Transnational European Television Drama

TRANSNATIONAL

EUROPEAN

TELEVISION DRAMA

Production, Genres

and Audiences

PALGRAVE EUROPEAN FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES

Ib Bondebjerg · Eva Novrup Redvall

Rasmus Helles · Signe Sophus Lai

Henrik Søndergaard · Cecilie Astrupgaard

Series Editors

Ib Bondebjerg

University of Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Denmark

Andrew Higson

University of York

York, UK

Mette Hjort

University of Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Denmark

Palgrave European Film and Media Studies

Palgrave European Film and Media Studies is dedicated to historical and con￾temporary studies of flm and media in a European context and to the study of

the role of flm and media in European societies and cultures. The series invite

research done in both humanities and social sciences and invite scholars work￾ing with the role of flm and other media in relation to the development of a

European society, culture and identity. Books in the series can deal with both

media content and media genres, with national and transnational aspects of flm

and media policy, with the sociology of media as institutions and with audi￾ences and reception, and the impact of flm and media on everyday life, culture

and society. The series encourage books working with European integration or

themes cutting across nation states in Europe and books working with Europe

in a more global perspective. The series especially invite publications with a com￾parative, European perspective based on research outside a traditional nation state

perspective. In an era of increased European integration and globalization there is

a need to move away from the single nation study focus and the single discipline

study of Europe.

Advisory Board

Tim Bergfelder, University of Southampton, UK

Milly Buonanno, University of Rome, Italy

Carmina Crusafon, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

Peter Golding, Northumbria University, UK

Petra Hanakova, Charles University, Czech Republic

Sonja de Leeuw, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

Tomasz Goban-Klas, University of Krakow, Poland

Jostein Gripsrud, University of Bergen, Norway

Michelle Hilmes, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Amanda Lotz, University of Michigan, USA

Ewa Mazierska, University of Central Lancashire, UK

Michael Meyen, University of Munich, Germany

Stylianos Papathanassopoulos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens,

Greece

Katharine Sarikakis, University of Vienna, Austria

Monica Sassatelli, Goldsmiths University of London, UK

Paul Statham, University of Sussex, UK

Isabelle Veyrat-Masson, Laboratoire Communication et Politique Paris (LCP￾CNRS), France

Patrick Vonderau, University of Stockholm, Sweden

William Uricchio, MIT, USA

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14704

Ib Bondebjerg · Eva Novrup Redvall

Rasmus Helles · Signe Sophus Lai

Henrik Søndergaard · Cecilie Astrupgaard

Transnational

European Television

Drama

Production, Genres and Audiences

Ib Bondebjerg

University of Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Denmark

Eva Novrup Redvall

University of Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Denmark

Rasmus Helles

University of Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Denmark

Signe Sophus Lai

University of Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Denmark

Henrik Søndergaard

University of Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Denmark

Cecilie Astrupgaard

University of Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Denmark

Palgrave European Film and Media Studies

ISBN 978-3-319-62805-9 ISBN 978-3-319-62806-6 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-62806-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948253

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the

Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights

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v

Acknowledgements

This book presents the results of three years of research by the

Copenhagen team of the European research project Mediating Cultural

Encounters Through European Screens (MeCETES, www.mecetes.

co.uk), fnanced by European research councils through Humanities in

the European Research Area (HERA, www.heranet.info). This research

project was fnanced from 2013 to 2016 under the joint research pro￾gram Cultural Encounters. The Copenhagen team wants to thank

HERA and EU for the support that made this possible. As a collabo￾rative, transnational European project, MeCETES looked at flm, tel￾evision and new digital platforms in Europe and the potential role of

these audiovisual media in creating transnational cultural encounters.

The Copenhagen team primarily considered television, the British team,

based in York, studied flms across Europe, while the Belgian team in

Brussels looked primarily at European policy and support programmes,

including the digital possibilities and challenges now facing European

flm and media in an increasingly globalized world.

We should like to thank the other teams on this joint project for a

very constructive and inspiring three years, and for the various seminars

and workshops around Europe. A special thank you of course goes to

our project leader, Prof. Andrew Higson at the University of York, for

his inspiring leadership and for being such a good host in York and Italy;

to Denise Mitchell who kept track of the budget and travel arrange￾ments; and not least to Huw Jones in York for creating such an effec￾tive and active website (www.mecetes.co.uk). While also doing his own

vi Acknowledgements

research for the project, he made all participants produce blogs along the

way and managed to get individuals from outside the project, such as

those involved in the flm and media industries, to contribute. The site

itself was an amazing locus of mediated cultural encounters. A special

thank also to Petar Mitric for participating in the group discussions and

for inspiration, and to Fredrick K. Larsen and Mette Kragh Andreasen

for assistance.

The project also had a group of associate partners from the flm and

media industries, as well as an academic advisory board. We cannot men￾tion everyone, but we want to thank them for discussing and comment￾ing on our research and for putting us in contact with a broader network

of people working in European flm and media companies and institu￾tions. We also interviewed many individuals in television around Europe,

people in charge of programming on European channels and creatives

behind the camera and in the writer’s rooms. We thank them all.

