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

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

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

Television and New Media introduces students to the ways that new media technologies have transformed contemporary television production, distribution, and reception practices. Drawing upon recent examples including Lost, 24, and Heroes, this book closely examines the ways that television programming has changed with the influx of new media—transforming nearly every TV series into a franchise, whose on-air, online, and on-mobile elements are created simultaneously and held together through transmedia storytelling. This book is essential for understanding how creative and industrial forces have worked together in the new media age to transform the way we watch TV.

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

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

This book addresses gaps in our understanding of processes that underpin the making and circulation of children's screen contents across the Arab region and Europe. Taking account of recent disruptive shifts in geopolitics that call for new thinking about how children’s media policy and production should proceed after large-scale forced migration in both regions, the book asks to what extent children in Europe and the Arab World are engaging with the same content. Who is funding new content and who is making it, according to whose criteria? Whose voices are loudest when it comes to pressures for regulation of children’s screen content, and what exactly do they want? The answers to these questions matter for anyone seeking insights into diverse cross-cultural collaborations and content innovations that are shaping new investment and production relationships.

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

This book explores the emergence and development of multilingual fiction series, a relatively new phenomenon propelled by the globalization of media industries and the consolidation of streaming platforms as central vectors in the production and consumption of audiovisual entertainment content. Through a detailed analysis of thriller, sitcom, and drama series, the book proposes an original qualitative and quantitative research methodology for the study of on-screen multilingual encounters, examining the relationship between multilingual speech and genre conventions. The book covers fiction series beyond English-speaking countries: alongside American productions, the analysis covers TV shows from Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East region. This interdisciplinary and original volume will interest scholars and students in film studies and media studies working on global media, as well as communication studies, television studies, sociolinguistics, media and cultural industries, and translation studies.