees bedient. Die Welt. Available at: https://www.welt.de/kultur/article206965399/ Netflix-­S erie-­Warum-­U northodox-­a ntisemitische-­K lischees-­b edient.html. Accessed 2 Dec 2022. Ramos, D.  R. (2020, June 30). ‘Unorthodox’ Team Talks Cultural Impact of Netflix Limited Series and Shining a Respectful Light On the Satmar Community – Deadline Virtual House. Deadline. Available at: https://deadline.com/video/unorthodox-­netflix-­satmar-­hasidic-­jewish-­community-­shira-­ haas-­anna-­winger-­maria-­schrader/. Accessed 2 Sept 2022. RS/anonymous. (2012). Exposing the Lies and Fabrications of Deborah Feldman. Blog Dedicated to Expose the Lies of Deborah Feldman and Reveal the Bias of

246 

E. DÖDTMANN

Her Publisher Simon & Schuster. Available at: http://deborah-­feldman-­ exposed.blogspot.com/. Accessed 2 Sept 2022. Schweizerhof, B. (2021). Nicht kein Gelächter. Der Freitag. Available at: https:// www.freitag.de/autoren/barbara-­s chweizerhof/nicht-­k ein-­g elaechter. Accessed 24 Feb 2023. Seth, R. (2020, July 3). Shira Hass: Im Gespräch mit der ‘Unorthodox’Schauspielerin (von der Sie noch viel hören werden!). Vogue Germany. Available at: https://www.vogue.de/kultur/artikel/shira-­haas-­unorthodox-­esty-­ schauspielerin-­interview. Accessed 30 Aug 2022. Shiloni, S. (2020, March 29). The Rebel: Shira Hass in a Total and Touching Acting Performance. Ynet. Available at: https://www.ynet.co.il/entertainment/article/rknrb268U. Accessed 3 Dec 2022. Smith, J. A. (2001). Hollywood Theology: The Commodification of Religion in Twentieth-Century Films. Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, 11(2), 191–231. Spitzer, E. (2020, April 24). No, The Way Sex Is Portrayed in ‘Unorthodox’ Is Not Accurate – It’s a Hateful Libel. Forward. Available at: https://forward. com/culture/444798/in-­unorthodox-­the-­portrayal-­of-­sex-­in-­the-­hasidic-­ community-­is-­a-­hateful/. Accessed 2 Dec 2022. Stolow, J. (2004). Transnationalism and the New Religio-Politics: Reflections on a Jewish Orthodox Case. Theory, Culture and Society, 21(2), 109–137. Straubhaar, J. (1991). Beyond Media Imperialism: Asymmetrical Interdependence and Cultural Proximity. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 8(1), 39–59. Straubhaar, J. (2007). World Television: From Global to Local. SAGE Publications. Stuever, H. (2020, March 25). ‘Unorthodox’ Carefully and Beautifully Depicts a Young Woman’s Flight from Tradition. The Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/unorthodox-­carefully-­ a n d -­b e a u t i f u l l y -­d e p i c t s -­a -­y o u n g -­w o m a n s -­f l i g h t -­f r o m -­ tradition/2020/03/25/f36ab420-­6d2d-­11ea-­a3ec-­70d7479d83f0_story. html. Accessed 24 Feb 2023. Sznaider, N. (2020). Antisemitismus zwischen Schwertern und Pflugscharen  – Essay. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte. Available at: https://www.bpb.de/shop/ zeitschriften/apuz/311619/antisemitismus-­z wischen-­s chwertern-­u nd-­ pflugscharen-­essay/. Accessed 2 Dec 2022. Weidermann, V. (2020, March 26). Berlin, eine Märchenstadt. Der Spiegel. Available at: https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/tv/unorthodox-­neue-­deutsche-­ n e t f l i x -­s e r i e -­b e r l i n -­e i n e -­m a e r c h e n s t a d t -­a -­8 1 c 0 c b f 0 -­0 d f 4 -­4 8 1 4 -­ b1b2-­031b8cc1e32c. Accessed 8 Sept 2022. Wolf, N. (2020, March 29). ‘The Rebel’: Refuge from the Personal Ghetto. Israel Hayoum. Available at: https://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/746581/. Accessed 3 Sept 2022.

11  FREEDOM OF DEFECTION: THE REPRESENTATION… 

247

Yaccar, M.  D. (2020, April 11). Poco ortodoxa: una nueva heroína feminista. Página 12. Available at: https://www.pagina12.com.ar/258854-­poco-­ ortodoxa-­una-­nueva-­heroina-­feminista. Accessed 28 Aug 2022. Zierler, W. (2011). Review of Rubel NL, Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-­ Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. Available at: http://www.h-­net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=29713. Accessed 24 Feb 2023. Zuckermann, M. (2018). Der allgegenwärtige Antisemit oder die Angst der Deutschen vor der Vergangenheit. Westend.

CHAPTER 12

Polish Culture? World on Fire, Transnational Coproduction and the Inscription of Cultural Specificity Joanna Rydzewska and Elżbieta Durys

Introduction This chapter examines the BBC/PBS coproduction World on Fire (2019– present) (hereafter abbreviated to WoF) as an example of new high-end transnational television drama which deploys and inscribes cultural specificity in ways that target an international audience. The chapter explores how the first season of this multi-season serial drama foregrounds Polish cultural experiences.1 World on Fire, which debuted internationally in September 2019, has been designed for six seasons, each using a year of WWII to eventually cover, as its writer and creator Peter Bowker explains, “the entire war from a network of international and personal perspectives” (Billen, 2019). Offering the “cinematic” aesthetics that war spectacle

J. Rydzewska (*) Swansea University, Swansea, UK e-mail: [email protected] E. Durys University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_12

249

250 

J. RYDZEWSKA AND E. DURYS

demands, depicting a globally significant history, and devised to target a discerning international audience, WoF exhibits all the expected features of high-end drama (Dunleavy, 2009: 22). This chapter focuses on WoF’s first season, which begins in September 1939, with the outset of WWII in Poland, and ends after the Dunkirk evacuation in the summer of 1940.2 It tells the stories of the intertwining lives of five ordinary families domiciled in different European cities—Manchester, Warsaw, Paris, and Berlin—as well as examining some key and previously marginalized wartime operations. While WoF alternates its storylines between those cities, developing sub-plots for different families against a detailed historical background of war (such as Berlin’s Nazi Child Euthanasia Program), the serial’s main story follows a young translator, Harry Chase (Jonah Hauer-King), who leaves his sweetheart, Lois Bennett (Julia Brown) in Manchester to take up a position at the British Embassy in Warsaw just before the outbreak of war. In Warsaw, Harry becomes involved with Kasia Tomaszeski (Zofia Wichłacz), and it is this love triangle that propels the season’s narrative forward. In doing so, this season gives equal primacy to British and Polish history, using Manchester and Warsaw as specific settings. While the focus on the UK in a high-end coproduction between British and US public broadcasters is to be expected, WoF’s foregrounding of events in Poland, for which it uses spoken and subtitled Polish language (with British actors also delivering their lines in Polish), is unprecedented in international high-end drama. One may wonder why the programme puts such an emphasis on the experience of people in Poland and what this means for its audiences. We want to suggest that WoF’s prominent emphasis on Polish cultural specificity reflects the profound changes occurring in the distribution and consumption of high-end television drama since the 2010s, during which the rise of SVoD services has stimulated an increased global demand for high-end drama (Doyle et al., 2021), boosted its production budgets, and consolidated changes in the textual organization of these drama productions, including a new emphasis on the use of serial form. As Peter Bowker recalls, “Television had changed and people were investing more in longform series – it seemed like a good time to tell something novelistic in its sweep” (quoted in Gordon, 2020). As a coproduction partnering “public-­ sector broadcasters with independents and large commercial companies from two or more nations”, WoF is a prime example of what Michelle Hilmes calls “transnational coproduction” (2014: 12). Hilmes posits that

12  POLISH CULTURE? WORLD ON FIRE, TRANSNATIONAL… 

251

today’s transnational coproduction can be differentiated from earlier approaches to coproduction through the deployment of “a creative partnership in which national interests must be combined and reconciled, differing audience tastes considered, and, often, the collision of public-­service goals with commercial expectations negotiated” (2014: 12). Confirming that the multiplatform era is encouraging such new strategies for transnational coproduction, Trisha Dunleavy (2020) suggests that two related processes characterize the high-end dramas produced in this new environment for transnational coproduction. First, due to the necessity for higher budgets which can only be attained from multiple sources, high-­end dramas are conceived in ways that extend their appeal to international audiences and, to achieve this, are finding ways “to reconcile cultural specificity with international resonance in the kinds of stories they construct and in the strategies through which these stories unfold” (Dunleavy, 2020: 352). Testifying to the impacts of this, Timothy Havens (2018) uses the term “conspicuous localism” to acknowledge what he sees as a striking level of cultural specificity in high-end dramas that target a “cosmopolitan international audience”. Second, Dunleavy argues that this foregrounding of cultural specificity shows that within the increased complexity and diversity of transnational coproduction partnerships in TV drama, the traditional collision of public-service and commercial goals is being redefined to “reveal a new degree of alignment between the cultural objectives of national public broadcasters and the commercial imperatives” of multinational SVoDs (2020: 352). The significant focus on the experience in Poland in WoF’s first season is an intriguing example of this emphasis on cultural specificity, also demonstrating some reconciliation between the cultural objectives of national public broadcasters and the commercial necessity for high-end dramas to address an international audience. The focus on Polish experience is also an exceptional acknowledgement of the Polish community, both within the UK and US, and the Polish diaspora worldwide. By analysing WoF’s unprecedented foregrounding of a Polish experience of WWII, we show how WoF exemplifies the increased salience of cultural specificity for high-­end TV drama and deploys both textual and aesthetic strategies to inscribe this. We look at how WoF’s story reframes the (British) national myths of WWII that have traditionally put emphasis on the UK’s ‘Home Front’ by instead fore­ grounding Polish heroism and an Anglo-Polish connection. This emphasis on Polish history and heroism is remarkable as it departs from previous representations of Poland in two ways. First the representation of the Polish

252 

J. RYDZEWSKA AND E. DURYS

community is rare despite the long history of migration by Poles to the UK. Second, the representations of Poland/Eastern Europe (as they often overlap) have been exclusively focused on images of migrants (Rydzewska, 2012, 2013; van Heuckelom, 2019) which WoF, with its focus on the reality of war within Poland, subverts. Here we identify and contextualize the heroic Pole archetype. WoF constructs cultural specificity through a particular use of space and period verisimilitude, and, through these and other measures, achieves the kind of ‘conspicuous localism’ (Havens, 2018) that enhances its potential appeal to a “cosmopolitan international audience”. We show how the drama’s construction of wartime Manchester is divided spatially along class lines, this referencing the traditions of both ‘heritage’ and ‘social realism’ in UK-produced film and TV fiction. In addition, the depictions of Warsaw foreground aesthetic and narrative contrasts between peacetime (before the War) and wartime (after the invasion). Another objective of this chapter is to trace WoF’s inception as a transnational coproduction between two national public service providers: the British BBC and American PBS. Here we follow Dunleavy’s line of argument (2020: 352) to confirm that the WoF example can demonstrate that what were once thought to be incompatible national and international imperatives in high-end TV drama are not only finding new opportunities for reconciliation  but also becoming increasingly aligned around cultural specificity.

Transnational Coproduction, Public Broadcasters, Worldwide Audiences WoF was conceived as part of a multi-title coproduction deal between the BBC and PBS signed in 2015 (Wagmeister, 2015), and its main coproducers were UK-based company Mammoth Screen (with the BBC as the chief funder) and the Boston-based American station WGBH (for PBS’s anthology series Masterpiece). The American funding for WoF came from PBS as public broadcaster, its commercial sponsors (Viking Cruises and Raymond James Financial. Inc.) and The Masterpiece Trust for the serial—a new initiative that  started with Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15).3 Additional coproducing partners for WoF  include the French production company, Tetra Media Fiction, and the German Nadcon Film. Beth Hoppe, PBS’s chief programming executive and general manager, explains that “PBS and the BBC share similar public service missions and the same commitment to producing entertaining and educational

12  POLISH CULTURE? WORLD ON FIRE, TRANSNATIONAL… 

253

programming of the highest quality” (Wagmeister, 2015). This similarity is not coincidental, as the partnership between the BBC and PBS dates back to 1969, when the BBC’s model influenced the creation of PBS, and initially consisted of only buying BBC’s productions for PBS’s schedules (Steemers, 2004: 110). In subsequent years, however, coproduction was added and it became important to the BBC/PBS relationship (Weissmann, 2012: 105). As Weissmann observes, the 1970s coproduction deal between PBS and the BBC established “a long-term commitment by a US network to UK drama” and was instrumental in “facilitating and continuing discourses about the BBC and UK more generally as a provider of quality content which it could later build on when UK producers developed more aggressive export strategies” (2012: 106). What Weissmann calls “the special relationship” between the UK and the US in TV drama production (2012: 105) has been mutually beneficial. While PBS gets a British TV drama that American audiences want to watch for its perceived cultural value, for the BBC, the coproduction system brings the immense advantage of enabling “more ambitious and securely financed programs” (Sutton quoted in Hilmes, 2012: 287). For WoF as a historical high-end drama reliant on expensive historical reconstructions and computer-­ generated war spectacles, this coproduction budget was vital. Despite the long-standing continuity of the BBC /PBS coproduction partnership, the 2010s saw some profound changes. According to Masterpiece executive producer, Rebecca Eaton, the major difference that has occurred in the last few years is that the success of Downton Abbey has set off bidding wars among streamers and premium cable networks for original British productions (Goldsmith, 2020). Writing in 2016, Jeanette Steemers noted that, “international sales of British television programs and formats appear to be booming” (2016: 734). The European Audiovisual Observatory report, European High-End Fiction Series: State of Play and Trends (2020) shows the UK to be the strongest player in the market of high-end drama defined as “short series (2 to 13 episodes per season) made for prime time” (Fontaine & Jiménez Pumares, 2020: 1). The UK is the leading producer of high-end drama in terms of the number of seasons, episodes and hours, the main exporter within the European Union (54 per cent), and the primary exporter outside Europe (67 per cent) (Fontaine & Jiménez Pumares, 2020: 17). While the United States “remains the most sought-after partner due to its sizeable audience” (Hilmes, 2014: 12), the increased competition for UK-produced dramas, at first from American cable channels and now most obviously from SVoD

254 

J. RYDZEWSKA AND E. DURYS

players such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, means that PBS/Masterpiece has lost some of its advantageous position in relation to UK /US coproduction deals.4 The need to sidestep competitors earlier necessitated a shake-up of Masterpiece coproduction structures with a new role for Eaton from 2019, that of executive-producer-at-large, responsible for developing coproductions with UK partners (Goldsmith, 2020). Eaton, in her new role, exclusively focuses on the development of new drama coproduction projects, collaborating in the creative processes with the writers and producers, working on the content, the scripts, and fundraising for the Masterpiece Trust (Goldsmith, 2020). “A back-and-forth process”, Eaton explains, “is shared as producers want to enter the American market”, but she underlines that “In England, the BBC and ITV are the primary funders. They decide what dramas they want to put on their air, and they invest a lot of money” (Goldsmith, 2020). In WoF the creative control originated and remained with the BBC, with Peter Bowker writing all the episodes for the first season (which is unusual for a high-end multi-season drama). However, consistent with the understanding that “a big US broadcaster will expect their voice to be important” (Plunkett, 2013), it was through  Eaton’s role as executive producer of Masterpiece  that PBS  gained  editorial influence over WoF. It is here that we can see an instance of alliance between national and transnational providers and audiences. While WoF reflects Britishness, delivering both to national audiences and to the international appeal of Britishness, it also responds to the necessity to negotiate cultural specificity and foreground events that Americans can relate to. With high-end drama constituting “the crucial battleground in rivalry for television subscribers” (Doyle, 2016: 640), WoF is a key example of transnational coproduction strategies reflecting creative decisions about story selection, how a narrative is scripted, and in what areas the production will be located. The historical event of WWII still holds an honoured place in the public imagination of different nations, and many have looked to it “as a touchstone for their ‘sense of self’ in the post-war period” (Noakes & Pattinson, 2014: 2). As such, WWII offers a resonant point of convergence for multiple national cultures and audiences but also links them transnationally as characters move between countries during an event that globally displaced and connected more people than any other event in recent history. In terms of addressing American audiences, WWII offers the moral values of ‘the good war’ that has been the staple of

