The Politics of Serial Television Fiction E-Book

Sebastian Naumann

• Herausgeber: transcript Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Serien- und Fernsehforschung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 957

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Fictional TV politics played a pivotal role in the popular imaginaries of the 2010s across cultures. Examining this curious phenomenon, Sebastian Naumann provides a wide-ranging analysis of the rapidly evolving landscape of contemporary polit-series. Proposing a novel structural model of serial television, he offers an innovative methodological framework for comparative textual analysis that integrates sociocultural, economic, sociotechnical, narratological, and aesthetic perspectives. This study furthermore explores how the changing affordances of (nonlinear) television impact serial storytelling and identifies key narrative trends and recurring themes in contemporary TV polit-fiction.

Leseprobe

Sebastian Naumann is a researcher, cultural manager, and advocate in international cultural and media policy. He holds a joint PhD from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and King’s College London. An expert in audiovisual media landscapes, political storytelling, and multilateral cross-cultural cooperation, he currently serves as managing director of the International Confederation of Arthouse Cinemas. He has also worked as a researcher, journalist, and project manager in Berlin, London, Paris, New York, and Amsterdam. His research focuses on the politics of storytelling and contemporary cultural and media economies.

Sebastian Naumann

The Politics of Serial Television Fiction

Structural Developments, Narrative Themes, and the Nonlinear Turn

As a dissertation, at the same time: Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät and London, King’s College London, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, 2023, under the title: The Politics of Serial Television Fiction

The publication of this work was supported by the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.The publication of this work was supported by the Chair of Neuere Deutsche Literatur (19.-21. Jhd), Prof. Dr. Claudia Stockinger at Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

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First published in 2025 by transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

© Sebastian Naumann

transcript Verlag | Hermannstraße 26 | D-33602 Bielefeld | [email protected]

Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld, based on an idea by Avirukh Roy

Cover illustration: Yevhen / AdobeStock

Printed by: Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar

https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839475683

Print-ISBN: 978-3-8376-7568-9

PDF-ISBN: 978-3-8394-7568-3

EPUB-ISBN: 978-3-7328-7568-9

ISSN of series: 2703-1578

eISSN of series: 2703-1586

Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

List of Figures

1.    Introduction

2.    Contemporary TV, Complexity, Power Struggles and the Cynical TurnPertinent Research Perspectives on Polit-Series

2.1  Describing Narrative and Structural Complexity

2.2  TV and Industry Research – Production, Circulation, and Reception

2.3  Popular Seriality

2.4  Politics in Popular Serial Television Fiction

2.5  Where Does This Leave Us?

3.    Actors, Games, and PlayersAn Analytical Model for Serial Television Fiction

3.1  The Network of a Fictional Television Series

3.2  Defining Actors

3.3  The Serial Narrative as Actor?

3.4  Ontological Planes

3.5  The Triple Logic of Serial Fiction: Pragmatic, Dramatic, Intradiegetic

3.6  Actors, Games, and Players

3.7  Conclusion: Expanding the Possibilities for (Con)Textual Analysis

4.    Royal Performance and the Queen’s Three BodiesThe Making of the British Monarchy in the Netflix Series THE CROWN

4.1  Anxious About History and Breaking Taboos

4.2  The Queen’s Two Bodies: How to Dramatize a Monarchy

4.3  Some Notes on Typecasting and THE CROWN’s Season Divide

4.4  The Monarch’s Two Bodies Game

4.5  The Royal Panopticon and the Queen’s Third Body

4.6  Questions of Purpose: Why do they do it?

4.7  Conclusion: Fictional Games, Imaginary Bodies, and Narrative Contortions

5.    Overcoming OmnishamblesThe Changing Face of Polit-Comedy from VEEP and EICHWALD, MDB to THE POLITICIAN

5.1  Positioning VEEP and EICHWALD, MdB

5.2  Changing Paradigms: THE POLITICIAN

5.3  Diverging Images of Politics

5.4  Conclusion: Simulation, Representation, and a Progressive Turn

6.    The Curious Case of Volodymyr Zelensky and Vasyl Petrovych HoloborodkoIdealism and Populism in SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE

6.1  When History and Fiction Converge? A Timeline

6.2  Fictionalising Idealpolitik and the Narrative Logic of Populism

6.3  A Comparative Analysis of a Paradox Narrative Convention

6.4  Seasonal Changes and Historical Politics

6.5  How Fictional is the President Anyway?

6.6  Conclusion: Politics, Populism, and Paradoxes

7.    Modelling Malfunction and Inverting the Populist QuestBARON NOIR

7.1  Politics as a Fictional Actor-Network

7.2  Modelling Malfunction

7.3  Conclusion: Inverting the Populist Quest and Extending Polit-Fiction

8.    Starting “from some kind of scratch”The Recalibration of HOUSE OF CARDS, Season 6

8.1  The 2010s Essential Polit-Series?

8.2  How to Recalibrate a Global Success on Short Notice

8.3  Conclusion: An Ending Exemplyifying the Serial Triple Logic

9.    ConclusionPolit-Series, Politics, and (Progressive) Perspectives

9.1  Emergent Networks and the Triple Logic of Popular TV Series

9.2  Analysing Contemporary Polit-Series

9.3  Some Conclusive Comparisons

9.4  Final Remarks and Vantage Points for Future Research

List of Contemporary Polit-Series

Representative Corpus of Series Examined in this Thesis (by date of first release)

Fictional Polit-Series: General Overview (by date of first release)

Additional Selected Mini-Series and Anthology Series

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisors, Prof. Dr Claudia Stockinger and Prof. Dr Sarah Atkinson, for their unwavering support, wise counsel, and patience. Without them, I could never have undertaken this incredible journey.

This endeavour would not have been possible without the financial support and academic opportunities provided by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation [Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes] throughout my PhD.

For their kind hospitality and their unquestioning commitment to maintaining a border-crossing exchange of ideas even during a pandemic, my sincere appreciation goes to Prof. Dr Bernard Banoun, Prof. Dr Hélène Miard-Delacroix, REIGENN and the Faculté des Lettres at Sorbonne Université, Paris and to the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Dr Frank Nack for his support and many invaluable lessons along the way. Moreover, my gratitude goes to PD Dr Manuel Köppen for years of invaluable academic guidance.

