TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era

This edited collection examines a new phase in the creation of transnational high-end drama in television’s current multiplatform era. Fuelled by the wider international exposure that internet distribution has brought to TV shows, this phase for high-end drama is one of unprecedented budgets and costs, frequent transnational coproduction and increased cultural diversification. While this drama continues to be facilitated by national broadcasters, fuelling the above trio of influences upon it has been the commissioning activity of multinational subscription-video-on-demand (SVoD) providers. This book showcases leading examples of transnational TV drama, produced outside the US, yet involving collaboration with US-owned SVoDs. It foregrounds some new potentials for drama creation in the context of its strategic importance to providers as different as national broadcasters and multinational SVoDs. This book helps to explain why today’s high-end dramas are demonstrating new elements of cultural specificity despite their common objective to engage a diverse international audience. Trisha Dunleavy is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her books include Ourselves in Primetime: A History of New Zealand Television Drama (2005), Television Drama: Form, Agency, Innovation (2009), and Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television (2018). Elke Weissmann is Reader in Television and Film at Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK. She is the author of Transnational Television Drama (2012). She is ECREA editor for Critical Studies in Television and currently working on the British Academy-funded project ‘Transnational Television Drama in the Multiplatform Age’.