12  POLISH CULTURE? WORLD ON FIRE, TRANSNATIONAL… 

255

American representations of it and casts American characters in roles that emphasize their country’s mission in fighting for world freedom. The most prominent example is the US journalist in Berlin, Nancy (Helen Hunt) who, in line with American ideals, pursues  the noble mission of guarding world freedom by informing the world of the imminent war.5 The second American character is Webster (Brian J. Smith). This character can be seen as a deliberate attempt to engage US viewers through the well-­ established stereotype of ‘an American in Paris’. Despite using Americans in prominent roles, WoF’s main storylines of the first season take place in Manchester and Poland. The insistence on the Britishness of the Manchester setting satisfies the international appetite for British TV drama as well as delivering to the expectations of the BBC as national public broadcaster. The 2010s have seen the release of at least three diversity reports (Conlan, 2014) and a subsequent updating of the BBC’s regulatory frameworks that require its programming to strive harder to reflect ethnic diversity, a change that means that “the need for a higher degree of inclusion both on and off-screen is now a must-have rather than a nice-to-have” (Sarpong, 2020: 5). The attempt to meet the needs of a British Polish community as part of this change seems likely to have encouraged the use of Polish cultural specificity in WoF, with around half of the season taking place in Warsaw and these scenes also using Polish language. Invoking the idea that representations of the past always comment on the present, WoF’s representation of Polish history at the outset of WWII and the migration of its characters to the UK mirror the experiences of British society which saw an influx of Eastern Europeans into the UK after Poland’s accession to the European Union (EU) in 2004. In the 2021 British census, Polish people by birth were the second largest non­UK group with estimated 743,000 UK residents born in Poland (Office for National Statistics, 2022). While we are not implying that Polish/ Eastern European viewers are the primary target audience for this drama, it is difficult not to interpret WoF’s first season’s heavy focus on specific Polish experiences as not only reflecting more closely the contemporary ethnic landscape of Great Britain in which Eastern Europeans are a feature, but also responding to the BBC’s commitment to represent the cultural diversity of British society more fully in the programmes it airs. Cultural objectives for WoF to acknowledge and reflect the influx of the Poles to the UK are supported by economic ones; in the UK, Eastern Europeans tend to be heavier media consumers compared to the national average (UK Film Council, 2011). Myria Georgiou confirms that migrant

256 

J. RYDZEWSKA AND E. DURYS

communities exist in “media rich” environments in which television in particular contributes to the migrants’ sense of “ontological security”, countering the dissolution of identity grounded in any single-place reality, and assisting in building the continuity of self-identity (Georgiou, 2012: 306). For the Polish diaspora, the portrayal of their national history in a BBC high-end drama may have created a feeling of inclusion. Along these lines, The Guardian reported that, “a large and expectant audience turned up to a preview screening” of WoF at a Polish community centre in West London (Krupa, 2019). It is difficult to establish the habits of diasporic Polish audiences, especially in relation to Masterpiece, but PBS’s webpage and 2021 report on diversity both emphasize that “PBS’s audience mirrors the diversity of the United States with respect to race, ethnicity, income, and geography – and it is core to our mission that PBS content reflects this diversity” (Kerger & Loving, 2021).6 In 2021, the American Community Survey estimated that 5.8 million Americans (roughly 2.5 per cent of the US population) reported Polish ancestry, and American Polonia is the fifth largest group, in identifying its ancestry, after the Germans, English, Irish and Italians (United States Census Bureau, 2022a). Even if only a fraction of Americans of Polish ancestry watch Masterpiece, in the contemporary climate defined by niche and fragmented audiences, it might be that it is those ‘trickling’ audiences that eventually make up the numbers.7 Even though the BBC/PBS collaboration was a guarantor of profile in the valuable British and American markets, in the multiplatform era the combined international  audience outside of those two regions cannot be disregarded. As one factor contributing to the drama’s appeal in non-US and non-British markets, it might be argued that the flows of Polish migration connect  the interests of at least two other countries: Germany and France.8 But WoF is also set in a range of key and indicative wartime locations (Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, and Manchester). In terms of its cast, it is an ensemble piece that employs actors with the potential to appeal in a range of world markets which one producer highlights as a pre-requisite for successful transnational drama (Griffith cited in Doyle, 2016: 640). Helen Ziegler, executive producer at Mammoth Screen, describes the show’s casting process as “absolutely massive” (in Drama Quarterly, 2019). Producer Wayne Garvie acknowledges that pressure on budgets requires stories that have “an international cast … are not based in one particular location … [which is why] everyone is after those international co-­productions” (Garvie quoted in Doyle, 2016: 640). As a subtitled drama that features culturally specific

12  POLISH CULTURE? WORLD ON FIRE, TRANSNATIONAL… 

257

Polish experiences, WoF also delivers to a wider international market than the above key countries. WoF has been sold to channels in more than 80 territories, including Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Central and Eastern Europe, the Scandinavian countries, and the emerging Chinese market (Brzeski, 2019; Chapman, 2019; Middleton, 2019).

“Our Finest Hour”: The British Home Front, Anglo-Polish Relations, Polish Heroism With changes to regulatory frameworks of the BBC and PBS and recent Polish migration flows likely to have encouraged its foregrounding of the Polish experience of war, WoF aptly references transnational elements of the myth of Polish heroism that many audiences can relate to. This myth of Polish heroism is well-recognized in the US and worldwide; for example, the American Ambassador to Poland tweeted on 8 May (Victory in Europe Day) 2020 an appeal for people to pay tribute to “Poland’s valiant heroes who fought on multiple fronts” of WWII (Mosbacher, 2020). Myths of Polish heroism derive from the Polish Romantic tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth Centuries, and from successive waves of expulsions of Polish patriots leading to their dispersion around the world, most notably to the US.9 The reach and ubiquity of this myth of Polish heroism was consolidated during WWII due to the significant contributions of Polish soldiers to military operations on several continents. Having been depicted in numerous feature films since then, the archetype of the heroic Pole is entrenched in a global collective imagination.10 Lucy Noakes and Juliette Pattinson (2014: 2) assert that, “few historical events have resonated as fully in modern British culture as the Second World War”. Yet the cultural memory of the period is dominated by only a few ‘signal events’ such as Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and the D-Day landings while some aspects of the war years struggle for recognition (Sonya Rose cited in Noakes & Pattinson, 2014: 12–13). Janet Watson (2014: 175) asserts that, “it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the Second World War to British national identity” but also  posits that as the public memorializing of WWII  broadened in the post-war years “to include seemingly everyone […] it became harder and harder to see those who were still excluded” (2014: 176). Watson emphasizes the importance of visual representations of the war—newspaper, radio, television, museum exhibitions, and commemorative objects—but

258 

J. RYDZEWSKA AND E. DURYS

questions the usual methodology of “memory” to accentuate the importance of “the stories that are told about the past: which stories, when, by whom, for whom, and  – especially  – to what purpose” (2014: 176–7). Watson concludes that not telling certain (war) stories is a simple way to marginalize those experiences and their participants. When Peter Bowker started writing WoF, he set out to examine the experience of WWII from a different perspective, aiming to “tell the stories of the people on the margins” (Billen, 2019). Bowker was concerned that “nine out of ten British dramas about the Second World War feature a family listening to Neville Chamberlain’s announcement of war on September 3, 1939” while the country in which it started, Poland, is hardly mentioned (Billen, 2019). As he explains in an interview for PBS: The Polish story, at least in the United Kingdom and I suspect also here in the States, hasn’t really been told. The way it comes across in history lessons in the U.K. is that the Poles rather inconveniently got themselves invaded and then we had to help them out. And the fact that we call that period from September till after Christmas, the Phoney War indicates that the Polish experience was pretty much written-off … there’s material there that hasn’t been used or done. (Bowker in PBS, 2020)

Paul Ward (2004: 124) confirms that for reasons of “togetherness”, the dominant post-war discourse about WWII creates “the ‘people’ as socially and ethnically homogenous” while Wendy Ugolini (2014: 90) argues that the contributions of Polish soldiers’ were indeed marginalized following the war, this helping to construct and represent the UK’s Home Front in a manner that discriminated against ethnic groups and privileged Britishness. One reason for the marginalization of Polish experience was that the soldiers aligned with the Polish Government in Exile in London rejected the 1945 Yalta Agreement and questioned Joseph Stalin’s claim on Poland. As a result, the Establishment in the UK felt it had no choice but to ensure that the Polish context was rarely mentioned in the public domain (Davies, 1997:  1061;  Stachura, 2004: 11). One result was that after WWII there were no television dramas that would depict the contributions of Polish soldiers to the war effort despite the recognition of their heroism during the war years.11 In Great Britain, the archetype of the brave Polish patriot was to a large extent forged during WWII when Winston Churchill called the Poles “faithful and valiant warriors” after the Battle of Britain (quoted in Winder,

12  POLISH CULTURE? WORLD ON FIRE, TRANSNATIONAL… 

259

2004: 248).12 Historian Robert Winder offers an assertion as to the perception of the Poles in British society during WWII, writing that “The Poles were heroes, and were much mythologized as such – eager, brave, talented, incomprehensible and palpably our friends” (Winder, 2004: 247). WWII was also a period during which British cinema produced successive wartime propaganda feature films to boost the morale of armies and citizens fighting against Nazism and to aid the war effort by generating feelings of patriotism. One such well-known film, which could be seen as screen progenitor of the myth of heroic Polishness invoked in WoF, is Dangerous Moonlight (1941). Clearly conceived as wartime propaganda film, the Polishness of its main character, Stefan Radetzky (Anton Walbrook) was imbued with a fervent patriotism that could help to engender among its British viewers the above sentiments about Poles. The myth of Polish heroism created during WWII was so powerfully represented in film, notably in wartime feature and documentary propaganda examples, that many Britons still recognize it today, despite its post-war trajectory of political and public erasure. WoF’s first episode goes into extraordinary detail about the Polish experience of British (non-)involvement at the start of the war. The journalist Nancy reports that “the Germans have tanks; the Poles have bicycles” and her interactions with Harry (notably her urging that he try to get Kasia out of Warsaw) include  a mild critique of the British policy of appeasement. The defence of the Gdańsk Post Office, as depicted in WoF’s first episode, evokes a specific Polish cultural knowledge through its construction of ardent Polish patriots and heroic soldiers, thus combining the contributions of story, indicative characters, and mise-en-scène. This episode depicts one of the most mythologized events in Polish history—the heroic defense by Polish soldiers and civilians, which occurred at this site, against the German attack.13 The scene in which Kasia’s father, Stefan Tomaszeski (Tomasz Kot), as Polish commanding officer, asks if the soldiers want to carry on defending the Post Office, knowing they will most likely die, pays a direct homage to Dangerous Moonlight through the similarity of its mise-­ en-­scène.14 Dangerous Moonlight introduces a theme of Polish gallantry and sacrificial patriotism, as key features of this heroic Polish solider archetype, when a Colonel asks the Polish soldiers to volunteer for a mission. The Colonel calls the mission “a one-way journey” and says he does not want married men, whose wives, it is implied, would likely become widows. In response to this, all the Polish soldiers step forward without hesitation. WoF stages the scene in an identical way to Dangerous Moonlight:

260 

J. RYDZEWSKA AND E. DURYS

Kasia’s father is standing in the middle while the soldiers, dressed in military uniforms, vote in a semi-circle by raising their hands to fight on—and they all volunteer despite the mission being doomed. Here, the drama evokes a particular expression of Polish heroism in which Polish men are willing to sacrifice themselves for their Motherland. The decision to reference this idea through the inclusion of a scene depicting the real historical event of the defence of the Gdańsk Post Office delivers to viewers with a high degree of culturally specific knowledge, important to which, in addition to the elements of story, characters and mise-en- scène, is the use of the Polish language. It is not just depicted real events that draw on Polish mythology; Kasia’s mother fits the archetype of the Polish Mother—a  cultural  construct that arose out of the historical situation in which men fought for Poland’s freedom (and often died or were exiled) while women lost men around them (Szwajcowska, 2006: 26). Kasia’s Mother’s husband, Stefan, dies for Poland defending the Post Office, while her sons both end up in England. If the release of WoF responds in part to the greater visibility of the Polish population because of a wave of Polish migration to the UK after Poland’s 2004 accession to the EU, the historical time frame of the drama references a post-WWII wave of Polish migration while also  evoking much older myths of heroic Polishness. What the myth of Polish heroism in WoF shows is that in the multiplatform era, the goals of the BBC as national public service provider and its domestic  audiences may align with the objectives  of commercial producers and/or international audiences through the specificity of cultural myths which are internationally recognizable, often because these myths have themselves arisen from earlier waves of migration.

Cultural Specificity, Period Verisimilitude, ‘Conspicuous Localism’ WoF attains cultural specificity through its attention to the details of verisimilitude, this term referring to a text’s “evocation of and resemblance to a particular time and place” (Dunleavy, 2018: 136) important to which are the contributions of high production values, location shooting, mise-­ en-­scène and cinematography. WoF attains verisimilitude as well as a sense of Britishness through its use of the above elements, which it combines with contrasts between the foremost characters. These features work

12  POLISH CULTURE? WORLD ON FIRE, TRANSNATIONAL… 

261

together not only to accentuate traditional British class distinctions within the storyline but also to ground its visual representations in British film and TV traditions of ‘heritage’ drama and ‘social realism’. In WoF, the specificity of British culture is built through spatial contrasts between the locations that different classes occupy. The specificity of Polish culture is established through WoF’s contrasting constructions of Warsaw: the thriving, colourful city it was before and the rubble city to which it was reduced after the outbreak of war. This period verisimilitude also incorporates the “rubble city” aesthetics deployed by a group of post-war films, Trümmerfilm (Rentschler, 2010: 10). Havens (2018) suggests that “the conspicuous localism of the cinematography, storylines, and languages of contemporary transnational television drama” goes beyond an expected level of cultural specificity for international TV drama partly because it is pursuing a “cosmopolitan international audience”. Yet the perception of ‘conspicuous localism’ may also depend on an audience’s previous exposure and familiarity with a given instance of cultural specificity. In the previous section, we suggest that setting of half of the storyline for season 1 of  WoF in Poland and exploring the cultural myths surrounding the Anglo-Polish relationship at the beginning and post-WWII is unusual because it has not featured in television before. In addition, Eastern Europe as a geographical region and its media representations used to be part of a ‘cultural periphery’, both being  subject to orientalising discourses and stereotyping (Wolff, 1994). As such, depicting Poland and using the Polish language might, in the past, have been perceived as risking alienating non-Polish viewers. However, cosmopolitan audiences perceive themselves as ‘citizens of the world’ who embrace different cultures and are likely to have had a variety of tourist experiences, ranging from exotic and remote destinations to the top-rated  and must-see  tourist attractions. Cosmopolitan  audiences are also avid consumers of ‘art television’ and art films and are likely to have encountered different cultures and languages through their media consumption. New high-end drama’s ‘conspicuous localism’ can, therefore, be seen as ‘cultural capital’ that contributes to the self-identity of this target audience as cosmopolitan (Havens, 2018).15 However, in the multiplatform era it is also possible that television’s ‘traditional’ audiences are becoming ‘couch cosmopolitans’, meaning that they derive and build their understanding of cultural specificity from the media representations they consume. This effect is likely to be pronounced in historical high-end dramas in which verisimilitude demands meticulous attention to the details

262 

J. RYDZEWSKA AND E. DURYS

of a particular time, place, and succession of events. Bowker remarks that ten years ago subtitles and multinational cast productions were rare, but for WoF they “did not want British actors to speak with German or Polish accents”. He is delighted with WoF’s international cast which he feels has added authenticity to the drama (BFI, 2019). Bowker also infers that he felt empowered to tell “this global war from a global perspective, in multiple languages” because the success of Danish shows, especially Forbrydelsen/The Killing (DR/ZDF Enterprises, 2007–12) and Broen/Bron/The Bridge (SVT1/DR1, 2011–18) “suggested that audiences were now more willing to engage with subtitled shows” (Lobb, 2019). The very first scene of WoF (season 1 episode 1) introduces Harry and Lois as each is collected from the police station after being arrested at a rally against fascist Oswald Mosley; Lois by her working-class father, Douglas (Sean Bean) and Harry by his snobbish, class-conscious mother, Robina (Lesley Manville). The scene introduces two generations of Britons divided by class, clearly aiming to enhance the intergenerational and inter-­ class appeal of the show. This scene features visuals specific to the location of Manchester as well as Douglas and Lois’s use of the local Mancunian accent which contrasts with Robina’s received Southern English pronunciation. Throughout the episode, the drama consistently builds the details of working- and middle-class life and locations, these filtered through the different aesthetics of British heritage drama and social realism. Thus, Lois’s working-class credentials are reinforced through the depiction of the red-brick factory where she works, a visit to the pub with her dad, and crane shots of rows of red-brick, terraced houses—all signifiers of the British  North and its  working-class.16 Robina’s class credentials, on the other hand, locate her at the very posh end of Manchester, in a grand residence replete with expensive furniture and a large garden. The story institutes this class division over successive scenes. For example, we first see Lois’s terraced house which cuts to an aerial shot of Robina’s opulent mansion house. As Lois enters this house, there is a cut to an establishing shot of a wood-panelled hall and the camera leaves her to dwell on the period details of the country house: lavish wallpaper, silver teapots, expensive drapery, and elaborate panelling. This visual short-hand for middle- to upper-class living taps into the audience’s visual competence in the “pictorialist museum aesthetic” (Higson, 2003: 39) known from heritage television series (such as Downton Abbey) and from the larger British heritage industry.

