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Trisha Dunleavy • Elke Weissmann
Editors
TV Drama in the
Multiplatform Era
Transnational Coproduction and Cultural Specificity
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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: trisha.dunleavy@vuw.ac.nz
1
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END…
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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
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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
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MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END…
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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
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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
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MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END…
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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
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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
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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”.
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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”.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END…
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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MULTIPLATFORM TV, THE CULTURAL DIVERSIFICATION OF HIGH-END…
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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.
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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’.
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