1st Edition
A European Television Fiction Renaissance Premium Production Models and Transnational Circulation
This book maps the landscape of contemporary European premium television fiction, offering a detailed overview of both the changes in the digital production and distribution and the emergence of specific national and transnational case histories.
Combining a media-production approach with a textual and audience analysis, the volume offers a complex, stratified, systemic view of ongoing aesthetic, sociocultural and industrial developments in contemporary European TV. With contributions from leading experts in the field, the book first offers an overview of the industrial, policy and cultural context for the renaissance of European television drama over the past decade, based on original comparative research. This research is then supported by case study chapters from the key contexts within which quality European television is being produced, offering a complex and complete picture of the industry’s strengths and limitations, its traditions and trends, its constraints and future perspectives.
A European Television Fiction Renaissance is a must-read book for TV scholars working across Europe and beyond in the areas of media studies, international communications and television studies, media industries studies, production studies, European studies, and media policy studies as well as for those with an interest in television drama, Netflix, globalisation, pay TV and on demand.
1. Introduction: The Many Steps and Factors of a European Renaissance
Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni
Part I: Researching European Fiction
2. The Grounds for a Renaissance in European Fiction: Transnational Writing, Production and Distribution Approaches and Strategies
Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni
3. Mapping European Premium Scripted TV: Trends, Patterns and Data in an Emerging EU Market
Dom Holdaway, Cecilia Penati and Anna Sfardini
4. Transnational Circulation of European TV Series: National Models and Industrial Strategies for Scripted Pay Imports/Exports
Paolo Carelli and Damiano Garofalo
Part II: United Kingdom
5. A 21st-Century Gold Rush? Video on Demand and the Global Competition for UK Television
Philip Drake
6. "The Biggest Drama Commission in British Television History": Netflix, The Crown and the UK Television Ecosystem
Roberta Pearson
Part III: France
7. Video on Demand Platforms, Editorial Strategies and Logics of Production: The Case of Netflix France
Christel Taillibert and Bruno Cailler
8. The Strategy of "Quality TV": Branding, Creating and Producing at Canal+
Hélène Monnet-Cantagrel
9. What is a Quality French Series? Reflections on The Bureau
François Jost
Part IV: Italy
10. Towards a New Model for Italian TV Fiction: Sky Italia Originals and the Struggle for Difference
Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni
11. The Holy See(ing): Splendors and Miseries of The Young Pope
Giancarlo Lombardi
Part V: Germany
12. TV Drama Series Production in Germany and the Digital Television Landscape
Lothar Mikos
13. Selling Location, Selling History: New German Series and Changing Market Logic
Susanne Eichner
Part VI: Spain
14. Ways of Production and Distribution as Movistar+
Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano
15. Bambú Producciones and the Transformation of Spanish Television Fiction Production
Concepción Cascajosa-Virino
Part VII: Central and Eastern Europe
16. HBO Europe’s Original Programming in the Era of Streaming Wars
Petr Szczepanik
17. Quality by Design: Feature TV Series from Premium Television in Poland
Artur Majer
18. Familiar, Much Too Familiar… HBO’s Hungarian Original Productions and the Questions of Cultural Proximity
Balasz Varga
Biography
Luca Barra is Associate Professor of Television and Digital Media at Università di Bologna, Italy.
Massimo Scaglioni is Full Professor of Media Economics and History at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan.