This book is a collective, co-authored work, which means that all

chapters have been conceived and discussed by the whole Copenhagen

MeCETES team but with one or two primary authors taking the main

responsibility for each of the chapters. Lead author and responsible

for overall editing of the whole book is Ib Bondebjerg. The primary

author(s) of the individual chapters are as follows: Ib Bondebjerg: Chaps.

1, 2, 8, 10 and 11; Rasmus Helles and Henrik Søndergaard: Chap. 3;

Rasmus Helles and Signe Sophus Lai: Chap. 4; Eva Novrup Redvall:

Chap. 5 and, together with Ib Bondebjerg, also Chap. 9; Signe Sophus

Lai and Cecilie Astrupgaard: Chaps. 6 and 7.

Copenhagen, Denmark Ib Bondebjerg

June 2017 Eva Novrup Redvall

Rasmus Helles

Signe Sophus Lai

Henrik Søndergaard

Cecilie Astrupgaard

vii

Contents

1 Introduction: Transnational European TV Studies 1

2 A Theory of Mediated Cultural Encounters 23

3 The Perfect Storm: European Television Policy and

the Emergence of Streaming Services 49

4 Networks and Patterns of European TV Drama

Co-production 79

5 Creative Work in a Transnational Context: Cultural

Encounters Behind the Scenes 99

6 National Patterns of TV Drama Consumption in Europe 129

7 Meeting the Others on TV: How Drama Translates

into Cultural Encounters 153

8 Facing Everyday Life and the Societies We Live in:

Contemporary Drama 183

9 The Darker Sides of Society: Crime Drama 223

viii Contents

10 History, Heritage and Memory: Historical Drama 257

11 Conclusion: European Television—Diversity

with Very Little Unity? 297

Index 311

ix

About the Authors

Ib Bondebjerg is Professor Emeritus, Department of Media, Cognition

and Communication, University of Copenhagen. He was founder and

director of the Centre for Modern European Studies (2008–2011)

and chairman of the Danish Film Institute (1997–2000). He is associ￾ate editor of the open access journal Palgrave Communications (2014–),

co-editor of the book series Palgrave European Film and Media Studies

(2013–) and co-director of three large international research projects

since 2000. Recent books are Media, Democracy and European Culture

(2008, co-ed.), Engaging with Reality: Documentary and Globalization

(2014), European Cinema and Television: Cultural Policy and Everyday

Life (2015, co-ed.).

Eva Novrup Redvall is Associate Professor in Film and Media

Studies, University of Copenhagen, where she founded the Research

Priority Area on Creative Media Industries. She has published widely

on Scandinavian and European flm and television. Recent books are

Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark: From The

Kingdom to The Killing (2013), The Danish Directors 3: Dialogues on the

New Danish Documentary Cinema (2014, co-authored) and European

Cinema and Television: Cultural Policy and Everyday Life (2015, co-ed.).

Rasmus Helles is Associate Professor at the Department of Media,

Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen. He has pub￾lished on media regulation, media assessment, audience data and empiri￾cal methods and the impact of digitization on the media industry. He

x About the Authors

has participated in a European project on media policy and has published

several articles on media audiences and issues of media policy in Europe,

including the digital challenge. He is co-PI of the Peoples’ Internet pro￾ject (2016–2020), which studies the internet and civic communication in

Europe, the USA and China.

Signe Sophus Lai is a Ph.D. Fellow at the University of Copenhagen.

In the MeCETES project, she has researched and published on the com￾position, reception and refections of TV series audiences through a mul￾titude of methodological and analytical approaches, including large-scale

audience ratings analyses, focus group studies, quantitative content anal￾yses, statistical survey analyses and network analysis.

Henrik Søndergaard is Associate Professor at the Department of

Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen.

Formerly a member of the Danish Radio and Television Board, he

has recently been on the Public Service Committee appointed by the

Ministry of Culture. His main research areas are media regulation, media

policy and public service media. He has published articles and books on

public service media and media policy, media economy and European

media policy and regulation.

Cecilie Astrupgaard is a consultant at the cooperative Analyse & Tal,

where she works with digital data analysis. She studies sociology at the

University of Copenhagen and is currently writing her Master’s thesis

on political behaviour on Facebook. In the MeCETES project, she has

researched and published on how audiences experience cultural encoun￾ters mediated through TV series, using surveys and analysis of TV data

from the period 2005–2014.

xi

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Scope and agenda for cognitive sociology.

Based on Zerubavel 1997: 20 33

Fig. 4.1 Network graph of co-production relationships

between the 12 European countries. MeCETES

data based on raw data from Medimetrie 90

Fig. 4.2 Reduced network graph of co-production relationships

between the 12 European countries. MeCETES

data based on raw data from Medimetrie 91

Fig. 5.1 Framegrab from Midsomer Murders episode 100,

shot in Copenhagen 117

Fig. 6.1 European origin includes co-productions within Europe

as well as co-production with a European anchor country.