12  POLISH CULTURE? WORLD ON FIRE, TRANSNATIONAL… 

263

If Manchester presents a synchronic division dictated by the class system, the representation of Warsaw presents the diachronic division from its previous incarnation—as bustling city where people sit in cafes while young people fall in love—and influenced by the aesthetics of “rubble films”—a cycle of films which arose towards the end of WWII and visually chronicled this war’s devastation. We first see the sunny vistas of this full of life Warsaw—of beautiful houses, lively cafes, and cheerful crowds. Under German occupation this vision morphs into piles of monochromatic rubble, burnt houses, and meandering alleyways where executions occur. Just after the brief introduction to Manchester at the police station, the serial aptly intercuts to Warsaw by means of montage through music: as we see Lois singing at the club, her boyfriend Harry is in Warsaw dancing to music with Kasia (season 1 episode 1). This clever montage and the crosscutting it entails establishes both concurrent key locations as well as introducing the main thrust of the conflict propelling the story: that Harry is in love with both women. In one shot, in which Harry cycles with Kasia through Warsaw’s streets, we see beautifully painted tenement houses. Another shot depicts the Warsaw Castle Square and Old Town, complete with the King Sigismund’s Column and dance floors full of people. Yet anyone who has ever been to Warsaw will instantly recognize that neither the Castle Square of WoF nor the streets of the city are Warsaw. The location scenes for Eastern Europe were shot in Prague, with many online articles emphasizing this detail (Medd, 2019). What seems important in WoF, however, is that Warsaw looks Eastern European. Episode 2 establishes the stark contrast to the pre-war ‘tourist’ Warsaw with the introduction of the aesthetics of ruin. As with the myth of heroic Polishness, the chronotope of Warsaw as rubble city bears the visual influence of internationally acclaimed cinema films, rather than television series, notably  Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) and Roman Polański Pianista/The Pianist (2002) and of Polish auteur cinema, for example  Andrzej Wajda’s Kanał/The Canal (1957). A pronounced cycle of ‘rubble films’ (Trümmerfilm) originated in Germany, where the allied aerial bombing attacks pulverized German cities. Between 1946 and 1949, around 50 films were produced that documented the devastation of those cities and displayed prominent ruin aesthetics (Rentschler, 2010: 10). WoF deploys these ‘rubble film’ aesthetics to evoke the specifically Polish experience of the outbreak of WWII. According to Eric Rentschler (2010: 12) commentators link the Trümmerfilm to such period styles as expressionism, neorealism, and film noir, and WoF invokes this visual language

264 

J. RYDZEWSKA AND E. DURYS

through its use of ‘rubble’ aesthetics. Helen Ziegler, executive producer of WoF, acknowledges  the importance of these  ruin  aesthetics when she reveals that they “found this amazing location … this devastated factory [which] looked like it had been bombed … and it had this eerie beauty to it” (Medd, 2019). The first scene of WoF’s second episode, which occurs after the invasion of Warsaw, shows Kasia and her mother walking among “towering ruins stretched into the sky” through a panning movement of the camera and the use of harsh, chiaroscuro lighting contrasts  and rundown spaces  to accentuate the feel of “life amid the rubble” that is characteristic of rubble films (Rentschler, 2010: 12). The next scenes show half-burned walls while the cinematography is characterized by expressive composition and the use of realist aesthetics to enhance verisimilitude. Yet many shots in these WoF episodes depend on the contributions of computer-generated images. As Adam Smith, the director of the first and second episodes, explains, “Obviously there’s a lot of CGI in the show, but we tried to use as many real things as possible and augment, rather than create, so it felt truthful and realistic” (Ling, 2021). WoF scenes also construct verisimilitude through the recounting of historical events—the truly disturbing images involving the persecution of the Jewish community, the displacement of people, and well-executed, fast-paced extensive battle scenes, the latter complete with explosions, tanks, shooting and fires. The rise and fall of the Polish Resistance movement that takes place in dark alleyways, using expressive chiaroscuro lighting to emphasize a moral void, attains a notably stark climactic moment when Kasia’s resistance companion, Tomasz, is unceremoniously hung. One shot reveals this fate in which careful composition allows Tomasz’s lifeless body to be centrally framed through the window of a cell that Kasia occupies and looks out from (season 1 episode 7).

Conclusions This chapter has argued that focusing half of World on Fire’s first season on specifically Polish experience and knowledge is unprecedented in a high-­ end drama that was primarily coproduced by British and American TV networks. This first season of WoF displays both a meticulous period verisimilitude as well as referencing the myth of heroic Polishness during WWII. We have argued that this is significant because WoF’s depictions of Polish WWII experiences redress an earlier failure to include a more

12  POLISH CULTURE? WORLD ON FIRE, TRANSNATIONAL… 

265

balanced view of Polish contributions to this war. We have suggested that the representation of an ‘authentic’ Polish culture in a UK-produced high-­ end drama responds in part to the wave of migration of Poles to the UK that occurred after Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004, as well as to an adjusted regulatory framework that requires the BBC’s programming to reflect the (extended) national identity and diversity of contemporary Britain. In doing so, WoF departs from established representations of Polish migrants. Yet at the same time, the ubiquity of the myth of Polish heroism carries resonance for American audiences and for the sizeable Polish diasporas in the US. WoF’s portrayal of Poland at the outset of WWII exemplifies a shift toward more overt elements of cultural specificity in international high-­ end drama. This is occurring, as suggested in several book chapters, partly as a result of the expansion of SVoDs and their targeting of multinational subscribers. It also points to the importance of what Havens (2018) calls a “cosmopolitan international audience”, as one that is considered to consume TV and film content from a large range of countries and thought to be more welcoming of cultural differences than a traditional national ‘mass audience’ has been. What it shows in the last instance is that a transnational coproduction between the UK and the US is no longer quite as limited, in terms of its cultural constructions and representations, as it was in the past, and that today’s multiplatform era of television is one that is unusually hospitable to stories involving different cultures, languages, and new perspectives.

Notes 1. WoF premiered on the BBC One broadcast service in September 2019 in its coveted primetime slot of 9 pm on Sunday and averaged 6 million viewers per episode (Hale, 2020). It was simultaneously available on the BBC’s video-on-demand service iPlayer. Six months later, in the spring of 2020, WoF premiered on PBS Masterpiece following the same release format for its “traditional” audiences, Sunday at 9 p.m., and additionally its own video-on-demand website platform, PBS Passport. Masterpiece has occupied the 9 pm slot for almost all of its time on air and is a time-slot regarded as “an institution and pleasurable ritual” by its audiences (Knox, 2012: 35).

266 

J. RYDZEWSKA AND E. DURYS

2. A second season of WoF was officially announced in November 2019, but the planned 2020 shoot was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Filming of the second series commenced in July 2022, and will air on BBC One in 2023 (BBC Media Centre, 2022). 3. The Masterpiece Trust “provides the opportunity for individual donors who deeply care about the series to help provide for its future” through donations (Hilmes, 2019: 60; GBH, 2021). 4. Eaton says that even though it is Masterpiece that has created an appetite for high-end British drama, streaming platforms such as Netflix win in a coproduction war due to their  “extremely deep pockets”. Eaton gives the example of The Crown, which she says “naturally should be on Masterpiece” (GBH, 2019). 5. Nancy’s character is based on British journalist Clare Hollingworth (Billen, 2019). 6. Reports on diversity usually refer to the largest minority groups in the United States: Hispanic and Latino (18.9 per cent of the U.S. population), Black and African (13.6 per cent), Asian (6.1 per cent) (United States Census Bureau, 2022b). 7. For transnational high-end dramas that target both  national and international audiences, it makes sense to count audiences in terms of total diaspora numbers. There are 37 million Polish nationals and around 20 million people of Polish ancestry living around the world (Serwis Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, 2022). 8. France has been the traditional destination for Polish exiles, and Germany has the second largest European community of Polish migrants after the UK (Serwis Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, 2022). 9. The myth of Polish heroism arose in the United States during the American Revolution (1775–1783) with two Polish nobleman: Tadeusz Kościuszko (Thaddeuss Kosciuszko)—“the Polish patriot who helped Americans beat the British” (Trickey, 2017) and Kazimierz Pulaski (Casimir Pulaski) who is referred to as a “Polish hero”. 10. Films which portray the archetype of heroic Polishness include in America, The Great Escape (1963), A Bridge too Far (1977) or Defiance (2007), in Spain ¡Ay, Carmela ! (1990) and in Australia The Way Back (2010). 11. 250,000 Polish soldiers and their families remained in the UK after the war, and the British Government introduced The Polish Resettlement Act in 1947 (Stachura, 2004: 5).

12  POLISH CULTURE? WORLD ON FIRE, TRANSNATIONAL… 

267

12. Great Britain experienced the earlier migration of the Poles to the UK in the nineteenth Century. 13. The Post Office was established by the Treaty of Versailles, which reestablished the Polish state after 123  years of Partitions, and became a symbol of the free Polish nation. For this reason, the Germans had specific plans to attack the Post Office at the beginning of WWII. 14. The heroic characters of Dangerous Moonlight and WoF also share the first name, Stefan. 15. The recent spectacular success of two wartime dramas by Pawel Pawlikowski shot in Polish may offer a context for WoF. Pawlikowski said that the initial prospects of pre-selling Ida (2013), which later won Poland’s only ever Oscar for Best Film in 2015, were pretty hopeless and the main reason was its use of the Polish language (Pawlikowski, 2014). Yet it paved the way to his next acclaimed film in Polish, Cold War (2018). WoF shares several Polish actors with Cold War. 16. The success of stylized depictions of the North of England, such as Peaky Blinders (BBC, 2013–22), have offered an extension of Britishness (customarily served by the heritage tradition) and helped to make British Northern realism familiar to international audiences. Acknowledgements  We would like to thank the editors of this volume for their invaluable feedback on drafts of this chapter.

References BBC Media Centre. (2022). Filming Begins on Series Two of World on Fire. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2022/world-­on-­fire-­series-­ two. Accessed 15 Oct 2022. BFI. (2019, October 18). World on Fire Cast and Crew, Including Sean Bean|BFIQ&A. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=5xqOdwZf8Ew. Accessed 12 Dec 2021. Billen, A. (2019). What Did You Do in the War? The Drama That Doesn’t Take Sides. The Times. Available at: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/world-­on-­ fire-­the-­new-­second-­world-­war-­tv-­drama-­that-­doesnt-­take-­sides-­fhwqfbssr. Accessed 3 Mar 2023.

268 

J. RYDZEWSKA AND E. DURYS

Brzeski, P. (2019). Chinese Streamer Huanxi Acquires BBC Miniseries ‘World on Fire’. The Hollywood Reporter. Available at: https://www.hollywoodreporter. com/tv/tv-­news/chinese-­streamer-­huanxi-­premium-­acquires-­bbc-­miniseries-­ world-­fire-­1243829/. Accessed 12 Mar 2021. Chapman, S. (2019). PBS to Air Bowker’s World on Fire. Prolific North. Available at: https://www.prolificnorth.co.uk/news/broadcasting-­news/2019/08/ pbs-­air-­bowkers-­world-­fire. Accessed 6 July 2021. Conlan, T. (2014). BBC Director General Launches New Diversity Plan for Corporation. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/ media/2014/jun/20/bbc-­director-­general-­diversity-­plan-­minorities-­on-­air. Accessed 12 Mar 2021. Davies, N. (1997). Europe: A History. Pimlico. Doyle, G. (2016). Digitization and Changing Windowing Strategies in the Television Industry: Negotiating New Windows on the World. Television & New Media, 17(7), 629–645. Doyle, G., Paterson, R., & Barr, K. (2021). Television Production in Transition, Independence, Scale, Sustainability and the Digital Challenge. Palgrave Macmillan. Drama Quarterly. (2019). Fired Up. Available at: https://dramaquarterly.com/ fired-­up-­2/. Accessed 22 Nov 2021. Dunleavy, T. (2009). Television Drama: Form, Agency, Innovation. Palgrave Macmillan. Dunleavy, T. (2018). Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television. Routledge. Dunleavy, T. (2020). Transnational Co-production, Multiplatform Television and My Brilliant Friend. Critical Studies in Television, 15(4), 336–356. Fontaine, G., & Jiménez Pumares, M. (2020). European High-End Fiction Series: State of Play and Trends. European Audiovisual Observatory. Available at: https://rm.coe.int/european-­h igh-­e nd-­f iction-­s eries-­s tate-­o f-­p lay-­a nd-­ trends-­g-­fontaine-­a/16809f80cd. Accessed 28 Feb 2022. GBH. (2019). RLS Meet the Producer: Masterpiece’s Rebecca Eaton. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pVIRN7zXag. Accessed 24 July 2022. GBH. (2021). The Masterpiece Trust. Available at: https://www.wgbh.org/support/the-­masterpiece-­trust. Accessed 24 July 2022. Georgiou, M. (2012). Seeking Ontological Security Beyond the Nation: The Role of Transnational Television. Television & New Media, 14(4), 304–321. Goldsmith, J. (2020). How Rebecca Eaton’s ‘Tailor-Made’ Role at ‘Masterpiece’ Fits with a New Strategy for Original Dramas. Current. Available at: https:// current.org/2020/04/how-­rebecca-­eatons-­tailor-­made-­role-­at-­masterpiece-­ fits-­with-­a-­new-­strategy-­for-­original-­dramas/. Accessed 24 July 2022.

12  POLISH CULTURE? WORLD ON FIRE, TRANSNATIONAL… 

269

Gordon, D. (2020). World on Fire’s Helen Hunt on Being the “Token American” in PBS Series & More—TCA. Deadline. Available at: https://deadline. com/2020/01/world-­on-­fires-­helen-­hunt-­token-­american-­pbs-­series-­world-­ war-­ii-­drama-­tca-­1202827185/. Accessed 14 Apr 2021. Hale, M. (2020). In ‘World on Fire,’ War Is the Virus. The New  York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/arts/television/ world-­on-­fire-­review.html. Accessed 2 Dec 2021. Havens, T. (2018). Transnational Television Drama and the Aesthetics of Conspicuous Localism. FlowTV. Available at: http://www.flowjournal. org/2018/04/transnational-­television-­dramas/. Accessed 10 Dec 2021. Higson, A. (2003). English Heritage, English Cinema: Costume Drama Since 1980. Oxford University Press. Hilmes, M. (2012). Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting. Routledge. Hilmes, M. (2014). Transnational TV: What Do We Mean by “Coproduction” Anymore? Media Industries Journal, 1(2), 10–15. Hilmes, M. (2019). Making Masterpiece Matter: The Transnational Cultural Work of America’s Longest-Running Drama Program. In M.  Hills, M.  Hilmes, & R.  Pearson (Eds.), Transatlantic Television Drama: Industries, Programs, & Fans (pp. 31–47). Oxford University Press. Kerger, P., & Loving, C. (2021). Annual Report on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: FY 2021. PBS. Available at: https://d1qbemlbhjecig.cloudfront.net/prod/ filer_public/pbsabout-­b ento-­l ive-­p bs/DEI%20Folder/21e70c0a9c_ PBS_2021_DEI_Report.pdf. Accessed 23 Mar 2023. Knox, S. (2012). Masterpiece Theatre and British Drama Imports on US Television: Discourses of Tension. Critical Studies in Television, 7(1), 29–48. Krupa, J. (2019). World on Fire: Britain’s Poles Hope War Drama Will Reclaim Their Past. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-­ and-­radio/2019/oct/20/world-­on-­fire-­bbc-­war-­drama-­polish-­londoners-­ epic-­series-­relcima-­their-­past. Accessed 20 Oct 2019. Ling, T. (2021). Where Was BBC1’s World on Fire Filmed? Radio Times. Available at: https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/world-­on-­fire-­bbc-­one-­filming-­ locations/. Accessed 20 July 2022. Lobb, A. (2019). World on Fire’s Peter Bowker: I Won’t Have WWII Rewritten by Isolationists. Big Issue. Available at: https://www.bigissue.com/culture/tv/ world-­on-­fires-­peter-­bowker-­i-­wont-­have-­wwii-­r ewritten-­by-­isolationists/. Accessed 12 Mar 2021. Medd, J. (2019). Where Was World on Fire Filmed? Condé Nast Traveller. Available at: https://www.cntraveller.com/gallery/where-­was-­world-­on-­fire-­filmed. Accessed 12 Dec 2021.

270 

J. RYDZEWSKA AND E. DURYS

Middleton, R. (2019). ITVS Drama World on Fire Finds Home in the US. Television Business International. Available at: https://tbivision.com/2019/07/30/ itvs-­drama-­world-­on-­fire-­finds-­home-­in-­the-­us/. Accessed 12 Mar 2021. Mosbacher, G. (2020). US Ambassador Pays Tribute to Polish Heroes Who Fought in World War Two. THEfirstNEWS. Available at: https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/us-­a mbassador-­p ays-­t ribute-­t o-­p olish-­h eroes-­w ho-­ fought-­in-­world-­war-­two-­12538. Accessed 20 July 2022. Noakes, L., & Pattinson, J. (2014). Introduction: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’: The Cultural Memory of the Second World War in Britain. In L.  Noakes & J.  Pattinson (Eds.), British Cultural Memory and the Second World War (pp. 1–24). Bloomsbury. Office for National Statistics. (2022). International Migration, England and Wales: Census 2021. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/ internationalmigrationenglandandwales/census2021. Accessed 3 May 2022. Pawlikowski, P. (2014). How We Made Ida: Paweł Pawlikowski on the Journey from Script to Film. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian. com/film/2014/nov/21/pawel-­p awlikowski-­m aking-­o f-­i da-­p olish-­f ilm. Accessed 12 Dec 2014. PBS. (2020). Peter Bowker Paints Intimate Portraits of a World at War. Available at: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/podcasts/masterpiece-­studio/ peter-­bowker/. Accessed 18 Aug 2020. Plunkett, J. (2013). Why British Producers Are Going Global? The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/mar/29/ international-­production-­drama-­actors. Accessed 2 May 2022. Rentschler, E. (2010). The Place of Rubble in the “Trümmerfilm”. New German Critique, 110, 9–30. Rydzewska, J. (2012). Ambiguity and Change: Post-2004 Polish Migration to the UK in Contemporary British Cinema. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 20(2), 215–227. Rydzewska, J. (2013). Masculinity, Nostalgia and Polishness in Somers Town. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 10(4), 890–908. Sarpong, J. (2020). Creative Diversity Report 2020, Vol. 1. BBC. Available at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/reports/creative-­ diversity-­report-­2020.pdf. Accessed 23 Mar 2023. Serwis Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej. (2022). Historia. Available at: https://www. gov.pl/web/polonia/historia. Accessed 2 Dec 2022. Stachura, P.  D. (2004). The Poles in Britain 1940–2000: From Betrayal to Assimilation. Frank Cass. Steemers, J. (2004). Selling Television. British Film Institute.

