Journal of Popular Television, The - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2016

Previous writing on the hugely popular series Inspector Morse (1987–2000) has stressed the presentation of space and place as conforming to a heritage aesthetic, characterized by quality and nostalgia. This article seeks to address how television drama can be re-evaluated through a methodology of longitudinal analysis, and the ways this process itself encourages sensitivity to how space is articulated. Inspector Morse offers a specifically televisual experience of space, involving repeated encounters with particular spaces by virtue of its long run. This is a spatial experience characterized by layering and accumulation of meaning, a textured or thickened contact with space. Drawing on the detail of pattern and embellishment arising from repeated contact with particular spaces, it explores the density of aesthetic choices which create images of spatial disjunction suitable to the generic context of Inspector Morse. In underlining that the programme’s handling of space is more complex than previously suggested, this article seeks to demonstrate that the construction of space and place in Inspector Morse is not limited to the kind of ‘heritage’ qualities commonly associated with the programme.

Although clearly recognized in broader institutional histories of British children’s television as a significant moment in the BBC’s address towards the pre-school child, Play School (1964–1988) has not been the focus of sustained archival analysis. This arguably reflects the fact that a good deal of work on children’s television in Britain adopts either an institutional or an audience focus, and the study of programmes cultures is often more neglected. This article seeks to revisit Play School using available historical documentation – including memos, scripts and press cuttings – from the BBC Written Archive Centre, as well as early surviving episodes (principally from 1964). In doing so, it seeks to explore how it fitted into BBC’s historical address to the pre-school child, how it intersected with discourses on pre-school education, and the range of institutional and social contexts surrounding its emergence.

This article examines the treatment of sex and gender in the Australian TV programme, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. Promoted by its creators as feminist TV, the series re-imagines the figure of the ‘lady detective’ made popular during the 1920s’ Golden Age of detective fiction. However, the series’ celebration of female sexuality reveals, sometimes unintentionally, the limits of liberation in the 1920s and the conflicted responses of viewers in a post-feminist media landscape to the sexualized ‘modern woman’ of the past and present.

The Canadian broadcast sector has been the subject of many policy initiatives and much hand wringing. This article uses a production study of the reality television sector in Toronto, Canada’s centre for English-language production, to consider how the concerted move towards an entrepreneurial, market-driven television economy since the late 1990s has dovetailed with the rise of the global trade in formats. The article considers some of the key policy moves in this period of neo-liberalization, including the de-regulation of ownership, the introduction of group licensing, and shifts in the definition of ‘priority’ Canadian content. The article concludes that the set of related shifts in both technologies and considerations about television’s social and economic role has led to an almost purely market-driven (though state subsidized) system that disadvantages both smaller industry players and the broadcast system’s public mandate. The challenges experienced in Canada during this period are not unique, making it into a case study for small market television nations.

This article provides a detailed analysis of how the Danish public service broadcaster DR employs external funding for its drama productions. This investigation is carried out in order to discuss the schisms involved when a public service broadcaster – whose traditional obligations arguably pertain to the national sphere – becomes a player in the international market for television content and, as a consequence, becomes partly reliant on international funding. Our article examines five different forms of external funding (i.e. funding from sources other than DR’s licence fee income): (1) co-funding with external partners (most often foreign broadcasters and/or foreign distributors); (2) canned programming sales; (3) pre-sales of canned programming; (4) format/remake sales and (5) international funds, both regional and international as well as pannational funds. All five forms of funding are critically assessed on the basis of existing theory and interviews conducted with significant industry professionals at DR’s Drama Division, DR Sales, German public broadcaster ZDF’s commercial sales arm ZDF Enterprises, and independent Danish production companies Nimbus Film and Miso Film. Specific cases (such as Forbrydelsen/The Killing [2007–2012], Bron/Broen/The Bridge [2011–], Arvingerne/The Legacy [2014–], 1864 [2014] and The Team [2015–]) are employed to illustrate the different funding models and tendencies identified within Danish television drama production. Apart from presenting the proliferation of different cross-national funding models that have been used within the last fifteen years, our empirical data also show significant new patterns in production culture and international market orientation within DR. Interestingly, however, our study demonstrates the distinctive contribution that DR’s public service remit has made to the quality of its drama programming, on one hand, and to the reach of its funding models, on the other – and, hence, to DR’s overall international success.

For small nations, the television industry functions on a number of interlinking levels constructing a sense of identity, contributing towards a democratic public sphere, and providing an important cultural and economic resource. Television drama is particularly important to these functions due to its ability to tell stories about and for a nation. However, the ecology of television drama production is changing in terms of technological innovation, greater competition, downward pressure on costs, and evolving audience consumption patterns. Set within this context, this article investigates the television industry of a particular small nation, Wales, and its most recent creative infrastructure project, the BBC’s Roath Lock Studios. One of the key features of the Welsh production ecology is mobility, and the authors frame this research around three aspects of mobility, which condition the making of television drama: how production and symbolic value are mobilized in small nations, the consequences of production mobility between regions and nations, and the impetus for content mobility through the international sale of series and formats. These forms of mobility are intimately linked to the negotiation of power, which circumscribes all indigenous drama production, but which may be felt more acutely by smaller nations where access to talent, greater limits on resources and questions of sustainability condition the everyday realities of television professionals. Using interviews with key stakeholders in the field of television drama production in Wales, this article argues that the voice and lived experience of television practitioners and stakeholders is a vital element in the academic critique of cultural and industrial developments in television production. The research suggests that Roath Lock would seem to be a success within its principal term of reference, which is to house more efficient and well-made drama for the BBC network and for S4C. On a more subjective level, it has been used by a variety of stakeholders to create positive perceptions of Welsh creative industries and ‘put Wales on the map’, to compete with other locales within and outside the United Kingdom, for international productions, capital investment, talent and industry legitimacy. However, real concerns remain about whether it enables drama production that adequately represents contemporary life in Wales, and delivers on the cultural aspirations of television workers and viewers.

Various trends, both technological and economic in nature, have led to a shift in the financing and production of serial television fiction (principally television drama and episodic comedy), resulting in pressure on existing financing of TV fiction. These pressures prove especially difficult for small nations and regions, being characterized by restricted markets, a limited number of active players, and barriers for export and scale. For media policy-makers, these transitions invoke a series of new challenges to sustain existing audio-visual ecosystems. Based on a case study of TV fiction in Flanders, and presenting evidence from a financial analysis of 46 TV fiction productions, this article analyses current financing streams, patterns and dynamics of TV fiction in small media markets. It seeks to reveal the composition of budgets and the relative importance of diverse agents and funders involved in TV fiction production. Critical evaluations are then offered as to whether current financing models and policy support mechanisms are fit to tackle the challenges posed by the increasing number of windows and increased fragmentation of TV fiction financing.