[Commlist] CFP: Special Issue Cultural Diversity in Internationally Produced High-End Drama

Call for papers for a special issue for /Critical Studies in Television/.*
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*Cultural Diversity in Internationally Coproduced High-End Drama*

Special Issue of Critical Studies in Television 2022

*Call for Papers*

International coproduction, which Michelle Hilmes (2014:10) defines as 
“a partnership between two or more different national production 
entities” located in different countries, is exerting a notable 
influence on the creation of new high-end TV dramas produced outside the 
US. As ‘peak TV’ continues to expand the annual volume of US-produced TV 
fiction to unprecedented levels (Koblin 2020), continuing audience 
demand for distinctive original drama is fuelling new opportunities for 
high-end drama production in a larger range of countries. The important 
consequence has been an increased cultural and/or linguistic diversity 
for high-end dramas produced for international distribution. Attended by 
a new emphasis on serial form and storytelling, this development and 
diversity is exemplified by /Babylon Berlin/ (ARD/Sky 
Deutschland/Netflix), /Anne With An E/ (CBC/Netflix), /My Brilliant 
Friend/ (Rai/HBO), /World On Fire/ (BBC/PBS), /Bad Banks/ (ZDF/Arte) and 
Finnish/Spanish example /Paratiisi/The Paradise/ (YLE), among others. 
These dramas make visible and treat as a matter-of-fact the cultural 
diversity and encounter that Janet McCabe (2017) indicates were 
previously treated as disruptive to the imagination of the national 
community that broadcasters sought to represent.

While regional funding schemes and content regulations are making their 
own contributions, the expansion and cultural diversification of non-US 
high-end drama can also be attributed to the institutional capacities of 
‘multiplatform’ television (Dunleavy 2018). As a label that recognises 
the internet as a pervasive platform for television, this 
‘multiplatform’ era is one in which broadcast, cable/satellite and 
internet-only TV networks are collaborating as well as competing and the 
earlier distinctions it was possible to make between 
internet-distributed and so-called ‘legacy’ TV services are beginning to 
recede. Although international coproduction has always been an option 
for high-end drama (television’s most expensive form), it is moving to 
the forefront of TV drama’s international industry in the context of 
three main institutional and industrial conditions. The first is much 
higher production budgets and costs for the kinds of dramas that aim to 
succeed on an international stage. Second, the accelerated international 
circulation of new shows that internet distribution enables has 
increased the profit margins and extended the ‘afterlife’ of successful 
dramas (see Lotz 2019). Third is the commercial necessity for leading 
transnational networks (indicatively the premium players Netflix, Amazon 
Prime, HBO and Disney+) to involve themselves in coproduction. In 
recognition that the offer of distinctive, original high-end drama is 
pivotal to the allure of premium TV services, US-based premium networks 
are coproducing with non-US broadcasters and/or non-US drama producers 
as a means to engage more directly with their national industries and 
audiences, to comply with content regulations operating in non-US 
markets, and to increase their subscribers in non-US territories.

By featuring an indicative selection of recent or current high-end TV 
drama examples, this special issue aims to explain and explore the 
increased cultural diversity of high-end dramas produced in non-US 
territories. It aims to demonstrate the importance of current 
coproduction strategies in facilitating their cultural distinctions, 
high-end ambition and appeals to an international audience. We invite 
abstracts for the themed issue that analyse these dramas from 
institutional, creative media industries and/or representational 
perspectives. Articles will be approximately 6-7000 words and engage 
with some of the questions below:

  * How are international coproduction relationships changing the
    industrial, creative, representational, and/or linguistic parameters
    for non-US TV drama?
  * How and why have these dramas deployed international coproduction?
  * Public broadcasters continue to use international coproduction to
    help them finance unusually ambitious and expensive dramas. But how
    are their drama coproduction strategies and partnerships changing in
    the multiplatform era?
  * How do dramas arising from creative and/or financial collaboration
    between non-US producers and transnational networks pursue and
    negotiate cultural specificity?
  * Are today’s internationally coproduced dramas – even as their
    network investors anticipate wider international reach for them than
    was possible in past TV eras – extending the cultural specificity
    (or ‘localism’) of non-US high-end drama?
  * How is the imagination of cultural specificity impacted by the
    co-production process?

Please send your abstract of no more than 750 words to Trisha Dunleavy 
((trisha.dunleavy /at/ vuw.ac.nz) <mailto:(trisha.dunleavy /at/ vuw.ac.nz)>) and Elke 
Weissmann ((weissmae /at/ edgehill.ac.uk) <mailto:(weissmae /at/ edgehill.ac.uk)>) by 
1 October 2020. The special issue of /Critical Studies in Television/ is 
scheduled to be published in 2022.

The special issue is part of the outcomes of a Victoria University of 
Wellington and British Academy-funded project on /Transnational 
Television in the Multiplatform Age/ for which the editors are principal 
investigators.


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