To my fellow PhD students and colleagues in Berlin, London, Paris, Amsterdam and beyond, I want to say thank you for the privilege of your company, numerous inspiring exchanges, and for providing a network of support throughout the good and the challenging times.

Finally, to my incredible network of supportive friends and family everywhere: thank you for being at my side and keeping my spirits high during this process.

List of Abbreviations

BN

Baron Noir (series)

CoA game

Coming-of-Age game

DS 60

Designated Survivor: 60 Days (series)

DS US

Designated Survivor (series)

HoC

House of Cards (series)

M2B game

The Monarch’s Two Bodies game

MS

Madam Secretary (series)

P2B game

The President’s Two Bodies game

P4P game

Patronage for Pleasure game

RM game

Reverse Macbeth game

SN

Sluha Narodu [Servant of the People] (series)

TA

Transaction Analysis

TA game

Treat Me Like an Adult game

WH game

Making a Play for the White House game

List of Figures

Figure 1:The Emergent Network of Fictional Television Series

Figure 2:The Triple Logic of Serial Fiction

Figure 3:Narrative Amplitude, Frequency, and Intensity

Figure 4:The actualization, position, and interaction of fictional characters as ‘players’

Figure 5:Pre-Coming-of-Age

Figure 6:Post-Coming-of-Age

Figure 7:The Simple Macbeth Game

Figure 8:The Complex Macbeth Game

Figure 9:Underlying configuration of the Reverse Macbeth game

Figure 10:The first conflictive progression of the Reverse Macbeth game

Figure 11:The second conflictiveprogression of the Reverse Macbeth game

Figure 12:The Historical Network

Figure 13:The Discursive Macro Actors

Figure 14:The Monarch’s two Bodies game – Example: Young Elizabeth II with undefined co-player

Figure 15:Expositional configuration of THE CROWN’s royal family

Figure 16:Conflictive configuration after Elizabeth’s figuration of the Monarch actant

Figure 17:Configuration of the M2B game with the post-coming-of-age Queen

Figure 18:Initial configuration Mentor-Student game Churchill-Elizabeth II

Figure 19:Winston – Elizabeth mid-coming-of-age

Figure 20:Winston – Elizabeth post-coming-of-age

Figure 21:Initial configuration Elizabeth-Philip

Figure 22:Conflictive termination of the Reverse Macbeth game

Figure 23:The President’s two Bodies game – exemplary configuration

Figure 24:The P2B game in VEEP – exemplary initial configuration

Figure 25:First Dissolution of Tension

Figure 26:Second Dissolution of Tension

Figure 27:The Treat Me Like an Adult game – initial configuration

Figure 28:Personal Coming-of-Age game in THE POLITICIAN, Season 1 – initial configuration

Figure 29:Personal Coming-of-Age game in THE POLITICIAN, Season 1 – final configuration

Figure 30:The Making a Play for the White House game – example Elliot

Figure 31:Macbeth game Dede and Hadassah in THE POLITICIAN, season 2

Figure 32:Timeline: The convergence of SLUHA NARODU and key historical events

Figure 33:Photo from ‘Sluha Narodu’ on Zelensky’s Campaign Website.

Figure 34:Inside and outside players in SLUHA NARODU

Figure 35:The outside Macbeth game and the inside-outside configuration

Figure 36:The Independence Monument in Maidan Square covered in gold.

Figure 37:The multipolar diegetic actor-network in Baron Noir

Figure 38:The Complex Macbeth game Dorendeu-Rickwaert

Figure 39:The Underwood’s initial privileged Macbeth game

Figure 40:The Underwood’s non-complementary, dysfunctional interim game

Figure 41:The Underwood’s Zero-Sum cliffhanger game following Claire’s elevation to coequal antagonist in “Chapter 65” (season 5, episode 13).

1.   Introduction

In the unsteady second decade of the 21st century, fictional representations of politics have taken a notable, centre-stage role. There are, for one, the many instances in which tropes from fictional television and cinema have migrated into the historical political discourse. Most recently, the case of comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, who went from playing an idealised president in the fictional series SLUHA NARODU (UKRAINE, 2015–2019) to winning the historical Ukrainian presidency in May 2019, has become famous the world over following the condemnable Russian invasion of his country in February 2022.

The three-finger salute from the dystopian cinema tetralogy HUNGER GAMES (Gary Ross, Francis Lawrence: USA, 2012–2015) has emerged as a highly charged symbol in several Asian pro-democracy movements starting in Thailand and appearing in Hongkong, Myanmar and Cambodia.1 In Denmark, parliamentary opposition started an initiative to ban prostitution shortly after the issue had appeared in the internationally successful polit-series BORGEN (Denmark, 2010–2013, renewed for a sequel in 2022).2

In the US, both then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden engaged with their respective fictional counterparts Frank Underwood (protagonist of the Netflix series HOUSE OF CARDS, USA 2013–2018) and Selina Meyer (from the HBO series VEEP, USA 2012–2019). In a video released on April fool’s day 2015, Obama imitated Underwood’s signature move of breaking the fourth wall and speaking ad spectatores, ironically stating into the camera, “Frank learned it from me”.3 In a clip streamed at the 2014 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Biden engaged in a humorous exchange with fictional screen-VP Selina Meyer (alias Julia Louis-Dreyfus).4

In France, the seasoned socialist functionary Julien Dray first claimed, then disclaimed, to be the inspiration for the slick protagonist of the hit polit-series BARON NOIR (France, 2016–2019).5 In the UK, then-Secretary for Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Oliver Dowden went on record to demand Netflix provide a ‘health warning’ to inform viewers of the fictional nature of its royal bio-series THE CROWN (UK, 2016-present).6 It seems that in the 2010s, as Andreas Dörner remarks elsewhere, fictional series have gained such a significant media presence that politicians and citizens feel the need to respond to them.7 Accordingly, in late 2021, with the French presidential election on the horizon and echoing established fears of political ‘gamification’ and US-American cultural hegemony, the French newspaper Le Monde published an opinion piece warning of the “netflixisation” of political life.8 What is going on here?