Graph based on raw data from Lange (2015) 134

Fig. 6.2 Origin of TV series across public service and

commercial channels. Graph based on raw data

from Lange (2015) 135

Fig. 6.3 Development of national and foreign shares

of broadcast time. MeCETES data based on raw

data from TNS Gallup people. Channel sample:

DR1, DR2 and TV2 137

Fig. 6.4 Origin of prime time series in Denmark by average

share and rating. Data source TNS Gallup people meter,

data extracted from Infosys + , channel sample; DR1,

DR2 and TV2, 2005–2014 139

xii List of Figures

Fig. 6.5 Reasons for favouring Danish or European TV series.

Data source national survey conducted by the

MeCETES team, 2015, N = 1200 142

Fig. 7.1 Reasons for favouring crime and historical drama.

Data source national survey conducted by the

MeCETES team, 2015, N = 1200 158

Fig. 7.2 Cases on Danish television. Data source TNS Gallup

people meter, data extracted from Infosys+ 161

Fig. 8.1 Regional shares of contemporary drama in Denmark

between 2005 and 2014. MeCETES data based on

raw data from TNS Gallup 185

Fig. 8.2 Mistresses—Danish audience demographics. MeCETES

data based on raw data from TNS Gallup 192

Fig. 8.3 UK Ratings for the frst three seasons of

Last Tango in Halifax. Wikipedia data,

based on British Ofcom 192

Fig. 8.4 Viewer shares of selected Danish TV drama

since 2005. MeCETES data based on raw data

from TNS Gallup 197

Fig. 8.5 Gender and age profle for viewers of The Legacy

on Danish television. MeCETES data based on raw

data from TNS Gallup 198

Fig. 8.6 Demographic profle for viewers of The Legacy

on Danish television. MeCETES data based on raw

data from TNS Gallup 199

Fig. 8.7 Graphic illustration of Borgen’s audience shares in

selected countries. MeCETES data based on raw

data from TNS Gallup 204

Fig. 8.8 The entangled spheres of the modern

mediatized society 206

Fig. 8.9 The Entangled spaces of Borgen and the

public spheres 208

Fig. 8.10 Borgen gender and age demographics,

Danish viewers. MeCETES data based on raw

data from Gallup TNS 212

Fig. 8.11 Framegrab from The Honourable Woman 217

Fig. 9.1 Regional share of crime on Danish

TV channels 2005–2014, total broadcast hours.

MeCETES data based on raw data from TNS Gallup 227

List of Figures xiii

Fig. 9.2 Average share and rating of crime fction on Danish

TV channels 2005–2014. MeCETES data based

on raw data from TNS Gallup 228

Fig. 9.3 Forbrydelsen/The Killing: average share of audiences

(%) in Denmark, Germany, Norway and Belgium.

MeCETES data 238

Fig. 9.4 Average audience share of Midsomer Murders.

UK audience. MeCETES data based on raw

data from TNS Gallup 241

Fig. 9.5 Average audience share of Midsomer Murders.

Danish audience. MeCETES data based on raw

data from TNS Gallup 241

Fig. 9.6 Broadchurch. Framegrab 245

Fig. 9.7 Salamander. Framegrab 249

Fig. 10.1 Origin of European TV series broadcast in 11 countries

in 2013. MeCETES data based on Lange 2005 261

Fig. 10.2 Regional shares of historical drama on

Danish TV 2005–2014. MeCETES data based

on raw data from TNS Gallup 268

Fig. 10.3 Historical drama, percentage of regional shares on

Danish TV 2005–2014. MeCETES data, based

on raw data from TNS Gallup 269

Fig. 10.4 Five UK historical drama series on Danish

TV—share and rating. MeCETES data based

on raw data from TNS Gallup 269

Fig. 10.5 Downton Abbey. Average shares in 6

European countries. MeCETES data 270

Fig. 10.6 Gender and age profle of Downton Abbey

in Denmark. MeCETES data based on raw data

from TNS Gallup 271

Fig. 10.7 Gender and age profle of the Danish Historical

series Krøniken. MeCETES data based on raw

data from TNS Gallup 271

Fig. 10.8 Life style segments for three Danish historical series.

MeCETES data 272

Fig. 10.9 The UK gender age prolife for Downton Abbey.

MeCETES data 273

Fig. 10.10 The UK social profle for Downton Abbey.

MeCETES data based on Ofcom raw data 274

xiv List of Figures

Fig. 10.11 Lifestyle profle, Danish audiences, for Jane Eyre

and Downton Abbey. MeCETES data based on raw

data from TNS Gallup 275

Fig. 10.12 Ranking of reception themes of

Downton Abbey. UK press, MeCETES data 276

Fig. 10.13 Ranking of reception themes of

Downton Abbey. Danish press, MeCETES data 277

Fig. 10.14 Audience share and rating for for Danish

historical drama series. MeCETES data

based on raw data from TNS Gallup 286