Abstract
Popular television criticism is awash with the claim that we are currently experiencing a time of ‘peak television’, in which the sheer number of new programmes being produced leaves audiences overwhelmed with choice. There is perhaps something of a similar ‘peak’ moment within academic television scholarship, which has been flooded with monographs on US long-form serial drama over the last decade (Creeber, 2004; Gillan, 2011; Jacobs and Peacock, 2013; Mittell, 2015; Newman and Levine, 2012). Like peak TV, what we might call ‘peak TV scholarship’ is concerned with defining this particular moment in television history, negotiating its relationship with what has come before. Two pathways are generally favoured by scholars working in this area: to follow the lead of the texts they study in celebrating these programmes as new and different or to position them in dialogue with the foundational principles of the medium. The books reviewed here share a similar corpus of serial dramas but take opposing routes towards their critical definition and evaluation.
Wells-Lassagne’s work sits at the intersection of adaptation and television studies, focusing on a variety of programmes that engage with adaptive processes. Her argument departs from the insightful recognition that television and adaptation speak to the same set of paradoxes – the universal versus the specific, the familiar versus the novel, the tensions of hybridity and the thorny questions of authorship. She uses the long-running, evolving and collaborative nature of serial narrative to consider how adaptation works uniquely on television and, in doing so, offers clear insights into both areas of study.
Wells-Lassagne’s interest in seriality gives her the scope to engage with the different scales of adaptation at work on television. She begins with a comparison of the sitcom and the miniseries, considering how these narrative formats situate their adaptive processes within different conceptualisations of endings and narrative gaps. The following chapter focuses on what she terms the ‘microadaptation’, or an adaptation contained within a single episode of a programme. She frames the microadaptation as emblematic of the quintessentially televisual tension between the familiar and the novel while also operating as a critique of ideas of fidelity; the microadaptation’s fidelity she argues refers more to an episode’s relationship to the programme’s premise than to the source it adapts. This is a perceptive and original discussion that makes a real contribution to both adaptation and television studies. Later chapters explore the issue of authorship and focus on transmedia storytelling and transnational flows as twin processes of adaptation: one which emphasises television’s universal appeal (across multiple media) and one which speaks to the medium’s local specificity. Her final chapter is an ambitious, if less successful, discussion of how contemporary literature might adapt the language and styles of television. Her textual analysis is engaging and thoughtful and strikes a good balance between citing a broad range of programmes and analysing key texts in detail, including Game of Thrones (2011–), The Office (2005–2013), Community (2009–2015) and Hannibal (2013–2015).
Throughout her work, Wells-Lassagne repeatedly identifies a metafictional trend within television’s serial adaptations. These texts explicitly understand themselves as adaptations, she argues, and ask to be read critically as such. In so doing, she paints a useful portrait of audience pleasure and offers some answers as to why audiences and scholars alike might remain so transfixed by peak television. Some of her analysis strays from her key contention at times, perhaps waylaid by her genuine enthusiasm for her objects of study, and the question remains as to whether some of the trends she identifies are applicable beyond her individual case studies. Her final chapter, in which she analyses the novels of Helen Fielding and Jasper Fforde through their televisual influences, also reads as something of stretch and unwittingly reiterates the idea that adaptation is a question of flows between page and screen. However, her work remains attuned to some of the key questions and tensions of both television studies and adaptation theory and has much to offer scholars working in both areas.
Trisha Dunleavy presents her corpus of serial dramas as a break with older forms of television. Drawing from Mittell’s (2015) influential discussion of ‘narrative complexity’ as a narrational mode that can be traced across contemporary television, Dunleavy argues for a slightly more specific category of what she terms ‘complex serial dramas’. For Dunleavy, these are dramas conceived as serials and shaped by the institutional contexts of the cable networks to which they belong, emphasising ‘morally conflicted’ characters and transgressive, explicit content. She frames these dramas as distinctly different to broadcast television in terms of aesthetics, narrative structure and content and production and industrial contexts.
Dunleavy organises her book around a series of different critical approaches to the analysis of the complex serial – industrial, authorial, narrative and aesthetic. She begins with a history of US cable television, carefully detailing the institutional, economic and cultural factors that lead to the rise of HBO and its influence on other networks such as FX, Showtime and AMC. Her next chapter contrasts her category of complex serials with existing work on American quality drama, arguing that the differences between the two categories of dramas can be attributed to the influence of their broadcast/non-broadcast contexts. Her chapter on authorship explores the tension between the promotional allure of single authorship and its practical impossibility within the industry. Later chapters attempt to clearly define the narrative and aesthetic strategies of the complex serial, the former revolving around tight integration between character and plot and the latter as a play between realist and postmodern styles. Each of her chapters ends with a case study of a single programme to illustrate her ideas, discussing canonical complex serials such as Oz (1997–2003), Breaking Bad (2008–2013), Six Feet Under (2001–2005) and Mad Men (2007–2015).
Dunleavy’s work is strongest in her discussion of the cable television industry, which is rigorously researched and often genuinely insightful. She carefully situates the features of ‘complex serial drama’ within these broader economic and industrial contexts. Her discussion of cable television’s commissioning cultures is illuminating, as is her account of the authorial tensions between single showrunners and the writers’ rooms they rely upon. However, her book is missing a number of key ideas. Despite devoting a chapter to the concept of ‘American quality television’, Dunleavy never engages with the quality debate that surrounds these programmes. Similarly, while she returns repeatedly to the idea that these programmes are defined by their morally ambiguous and transgressive central characters, she does not unpack the fact that all of these characters are white men. Dunleavy does state that her work is not concerned with evaluative debates, but this seems like something of a missed opportunity since each of her critical frameworks raises key questions regarding evaluative and identity politics which remain unanswered within her book. I was also somewhat surprised to see that she only briefly discusses the notion of ‘multiplatform television’ in her conclusion. This was disappointing, as the care she takes in exploring the institutions of cable television suggests that she could have made a highly productive contribution to our understanding of how streaming services are shaping the structures of peak television.
Both books make a useful contribution to the growing collection of ‘peak television’ scholarship. Dunleavy’s book is a clear introduction to US cable television and its original programming and provides much of value to those interested in how institutional contexts shape contemporary programming. Wells-Lassagne’s work thoughtfully explores the conceptual intersections between television and adaptation studies and will be rewarding for scholars working in both disciplines. Wells-Lassagne ends her book by citing the famous vase optical illusion, suggesting that reading television and adaptation together might allow us to shift between different perspectives. To borrow this analogy, peak TV scholarship is at its strongest when it allows for such a nuance of multiple perspectives, recognising that the supposed summit of television is simply another viewpoint among many.