12  POLISH CULTURE? WORLD ON FIRE, TRANSNATIONAL… 

271

Steemers, J. (2016). International Sales of U.K. Television Content: Change and Continuity in “the Space in Between” Production and Consumption. Television & New Media, 17(8), 734–753. Szwajcowska, J. (2006). The Myth of the Polish Mother. In E.  Mazierska & E. Ostrowska (Eds.), Women in Polish Cinema (pp. 15–33). Berghahn Books. Trickey, E. (2017). The Polish Patriot Who Helped Americans Beat the British. Smithsonian Magazine. Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor y/polish-­p atriot-­w ho-­h elped-­a mericans-­b eat-­b ritish-­1 80962430/. Accessed 2 May 2022. Ugolini, W. (2014). When Are You Going Back? Memory, Ethnicity and the British Home Front. In L.  Noakes & J.  Pattinson (Eds.), British Cultural Memory and the Second World War (pp. 89–110). Bloomsbury. UK Film Council. (2011). Portrayal vs. Betrayal? An Investigation of Diverse and Mainstream UK Film Audiences. Available at: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/ bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/uk-­f ilm-­c ouncil-­p ortrayal-­v -­b etrayal-­a n-­ investigation-­of-­diverse-­and-­mainstream-­uk-­film-­audiences.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2021. United States Census Bureau. (2022a). Census Bureau Tables. Available at: https://data.census.gov/table. Accessed 23 Mar 2023. United States Census Bureau. (2022b). U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: United States. Available at: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/ PST045222. Accessed 7 Aug 2022. Van Heuckelom, K. (2019). Polish Migrants in European Film 1918–2017. Palgrave Macmillan. Wagmeister, E. (2015). PBS & BBC Ink Multi-Title Co-production Deal. Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2015/tv/news/pbs-­bbc-­co-­production-­ deal-­1201408869/. Accessed 29 Apr 2021. Ward, P. (2004). Britishness Since 1870. Routledge. Watson, J. (2014). Total War and Total Anniversary: The Material Culture of Second World War Commemoration in Britain. In L. Noakes & J. Pattinson (Eds.), British Cultural Memory and the Second World War (pp.  175–194). Bloomsbury. Weissmann, E. (2012). Transnational Television Drama: Special Relations and Mutual Influence Between the US and UK. Palgrave Macmillan. Winder, R. (2004). Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain. Little Brown. Wolff, L. (1994). Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford University Press.

CHAPTER 13

El Robo del Siglo/The Great Heist: Perpetuating False Territorial Dichotomies in Colombia? Juan-Pablo Osman

Introduction This chapter investigates El Robo del Siglo/The Great Heist (Netflix, 2020), a Colombian high-end limited serial commissioned by Netflix. This drama production is one example of an increasingly widespread pattern in which countries and TV industries with little previous tradition of external partnership on high-end drama productions become involved in co-producing this type of content with a foreign-owned network, increasingly a SVoD service. While such alliances often involve a US network partner, in this case the collaboration combined a Colombian production company with the US-owned multinational SVoD, Netflix. This chapter’s analysis foregrounds the implications of this form of production for the construction and representation of cultural specificity, the vehicle for which, in El Robo del Siglo, is high-end drama in limited serial

J.-P. Osman (*) Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_13

273

274 

J.-P. OSMAN

form. The focus of this chapter’s investigation is El Robo’s representations of Costeños and Cachacos, two territorial groups whose differences have remained an important source of conflict in Colombia. Fuelling this longstanding clash has been the representation of these groups and their differences; they have tended to construct a false dichotomy between them, which has political, social, and cultural dimensions and ramifications. Because of this background, it is important for the chapter to analyse the extent to which this false dichotomy continues to be perpetuated by El Robo del Siglo. This is a hugely relevant issue in the context of this drama’s creation for a foreign-owned and multinational SVoD such as Netflix. Netflix’s finance and commissioning means that El Robo del Siglo and its representations of Colombian peoples and their cultures will reach a potentially global audience whose understandings of Costeños and Cachacos stand to be informed and shaped by this particular TV drama. El Robo del Siglo is also based on a true story, which means that its cultural specificity and representations gain additional significance through their connection with real people, events, and situations. The textual analysis in this chapter foregrounds El Robo del Siglo’s first episode in which the relationship between Cachacos and Costeños is established.

Background Colombia is a nation of approximately 51 million inhabitants. In general, the country is divided into two large groups, Costeños and Cachacos. This has generated a duality and false dichotomy that is not only territorial but also ethnic, cultural, and ideological. Within this, Costeños belong to the region located in the northern coastal part of the country, facing the Caribbean Sea, whereas Cachacos occupy the Andean area, where Bogotá, the country’s capital city, is located. This conception has provoked a dualistic imaginary of the country which invokes and emphasises the binary oppositions between Costeños and Cachacos of centre/periphery, coast/ mountain, and exotic/familiar. These cultural and regional binaries make the construction of dialogue and the deployment of cultural appropriation difficult in a diverse territory such as Colombia (Talero, 2002). Dividing Colombian society, these binary attributes have gained influence from the way that some Colombian historians have approached the complex relationship between the Caribbean region and the Andean centre of the country. This is the main argument of Archila (1984), who suggests that a regional approach to the history of Colombia has prevented a

13  EL ROBO DEL SIGLO/THE GREAT HEIST: PERPETUATING FALSE… 

275

unified national conception of the country. Morales (1998) affirms that in Colombia it is frequently more urgent to intensify the regional identity to the detriment of the national one, creating a permanent conflict between the national and the regional. According to Morales, this is where the false dichotomy between Costeños and Cachacos arises. Múnera explains that, “From the Andean region a vision of the nation was constructed which became dominant, to the point of being shared by other regional elites, towards the end of the 19th Century” (2005: 22).

Costeños and Cachacos Within Colombian National Identity: The History of a False Dichotomy The territorial hierarchy that emerged in the nineteenth Century, as described by Múnera (2005: 22), awarded the Andes region and peoples both a supposedly natural superiority and a spatial distribution of ethnic groupings, which predominantly placed Caucasian (White) Colombians at the centre of the country. These two aspects, natural superiority and spatial distribution are central elements of the nation that were invoked and narrated, without there being sufficient counter-images with similar levels of persuasion emerging from other regions. Múnera (2005) explains that, at the beginning of the nineteenth Century, Colombian political elites even considered that the territories outside the Andean area were occupied by inferior races and that the only way for these territories to acquire some degree of civilisation was to subject them to the influence and dominion of Cachacos. A clear example of and precedent for this trend can be seen in a text written by Cachaco historian Samper (1861), who did not consider Costeños to be compatriots. Posada (1983) identifies 1874 as a key year in the strengthening of this regional division in Colombia, when the idea of electing a Costeño president to defend and represent the interests of this part of the country was established as something urgent and necessary for the Caribbean coast. Posada observes that this was when concepts, such as the ‘Costeño bench’, were developed to refer to the congressmen from this part of the country and differentiate their agendas and interests from Cachaco congressmen. Múnera (2005) also points to the climate as a fundamental factor in this division, creating a cultural and idiosyncratic separation between the cold, rainy, and mountainous Andes, and the warm and sunny Caribbean areas. Thus, stereotypes have been created of Costeños as lazy, ostentatious,

276 

J.-P. OSMAN

charlatans, and partygoers living by the sea, whereas Cachacos who inhabit the Andes, are assumed to be hard working, elegant in their style, well-­ mannered, and reserved in their behaviour. In this respect, Ruch (2003) states that Cachacos are usually associated with aristocracy, higher education, and decency, while Costeños are seen as blithe, superstitious, and adventurous. It is important to refer to colonial dynamics to explain this division in a better way. Garrido (2007) reminds us that the Colombian Caribbean region became an important port of entry of African slaves during the Spanish colonisation. The slave trade, the pirate attacks, and the illegal activities occurring at the Caribbean ports led the Spanish elites to establish their powerbases far from the coast, in the Andean region. There, these influential groups founded the main intellectual centres, including the first university as well as the main Catholic churches. This development transferred the most important political and cultural institutions to the Cachaco part of Colombia with the effect that the Costeño region was marginalised and/or excluded. Betancourt (2008) affirms that this dual vision of Colombia has led to the historical construction of the country from a regional perspective. More important still, this vision proposed a national unity in which the Cachaco dimension is considered a ‘superior’ and ‘civilised’ world. Betancourt also points out that this vision became embedded as the ‘traditional history’ through which the Colombian past was narrated for many decades and that it was not until the 1970s that this biased approach and historiography was challenged. The lingering repercussion of its influence is that many of these misconceptions remain in the collective imagination of the Colombian people.

Costeños and Cachacos on Colombian TV This narrative of historical fragmentation between Costeños and Cachacos has been transferred to media representation and has been a notable facet of Colombian TV fiction. Colombia has two large private television channels with open broadcasting: Caracol and RCN. Both channels are based in Bogotá, the epicentre of the Cachaco universe. The programming aired by these two channels dominates the country’s national audience ratings. Caracol and RCN command the largest section of the audience share in Colombia, enjoying something close to a duopoly of the Colombian television market (Coa, 2017).

13  EL ROBO DEL SIGLO/THE GREAT HEIST: PERPETUATING FALSE… 

277

Audiences in the Caribbean region have not felt represented when productions planned in Bogotá depict characters or environments from the Costeño context. In 2014, El Universal, the main newspaper in Cartagena, one of the most important cities in the Colombian Caribbean region, published a survey asking the question: Do you believe that Colombian television represents Costeños accurately? The survey showed that just 6 per cent of the participants answered “yes”, whereas the vast majority, 94 per cent, answered “no” (Diario El Universal Colombia, 2014). Due to this conflict, academics have begun to explore these representations. Alberto Abello, former director of the Colombian Caribbean Observatory, argued that: The media should be more judicious, more serious, watering down the wealth of knowledge that a region like the Caribbean has generated about itself. Today it is the most studied region in Colombia and that is why it is sad to see a new chapter of entertainment being built, away from culture, at the expense of a false Caribbean. (Vives cited in Díaz, 2012: 23)

Similarly, Costeño writer David Sánchez-Juliao, in a conversation with Peláez (2010), stated that fictional representation produced in Bogotá has not accurately reflected the inhabitants of the Caribbean and suggested that the media located in the capital have not tried to understand the cultural richness of Costeños. As to the cultural impacts, García (2008) posits that it is extremely problematic for the representation of national identity when television tends to homogenise diverse cultures within the same country, building discourses from a single perspective and ignoring the heterogeneity of Colombian national culture. In this situation, some segments of the country’s population are being poorly served and misrepresented. These misrepresentations generate conflicts in terms of national identity in Colombia, and fiction narratives make important contributions. Highlighting the potential cultural influence of screen fiction productions, Miller affirms: “Like all cultures, we find our sense of self, not in facts, but in fiction, in the songs and plays that express our view of the world” (1987: 18). Consequently, we must ask, what sense of society are Colombian TV dramas constructing for both Colombian and foreign audiences if they continue to deploy and promote this false dichotomy between Costeños and Cachacos? That is to say, the images that screen drama representations construct of a certain population or culture are not harmless and instead

278 

J.-P. OSMAN

can modify the wider cultural imaginary. Above all, these effects of such narratives allow them to shape the attitudes of other population groups towards that sector of society that is being misrepresented.

El Robo del Siglo and Netflix: Same Old False Dichotomy? Netflix commissioned Dynamo, a Colombian independent production company, to create El Robo del Siglo as a high-end limited serial. The co­production approach used here exemplifies ‘direct commissioning’. As Dunleavy explains, this involves the creation of “a new drama by a single foreign-domiciled, yet multinational or transnational network, in partnership with one or more production companies operating within a given national market” (2020: 346). This type of production connects “foreign finance with domestic creative industries” (2020: 346). As Dunleavy (2020: 346) observes, it allows dramas to be “developed and produced by local independent companies” in locations and languages outside the US, under contract to a single multinational or transnational network, which gives them the potential to be distributed to a near-global audience. Dynamo, under contract with Netflix, created and produced this serial, which takes place entirely in Colombia and is spoken in Spanish. El Robo del Siglo dramatises real events that took place on 16 and 17 October of 1994 in the coastal city of Valledupar. During those two days, a gang of 26 people robbed one of the offices of the National Bank, taking the equivalent of US$33 million. The robbery was organised by an alliance between Costeños, who knew the local context of Valledupar, and Cachacos, who arrived from the centre of the country to execute the felony. The drama serial reconstructs this infamous coup; representing the planning of the robbery, its execution, as well as the subsequent events of what was the largest robbery in the history of Colombia (Asalto del Banco de la República en Valledupar, 2022). Within the context described so far, this chapter’s objective is to explore the extent to which this production continues to perpetuate the false dichotomy between Costeños and Cachacos described above. This objective attains additional importance in the context of Netflix’s financing of this drama, as a multinational SVoD who invests in productions with a global audience in mind. The chapter’s exploration aims to establish whether El Robo del Siglo breaks with traditional representations of cultural,

13  EL ROBO DEL SIGLO/THE GREAT HEIST: PERPETUATING FALSE… 

279

ideological, and social elements of the false dichotomy in the relationship between Costeños and Cachacos or whether it reinforces and thus maintains the imagined binaries discussed earlier. As mentioned above, El Robo del Siglo is based on a true story and gains additional significance in consequence through its connection with real events and characters. The chapter has noted the representational dynamics that can be seen in dramas created for the two main Colombian broadcast TV channels when portraying Costeño characters and/or contexts. However, this chapter is aiming to explore if this false dichotomy between Costeños and Cachacos is also being perpetuated in a drama produced for the multinational SVoD Netflix, which brings its representations into the international arena.

El Robo del Siglo: Analysis of Cultural Representations in the First Episode In its analysis of cultural identity, this chapter deploys the approach of American anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Geertz shares with Max Weber the sense of human beings inserted into webs of meanings that they themselves have woven. Geertz explains that: The concept of culture I espouse[…] is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. (Geertz, 1973: 5)

In this way, Geertz sees culture as a system of symbols by virtue of which human beings give meanings to their own existence. These systems of symbols are shared, learned, and conventionalised, and in this form determine human relations in their reciprocity, in our relationship with the environment and with ourselves. Geertz establishes two major categories within cultural identity. These are moral and aesthetic aspects (or ‘ethos’) on the one hand, and cognitive and existential aspects (or ‘world view’) on the other. Geertz argues that: A people’s ethos is the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood; it is the underlying attitude toward themselves and their world that life reflects. Their world view is their picture of the way

280 

J.-P. OSMAN

things in sheer actuality are, their concept of nature, of self, of society. It contains their most comprehensive ideas of order. (Geertz, 1973: 127)

Audiovisual language is a system of signs that can be read semiotically. There is a long tradition of academics who have approached this language through semiotics, specifically within film and television studies (Eco, 1970; Metz, 1974; Deleuze, 1983; Chandler, 1994). Since the problem that fuels this chapter’s explorations is the representation of cultural identity, the chapter seeks to build an epistemological bridge between Geertz’s categories that understand culture as a set of signs and a semiotic conception of audiovisual language in the specific instance of an SVoD-­ commissioned high-end TV drama serial. The analysis of this study concentrates on the first episode of El Robo del Siglo, which is when the relationship between Costeños and Cachacos is introduced. A context that is important to this is that most of the protagonists in this robbery are Cachaco criminals who travel to the Colombian Caribbean zone where the bank is located and, once there, must align themselves with Costeños who know the local context and the logistics that are needed to carry out the robbery. This creates a situation in which Cachacos and Costeños must work together with the common objective of a successful assault on the bank. The first example of cultural misrepresentation regarding the depiction of these two groups occurs 15 minutes into the episode. This is a scene in which Chayo, the serial’s foremost character, talks to Boris, a contact who informs him of an alleged plan that is being developed to rob the headquarters of the National Bank in the city of Valledupar. The conversation takes place on a rooftop of a building in Bogotá, with the mountainous landscape of the city on the background. An extract from their conversation follows: CHAYO: So, what is it that gives you a bad feeling? BORIS: Well, they’ve taken a lot of money in advance, and they haven’t done anything. I think it’s a Costeño who is bullshitting and that’s it. The accent of the two characters situates them as clearly from the Andean region of Colombia. Likewise, their costumes are suits and ties, clothes commonly used by men in this part of the country. Boris’s words are derogatory towards the people from the coast, characterising them as

13  EL ROBO DEL SIGLO/THE GREAT HEIST: PERPETUATING FALSE… 

281

people who “bullshit”. This invokes the stereotypical image of Costeños which has been evident for decades and which mistakenly suggests people from this region are neither serious, responsible nor trustworthy, as described earlier in this chapter. Another scene in this episode offers a second example of how the relationship between Costeños and Cachacos is depicted. In this scene, Chayo is talking to Doña K, a powerful woman from the illegal circles of Bogotá. Chayo is in Doña K’s office trying to convince her to lend him the money he needs to give in advance to do part of the robbery and at the same time, make her a partner in the coup. Again, Doña K’s accent is Andean, and again the situation involves two Cachaco characters. Once more, Chayo is dressed in a suit and tie as the clothing used very often in Bogotá. Chayo tells Doña K that, “We are going to knock down the National Bank in Valledupar. Boris gave me the tip. It’s with some people from the Caribbean coast, some serious people”. Here it is striking that Chayo, when trying to convince Doña K to become a partner in the bank coup, tells her that the alliance is with “serious people” from the “Caribbean coast”. It is significant that Chayo avoids mentioning the word Costeños to highlight a positive quality (‘seriousness’) and instead refers to them as “people from the Caribbean coast”. That is to say, the scene does not give a positive attribute to Costeños, but to “people from the Caribbean coast”, in a generic manner. A third scene in which the relationship between Costeños and Cachacos is depicted in this first episode involves Chayo, Doña K and Molina, the latter being Chayo’s best friend and main accomplice in the robbery. Molina’s accent links him to the Andean region and he is dressed in a suit and tie, as with Chayo. Doña K hands over the money to Chayo so that he can pay the advance and take part in the robbery. Chayo says, “Well, this stuff is on, fuck…” The phrase is relevant to this analysis since Chayo says it by imitating the Costeño accent, alluding to the place where the plan is to be carried out. Similarly, Chayo uses two expressions that are deeply rooted in the Costeño slang: “vaina” (which means ‘stuff’) and “no joda” (which would not have a literal translation, but it could be defined in the same way that the word ‘fuck’ is used in English). It is significant that Chayo’s imitation of the Costeño accent is extremely exaggerated, caricatured, and completely removed from an authentic Costeño way of speaking. Here, we can observe this misrepresentation of the Costeño personality when it is presented from the viewpoint of Cachacos, which contributes to the conflict described above.

