Eva Novrup Redvall

Breaking Borders: The International Success of Danish Television Drama

‘Stories and images are among the principal means by which human society has always transmitted its values and beliefs, from generation to generation and community to community’ (Puttnam 1994: 357). These words by David Puttnam point to why TV drama and film matters. Through stories and images we experience and reflect on both contemporary reality and the past. Audiovisual narratives are powerful means to influence and develop our social imaginary, our ability to understand not just ourselves but also others. Behind both national and EU support for the audiovisual industries there is the belief that Europeans will only experience being European if they can imagine life across Europe, and that one of the key means of doing that is through encountering their European others on European screens. Behind the statutes and paragraphs of European programmes for cultural support lies the idea that our common, European heritage is also about constantly reflecting on or meeting with the past and the present through stories. Stories must be based on and result in cultural interaction, expressing and challenging the fundamental values, beliefs, forms of knowledge and experience and the traditions that are formed by the highly diverse cultural and social history of Europe (Council of Europe 2005).

Film and Media Production as a Screen Idea System

Producing new works of fiction for film and television is notoriously categorized as risky business. As discussed by David Hesmondhalgh, all business is risky, but the cultural industries are particularly risky because they are centred on texts to be bought and sold to audiences that use these texts in highly volatile and unpredictable ways (Hesmondhalgh 2013, p. 27). Developing a new film or television product is a process marked by high sunk costs without any certainty as to whether there will be audience demand for this specific new variation. In the film industry, the term ‘nobody knows’ is thus accepted as a common truth. Professor of economics Richard Caves (2000) has even formulated the ‘nobody knows principle’ as a defining property of the film and media industries, since it is impossible to predict how the market will react to a certain product beforehand.

Introduction: Mediated Cultural Encounters in Europe

Research on film and television in Europe tends to adopt a nation state framework, despite the fundamental changes brought about by increased globalization and collaboration as well as transnational cultural policy on a European level since the 1990s. Furthermore very little research on European film and television takes a broader social and cultural look at the role of film and television in the forming of our everyday life and in the creation of transnational images of Europe and the construction of cultural identities. In this volume we focus on European film and television culture with the purpose of analysing how important media have become for the cultural integration and development of a Europe beyond the nation state. The ongoing globalization is not just about the strong presence of US film and television in Europe — a long-established fact of modern media culture. It is also about the role European film and television already plays in the everyday life and media culture of Europeans, and the political and cultural challenges Europe faces with increased globalization and digitization.

Midsomer Murders in Copenhagen: the transnational production of Nordic Noir-influenced UK television drama

Abstract While the international interest in subtitled Scandi crime series, or ‘Nordic Noir’, is a phenomenon of the 2010s, UK detective series, such as the ‘comfy crime’ drama Midsomer Murders, have enjoyed international success for many years. Based on a qualitative case study of the production and reception of episode 100 of the series (‘The Killings of Copenhagen’), this article investigates why and how DCI Barnaby ended up in Denmark for what can be regarded as a ‘production service collaboration’ rather than a traditional co-production and whether we will see more transnational crime stories like these in the near future.

Meeting the Others on TV: How Drama Translates into Cultural Encounters

This chapter is grounded in focus group studies—that is, people interacting with each other and with us as researchers about specific TV drama episodes shown on an actual TV screen. We pose two questions: How do Danish viewers reflect on and engage with Danish and British series respectively? How do Danish viewers conceptualize and negotiate genre categories within and beyond the genre framework of the MeCETES project? In the concrete meeting between viewers and series, we were able to experience cultural encounters as they were happening. Focusing on five case study TV series, the chapter approaches the negotiations and understandings around these cultural encounters and in what they consist. As such, we analyse the stories people tell and the arguments they make in order to account for their personal reception.

Facing Everyday Life and the Societies We Live in: Contemporary Drama

This chapter deals with contemporary drama, comparing primarily English and Danish series but also taking up Scandinavian and other European examples. By telling dual stories of large-scale contemporary conflicts and themes as well as showing scenes from everyday life, contemporary drama can expose the links between the public and private realms. In many ways, everyday life can be seen as the often unnoticed or taken-for-granted reality we all live in but upon which we seldom reflect. The chapter analyses the production and reception of the family-community drama and of the social-political drama. Family life and everyday life is central in these kinds of drama, and, by showing the lives of others, contemporary drama is an important vessel for mediated cultural encounters.

History, Heritage and Memory: Historical Drama

This chapter deals with European historical television drama, with examples from Scandinavia, the UK, Germany and Belgium. The chapter discusses why historical drama is one of the most popular transnational European genres. Our past seems to appeal to our present, living memory, and historical drama in Europe often creates strong reactions and debate. This is due to the role of memory in both the individual and the collective contexts. Part of the forming of identity in human beings is connected to the ability to create a link between past and present, the feeling of being a person with a particular history. Through case studies, the chapter deals with different kinds of historical drama, their transnational distribution and reception.

National Patterns of TV Drama Consumption in Europe

This chapter combines three distinct quantitative data sources in a mixed methods research design in order to map national patterns of TV drama consumption in Europe. This design enables us to do three things: (1) map what characterizes the distribution of European, non-European and national television fiction series across the major channels in the United Kingdom, Belgium and Denmark; (2) focusing on the Danish case, to show how particular distribution has evolved over time; (3) characterize audience viewing patterns across the Danish population. We start out by targeting the three countries and their internal similarities and differences when it comes to national, European and non-European broadcast patterns. Secondly, we expand this snapshot, by investigating development over time in Denmark as an example. And thirdly, we turn to analysing audience viewing patterns and developing four ideal viewer types for European content.

Creative Work in a Transnational Context: Cultural Encounters Behind the Scenes

This chapter analyses tensions related to creative work when collaborating on making transnational television drama in Europe. Drawing on qualitative case studies of the bilateral Swedish–Danish co-production Bron/The Bridge (2011–), the co-financed shooting of episode 100 of the UK TV series Midsomer Murders (1997–) in Copenhagen, and the pan-European co-production The Team (2015), the chapter analyses what the main practitioners behind these series perceive as the greatest strengths or challenges when working with transnational television drama, along with notions of best practice in this regard.

Introduction: Transnational European TV Studies

The introduction argues for the importance of mediated cultural encounters for a deeper European understanding across borders. Fictional narratives and cultural encounters are posited as the missing link in European studies. The introduction outlines a sociology of mediated cultural encounters, considering the dynamics of cultural and media policy, the processes of co-production and distribution, the forms of creative encounters and the dimensions of transnational reception. Along with providing an overview of each of the chapters, it argues for the importance of combining qualitative and quantitative data and analysis in transnational television drama studies.