Examining contemporary fictional TV series from various cultural and economic contexts, this thesis seeks to answer three fundamental questions:

(1)How does contemporary TV fiction present politics?

(2)Which factors inform and influence this presentation?

(3)How can scholarly analysis discern these various influences on a serial TV text?

While this thesis’ interest and methodological approach are, above all, that of textual analysis, it is essential to consider that, in the 2010s, fictional politics, serial storytelling, and the highly dynamic medium of television itself have, in many ways, appeared as co-evolving phenomena. Following the development of more efficient ways for data compression and dissemination as well as multi-device means of reception, the much-discussed nonlinear ‘disruption’ of TV arguably accelerated early in the decade.9 It resulted in an (ongoing) overhaul of TV business models, viewer engagement, and arguably storytelling10 and has since been regarded to have ushered in a new age of television alternately termed “TV IV”11, “‘post-network’ or ‘neo-network’”,12 or “the phase that comes after ‘TV’”.13 Fictional serial formats, in particular, have historically played (and continue to play) a crucial part in the ascent of new, globally operating on-demand services, most prominently Netflix.

Initially, few series had been more tangibly linked to the recent transformations of contemporary TV than the US production HOUSE OF CARDS (HoC). The controversial success of the show about a sinister power politician arguably contributed much to putting politics back on the map for fiction in the 2010s. HoC has long been regarded as a turning point for Netflix14 and general paradigms in recent TV history,15 thus creating tangible links between fictional politics and the new TV era. The show is indeed a story of many firsts: it was the first high-profile series produced for the emerging streaming giant Netflix, crucial in aiding the portal’s branding as a source for exclusive ‘quality’ content;16 it was one of the first of its type produced using big data algorithms;17 it was one of the first to see a full season release:18 an initially much-contested format that has since become an industry standard. HoC’s success arguably helped pave the way for major Hollywood celebrities to transition semi-permanently from the big to the small screen. It made its star, Kevin Spacey (who was dismissed from the show in 2017 following numerous allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse), a prolific exegete and efficient marketing tool of the early streaming age and further dismantled notions of a cultural hierarchy between the ‘superior’ medium of film and the ‘inferior’ medium of TV. Remarkably, in the course of the 2010s, politics has featured prominently in serial TV productions across the globe and various production and circulation models, with a notable increase in non-English-speaking high-profile productions.19

As serialized fictional politics has become a leitmotif of the early streaming age, any analysis of contemporary TV’s presentations of fictional politics must, therefore, almost inevitably coincide with an examination of popular seriality and the evolving affordances of the medium of TV itself.

Popular seriality seems to show a particular tendency to connect cultural, economic, aesthetic, and distinct textual affordances.20 For its analysis, this thesis, therefore, acknowledges that TV series, with their double identity as aesthetic objects and cultural commodities, exist in a field of tension between three distinct but interdependent poles that highly increase their systemic and narrative complexity.21 (1) the logic of the fictional world itself, (2) aesthetic textual, formal, and serial logic, and (3) historical social, cultural, and economic affordances. Consequently, the comparative analysis of contemporary TV series and fictional politics requires an integrated, structured approach that accounts for these three factors and their interplay.

The contextual analytical approaches of what has been called New Film / Cinema History and historical poetics – the latter term coined by David Bordwell to describe “the study of how, in determinate circumstances, films are put together, serve specific functions, and achieve specific effects”22 – provide valuable methodological vantage points here. In his relatively recent study of the poetics of complex linear television, Jason Mittell accordingly refers to historical poetics as a helpful approach to situating TV’s “formal developments within specific contexts of production, circulation, and reception”.23 The approach examines the medium’s “formal elements […] alongside the historical contexts that helped shape innovations and perpetuate particular norms”,24 regarding a TV series’ formal innovations as “the nexus of numerous historical forces that work to transform norms and possibilities”.25

However, the specific narrative and systemic complexity of the phenomenon of a TV series poses a methodological and practical challenge. While it is possible to describe many of the varied processes that shape a TV series, it is impractical to ascertain all the discrete factors that determine this series as a complex system and impossible to discern the ultimate extent of their influence. What is more, beyond the contributions of individual agents, the “tension between systemic and agentic dynamics”26 is itself an essential factor for understanding complex narratives as products of the “interplay of micro and macrosystems”.27

This structural complexity makes many historical approaches to textual analysis somewhat unwieldy and, at times, imprecise, which may be one of the reasons why scholarly practice has often avoided integrating contextual perspectives into textual analysis. The degree to which historical factors influence fictional TV series’ presentation of politics and other tropes is, likewise, a controversial issue. It ties in with the contentious question of whether (and to which degree) fictional serial texts can be read as sociocultural “data”,28 thus allowing inferences about the society that shaped them in “symptomatic reading[s]”.29

Given the structural complexity of TV series, I posit that textual analysis and the comprehensive identification of sociocultural influences within any TV series – if that should be a desirable goal at all – first requires a careful distinction between the various factors and dynamics that shape a serial text.

Therefore, this thesis will (1) provide a much-needed methodical approach for comparative textual analysis that integrates sociocultural, sociotechnical, narratological and aesthetic perspectives. It will (2) give a structured sense of where and how the contemporary affordances of (nonlinear) TV impact upon serial storytelling. (3) It will identify current narrative trends and themes in TV polit-fiction and aid in decerning whether (and to which degree) these are contingent on temporal cultural factors, production context, or inherent in the intrinsic structural affordances of popular serial narratives. Is there, e.g., an intrinsic structural affinity between politics and serial storytelling, as has been suggested?30

As long as it can be assumed that media and “cultural representations do not simply mirror reality [but] also construct and fabricate it”,31 these are crucial insights that, in a globalizing, transnational media landscape, are closely tied to urgent questions of political participation, cultural dominance, hegemony, inclusion and exclusion. This thesis’ integrated approach will, thus, contribute significantly to understanding one of the most popular and influential narrative TV genres of the 2010s and provide further insight into the structural landscape of contemporary serial TV fiction after the recent nonlinear turn.