282 

J.-P. OSMAN

Later in the episode, Chayo and Molina are heading in a vehicle towards the Colombian Caribbean region and a title on screen reads ‘Road to Valledupar’. An important aspect to highlight is that for this scene the ‘look’ and colour temperature of the landscape are seen to radically change. The colour scheme moves from a cold tone framed in the range of blues and greys to a much warmer tone that highlights the yellows and vivid greens. This visualisation responds at this point to a contrast in terms of landscape, climate, vegetation, colours, and textures that exists between the Andean region and the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Similarly, the costumes of the characters of Chayo and Molina have changed completely; they no longer wear suits and ties. Instead, they are now dressed in light-­ coloured shirts and short sleeves, a change that is keyed to emphasise a sense of significant differences in style, aesthetics, and clothing between Costeño and Cachaco universes. Chayo takes a music cassette out of the glove compartment of the car, a detail that references the period setting for El Robo, whose story takes place in 1994 when audio cassettes were common. Valledupar is considered the cradle of one of the most representative music genres of Colombian folklore, Vallenato. In fact, the etymology of the word Vallenato comes from Valledupar, referring to the place where this musical genre was born. Vallenato spread all over the Colombian Caribbean coast until it became a music connected to the Costeño identity (Vallenato, the History of an Entire Region, 2023). This is a musical genre that is closely related to partying and dancing, which has been a fundamental factor in the imaginary held in the Andes of the Costeño as a ‘party animal’, as noted earlier. Chayo inserts the cassette into the car radio and one of the most emblematic Vallenato songs can be heard. Although it is true that the song tells the story of a great friendship between the singer and his best friend whose surname is Molina (which in the drama becomes an allusion to the friendship between Chayo and Molina), it is meaningful that just when the characters are arriving in Valledupar, the protagonist plays a Vallenato song in the car. The limited serial immediately connects the Colombian Caribbean region with the Vallenato genre, falling into the most stereotyped characteristics of this area of the country and simplifying the cultural richness of the Costeño identity. In this scene, the soundtrack creates a simplistic conflation between the Caribbean area and Vallenato music. The most important example of El Robo’s misrepresentation of the Costeño culture occurs in a scene depicting the first meeting between Cachacos who have travelled to Valledupar and a Costeño who will be their

13  EL ROBO DEL SIGLO/THE GREAT HEIST: PERPETUATING FALSE… 

283

first contact in the Caribbean coast. As the scene opens, a subtitle appears indicating its location as a hotel in Valledupar. In the room are Chayo, Molina, Doña K, and “El Sardino” (The Kid), who is Chayo’s son and accompanies him in all his felonies. The four of them are waiting for the arrival of the Costeño to give him the money in advance, confirm that they will take part in the robbery, and receive the respective instructions. The scene begins with the four of them feeling restless and impatient due to the importance of the appointment: CHAYO: Another drink, lawyer? MOLINA: Thirty-five minutes late, brother. CHAYO: I know, but let’s not behave like a bunch of hard core Cachacos. The coast has a different rhythm, you must relax. This dialogue reflects two elements of relevance to this analysis. The inference of this last comment is that the Caribbean coast is a place where noncompliance is normal and natural. This supports and reinforces the examples described above which assign the characteristics of laziness and a lack of commitment to Costeños. In responding this way, Chayo implies that in the Colombian Caribbean coast, if someone demands punctuality, seriousness, or commitment, they are seen as “hard core Cachacos”. This has two effects. One is that it reaffirms the traditional binary of lazy Costeños versus diligent Cachacos and, the other, that it reaffirms the narrative of irreconcilable fragmentation and division between Costeño and Cachaco identities. Immediately afterwards, someone knocks on the door, which Chayo opens, allowing the following conversation to take place: CHAYO: Ulises? ULISES: As I live and breathe … Are you Chayo? CHAYO: Yes, sir, how are you? ULISES: Nice to meet you. CHAYO: Go on. My partners… ULISES: Excuse me… CHAYO: Would you like a drink? ULISES: No, no, no, no. I still have a hangover from last night that I won’t even tell you about … I might still be drunk.

284 

J.-P. OSMAN

In this first part of the scene, there are several elements to be analysed. First, Chayo, Molina, and Doña K are all elegantly dressed. Chayo and Molina are wearing blazers and shirts, without a tie, but they look elegant. Ulises, the Costeño, is dressed in a much simpler way than the two Cachaco characters, which affirms the traditional imagined view of Costeño people as untidy and Cachacos as elegant in their dress style. Second, there is the way that these different characters speak. Beyond the obvious and justified difference in their accents, there is an important detail. In the Spanish language, unlike in English, one can speak to another person from two verb conjugations, one of which is less formal than the other. The generalised idea has been established that in Bogotá and the Colombian Andes the formal conjugation predominates, while in the Caribbean coast it is the informal conjugation. This difference contributes further nuances to the cultural divisions between Costeños and Cachacos described above (Bernal Chávez & Díaz Romero, 2017; Orozco & Díaz-­ Campos, 2016). Chayo uses the formal conjugation to address Ulises, while the Costeño uses the informal way when talking to Chayo and the other characters, reaffirming that supposed cultural gap between Costeños and Cachacos. Similarly, when Ulises enters the room, Molina stretches out his hand to formally greet him, to which the Costeño responds by tapping him on the shoulder. Once again, Cachaco formalism is positioned against Costeño informality. To complement this idea, Ulises’s first sentence when he arrives is “as I live and breathe”, so he starts the conversation in a jocular tone. At the same time, Ulises says that he has arrived at the meeting with a hangover from the previous day and that he may even still be drunk. These exchanges provide further evidence of an overall attempt to construct and contrast the hedonistic and irresponsible Costeños, with the serious, well-mannered, and punctual Cachacos. As this key scene continues, Ulises sits on a sofa next to Doña K and more dialogue between the two groups follows: ULISES: DOÑA K: ULISES:

Well, did you bring the advance? First, let’s talk about the guarantees… Guarantees for what or what, my love? If you ask anyone from Valledupar about Ulises, they will tell you that I am a legal man, a serious person, a correct person. Now, with the info I bring to you, you may, or may not, make the move. However, I can’t guarantee it. Do you understand me?

13  EL ROBO DEL SIGLO/THE GREAT HEIST: PERPETUATING FALSE… 

285

Here, Ulises taps Doña K’s thigh, who looks at him with disapproval. The dialogue continues: DOÑA K: ULISES:

And what serious people do you work with? (talking to Chayo) Didn’t you come here to buy? I didn’t come here to fool around, little bro. Nor to waste my time talking to women.

At that moment, Chayo looks at Doña K asking her silently to hand over the money to Ulises. Doña K hands over the case and Ulises tells her: “Now we’re talking. In my house my wife is also the one with the cash. Well, I make the cash, but she’s the one who won’t let me spend it”. These comments raise one of the most ingrained and problematic concepts in the relationship between Costeños and Cachacos, which is the presumed cultural inferiority of the people from the coast in comparison to the people of the Andes in Colombia. When Ulises taps Doña K’s thigh, he is clearly overstepping the mark and making inappropriate physical contact with a person he has just met. The same thing happens verbally when he calls her “my love”, when insufficient familiarity has yet been established between the two, suggesting an attitude that clearly belittles women. This is reinforced when Ulises says that he did not attend the meeting to talk to women, in a clearly derogatory comment. This sexist attitude is underlined by Ulises’s statement when he explains that in his house, the person who handles the money is his wife and then clarifies that, despite this, the economic weight of the house is really carried by him since his wife simply controls the expenses. Here, attitudes of machismo and sexism are presented by Ulises, a Costeño character. These behaviours work to sustain those stereotypes of Costeños as inferior beings with lower levels of intelligence or refinement compared to Cachacos—ideas that can be sourced to the country’s era as a Spanish colony. Later, Ulises explains to the three characters details of the physical structure and security arrangements of the National Bank and ends by saying “it’s not easy, is it? Here many have tried to find a way, but no one has figured out how to do it. But I have faith in you”. Here again, the episode deploys and thus reinforces the idea of a supposed superiority for Cachacos over Costeños, thus cementing a dichotomy as essentially true that, as I have discussed, many commentators find too simplistic at best.

286 

J.-P. OSMAN

Conclusions The main objective of this chapter has been to examine the extent to which the historic and false dichotomy between Costeños and Cachacos continues to be perpetuated. As a Netflix commission, transnational coproduction, and a drama destined to travel and be consumed internationally, El Robo del Siglo occupies a pivotal position in terms of its construction and dissemination of inauthentic and problematic national cultural stereotypes to international as well as domestic audiences. My analysis of the Netflix limited serial, based on Geertz’s two main categories of moral and aesthetic elements and cognitive and existential aspects, allows the following conclusions to be drawn. The textual analysis of key conversations, moments, and aesthetic elements in its first episode reveals that El Robo del Siglo perpetuates and reinforces this false dichotomy between Costeños and Cachacos. In terms of Geertz’s (1973) category of moral and aesthetic (or ‘ethos’), this serial constructs a narrative in which the constructed ‘ethos’ operates to maintain the system and traditional dominance of inaccurate binaries between the two Colombian main cultural identities. This Netflix commissioned production promotes the erroneous division that has been generated between Costeños and Cachacos since colonial times, has been replicated by historians and which, despite academic efforts to challenge and counteract it, continues to be reproduced in the media and, consequently, in Colombian society, daily life and culture. Beyond the significant contributions of characterisations and dialogue, we can observe evidence in this regard in the costumes of the Cachaco characters that appear in this first episode in contrast with Ulises, who is the only Costeño that we see in this episode with narrative relevance. There is also the way in which Cachacos are seen to speak, which is more formal and less colloquial than the dialogue given to Costeños characters. But, above all, the most significant contrasts being drawn between Costeños and Cachacos imply that their values, lifestyles, and moralities are completely dichotomous. The effect is to represent the former as lazy, lascivious, and deceptive, with regressive and troublesome values, while continuing to perpetuate the idea that Cachacos are uniformly elegant, hardworking, and reserved. Regarding Geertz’s (1973) category of the cognitive and existential (or ‘world view’), we can conclude that El Robo del Siglo supports the representational duality and historic conflict between Costeños and Cachacos.

13  EL ROBO DEL SIGLO/THE GREAT HEIST: PERPETUATING FALSE… 

287

This production portrays Costeños as underdeveloped, culturally inferior, and having cognitive and problem-solving capacities compared to Cachacos, who, in contrast, are depicted as more cultured, educated, and intellectually acute in their understandings of the world. This narrative in El Robo del Siglo perpetuates the false dichotomy discussed at the beginning of the chapter, which replicates an assumed dual identity for Colombian people and sustains much the same cultural division between Costeños and Cachacos that has characterised the representation of Colombian history. El Robo del Siglo contributes to this problematic construction of national identity in Colombia from the regions, despite the historically divisive conflicts that this has been shown to generate, as Archila (1984) and Morales (1998) rightly point out. This kind of approach is even more problematic in the context of a TV drama serial that is based on real events. The misleading depictions of Costeños and Cachacos in this drama, are supposed to evoke real-life characters and situations. Yet to the extent that they are seen to dramatise actual events and their participants, these cultural misrepresentations may seem more authentic and truthful for viewers. This misrepresentation becomes even more troublesome in the context of a Colombian-produced drama that has been created for Netflix’s multinational subscribers. Here we can see a struggle between the local and the global (Govil et al., 2005); in this case, the consequence is to internationalise a false dichotomy in the national cultural identity of Colombia. In its representations of the relationship between Costeños and Cachacos, Netflix’s El Robo del Siglo does not deviate from the representational traditions of Colombian TV productions in any way that can challenge or begin to overturn these. Instead, El Robo del Siglo demonstrates the capacity not merely to replicate and maintain a tradition of representational bias, but also to harness multiplatform television’s newfound ability, especially through the activities of SVoD services, to allow this bias to reach a much larger multinational audience.

References Archila, M. (1984). Creamos: Cachacos violentos, costeños pachangosos. Boletín Cultural y Bibliográfico, 21(2), 112–113. Bernal Chávez, J., & Díaz Romero, C. (2017). Caracterización panorámica del español hablado en Colombia: Fonología y gramática. Cuadernos de Lingüística Hispánica, 29, 19–37.

288 

J.-P. OSMAN

Betancourt, A. (2008). Policromías de una Región. Procesos Históricos y Construcción del Pasado Local en el Eje Cafetero. Alma Mater-Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí. Chandler, D. (1994). Semiotics for Beginners. University of Wales. Coa, A. (2017). Concentración de la Propiedad y Contenidos de la Televisión Abierta Nacional de Colombia 1998–2015: Entre las Determinaciones del Rating y el Proyecto Educativo-Cultural, Masters Thesis, Flacso Ecuador. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10469/11386. Accessed 15 Feb 2023. Deleuze, G. (1983). Cinéma 1. L’image-mouvement. Les Éditions de Minuit. Diario El Universal Colombia. (2014). ¿Cree que la televisión colombiana representa a los costeños tal cual son? Available at: http://www.eluniversal.com.co/ sondeo/cree-­que-­la-­televisioncolombiana-­r epresenta-­los-­costenos-­tal-­cual-­ son-­120. Accessed 25 Nov 2022. Díaz, J. (2012). La telenovela que indigna a los costeños. El Tiempo, 1 December, 23. Dunleavy, T. (2020). Transnational co-production, multiplatform television and My Brilliant Friend. Critical Studies in Television, 15(4), 336–356. Eco, U. (1970). Articulations of the cinematic code. Cinemantics, 1(1), 590–605. García, H. (2008). Vivir con la televisión: 30 años de análisis de cultivo. Revista Anagramas, 7(13), 91–106. Garrido, M. (2007). Language attitude in Colombian Spanish: Cachacos vs. costeños. The Journal of the Students of the Ph.D.  Program in Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures. Available at: https://lljournal.commons.gc.cuny. edu/2007-­2-­garrido-­texto/. Accessed 25 Nov 2022. Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books. Govil, N., Maxwell, R., McMurria, J., & Miller, T. (2005). El Nuevo Hollywood. Del Imperialismo Cultural a las Leyes del Marketing. Paidós. Metz, C. (1974). Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. University of Chicago Press. Miller, M. (1987). Turn Up the Contrast. CBS Television Drama Since 1952. University of British Columbia Press. Morales, J. (1998). Mestizaje, malicia indígena y viveza en la construcción del carácter nacional. Revista de Estudios Sociales. Available at: https://www. redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=815/81511376006. Accessed 25 Nov 2022. Múnera, A. (2005). Fronteras Imaginadas: La Construcción de las Razas y de la Geografía en el Siglo XIX Colombiano. Planeta. Orozco, R., & Díaz-Campos, M. (2016). Dialectos del español de América: Colombia y Venezuela. In J.  Gutiérrez-Rexach (Ed.), Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica (Vol. 2, pp. 341–352). Routledge. Peláez, I. (2010). Los costeños, ¿son como los pintan? El País, 15 August, pp. 57. Posada, E. (1983). Introduction to a Modern History of the Caribbean Coast of Colombia (1904–1926) (Masters Thesis). University of Oxford.

