Dutch research communities were introduced to anglophone Media and Cultural Studies via internationally renowned, pioneering studies in television theory and research on television series. Het Geval Dallas [Watching Dallas] (1982) by cultural scholar Ien Ang was notably ground-breaking because of its use of an active audiences research approach which sought out participant viewers by placing an advertisement

This paper starts from the premise that research into how producers negotiate issues of diversity and multicultural content in Europe is rare and mostly relies on interviews and documents, and furthermore work on understanding those negotiation processes in relation to children’s screen content is even rarer. The article seeks to reflect critically on an alternative hybrid research method, which aims

This article explores the ‘youthification’ of television through real-time storytelling. It draws on a study of the online youth drama blank (2018–2019), NRK’s first follow-up after the hit show SKAM (2015–2017). It finds that real-time drama brings unique opportunities to broadcasters aiming to reconnect with younger audiences, but also substantial challenges. This insight is essential, as previous

Post-crisis Greece is experiencing dynamic audiovisual market growth, faster than the EU average. As Greek TV responds to the challenges of the streaming era, new paths are forged by young viewers/users. This article, based on a survey of nearly 1,000 students, attempts to characterise the viewing patterns of young audiences, who are early adopters and heavy consumers of streaming television. We argue

In our contemporary age, defined profoundly by convergence and digitalisation, how has television spread across different platforms and varied screens to attract and engage young audiences, children and youth? Typically, this demographic has been seen as hard to reach, especially by older, more established media like public service broadcasters and other news providers. Young people are increasingly

This article investigates how platformisation changes the practices of content production and distribution through the case of the web series, Druck (tr. Pressure (2018–), for the public service content network ‘funk’ (ARD and ZDF). An analysis of the German adaptation of the Norwegian television and web series Skam (tr. Shame) (NRK3, 2015–2017) shows how public service broadcasting (PSB) in Germany

Public service media (PSM) are still seen in most European countries as a core means of informing citizens of all ages. Nevertheless, PSM struggle to reach young audiences, who are often characterised as news-avoidant or news-deprived. This article asks what meaning the news and information offered by PSM have for young people. The qualitative study describes young people’s attitudes and expectations

This article introduces quantitative reception aesthetics as a method and demonstrates how big data derived from social media services and textual analysis can be employed to uncover hitherto hidden processes of media spectatorship. It demonstrates how mixing quantitative and qualitative methods allows us to understand textual engagement and how media spectatorship evolves over time. Taking the Norwegian

Across four seasons of her Netflix hit comedy, Kimmy Schmidt emerged as a strong, female survivor of sexual violence. However, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt would often walk a fine line between post-feminist and feminist understandings of rape and gendered violence, while reinforcing harmful racial tropes rooted in ‘white feminism’. In 2020, Netflix brought Kimmy back for her ‘biggest adventure yet’ in

Produced and released by Netflix in March 2018, The Mechanism (2018–), a web series, fictionalised the Lava Jato operation, a series of criminal investigations about corruption in the Brazilian political system that led to the imprisonment of leading Brazilian politicians and businessmen. Analysing the series along with the media coverage in the Brazilian mainstream online and printed press, this article

Rethinking methodologies for understanding audiences and how viewers engage with TV content is at the heart of the article that opens the 2021 Spring issue of Critical Studies in Television. The latest shift in television’s ontology provides an opportunity for Gry Rustad and Anders Olof Larsson to reassess the methodological implications for studying the interrelationship between narrative events and

Berlin has had a long, often complex history as a location site and centre for production dating to the end of the 19th century. By the 2010s however, the German city had once more become a central location and production site for international and national television, in part because of changing media policy and shifts in the global media industry, as well as related to the mediated imagination of

Rai/HBO co-production L’Amica Geniale/My Brilliant Friend (2018–) provides an illuminating example of changing strategies for transnational drama co-production in television’s burgeoning ‘multiplatform’ era. Foregrounding institutional over textual analysis, the article places My Brilliant Friend (MBF) within the industrial, creative and cultural contexts that have facilitated it. Important to these

This article intends to understand the significance of depicting the Ottoman past in Turkish TV dramas by focusing on Filinta [Flintlock] (2014–2016), a hybrid of historical drama and police procedural that is set in the second half of the 19th century in the Ottoman Empire. On the one hand, the article examines the influence of the Ottoman heritage in localising the police procedural genre in Filinta

It goes without saying, but 2020 has been a year like no other and the CST editors felt that we couldn’t let the year end without acknowledging its impact on our own field of TV Studies. As John Ellis reflected in his CSTOnline blog from April 2020 (revised and reprinted in this issue, as already mid-spring seems like a distant memory, a different time) COVID-19 lockdown has found more of us at home

This article argues that watching Breaking Bad (2008–13) could encourage people affected by cancer to recognise and reconsider damaging reactions to their condition. If viewers are invited to see the series’ antihero, Walter White, as an iconic ‘silhouette’ of a better path not taken, this can provoke them to entertain more honest, constructive attitudes to cancer and death. Using the theological concept

This article focuses on contemporary queer television and examines its depiction of LGBTQ border crossings and migration. In recent years, a shift in the American and British televisual landscape has seen queer television drama veering away from a predominant focus on white, middle-class characters, towards an exploration of immigrant positionalities and the geopolitical relevance of state borders