Considering the structural complexity of TV series, this thesis will take up what has been described as the “methodological challenge” of analysing popular seriality: “to map in dense descriptive detail the concrete actions and carriers of action that come together, however disharmoniously, in a given serial narrative”.32 It will start by providing a structural model that combines various approaches to describing contemporary television, serial narratives, and systemic and narrative complexity into an operational, analytical tool. Drawing on perspectives from historical poetics, narratology, structural semantics, literary-, film-, TV-, and industry studies, systems theory, Actor-Network Theory,33 mathematical game theory, game studies, and psychology, this model will provide a unified terminology to describe contemporary popular TV series as complex agential networks in a liminal state between fictional, discursive, and ontic reality. It will, furthermore, allow the modelling of fictional characters’ interactions as regular, recurring ‘games’ that form narrative patterns in conjunction with systemic requirements. This combined approach will permit an analytic comparison across series, cultural contexts, and circulation formats.

For its subsequent textual analysis, this thesis takes a heuristic approach, examining a representative corpus of ten core series from various backgrounds through close reading. Popular TV series often extend over dozens, sometimes hundreds of hours of screen time. Such an overwhelming mass of material is impossible to manage comprehensively without the use of computer-based, quantitative macro-analytical methods (which, to date, remain limited in their ability to process audio-visual texts meaningfully). For now, a heuristic approach is, therefore, appropriate. The TV series in my corpus are (by order of release): The Politician (USA, 2019-present), 60일, 지정생존자 [Designated Survivor: 60 Days] (Republic of Korea, 2019), House of Cards, season six (USA, 2018), Baron Noir (France, 2016–2020), The Crown (UK, 2016-present), Designated Survivor (USA, 2016–2019), Слуга народу [Sluha Narodu, Servant of the People] (Ukraine, 2015–2019), Eichwald, MdB (Germany, 2015–2019), Madam Secretary (USA, 2014–2019), and Veep (USA, 2012–2019). Other relevant fictional texts will feature as context in the analysis.

This thesis takes a synchronic approach, analysing contemporary TV series that aired throughout the second half of the 2010s and thus accompanied the most dynamic period of the early streaming age. I consider series that (1) position their plot in a political setting or the physical “workplaces of politicians”;34 and (2) series in which the political activity of protagonists, that is, the somehow institutionalized process of negotiating the distribution of power,35 serves as the primary source of narrative dynamics. As I will show, this not only applies to fictional elected ‘politicians’ but also to the royal protagonists of THE CROWN, who likewise engage in the political business of retaining their positions.

In a tradition probably started by James F. Davidson,36 scholarship has long used the somewhat misleading term ‘political fiction’ to describe texts that essentially feature what Sandra Nuy calls “basal presentation of politics”,37 that is, texts which present politics as a “narrative occurrence”.38 However, the term ‘political fiction’ implies that the texts it describes are consciously political as a “medium of criticism, agitation and propaganda”.39 Its generalizing emphasis on “fiction” likewise blurs the distinction between serial and non-serial texts in line with the widespread scholarly practice of ignoring seriality’s distinctive narrative characteristics. This thesis, therefore, proposes to appropriate the somewhat vernacular German term polit-series [Politserie] as a more neutral and precise alternative.

It is crucial here to define what I mean by TV series. (1) Defining television in the multi-device, nonlinear post-network era has become somewhat difficult.40 As Mareike Jenner notes,

the term television has been used to describe different technologies, has been invested with varying degrees of cultural significance and ‘value’, and, thus, has meant different things at different times and in different social contexts.41

I will follow sociotechnical and discursive approaches to defining television not only by its material and technological shape but as a “medium”, which derives “from textual characteristics, industrial practices, audience behaviors, and cultural understanding”.42 As Roger Silverstone notes regarding (TV) technology, television thus becomes “both a material and a social phenomenon”.43 As such, it is defined primarily by discourse, which is why Jenner notes, “By stating that Netflix is television, Netflix can become television”.44

For the purposes of this study, television shall, therefore, be the diverse sociotechnical practice that surrounds (and includes) the “remote seeing”45 and hearing (in any case: reception) of audio-visual signs by way of technical transmission. It can thus, as Ramon Lobato points out, denote both “an online service dispersed across an ecology of websites, portals, and apps, as well as a broadcast and cable/satellite-distributed medium.”46

(2) For the moment, I understand the term TV series to mean a narrative with a common conceptual frame that unfolds over a number of distinct instalments47 and is transmitted via audio-visual signs within the medium of television.48 Setting aside, for now, more elaborate attempts at differentiating serial forms, I will use the term series to denote both narratives that feature self-contained episodic plotlines (often referred to as a ‘series’) and those that continue an ongoing plot over numerous episodes (called ‘serial’).49 Notably, the core texts in my corpus happen to be serials with varying narrative emphasis on their overarching plotlines. Although it is purely incidental, this suggests that the continuous mode of ‘serial’ narration is generally more suited to the affordances of the nonlinear TV age than the self-contained episodic mode. Nonlinear TV affords audiences greater control over schedules and the ability to rewind, repeat, and skip, thus facilitating engagement with more complex stories. The coming chapters will discuss this further. As the degree of continuity varies significantly between the series (HoC, or BARON NOIR, e.g., feature a prominent, ongoing plotline. EICHWALD, MDB, VEEP, or THE CROWN tend to focus more on episodic events, and SLUHA NARODU transitions from a more episodic to a more seasonal emphasis), the corpus remains sufficiently representative with regards to seriality.

As this thesis attempts to model the distinctive narrative effects of popular seriality, I will only consider series with strong seriality, that is, series whose eventual conclusion remained undetermined at the time of their first release.50 Mini-series – a narrative relayed over a pre-determined number of instalments – are, as Aldo Grasso and Massimo Scaglioni point out, a “weak serial form”51 and will therefore not be considered in this study. The same goes for anthology series.

This thesis aims to be transversal and thus considers a large variety of series from different cultural and industrial backgrounds an indispensable quality of its corpus. However, while it attempts to take a global perspective and explicitly aims to consider examples from non-English-speaking and non-Western backgrounds, there remains, despite my best efforts, an emphasis on series from the Global North. This bias is partly a result of material limitations of access to series or workable translations. It is partly due to significant pro-Western biases within existing scholarship and criticism, causing a notable imbalance in the prominence of different productions. However, it is also the consequence of personal limitations that stem from my being a researcher from the Global North, who speaks a limited set of European languages and comes with a specific cultural socialisation that inevitably influences my perspective. Despite my best efforts, these factors have inadvertently played a visible role in identifying my text corpus.