13  EL ROBO DEL SIGLO/THE GREAT HEIST: PERPETUATING FALSE… 

289

Ruch, A. (2003). The uncertain old man whose real existence was the simplest of his enigmas. The Modern Word. Available at: http://www.themodernword. com/gabo/gabo_biography.html. Accessed 25 Nov 2022. Samper, J. (1861). Ensayo Sobre las Revoluciones Políticas y la Condición Social de las Repúblicas Colombianas. Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana. Talero, S. (2002). Imágenes y contraimágenes del caribe colombiano: La invención de los “otros” comprendida a través del proceso de configuración territorial hispánico. Cuadernos de Geografía, XI(1-2), 115–149. Vallenato, the History of an Entire Region. (2023). Available at: https://www. colombia.co/en/colombia-­c ountry/story-­v alledupar-­h ome-­v allenato/. Accessed 16 Feb 2022.

Index1

NUMBERS, AND SYMBOLS #IchBinHanna, 188–190, 198 ¡Ay, Carmela!, 266 13 Reasons Why, 169 A Aalbers, Lotte, 59 Abbiss, Will, 26, 27, 103 ABC, 20, 145, 169 ABC World News Tonight, 145 Abello, Alberto, 277 Abonjo, Xúlio, 176 Adaptation, 11, 25, 35–53, 83, 93, 166, 175, 180, 186, 193, 236, 241 Adlakha, Nidhi, 233 Adult Swim, 95 Aesthetic, 7–10, 12, 26, 39, 50, 69, 71, 102, 120, 125, 126, 144, 147, 148, 160, 165–167,

179–181, 194, 249, 251, 252, 261–264, 279, 282, 286 Afilipoaie, Adelaida, 3, 101, 170 Africa, 52, 257 Against the Ice, 68 Agger, Gunhilde, 59, 60 Ahrens, Petra, 186 Akass, Kim, 147, 148 Akınerdem, Feyza, 206 Akyuz, Gün, 2, 3, 13, 24 Albornoz, Luis, 172 Alderman, Naomi, 225 Alderson, Andrew, 112 Alexander, Olly, 129 Alexievich, Svetlana, 141, 156, 157 Alles auf Zucker!, 238 All3Media International, 16, 119, 122, 124, 125, 135, 136 Aloni, Michael, 234 Altaras, Aaron, 232 Altenstädter, Lara, 190

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Dunleavy, E. Weissmann (eds.), TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1

291

292 

INDEX

Altin, Josef, 157 Amable, Bruno, 210 Amazon Prime Video, 4, 8, 9, 16, 23–25, 36, 38, 40, 42, 49, 53, 98, 207, 212, 254 AMC, 10, 73 American Community Survey, 256 American Revolution, 266 Amit-Joseph, Tamar, 232 Anatolia, 203 Andem, Julie, 64 Andersen, Kim, 59 Anderson, Benedict, 151 Anderson, Gillian, 105 Andrea, 178 Andrew, Prince, 108–110 Angels in America, 121 Anglada, Ona, 27, 169 Anne with An E, 23, 125, 136 Anthology serial, 11 Anti-Semitic, 237, 239, 240 Antwerp, 228 Aran, Gideon, 229 Archila Neira, Mauricio, 274, 287 ARD, 186, 190, 192, 193 Argentina, 85, 177, 233 Armstrong-Jones, Antony, 112 Arrested Development, 73 Arte, 199 Asheri, Ronit, 232 Assmann, Jan, 151 Atiye/The Gift, 10, 28, 203–219 The Audience, 105 Australia, 20, 106, 230, 257, 266 Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC), 20, 145, 169 Auteur, 125, 126, 148, 150, 263 Author, 29, 58, 66, 67, 69, 70, 169, 172, 173, 185, 188, 195, 205, 225, 231, 239 See also Auteur; Authored drama; Authorship

Authored drama, 11, 27, 119, 120, 125–128, 135 Authorship, 125, 126, 128, 148 Autonomies, 235 Avi Chai Foundation (ACF), 235, 236 Aydemir, Şenay, 207 Ayoub, Phillip M., 186 Azemar, Laura, 169 B Baby Fever, 68 Babylon Berlin, 186 Bad Banks, 199 Bad Wolf, 16 Bahr, Amrei, 189 Baier, Jakob, 239 Bailey, Marion, 112 Baitelli, Pierre, 86 Bajaria, Bela, 1 Banana, 127, 136n1 Banet-Weiser, Sarah, 174 Banijay, 16 Barantini, Philip, 154 Barcelona, 169, 175, 176 Barenboim, Daniel, 239 Barenboim-Said Akademie, 239 Barker, Alex, 54n4, 230 Barker, Cory, 230 Barmack, Erik, 3 Barr, Kenny, 19, 44 Barra, Luca, 147, 149 Barrientos, Natàlia, 168 Bartels, Gunda, 196 Baughan, Nikki, 161n3 Baumel, Simeon D., 230 Bavaria Film GmbH, 191 BBC, 11–15, 17, 23, 29, 35–53, 102, 104, 114, 120, 122, 125, 126, 171, 192, 197, 249, 252–257, 260, 265, 267 BBC America, 171, 197

 INDEX 

BBC Studios (formerly BBC Worldwide), 16, 40 Bean, Sean, 262 Becker, Uwe, 240 Beckner, Laura, 232 Beinart, Peter, 234, 238 Belarus, 155, 158 Belgium, 230 Benedict, Ruth, 50 Benesch, Leonie, 196 Benvinguts a la família/Welcome to the Family, 171 Berger, Miriam, 235 Berlin, 29, 51, 191, 195, 198, 223, 224, 226, 231, 239, 242, 250, 255, 256 Berlusconi, Silvio, 52 Bernstein, Joseph, 237, 241 Bernstein, Salman, 235 Bernt Henriksen, Thomas, 67 Bernth, Piv, 58, 61, 65, 73, 75n7 Bertolucci, Bernardo, 52 Besalú Casademont, Reinald, 171, 172, 181 Beswick, Emma, 208 Betancourt Mendieta, Alexander, 276 Bhutto, Fatima, 204, 206, 207 Bienhaus, Peter, 59 Bilke, Nadine, 191 Billen, Andrew, 249, 258, 266 Binge viewing, 122 Biskind, Peter, 7 Blade Runner, 35, 37, 51, 52 Blázquez, Francisco Javier Cabrera, 41 Blume, Christine, 189 BluTV, 207, 219n2 Bnei Brak/Tel Aviv, 228 bo Odar, Baran, 195 Boadas, Natàlia, 169 Boca de Lixo, 26 Bock, Annekatrin, 190 Bodyguard, 41

293

Bogotá, 274, 276, 277, 280, 281, 284 Bolin, Göran, 103 The Bombardment, 68 Bond, Lucy, 161n1 Bondebjerg, Ib, 14, 19, 59, 230 Bonham Carter, Helena, 106 Bonner, Frances, 7 Borgen, 57–74 Borgen:The Power and the Glory, 26, 58, 62, 68, 72 Boukes, Mark, 59 Bourdieu, Pierre, 143, 148–151, 160 Bowes-Lyon, Katherine, 112, 115 Bowes-Lyon, Nerissa, 112 Bowker, Peter, 249, 250, 254, 258, 262 Boybaş, Şengül, 205 Boym, Svetlana, 210 Bramesco, Charles, 239 Bravo, 73 Brazil, 81–87, 89–91, 94–98, 99n3 Brenton, Howard, 37, 38, 54n1 Bridgerton, 192 A Bridge Too Far, 266 British Film Institute (BFI), 262 Broadcaster Audience Research Board (BARB), 122, 134 Broadcast television, 103, 105, 185, 190, 207 Broadcast TV drama, 206 Broad City, 233 Broen/Bron/The Bridge, 60, 171, 262 Brooke, Tom, 105 Brown, Eric, 46 Brown, Julia, 250 Brufau, Dèlia, 168 Brunsdon, Charlotte, 186 Brutal Media, 170, 171 Bruun, Hanne, 60 Brzeski, Patrick, 257 BskyB, 149 Buckingham Palace, 113

294 

INDEX

Buckley, Jessie, 156 Buenos Aires, 228 Buga Buga, 173 Buonanno, Milly, 178, 179 Busche, Andreas, 239 Buschow, Christopher, 191 Byelorussian Institute for Nuclear Energy, 155, 158 Byrne, Tom, 110 C Cable, 5, 6, 11, 36, 84, 149, 165, 253 Cachacos, 29, 274–287 Caldwell, John T., 60 Camero, Bella, 86 Campion, Jane, 37 Canada, 228, 230, 232 Canal+, 16, 192 Canal Sur, 173 Cappello, Maja, 41 Caracol, 276 Caribbean, 274–277, 281–284 Carlyle, David, 130 Carponen, Claire, 155 The Carrie Diaries, 169 Cartagena, 277 Carter, Cassie, 45, 46 Casado Del Río, Miguel Ángel, 171 Casanova, 127 Cascajosa, Concepción, 171, 178, 179 Casper, Michael, 229 Castelló, Enric, 175, 176, 179, 180 Castells, Manuel, 83 Castellví Roca, Albert, 172, 179 Castro, Deborah, 171, 178, 179 Caughie, John, 120, 125, 126 Cazés, Laura, 239 CBS, 73 CCMA, 170 Central America, 143 Chalaby, Jean, 144, 145 Chandler, Daniel, 280

Channel 1 (Israel), 231 Channel 2 (Israel), 235, 236 Channel 4 (UK), 13, 15, 17, 27, 94, 119–122, 124, 125, 127, 134, 135, 176 Channel 5 (UK), 13, 120 Chapman, Stephen, 257 Charles, Prince, 106, 109, 110, 113, 114 Chernobyl, 27, 141–160 Chernobyl Prayer, 156 The Chestnut Man, 64, 68 Chichon, Jagon P., 109 Children’s Hospital, 95 Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, 169 Chosen, 68 Christensen, Claus, 75n7 Churchill, Winston, 37, 258 CIMA, 168 Cinematic, 7, 176, 249 Clancy, Laura, 108 Clotet, Marc, 168 The Club, 219 Clúster Audiovisual de Catalunya, 170 Coa, Ana, 276 Cocca, Romina, 177 Coel, Michaela, 125, 126 Co-financing, 2, 21, 43, 57, 64, 67, 68, 73, 74, 122, 124, 170 Cohen, Yoel, 241 Coixet, Isabel, 173 Cold War, 267 Collective memory, 141, 144, 151 Collins, Richard, 145 Colman, Olivia, 102 Cologne, 191 Commissioning, 2–5, 8, 9, 11–19, 24–27, 29, 39–41, 44, 52, 54n3, 57, 64, 68, 74, 82, 101, 102, 104, 114, 119–124, 135, 136, 150, 167, 170–172, 191, 198, 205, 274 Commissioning hubs, 4

 INDEX 

Commonwealth, 106, 107 The Communications Act 2003, 41, 122 Complex serial, 10, 147, 209 Complex storytelling, 7 The Conformist, 52 Conglomerated niche, 7, 103, 104, 114 Conlan, Tara, 255 Consell Audiovisual de Catalunya, 181 Conspicuous localism, 2, 23, 69, 94, 95, 251, 252, 260–264 Conspiração Filmes, 81, 84, 97 Constantin Film, 191 Conversations with Friends, 41 Cook, John, 125 Cooper-Chen, Anne, 113 Copenhagen Cowboy, 68 Corrin, Emma, 106, 112 Cosmopolitan international audience, 2, 24, 94, 151, 251, 252, 261, 265 Costeños, 29, 274–287 Cost-plus financing, 17–19, 123 Counterflow, 60, 62–74 The Court, 235 COVID-19, 67, 106, 233 Creative collaboration, 19, 21 Crenshaw, Kimberle, 174 Cross-platform coproduction, 23, 26, 27, 41, 44, 119–136 The Crown, 8, 10, 26, 27, 45, 101–115, 123, 266 Crownshaw, Rick, 142 Cuban missile crisis, 51 Cucumber, 122, 127, 136n1 Cultural authenticity, 2, 53, 173 Cultural Committee (Denmark), 59, 62–66, 68, 69 Cultural diversification (of high-end drama), 1–29 Cultural heterogenization, 166, 168

295

Cultural homogenization, 166, 168 Cultural identity, 2, 18, 25, 84, 98, 125, 178, 204, 218, 279, 280, 286, 287 Cultural imperialism, 105 Cultural specificity, 2, 3, 11, 18, 20–22, 24–27, 29, 83, 98, 119–136, 166–168, 170, 173, 181, 193, 205, 249–265, 273, 274 Curb Your Enthusiasm, 233 Currin, Elizabeth, 109 Curtis, Nathaniel, 133 The CW, 73, 169 D Dahmer, 72 Daly, Paul, 111 Dancing on the Edge, 126 Dangerous Moonlight, 259, 267 Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR), 11, 26, 57–69, 71–74, 74n2, 74n3, 75n4, 75n5, 75n6, 75n7, 262 The Danish People’s Party, 62 Daqqa, Hanan, 131 Dardashti, Galeet, 235 Dark, 4, 10, 22, 166, 193, 195, 212 Darroch, Jeremy, 151 Davies, Kate, 113 Davies, Russell T., 119–122, 124, 126–128, 130–133, 135, 136n1 Davis, Charles H., 44 De Cesari, Chiara, 144 Deasy, Frank, 37 Defiance, 266n10 Deficit financing, 16–18, 123 DeFino, Dean J., 148 Degn, Hans-Peter, 57 Delaney, Helen, 210, 211 Deleuze, Gilles, 280

296 

INDEX

Delocalization, 22, 125, 136 Deloitte, 206 Dencik, David, 145 Denmark, 4, 60–62, 67–69, 72, 75n7 Deogracias Horrillo, Marijo, 181 Dergacheva, Daria, 168 Derry Girls, 94 Destino, 85 Deutsch, Nathaniel, 229 Deutsche-Isrealische Gesellschaft (DIG), 240 Deutsche Presseagentur (DPA), 238 Deutscher Bundestag, 188 Deutschland 83, 187, 232 Diana, Lady Spencer, 106, 112–115 Diario El Universal Columbia, 277 Dias de Navidad/Three Days of Christmas, 195 Díaz-Campos, Manuel, 284 Díaz M., Juan Carlos, 277 Dick, Philip K., 35–53 Diehl, Sarah, 188, 196 Die Kaiserin/The Empress, 192 Die Welt, 239 Direct commissioning, 22, 23, 43, 44, 193, 205, 278 Dirnagl, Ulrich, 189 Discovery, 69, 112, 197, 217 Disney+, 4, 9, 14, 16, 24, 82, 98, 207 Disobedience, 225 Dix Pour-Cent/ Call My Agent, 54n6 Dizi, 206, 207 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 35 Dobra, Carina, 240 Dobrovolskiy, Mikhail, 204, 210 Dobson, Nichola, 179 Doctor Mengele, 46, 51 Doctor Who, 127 Dödtmann, Eik, 28, 29, 223, 228 Donders, Karen, 165 Dooley, Shaun, 130

Doron, Dina, 232 Douglas, Mary, 229 Douglas, Omari, 129 Dowden, Oliver, 106 Downton Abbey, 171, 252, 253, 262 Doyle, Gillian, 5, 8, 12, 15–19, 36, 40, 41, 44, 135, 250, 254, 256 Dramedy, 11, 12, 85 Drissi, Yasmina, 168 Dunkirk, 250 Dunleavy, Trisha, 5–7, 9, 10, 21–23, 27, 40, 43, 44, 54n5, 57, 58, 89–91, 119, 124, 126, 135, 147, 166, 173, 179, 193, 209, 250–252, 260, 278 Dünyanın Uyanışı/The Awakening of the World, 205 Dyab, Aziz, 232 Dynamo, 278 E Eaton, Rebecca, 253, 254, 266 Eco, Umberto, 280 Edgerton, Gary, 5, 6 Edward VIII, 109 Eggebeen, Rachel, 231, 232 Eichhorn, Kristin, 189 Eichner, Susanne, 191 Eleven Films, 45 Elisa I Marcela, 173 Elite, 4 Elizabeth II, Queen, 10, 102 Elleström, Lars, 93 Ellis, John, 6 Elon, Ori, 234 El Robo del Siglo/The Great Heist, 29, 273–287 El Universal, 277 Elves, 68 Emery, Trudie, 112 Emily in Paris, 12

 INDEX 

Emms, Adam, 153 Emmy Award, 150 Endelman, Todd, 225 The End of the F***ing World, 166 Enhedslisten, 62 Epps, Brad, 176 Epstein, Jeffrey, 108 Epstein, Michael, 5, 6 Equinox, 68 Erll, Astrid, 142, 157, 159 Ery, 178 Esser, Andrea, 20, 23 Estonia, 155 Ethos, 219 European Audiovisual Media Services Directive, 41, 181 European Audiovisual Observatory, 13, 253 European Union (EU), 18, 19, 41, 111, 187, 253, 255, 260, 265 European Union of Jewish Students, 231, 232 Evens, Tom, 165 Ewing, Heidi, 225 Exodus: A Memoir, 226 Exportability, 21, 23 Exxen, 207 Eyssen, Katharina, 192, 195 Eyüboğlu, Ali, 205 F Fagan, Michael, 105, 107 The Family Stone, 196 Faroe Islands, 71 Fatma, 219 Fdp/‘Sons of Bitch,’ 85 Featherstone, Jane, 150 Feldman, Deborah, 29, 224, 226, 230, 231, 237, 238, 241 Fennell, Emerald, 109 Ferree, Myra Marx, 186–187, 189, 196