There are no pre-existing comprehensive lists of contemporary ‘polit-fiction’. Compiling an overview of relevant series, I have been aware that existing scholarly and personal biases and the constantly increasing number of new releases means that simply referring to older existing overviews or personal viewing preferences would not suffice in creating a list that can make any claim at representativity. I have therefore undertaken extensive additional research in online databases like imdb.com, international media publications (at times using google translate to overcome language barriers), an array of informal websites, wikis, and forums, as well as targeted online searches into particular global areas and extensive surveys among friends and colleagues with different cultural literacies. The result is the most extensive list of contemporary polit-series to date (see section 11). However, it, by no means, claims to be exhaustive. Due to the number of relevant series and this study’s focus on contemporary TV, I have ended my overview in the 1990es. Even though this study does not examine them directly, I also include a selection of relevant mini-series. Mini-series constitute an essential part of polit-fiction’s transition from individual films to serial TV and remain a popular (albeit decreasing) format for the presentation of fictional politics. Their inclusion in my overview thus provides valuable context and, in addition, a helpful starting point for potential future inquiries.

In the analysis of its corpus’ presentation of politics, this thesis will begin by examining the series’ narrative and formal strategies using its model for illustration. A particular emphasis here lies on modelling the interplay of guiding narrative principles and the distinct properties of popular seriality that have often been overlooked in previous textual analyses of polit-series. Furthermore, this study will contextualise its findings with relevant insights from political theory, especially concerning the mediatised construction of political representation and simulation, political and national imaginaries, and their historically controversial role in contemporary politics. This will further qualify the specific visions of politics evoked in the series.

Using its structural model, this thesis will then extend its perspective to discern various pertinent sociocultural, sociotechnical, and economic contexts of production, circulation, and reception. Where applicable, it will (1) identify the series’ incorporation of economic and technical affordances, e.g., linear and nonlinear circulation backgrounds, into their narrative logic. Seeing that ongoing (or “open”) serial narratives possess a unique ability to integrate historical factors into their own continuation,52 this thesis will (2) examine how its sample series respond to distinct historical developments that occurred throughout their original run.

For its analyses, this thesis considers a variety of perspectives pertaining to the respective series and historical realities at hand. The chapters in this thesis thus provide a wide-ranging, though by no means comprehensive, examination of crucial developments and issues across the diverse landscape of contemporary polit-series as it presents itself at the beginning of the 2020s.

Chapter 2: Contemporary TV, Complexity, Power Struggles, and the Cynical Turn: Pertinent Research Perspectives on Polit-Series

Scholarly enquiry into polit-series can be divided into four disciplinary areas that have, so far, remained largely separate despite each providing valuable and unique perspectives on the same phenomenon. The first is the broader study of structural and narrative complexity. The second is the ongoing (and increasing) interest in transdisciplinary industry research that examines the political processes of production, circulation, and reception in popular culture and TV fiction. The third is the comparatively recent study of popular seriality as a distinct phenomenon. The fourth is the concrete textual analysis of TV series concerned with politics. The chapter reviews the existing literature, highlights major historical developments in (1) popular polit-fiction and (2) pertinent research, and indicates vantage points for combining these various perspectives.

Chapter 3: Actors, Games, and Players: An Analytical Model for Serial Television Fiction

The complexity of the phenomenon that colloquially carries the name ‘television series’ derives from the unique properties of popular serial texts and their interplay with contemporary TV’s dispersed, interconnected, and constantly evolving affordances. Presenting the theoretical and methodological framework for this thesis, the chapter draws on structural approaches from a variety of disciplines, ranging from narratology to Actor-Network Theory to game studies and psychology, to derive a unique original model as a tool for textual analysis that illustrates the specific principles [Eigengesetzlichkeit] of popular serial TV. The model structures the activity of a series’ fictional and ontic actors as repeatable, comprehensible, and interconnected patterns. Moreovr, it illustrates the uneasy conjunction of the – at times contradictory – triple logics of (1) the fictional world, (2) dramatic composition, and (3) historical affordances that determine the agential dynamics of a popular serial text.

Chapter 4: Royal Performance and the Queen’s Three Bodies: The Making of the British Monarchy in the Netflix Series THE CROWN

The section provides a textual analysis of the fictional bio-series THE CROWN, which follows Queen Elizabeth II and her family as their struggle with royal life. The series operationalises a well-established narrative trope for the fictionalisation of royalty: The concept of “The King’s two Bodies” (K2B).53 This dramatic device juxtaposes the requirements of the Queen’s personal body natural and her conceptual body politic and serves as a conventional formula for turning the abstract phenomenon of a remote monarch into a relatable fictional character. THE CROWN extends the K2B trope by introducing the postmodern notion of a mediatised third body that unifies the monarch’s body natural and body politic through the co-creative approval of his*her subjects. This turns the fictional Windsor family into decidedly political operators constantly occupied with taming public opinion and securing their position.

Chapter 5: Overcoming Omnishambles: The Changing Face of Polit-Comedy from VEEP and EICHWALD, MDB to THE POLITICIAN

Analysing three series from the beginning, middle, and end of the 2010s (VEEP; EICHWALD, MDB; THE POLITICIAN), the chapter demonstrates the changing ways in which polit-comedies have operationalized politics as a humoristic device. Following the tradition of mockumentary cringe humour of the 2000s, polit-comedy in the early 2010s essentially presents politics as a ruthless, simulative, and uncomfortable affair full of invective (VEEP), social discomfort (EICHWALD), and failure (both). Popular seriality’s economically motivated aim at perpetuity endows these texts with a tangibly absurdist outlook in which incompetence and depravity endlessly and aimlessly continue to spiral out of control. The emphatically ‘woke’ humour of THE POLITICIAN turns away from its predecessor’s emphasis on transgression and absurdity and instead draws its comedy from a satirical inversion of the conventional coming-of-age progression visible, e.g., in THE CROWN. The series consequently presents an optimistic vision of realpolitik as a constructive way to meaningful change.

Chapter 6: The Curious Case of Volodymyr Zelensky and Vasyl Petrovych Holoborodko: Idealism and Populism in SLUHA NARODU

The Ukrainian production SLUHA NARODU (SN) arguably became the platform that launched Volodymyr Zelensky on his path to becoming his country’s real-life president and, as of February 2022, its media-savvy defender against Russian aggression. SN follows the narrative traditions of “the populist telling of the quest”54 and the American Monomyth in which an idealised, individualistic messiah-hero saves a potential Eden which had previously been failed by its institutions.55 An inevitable consequence of this utopian narrative’s dramatic logic is the implicit rejection of pluralism and representative democracy. As a dramatic trope, this populist construction of idealistic politics (and its unintended ideological consequences) reappears almost identically in a variety of cultural contexts (e.g., in the series MADAM SECRETARY, DESIGNATED SURVIVOR, and DESIGNATED SURVIVOR: 60 DAYS).

Chapter 7: Modelling Malfunction and Inverting the Populist Quest: BARON NOIR

On many levels, BARON NOIR (BN) is an inversion of the populist quest. The series’ plot revolves around the threats facing representative, pluralist democracy through systemic dysfunction, the rise of populist agitators, and the decline of the “front républicain” against right-wing extremism. Centred around the ruthless Socialist Party functionary Philippe Rickwaert, the series presents a teleological vision of realpolitik unusual for a polit-series. In BN, it is the Machiavellian strivers who are charged with saving democracy from destructive idealists and populists alike. The series constructs its fictional polity as an emergent actor-network of rare complexity. Politics, in BN, appears as a multipolar system creating a highly complex narrative with an ambivalent sense of political morality. Moreover, the series demonstrates a remarkable ability to incorporate developments of contemporary French politics into its narrative and authentically model their interaction.

Chapter 8: Starting from “some kind of scratch”: The Recalibration of HOUSE OF CARDS, Season 6

The sixth and final season of HoC is an example of rare clarity for the contradictory interplay of intradiegetic, dramatic, and historical dynamics that shape popular TV series. Perhaps this thesis’ most (in)famous sample, HoC 6 had to implement far-reaching narrative changes under tight public scrutiny after the highly-publicised dismissal of its star, actor Kevin Spacey, following numerous allegations of sexual abuse. The series faced replacing its world-famous protagonist, accommodating inevitable associations with historical sexual abuse, and creating a reasonably coherent conclusion for an essentially irresolvable serial narrative while maintaining continuity with previous seasons. Essentially squaring the circle, HoC 6 thus draws on a remarkable variety of superficial allusions, compositional shifts, and formal embellishments to simultaneously simulate serial continuity, character development, the normative re-evaluation of its diegetic past and narrative resolution.

Chapter 9: Conclusion: Polit-Series, Politics, and (Progressive) Perspectives

Many of the famous series in this study come with a well-known historical context that often tends to impose a particular perspective on scholarly criticism (e.g., THE CROWN’s treatment of its historical role models or SLUHA NARODU’s relation to the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election). Aware of this seductive fallacy, this thesis will have provided some much-needed differentiation and clarification concerning a fictional phenomenon that arguably exerted a significant discursive impact on the (political) reality of the 2010s: polit-series. Moreover, this study’s structural model contributes a unique methodical approach that allows the examination of popular TV series from various angles, encompassing perspectives from textual composition to industry dynamics. It shows that most series draw on a set of popular narrative formulas arranged in accordance with specific systemic logics. The chapter concludes by pointing out the possibilities and risks of present popular serial networks and the potential pathways for further scholarly inquiry.

1AFP, “Crowds gather outside court after Hong Kong dissidents charged”, Bangkok Post, March 1, 2021, https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/2076319/crowds-gather-outside-court-after-hong-kong-dissidents-charged; Caleb Quinley, “Three-finger salute: Hunger Games symbol adopted by Myanmar protesters”, The Guardian, February 8, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/08/three-finger-salute-hunger-games-symbol-adopted-by-myanmars-protesters.

2Johannes Bongardt, Rieke Gießelmann, Matthias Jüschke et al., “Spiel der Kräfte. Politik, Medien und Familie in Borgen”, in Politik in Fernsehserien: Analysen und Fallstudien zu House of Cards, Borgen & Co, ed. Niko Switek (Bielefeld: transcript, 2018), 179.

3The Obama White House, “Happy 5th birthday, West Wing Week”, published April 2, 2015, 04:02”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG1Nmy4gZIk&t=238s.

4CBS, “Vice President Joe Biden meets ‘Veep’ Selina Meyer”, video shown at the 2014 White House Correspondent’s Dinner, May 4, 2014, https://www.cbsnews.com/video/vice-president-joe-biden-meets-veep-selina-meyer/#x.

5“Finalement, Julien Drey dit qu’il n’est pas le ‘Baron Noir’”, Le Monde, March 17, 2016, https://www.lemonde.fr/big-browser/article/2016/03/17/finalement-julien-dray-dit-qu-il-n-est-pas-le-baron-noir_5991934_4832693.html.

6Lanre Bakare, “UK culture secretary to ask Netflix for ‘health warning’ that The Crown is fictional”, The Guardian, November 29, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/nov/29/the-crown-netflix-health-warning-fictional-oliver-dowden.

7See Andreas Dörner, “Politische TV-Serien und Politische Kultur: Ein Forschungsprogramm und Betrachtungen zu einem deutschen Sonderweg”, in Politische Kulturforschung Reloaded: Neue Theorien, Methoden und Ergebnisse, ed. Wolfgang Bergem, Paula Diehl, and Hans J. Lietzmann (Bielefeld: transcript, 2019), 161. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839447475-008.

8Solenn de Royer, “La domination culturelle de Netflix a des incidences sur l’écriture des récits politiques”, Le Monde, December 21, 2021, https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2021/12/21/election-presidentielle-2022-la-domination-culturelle-de-netflix-a-des-incidences-sur-l-ecriture-des-recits-politiques_6106855_3232.html.