297

Ferrera, Daniel, 174 Feuer, Jane, 148 Fienberg, Daniel, 233 Filhos do Carnaval/Carnival Sons, 85 Filmin, 181 Finn, Adam, 23 Fire Dance, 235 Firmino, Leandro, 86 Fiske, John, 91 Fleabag, 12 Foldager, Meta Louise, 59 Fomm, Joana, 86 Fontaine, Gilles, 13, 253 Fontán Laia, 168 Forbrydelsen/The Killing, 11, 60, 73, 262 Forchtner, Bernhard, 59 Forward, 82, 129, 209, 241, 250, 259 Fox, 73, 87 Foy, Claire, 107 France, 22, 42, 177, 180, 256, 266 Franklin, Michael, 38, 40, 54n2 Fraser, Nancy, 146 Frateschi, André, 86 Fregnan, Rodrigo, 86 Freixas, Pau, 195 Fremantle, 16, 37, 38 Friedman, Harvey, 232 Fries, Liv Lisa, 186 Friks, Charles, 86 From, Unni, 59 G Gabold, Ingolf, 61, 75n5 Gabrielsen, Gorm, 59 Galdino, Juliana, 86 Gallagher, Margaret, 174 Game of Thrones, 8, 123 García Álverez, Hugo, 277 García-Leiva, Maria Trinidad, 172, 173, 181

298 

INDEX

Garib, Adriano, 85 Garrido, Marisol, 276 Garvie, Wayne, 256 Gaumont Group, 44 Gdańsk, 259 Geertz, Clifford, 279, 280, 286 Georgiou, Myria, 255, 256 Geraghty, Christine, 132, 186 Germany, 22, 29, 35, 49, 51, 186–193, 195–198, 225, 231, 232, 236–240, 256, 263, 266 Gessen, Marsha, 155 Al-Ghazzi, Omar, 206 Giddens, Anthony, 144 Giese, Oscar Dyekjær, 154 Gilmore Girls, 73 Girls, 11, 165 Gjelsvik, Anne, 185 Glickman, Dov, 234 Globo, 90, 98 Göbeklitepe, 209, 215 Godfrey, Chris, 133, 134 The Goldbergs, 233 Golden Globe, 150, 233 Goldsmith, Jill, 253, 254 González de Garay Domínguez, Beatriz, 175 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 144, 145, 160 Gordon, Diane, 250 Gorton, Kristyn, 185 Govil, Nitin, 287 Grady, Rachel, 225 Graff, Andreas, 211 Grand Army, 169 Grasten, Regnar, 75n7 Great Britain, 230, 255, 258, 267 The Great Escape, 266 The Great War, 102 The Great War, WWII, 25, 49, 158, 193, 227, 251, 254, 255, 257–259, 263, 264 Greenland, 69–72 Griffiths, Ian, 256

Groß, Martin, 187 Grønlund, Anders, 59 Grown-ish, 169 Grünenberg, Reginald, 231 The Guardian, 106, 256 Guerrin, Stéphanie, 233 Guimerà i Orts, Josep Ángel, 171 Gunning, Tom, 58, 72 Guyonnet, Francois, 2, 13 H Haart, Julia, 226, 237 Haas, Shira, 29, 223, 231–233 Hadad, Chen, 236 Hagedorn, Roger, 9 Hale, Mike, 265 Hallam, Julia, 185 Halle, 240 Halskov, Andreas, 64 Hamburg, 191 Hammerich, Camilla, 59, 61, 70 Hammerman, Shaina, 225 The Handmaid’s Tale, 10 Hansen, Kim Toft, 69 Haredi TV series, 233–236 Harfouch, Corinna, 193 Harris, Chad E., 109 Harris, Jared, 142 Harry, Prince, 108–110 Harvey, William S., 232 Hassink, Robert, 36 Hauer-King, Jonah, 250 Havas, Julia, 12 Havens, Timothy, 2, 23, 24, 69, 94, 251, 252, 261, 265 Hawes, Keeley, 130 Haynes, Suyin, 121, 132 Hazelton, John, 11, 124 HBO, 4, 8–11, 16, 23, 25, 27, 81–98, 119–126, 135, 141–160, 169, 176, 185, 197, 236 HBO Brazil, 26, 84

 INDEX 

HBO Latin America, 81, 84–86, 89, 97 HBO Max, 4, 9, 16, 24, 25, 82, 124, 135, 149 Headline pictures, 36–38, 44, 49, 53 Helgaker, Jon Iver, 64 Helles, Rasmus, 230 Hendrickson, Pauline, 112 Hernandez, Pablo, 177 Hernández-Prieto, Marina, 172, 173, 181 Hetsroni, Amir, 241 Higginbotham, Adam, 152 Higgins, John, 16 High-end drama, 1–29, 40, 45, 89, 98, 119, 122–124, 126, 135, 136, 149, 167, 168, 171, 173, 179, 180, 193, 197, 199, 205, 224, 230, 235, 250, 251, 253, 254, 256, 261, 264–266, 273 Higson, Andrew, 262 Hill, Polly, 37 Hills, Matt, 102, 103, 147, 230 Hilmes, Michele, 5, 21, 26, 144, 167, 250, 253, 266 Hitler, Adolf, 51 Hobsbawm, Eric, 99n3 Hochscherf, Tobias, 59 Hoffman, Dustin, 37 Hoffman, Yair, 237 Höijer, Birgitta, 103, 114 Holland, Cindy, 64 Holocaust, 224, 225, 227–229, 239 Holodomor, 157 Hood, Robin, 99n3 Hoomin Lviv Municipal Choir, 159 Hoover, J. Edgar, 46 Hoppe, Beth, 252 Hopper, Edward, 52 Hoskins, Colin, 23 HOT3, 235, 236

299

Howells Callum, 129 How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast), 193 Hull, Luke, 155 Hulu, 10, 11, 41, 48, 122, 171 Hulverscheidt, Claus, 238, 239 Hungary, 228 Hunt, Helen, 255 I IB3, 181 ̇ Içduygu, Ahmet, 210 Iceland, 71 Ich bin Sophie Scholl/ I am Sophie Scholl, 193 Ida, 267 IDTV, see Internet-distributed television Ignatenko, Lyudmilla, 156 Ikeda, Flavia Suzue de Mesquita, 84 Ildır, Aslı, 205, 207, 208 I May Destroy You, 11, 126 Imre, Aniko, 148 Independent producers, 4, 13, 14, 36, 37, 41, 53, 54n3, 181 Independent production company (indie), 15, 18, 36, 44, 45, 49, 90, 172, 173, 278 India, 4, 233 Indursky, Yehonatan, 234 Instagram, 172 International Atomic Energy Agency, 142 International coproduction, 5, 19–23, 125, 136, 166, 231 Internet-distributed television (IDTV), 5–7, 18, 19, 22, 24, 102, 122, 134 Iordache, Catalina, 170, 172 Ireland, 149 Iron Dome, 235 Isle of Wright, 129, 131, 134

300 

INDEX

Israel, 227–230, 232–236, 238–240, 242 It’s a Sin, 11, 23, 27, 119–136, 176 ITV, 13, 15, 17, 41, 120, 171, 252, 254 ITV Studios, 16 J Jacobi, Derek, 109 Jacobsen, Ushma Chauhan, 59–61 Jameson, Frederic, 148 Jancovich, Mark, 147 Jandura, Olaf, 59 Janmohamed, Shelina, 206 Japan, 35, 47, 49, 50 Jaramillo, Deborah, 7 Jazzwoman, 178 Jenkins, Simon, 106, 107 Jenkins, Tilda, 196 Jenner, Mareike, 5, 6, 101, 147, 167, 168, 175, 180, 208, 230 Jennings, Peter, 145, 146 Jensen, Pia Majbritt, 59–61 Jermyn, Deborah, 185 Jerusalem, 228, 234, 240 Jew in the City, 237 Jiménez Pumares, Marta, 253 Joanes, Julie, 237 Johannesburg, 228 Johnson, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel, 111 Johnson, Beth, 185 Josephs, Allison, 237 Jüdische Allgemeine, 239 Jung, Svenja, 194 K Kadioğlu, Ayşe, 209, 216 Kamm, Henning, 231, 232 Kammerspiel, 194

Kanał/The Canal, 263 KAN11, 231, 235 Karolinski, Alexa, 226, 230–232, 237, 238, 241 Karppinen, Kari, 63 Kasperavičius, Karolis, 153 Katla, 94 Katz, Ian, 121 Kennedy, Rosanne, 142, 152 Kerger, Paula, 256 Kerrigan, Páraic, 109 Keshet12, 236 KGB, 152, 158 Kilborn, Richard, 179 Kilian, Julia, 195 Killing Eve, 171, 197 Kiryas Joel, 228 Kitzinger, Jenny, 113 Klaerding, Claudia, 36 Klammer, Ute, 190 Knoblauch, Hubert, 211 Knoll, Katharina, 187 Knox, Simone, 265 Kohl, Nadine, 124 Kohnen, Melanie ES, 210 Kolbe, Wiebke, 195 Komorowski, Marlen, 191 Kompare, Derek, 147 Konrad Jensen, Ib, 67, 68, 73 Kosciuszko, Thaddeuss, 266 Kostin, Igor, 155 Kot, Tomasz, 259 KPMG and Struensee & Co., 74n3 Kraglund, Rikke Andersen, 59 Kraidy, Marwan, 206 Krauß, Florian, 187, 190–192 Krauss, Cornelia, 187 Kremlin, 145 Kristensen, Tore, 59 Kroager, Stinne Gunder Strøm, 57 Krupa, Jakub, 256 Kubon, Sebastian, 189

 INDEX 

Kudos, 16, 150 Kudrjawizki, Lenn, 232 Kuipers, Giselinde, 194, 195 L La Casa de Papel/ Money Heist, 1, 166, 173 L’Amica Geniale/ My Brilliant Friend, 4, 23, 125, 136, 197 Landsberg, Alison, 154 Lang, Sabine, 186 Lang, Volker, 187 La Pastina, A. C., 175 La Plante, Lynda, 185 Latin America, 85, 97, 124, 233 Latvia, 155 Laube, Jochen, 192 Lawes, Ruth, 1, 3 Left Bank Pictures, 16, 45 Legasov, Valery Alekseyevich, 142, 145, 156, 158–160, 161n2 Les de l’Hoquei/ The Hockey Girls, 12, 27, 165–181 Levine, Elana, 126–128, 147, 148 Li, Shirley, 48 Lidegaard, Martin, 69 Lilyhammer, 64 Limited serial, 9–11, 27–29, 45, 90, 119–122, 126, 127, 142, 176, 192, 223, 226, 236, 238, 273, 278, 282, 286 Lindberg, Kristian, 66 Linear schedule, 6 Ling, Thomas, 264 Lisbon, 176 Lithuania, 155 Little Fires Everywhere, 48 Littleton, Cynthia, 8, 62, 123 Lobato, Ramon, 39, 101, 102, 147, 172, 230 Lobb, Adrian, 262

301

Local Government Act, 1988, 133 Localization, 205, 207 London, 38, 40, 119, 124, 129–132, 134, 228, 258 Londonderry, 94 Longman, Chia, 211 Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, 8, 123 Los Angeles, 95, 226, 232 Lost in Space, 73 Lotz, Amanda, 4, 6, 7, 17, 69, 83, 102, 103, 114, 123, 147, 230 Loving Adults, 68 Loving, Cecilia, 256 L’ultima nit del karaoke/The Last Night of the Karaoke, 173 Lupin, 1, 3, 22, 166 Lusvarghi, L., 89 Lygo, Kevin, 41 Lyons, James, 147 M Mackinnon, Stewart, 35–40, 42–44, 46–48, 51 Maclean’s, 112 Mad Men, 10 Madrid, 170, 173 Magnifica 70, 26, 81–98 Maitlis, Emily, 108 Mammoth Screen, 252, 256 Manchester, 128, 129, 134, 228, 250, 252, 255, 256, 262, 263 Mandelbaum, Daniel, 232 Mandrake, 84 The Man in the High Castle, 4, 25, 35–53 Manville, Lesley, 262 Marcos Ramos, María, 175 Margalit, Avishai, 154 Margaret, Princess, 106, 109, 112 Marie Antoinette, 192

302 

INDEX

Marienlund, Henriette, 66 Martínez-Jiménez, Laura, 174 The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, 234 Mary, Queen, 109 Mason, Lee, 121 Masterpiece, 252–254, 256, 265, 266 Maubach, Fabian, 192 Maupin, Armistead, 131 Maxwell, Richard, 287 Mayer, Delia, 232 Mayr, Felix, 232 Mazin, Craig, 150, 156, 157 McCabe, Janet, 27, 59, 147, 148 McCracken, Grant, 166 McDonald, Kevin, 230 McElroy, Ruth, 13, 14, 18, 102, 120, 121, 172, 180 McFadyen, Stuart, 23 McMeekin, Douggie, 153 McMurria, John, 287 McPake, Alana, 106 Medd, James, 263, 264 Media Agreement 2019-23, 62, 66, 67, 73 Médici, Emílio Garrastazu, 95 Mega-indies, 15, 16, 18 Meghan Markle, 108, 109 Mejdahl, Christian, 58 Mejlhede, Jakob, 65 Melbourne, 228 Mellor, Kay, 185 Mellor, Louise, 42, 47, 50–52 Melo, Luís Alberto Rocha, 88 Mendonça, Maria Luiza, 86 Merkel, Angela, 186, 188, 240 Merlí/Merlin, 170, 171, 180 Meschugge, 238 Metz, Christian, 280 Meyers, Michelle, 166 Michael, Sonya, 237 Middle East, 204, 206, 209, 227 Middleton, Richard, 149, 257

The Mighty Mint, 150 Miguel de Bustos, Juan Carlos, 171 Mikos, Lothar, 190, 191, 193 Military Coup, 96 Miller, Liz Shannon, 128, 132 Miller, Mary Jane, 277 Miller, Toby, 287 Mills, Brett, 185 Milton, Josh, 121, 122 Miniseries, 10, 90, 142, 143, 149, 150, 152, 154, 158–160, 226, 235 Minsk, 155, 158 Mise-en-scène, 7, 24, 25, 83, 88, 89, 91, 145, 159, 167, 259, 260 Mitchell, Wendy, 231, 232 Mitric, Petar, 181 Mittell, Jason, 10, 147, 165 Moebius, 173 Moe, Hallvard, 63 Mogensen, Joy, 59, 62, 63, 65–68 Monroe, 228 Montevideo, 85 Moore, Charles, 111 Moore, Neil, 60 Morales, Jorges, 275, 287 Moran, Albert, 20, 23 Moreno, Melo, 177 Morgan, Peter, 105 Morley, David, 50, 51 Morocco, 177 Mosbacher, Georgette, 257 Moscow, 142, 155, 156, 158, 228 Mosley, Oswald, 262 Mossig, Ivo, 191 Movistar+, 175, 179 Multichannel TV/era, 5, 6, 16 Multi-directional memory, 152 Multinational commissioning, 4 Multinational SVoDs, 4, 8, 9, 14, 16, 23, 25, 26, 36, 40, 44, 49, 83, 121, 172, 173, 181, 251, 274, 278, 279

 INDEX 

Multiplatform television/ era, 3–9, 12–14, 17, 19–25, 49, 58, 83, 123, 124, 126, 136, 165, 173, 193, 227, 251, 256, 260, 261, 265, 287 Multi-season serial, 9, 29, 45, 249 Mulvey, Laura, 147, 225 Múnera, Alfonso, 275 Munic, Shmuel, 236 Munich, 191, 195, 198 Murdoch, Elisabeth, 150 Murdoch, Rupert, 144 Musso, Pierre, 54n8 My Unorthodox Life, 226, 237 N Nadcon Film, 252 Nagaitis, Adam, 153 The Name of the Rose, 166 National Television Award, 150 Naturalism, 89–91 NBCUniversal, 16 Neira, Elena, 166 Nelson, Robin, 7, 125, 147 Neoliberal, 174, 204, 205, 210, 211, 214, 218 Neoliberalism, 210, 214, 218 See also Neoliberal Nercessian, Stephan, 86 Netflix, 1–4, 7–10, 12, 14–17, 22–29, 39, 41, 42, 45, 54n4, 54n6, 57–74, 82, 94, 98, 101–105, 108, 113–115, 120, 123, 125, 165, 186, 190–193, 195, 197, 199, 203, 205, 207–209, 212, 218, 223–242, 254, 266, 273, 274, 278–279, 286, 287 The Netherlands, 232 Neumeister, Emilie, 194 The New Black, 235