9As remarked by Amanda Lotz who identifies the year 2010 as a turning point: In Amanda Lotz, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All (Cambridge, MA/London: The MIT Press, 2018), see e.g., 50 and 114; also Amanda D. Lotz, “Portals: A Treatise in Internet-Distributed-Television”, open access ed., Maize Books: Michigan Publishing, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, published 2017, last accessed September 9, 2022, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/maize/mpub9699689/1:3/--portals-a-treatise-on-internet-distributed-television?rgn=div1;view=fulltext; see also Catherine Johnson, Online TV (London: Routledge, 2019), 2f.

10As discussed in Amanda Lotz, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All (Cambridge, MA/London: The MIT Press, 2018); also Amanda D. Lotz, “Portals: A Treatise in Internet-Distributed-Television”, open access ed., Maize Books: Michigan Publishing, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, published 2017, last accessed September 9, 2022, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/maize/mpub9699689/1:5/--portals-a-treatise-on-internet-distributed-television?rgn=div1;view=fulltext; also Catherine Johnson, Online TV (London: Routledge, 2019).

11Mareike Jenner, Netflix & the Re-invention of Television (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer International Publishing), 14. And Mareike Jenner, “Is this TVIV? On Netflix, TVIII and binge-watching”, New Media & Society, 18, no. 2, (July 2014): 257–273, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814541523.

12Lotz, “Portals”, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/maize/mpub9699689/1:3/--portals-a-treatise-on-internet-distributed-television?rgn=div1;view=fulltext.

13Jan Olsson and Lynn Spigel, “Introduction”, in Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, ed. Jan Olsson and Lynn Spigel (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 2.

14See Christel Taillibert and Bruno Cailler, “Video on demand platforms, editorial strategies, and logics of production: The case of Netflix France”, in A European Television Fiction Renaissance: Premium Production Models and Transnational Circulation, ed. Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni (New York: Routledge, 2021), 105.

15See Sarah Atkinson, Beyond the Screen: Emerging Cinema and Engaging Audiences, 1st paperback ed. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 225f.

16Mareike Jenner, Netflix & the Re-invention of Television, (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer International Publishing), 176.

17Atkinson, Beyond the Screen, 225.

18Atkinson, Beyond the Screen, 225.

19My overview of pertinent series illustrates this.

20See the research on popular seriality conducted by the “Popular Seriality Research Unit”: DFG group no. 1091: “Popular Seriality: Aesthetics and Practice”, DFG, last accessed July 7, 2022, http://www.popularseriality.de/. E.g., Felix Brinker, “On the Formal Politics of Narratively Complex Television Series: Operational Self-Reflexivity and Audience Management in Fringe and Homeland”, in Poetics of Politics: Textuality and Social Relevance in Contemporary American Literature and Culture, ed. Sebastian M. Herrmann, Carolin Alice Hoffmann, Katja Kanzler et al. (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015), 42f; Frank Kelleter, “Five Ways of Looking at Popular Seriality”, in Media of Serial Narrative, ed. Frank Kelleter (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2017), e.g., 13, 18 and 26–31; Ruth Mayer, Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Supervillain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014), 12–21.

21For the term and the systemic origins of complexity see, e.g., Marina Grishakova and Maria Poulaki, “Introduction: Narrative Complexity”, in Narrative Complexity. Cognition, Embodiment, Evolution, ed. Marina Grishakova and Maria Poulaki (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 13.

22David Bordwell, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 266f.

23Jason Mittell, Complex TV. The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 5.

24Jason Mittell, Complex TV. The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 5.

25Mittell, Complex TV, 5.

26Marina Grishakova and Maria Poulaki, “Introduction: Narrative Complexity”, in Narrative Complexity. Cognition, Embodiment, Evolution, ed. Marina Grishakova and Maria Poulaki (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 12.

27Grishakova and Poulaki, “Narrative Complexity”, 13.

28For a popcultural perspective see Kaspar Maase, Populärkulturforschung: Eine Einführung (Bielefeld: transcript, 2019), 204f. For related discussions of polit-fiction see James F. Davidson, “Political Science and Political Fiction”, The American Political Science Review 55, no.4 (December 1961): 856 and 860. And Niko Switek, “Spiegel, Daten, Narrative. Politikwissenschaftliche Zugänge zu politischen Fernsehserien”, in Politik in Fernsehserien. Analysen und Fallstudien zu House of Cards, Borgen & Co, ed. Niko Switek (Bielefeld: transcript, 2018), 12–14.

29David Bordwell, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), XIII.

30Frank Kelleter and Andreas Jahn-Sudmann, „Eine interessante Affinität zwischen dem seriellen Erzählen und dem Thema Politik: Von Soap Operas zum Quality TV”, interview by Jöran Klatt and Katharina Rahlf, INDES: Zeitschrift Für Politik und Gesellschaft 3, no. 4 (2014): 5–22. Doi. https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666800092.5.

31Sean Robinson and Bernice Alston, “Lavender Identity and Representation in the Media: The Portrayal of Gays and Lesbians in Popular Television”, in The Millennials on Film and Television: Essays on the Politics of Popular Culture, ed. Betty Kaklamanidou and Margaret Tally (Jefferson, NC: Mc Farland & Co., 2014), 39.

32Frank Kelleter, “Five Ways of Looking at Popular Seriality”, in Media of Serial Narrative, ed. Frank Kelleter (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2017), 26.

33Following contentions building on the work of the “Popular Seriality Research Unit”: Kelleter, “Five Ways of Looking at Popular Seriality”, 22–26; Ruth Mayer, Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Supervillain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014), 19; Lorenz Engell, “Folgen und Ursachen: Über Serialität und kausalität”, in Populäre Serialität: Evolution – Narration – Distinktion: Zum seriellen Erzählen seit dem 19. Jhd, ed. Frank Kelleter (Bielefeld: transcript, 2012), 242.

34Annekatrin Bock, “Machtkampf, Intrigen und Manipulation: Die Negative Wahrnehmung von Politikgeschehen in Aktuellen Politikserien”, INDES: Zeitschrift Für Politik und Gesellschaft 3, no. 4 (2014): 24. My translation: “Arbeitsplätzen von Politiker_innen”.