303

Newman, Michael Z., 126–128, 147, 148 Newsnight, 108, 110 New York, 29, 48, 121, 224, 225, 228, 231, 237, 239 New Zealand, 106, 257 Ng, Celeste, 48 Nicholls, Juan, 27, 120, 133 Nielsen, Jacob Isak, 26, 57, 58, 60, 61, 64, 65, 68–72, 74, 74n2, 74n3, 172, 180 Nissen, Christian S., 63, 67 Nitsch, Cordula, 59 Noakes, Lucy, 254, 257 Non-English language drama, 1, 3, 13 Noonan, Caitriona, 13, 14, 18, 102, 120, 121, 172, 180, 210, 211, 214 Nora, Pierre, 158 Nordic12, 68, 69, 71 Nørgaard, Thomas, 58, 59 The Normal Heart, 121 Normal People, 11, 41, 122, 171 Norsemen, 64 NRK, 64, 191 Nugent, Annabel, 107 Nüsse, Barbara, 193 O The OA, 212 O’Donnell, Hugh, 179 Ofcom, 13, 14, 18 Office for National Statistics, 255 Off the derekh, 225, 226, 236, 241 Ofir Award, 236 O Hipnotizador/ El Hipnotisador/ The Hypnotist, 85 Olsen, Rømer, 75n7 O’Neill, Con, 155 One of Us, 225, 226

304 

INDEX

The Orchestra, 68 ORF, 192 Orientalism, 45, 47, 51 Oriol, Mireia, 168 Orozco, Rafael, 284 Ortega, Asia, 168 Oussekine, 4 Overarching story, 10, 12, 43, 122, 126, 209 Owen, Rob, 3 P PACT, 54n3 Pagh-Schlegel, Peter, 66 Paid TV law 20122, 84 Palau-solità I Plegamans, 175 Papandrea, Franco, 44 Paramount, 16, 87 Parfitt, Orlando, 120, 121 Parfum/Perfume, 199 Paris, 250, 255, 256 Park, Jin Kyu, 204, 211 Park, Sora, 44 Paterson, Richard, 8, 15, 16, 19, 25, 36, 40, 41, 44, 49, 54n3 Pattinson, Juliette, 254, 257 Paul, Christiane, 196 Pawlikowski, Pawel, 267 Pay television, 147 Peaky Blinders, 267 Pearson, Roberta, 8, 9, 15, 102, 104, 105, 121, 123, 151 Peláez, Isabel, 277 Peleg, Yaron, 234, 235 Pereio, Paulo Cesar, 86 Pérez Pereiro, Marta, 181 Petrova-Stoyanov, Ralitza, 190 Philadelphia, 228 Philip, Prince, 107 Philipsen, Heidi, 59

Pianista/The Pianist, 263 Picard, Robert G., 44 ̇ Pinto, Izzet, 206 Pinto, J, 18 Plepler, Richard, 151 Plokhy, Serhii, 152 Plunkett, John, 166, 254 Poland, 250–252, 255, 257, 258, 260, 261, 265, 267 Polański, Roman, 263 Poliakoff, Stephen, 125, 126 Pollmann, Inga, 194 Polseres Vermelles/Red Band Society, 170 Pompeu Fabra University, 169 Poniewozik, James, 233 Portillo Delgado, Carla, 175 Portman, Natalie, 233 Portugal, Portuguese, 85, 92, 99n2, 177 Posada Carbo, Eduardo, 275 Posener, Alan, 239 Possamai, Adam, 204, 210, 211, 218 Possamai-Inesedy, Alphia, 211 Potter, Dennis, 125, 126 Potter, Hilary, 186 Power, Lisa, 130 Prague, 263 Pramaggiore, Maria, 109 Prat, Maria, 168 Premium television fiction, 147 Pre-sales agreement/finance, 18, 123, 124, 135, 170, 171 Price, Adam, 59, 60, 63–65, 68–74, 75n4 Pripyat, 144, 145, 152, 155, 156 ProSieben, 190 The Protector, 208 Public broadcasting service (PBS), 29, 40, 171, 173, 249, 252–254, 256–258

 INDEX 

Public service broadcasting (PSB), 2, 8, 11, 13–15, 17, 18, 20, 24, 26, 73, 102, 121, 122, 125, 136, 254 Public service obligations, 13, 65 Pulaski, Casimir, 266 À Punt, 181 Q Quality TV drama, 28 Quartet, 37 The Queen Mother, 112 Queer as Folk, 122, 127, 128 Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, 73 Quintana-Fernández, Borja, 171, 174 R Raats, Tim, 170 Radski, Natasha, 145 Ragnarok, 4 Rahav, Amit, 232 Rahe, Vanessa, 191 RAI, 197 The Rain, 4, 68 Rajewsky, Irina, 93 Ramos, Dino-Ray, 233 Rank, Christian, 58 Rappas, Ipek A Celik, 205 Rapson, Jessica, 161n1 Rawlins, Adriann, 158 Rawlinson, Kevin, 110 Raymond James Financial Inc., 252 RCN, 276 Read, Jason, 210 Real Film Berlin GmbH, 231 Realism, 89–91, 98, 167, 252, 261, 262, 264 Red Production Company, 15, 119, 127 Redvall, Eva Novrup, 58, 59 Reeves, Jimmie L., 5, 6

Reich, Nadia Kløvedal, 74n3 Reid, Alex, 232 Reilly, Kevin, 124 Rentschler, Eric, 261, 263, 264 Reschet13, 236 Richeri, Guiseppe, 52 Riefenstahl, Leni, 51 Riera, Clàudia, 168 Riget, 57, 58, 74n1 Rigney, Ann, 144 Rio de Janeiro, 84, 85, 95 Rise of Empires: Ottoman, 219 Rita III-V, 68 Ritter, Paul, 152 Riverdale, 169 RKO, 87 Robertson, Roland, 84, 166 Robins, Kevin, 50, 51 Robinson, James, 149 Rogers, Mark C., 5, 6 The Romans in Britain, 37 Rønn, Maria Rørbye, 58, 68 Roof, Wade Clark, 211 Rose, Lacey, 64 Rose, Sonya, 257 Rosen, Eli, 231, 232 Rosendahl, Christina, 75n7 Rothberg, Michael, 152 RTL, 187, 232 Ruch, Allen, 276 Russia, 155 Ryan, Maureen, 8, 123 Rydzewska, Joanna, 29, 252 S Sacred Games, 4 Said, Edward, 51, 239 Salvà, Nando, 173 Salvador, 85 Samper Agudela, José Maria, 275 Samper, Baltasar Breki, 154

305

306 

INDEX

SAM Productions, 26, 58, 59, 63, 64, 68, 69 Sánchez-Juliao, David, 277 Sanchís, Vincent, 172 Sandler, Gera, 232 Santo, Avi, 148 São Paulo, 82, 84–87, 95 The Sarah Jane Adventures, 127 Sarıkaya, Kübra, 205 Sarpong, June, 255 Satellite, 5, 6, 144, 146, 149, 165 Sattar, Safinaz, 232 Satu Mare, 228 Saudi Arabia, 233 Sayeau, Ashley, 185 Scaglioni, Massimo, 147, 149 Scarlata, Alexa, 172 Schicke-Schäfer, Ramona, 187 Schindler’s List, 263 Schlesinger, Philip, 49 Schlütz, Daniela, 191 Schmitt, Christian, 188 Scholl, Sophie, 193 Schrader, Maria, 187, 232, 233 Schröder, Marco, 189 Schubart, Rikke, 185 Schultze, Thomas, 192, 195 Schwarzwaldklinik/ Black Forest Clinic, 43 Schweizerhof, Barbara, 234 Scott, Darren, 121, 122 Scott, Ridley, 35, 37, 40, 51 Second World War (WWII), 25, 49, 193, 227, 251, 254, 255, 257–259, 263, 264 See also The Great War, WWII Secos e Molhados, 97 Section 28, 133, 134 Seinfeld, 233 Selvas, David, 176 Sepinwall, Alan, 148 Serwis Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, 266

Seth, Radhika, 233 Sex and the City, 11 Sex Education, 12, 22, 45, 166 Sharpe, Kenan Behzat, 207 Sharp Objects, 11, 122 Shcherbina, Boris, 145, 159, 160 Shiloni, Smadar, 236 Shindler, Nicola, 119, 121, 124, 127, 128, 130, 136, 136n1 Shine International, 124 Shtisel, 231, 234–238, 241 Simpson, Jay, 153 Sinclair, John, 83, 144–146 The Singing Detective, 126 Si no t’hagués conegut/If I Hadn’t Met You, 171 Sirman, Nükhet, 206 Sister Pictures, 150 SKAM/SHAME, 191 Skam Spain, 175 Skarsgård, Stellan, 145 Sky Atlantic, 27, 149 Sky Studios, 16 Sleepless, 195 Small Axe, 23, 41, 125, 136 Smith, Adam, 264 Smith, Brian J., 255 Smith, Jeffrey A., 46, 51, 241 Smith-Rowsey, Daniel, 230 Sommerhaus Film, 192 Søndergaard, Henrik, 230 Søndergaard, Søren, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69 Soner, B. Ali, 210 Sony Pictures Television, 16 Sophus Lai, Singe, 230 The Sopranos, 10 Sørenson, Birgitte Hjort, 58 South Africa, 106, 108, 143 South America, 143, 204, 206 See also Latin America

 INDEX 

Soviet Union, 141, 144, 145, 155, 160 Spain, 4, 167, 169, 170, 173–181, 266 Sparre, Kirsten, 59 Spiegel, 190 Spielberg, Stephen, 263 Spiritualism, 204, 210–212, 214, 219 Spitzer, Eli, 237 Spoladore, Simone, 85 Spooks, 37 Spotnitz, Frank, 38, 40, 42, 43, 46, 47, 49–52 Squid Game, 1, 3, 22, 72, 166 SRF, 192 Stachura, Peter D., 258, 266 Stalin, Joseph, 157, 258, 264 Star, 50, 54n2, 58, 88, 233 Steemers, Jeanette, 13, 18–20, 105, 114, 122, 124, 253 Stensgaard, Jørgen, 67 Stephenson, Ben, 37 Stern, Mark, 38 Stock, Moritz, 191 Stokes, Peter, 60 Stolow, Jeremy, 227, 228 Straubhaar, Joseph, 22, 125, 136, 175, 233 Strauss, Carolyn, 150 Studio Airlift GmbH, 231 Studio Canal, 13, 16 Stuever, Hank, 233 Subscription television, 6, 9, 83, 84, 143, 237 See also Pay television Subscription-video-on-demand (SVoD), 2–9, 11–19, 23–26, 29, 36, 39–42, 44, 45, 49, 52, 53, 54n1, 57, 82–84, 114, 121, 124, 135, 168, 172, 173, 180, 181, 190, 191, 198, 207, 208, 234, 250, 251, 253, 265, 273, 274, 278, 279, 287

307

Suburra: Blood on Rome, 4 A Suitable Boy, 11 Sulimma, Maria, 12 Sullivan, Katie, 210, 211 Sumpter, Donald, 152 Sundance TV, 40, 187 Sundet, Vilde Schanke, 57 Super-indies, 15, 16, 37, 41 Sutton, Shaun, 253 Sveistrup, Søren, 59, 64 SVoD-commissioned drama, 24 SVT (Swedish Television), 60 Syfy Channel, 38 Szczepanik, Petr, 148 Sznaider, Nathan, 239 Szwajcowska, Joanna, 260 T Tagesschau, 189 Talavera Milla, Julio, 41 Talero, Sabina Cabrejo, 274 Tallantire, Malcolm, 145 Tan, Erhan, 208 Tanrıvermiş, Şenay, 205 Taste communities, 15, 151 Tate, Gabriel, 161n3 Tatort/Crime Scene, 192 Tax relief, 18, 40 Tchelet, 235 Ted Lasso, 12 Teitelbaum, Rbbi Joel, 228, 229 The Telegraph, 37 Tele München, 166 Televisió de Caalunya (TVC), 167 Televisión de Galicia, 173 Televisión Española (TVE), 167 Terms of trade (UK), 13, 17, 40, 42, 54n3 Tesa, 178 Tetra Media Fiction, 252 Thatcher, Margaret, 105, 106, 108, 111, 132

308 

INDEX

Thomas, James, 46, 113 To Catch the Sky, 235 Todman, Dan, 103 Top of the Lake, 37, 40 Torchwood, 127 Torgersen, Jonas, 64 Toronto, 228 Toscana, 68 A Touch Away, 235 Tous-Rovirosa, Anna, 168, 170 Touw, Jasmijn, 75n8 Transcultural memory, 27, 141–160 Transnational, 1–3, 6, 15, 18, 22, 23, 25–27, 29, 36, 49, 58, 62–74, 94, 101–115, 123–125, 141–146, 151, 155–160, 165–167, 169–175, 179, 181, 186, 191–195, 198, 206, 207, 224, 227–233, 240–242, 249–265, 278, 286 Transnational coproduction, 5, 19–23, 25, 69, 83, 85, 119, 120, 124, 136, 143, 151, 159, 168, 171, 180, 249–265 Transparent, 233 Treaty of Versailles, 267 Tremblay, Pinar, 208 Trickey, Erick, 266 Troughton, Sam, 153 Trümmerfilm, 261, 263 Trump, Donald, 72, 106 Tucker, James, 204, 211 Tula, 160 Turhallı, Neval, 207, 208 Turkey, 203–210, 212, 215–219 TV3, 12, 27, 169–176, 178–181 TVI, 5, 6 TVII, 5, 6 TVIII, 5, 6 TVIV, 5–7 Txarango, 178

U UFA Fiction, 191, 192 UGC, 44, 53, 54n6 Ugolini, Wendy, 258 Uibel, Langston, 232 UK Film Council, 255 Ukraine, 141, 155 Ultra-Orthodox Jewish culture, 29 Unchained, 235 Undone, 212 UNESCO, 215 Union of Danish Media Distributors, 67, 73 United Kingdom (UK), 5, 12–19, 25–27, 29, 36, 37, 40–42, 44, 45, 49, 50, 53, 54n7, 104, 106, 108, 111, 113, 114, 119–122, 127, 133, 134, 143, 149, 166, 167, 185, 232, 250–255, 258, 260, 265–267 See also Great Britain United States Census Bureau, 256, 266 United States of America (USA), 2, 4, 8, 9, 11, 16, 17, 23, 29, 35, 36, 38, 40, 43, 48–53, 95, 99n3, 101, 124, 131, 143, 145–147, 166, 168, 169, 173, 190, 191, 198, 224–226, 228, 230, 232–240, 242, 250, 251, 253–257, 265, 273, 278 Universal Pictures, 38 Unorthodox, 28, 29, 223–242 Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, 226 Uruguay, 85 V Valais, Sophie, 41 Valledupar, 278, 280–284

 INDEX 

Vallenato, 282 Ventura, Patricia, 210 Verisimilitude, 154, 252, 260–264 Viaplay, 58, 69 Vichnaya Pamyat, 159 Vickers, Hugo, 112 Vienna, 142, 159 Viking Cruises, 252 Villela, Roney, 86 Vitrinel, Ece, 207, 208 Vivarelli, Nick, 207 Vivet, Marta, 169 Von der Leyen, Ursula, 186 Vremya, 145 W Waade, Anne Marit, 59, 69 Wadia Richards, Rashna, 165 Wagmeister, Elizabeth, 252, 253 Wainwright, Sally, 185 Wajda, Andrzej, 263 Ward, Paul, 258 WarnerMedia, 124 Warsaw, 250, 252, 255, 256, 259, 261, 263, 264 Waterson, Jim, 14 Watson, Emily, 158 Watson, Janet, 257, 258 Watson, June, 157 The Way Back, 266 The WB, 73, 95 Weber, Max, 279 Wedel, Marco, 189 Wegrzyn, Eva, 190 Weidermann, Volker, 239 Weissmann, Elke, 28, 83, 94, 166, 186, 192, 207, 253 West, Lydia, 130 WGBH Boston, 252 The White Lotus, 11

309

Whittock, Jesse, 149–151 Wiatrowski, Myc, 230 Wichłacz, Zofia, 250 Wilbush, Jeff, 223 Williams, Susan S., 48 Williamsburg, 29, 224, 228, 231, 242 Wilson, Harold, 111 Winder, Robert, 258, 259 Windowing, 19, 54n4 Window of Creative Competition (WoCC), 14 Winger, Anna, 226, 230–233, 237, 239 Winkelmann, Ursual, 188 Winter, Marcos, 85 Wise, Louis, 121 Wiseman, Andreas, 44 Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz, 189 Wodak, Ruth, 59 Wolf, Nir, 86, 92, 236 Wolff, Larry, 261 World on Fire, 29, 249–265 World Productions, 16 Wright, Oliver, 114 X Xavier, Ismail, 86 The X Files, 38 Y Yaccar, María Daniela, 233 Yalta Agreement, 1945, 258 Yanardağoğlu, Eylem, 207, 208 Years and Years, 127 Yelin, Hannah, 108 Yes, 70, 134, 235, 236, 277 Yes Oh, 231 Yom Kippur, 240 You Are Wanted, 193

310 

INDEX

Young Royals, 4 Youthification, 185–199 YouTube, 177, 189 Z Zademach, Hans-Martin, 191, 192 Zeit der Geheimnisse/Holiday Secrets, 185–199 Ziegler, Helen, 256, 264

Zierler, Wendy, 225 Zionism, 229, 236, 238 Žižek, Slavoj, 148 Zoller Seitz, Matt, 148 Zorlu, Deniz, 28, 204, 210 Zoudé, Dennenesch, 232 Zuckermann, Moshe, 240 Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), 11, 190, 199