35See Max Weber, “Politics as Vocation”, in Max Weber: The Vocation Lectures, ed. David Owen and Tracy B Strong, transl. Rodney Livingstone (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2004), 33.

36See James F. Davidson, “Political Science and Political Fiction”, The American Political Science Review 55, no.4 (December 1961): 856.

37Sandra Nuy, Die Politik von Athenes Schild: Zur dramaturgischen Logik des Politischen im fiktionalen Film (Berlin/Muenster: LIT Verlag, 2017), 96. My translation: “basale Politikdarstellung”. Original emphasis.

38Sandra Nuy, Die Politik von Athenes Schild: Zur dramaturgischen Logik des Politischen im fiktionalen Film (Berlin/Muenster: LIT Verlag, 2017), 45f. My translation: “Narrativen Gegebenheit”.

39Nuy, Athenes Schild, 46. My translation: “eines Mediums der Kritik, Agitation und Propaganda”.

40For a more recent discussion see, e.g., Catherine Johnson, Online TV (London: Routledge, 2019), 4–19.

41Mareike Jenner, Netflix & the Re-invention of Television (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer International Publishing), 8.

42Amanda D. Lotz, “Portals: A Treatise in Internet-Distributed-Television”, open access ed., Maize Books: Michigan Publishing, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, published 2017, last accessed September 9, 2022, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/maize/mpub9699689/1:3/--portals-a-treatise-on-internet-distributed-television?rgn=div1;view=fulltext. See the broader definition of “medium” by Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006), 7.

43Roger Silverstone, Television and Everyday Life, e-Library ed. (New York: Routledge, 2003), 84.

44Jenner, Netflix and the Re-invention of Television, 7.

45Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell, “Introduction: An Owner’s Manual for Television”, in How to Watch Television, 2nd ed., ed. Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell (New York: New York University Press, 2020), 5.

46Ramon Lobato, Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution (New York: New York University Press, 2019), 7.

47Tanja Weber and Christian Junklewitz, “Das Gesetz der Serie – Ansätze zur Definition und Analyse”, MEDIENwissenschaft: Rezensionen | Reviews 25, no.1 (2008): 18, https://doi.org/10.17192/ep2008.1.663. See also: Knut Hickethier, “Serie”, in Handbuch Populäre Kultur: Begriffe, Theorien und Diskussionen, ed. Hans-Otto Hügel (Stuttgart/Weimar: J.B. Metzler/Springer, 2003), 397.

48I will adjust and extend this definition for the purpose of my model in chapter 3.

49See, e.g., Weber and Junklewitz, “Das Gesetz der Serie”, 19. For a discussion of serial forms see also Hickethier, “Serie”, 400–402.

50Chapter 3 will elaborate further on this highly relevant distinction.

51Aldo Grasso and Massimo Scaglioni, Che cos’è la television: Il piccolo schermo fra cultura e società: i generi, l’industria, il pubblico (Milan: Garzanti, 2003), 134. Quoted via Weber and Junklewitz, “Das Gesetz der Serie”, 21. They write of a “schwache seriale Form”. The original calls for “una forma seriale debole”(original emphasis).

52See, e.g., Frank Kelleter, “Five Ways of Looking at Popular Seriality”, in Media of Serial Narrative, ed. Frank Kelleter (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2017), e.g., 13f., 18, and 24f.

53Referencing the famous homonymous concept in Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, 7th paperback printing (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).

54Liesbet van Zoonen, Entertaining the Citizen: When Politics and Popular Culture Converge (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 112.

55Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, The American Monomyth (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1977), XX.

2.   Contemporary TV, Complexity, Power Struggles and the Cynical Turn

Pertinent Research Perspectives on Polit-Series

This thesis proposes to treat polit-series and contemporary linear and nonlinear TV series in general as highly complex structural phenomena that are simultaneously pop cultural commodities, vast narrative fictional universes, and ongoing discussions of political concepts with contested degrees of connection to historical reality. Due to the expansive nature of the phenomenon at hand, this thesis draws on a breadth of critical approaches from various scholarly disciplines suitable for analysing (polit-)series and their larger textual, economic, sociotechnical and sociocultural ecology. This chapter will review extant literature, highlight the major developments in popular polit-fiction and pertinent research, and indicate ways to combine various scholarly perspectives from narratology and literary studies, media and industry studies, structural semantics, systems theory, game theory and game studies, Actor-Network Theory and psychology.

The research pertaining to this thesis’ interests can be divided thematically into four main areas: (1) Pertinent approaches to describing structural and narrative complexity; (2) research concerned with illustrating the relations of various actors within TV, popular culture, and the broader culture industry; (3) scholarship examining popular seriality; (4) the textual analysis of contemporary polit-series themselves.

Accordingly, this chapter will (1) review how scholarship from fields ranging from structural semantics to narratology and game studies have considered complexity as a property of narrative phenomena with a distinct aesthetic dimension, which has led Jason Mittell to coin the term “complex TV”1 for his poetics of contemporary linear television.

This chapter will go on to review various approaches to describing complex networks, particularly concerning what Bruno Latour has termed Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and their application for the narrative analysis of multi-media texts. It will show how their roots in linguistics, semiotics, and structural semantics, which intended to identify a universal grammar of narrative action (or, in the case of archetypal criticism, underlying deep structures of fictional texts), make structural network approaches ideally suited to be developed as an analytic tool for the complex liminal phenomenon of popular serial TV.

Extant approaches to the study of games will prove particularly pertinent to this thesis. This chapter will illustrate how the conceptual universe of games has fascinated scholars from mathematics, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, narratology and ludology in their respective attempts to model complex phenomena. I will show how structuralist narrative scholars in the 1960 and ‘70s attempted to theorize language – and subsequently literature – as games. Subsequently, I will discuss how, in the 1990s and early 2000s, ludologist in the famous narratology vs ludology debate rejected the conflation of game, play and narrative terminology to advocate for a distinct character of the former. However, I will point out that, particularly with regards to interactivity, the question remains whether ongoing serial narratives do indeed possess systemic similarities to interactive games that singular texts lack.

Discussing the application of game-based models in psychology, this chapter will examine psychoanalytical approaches to textual criticism, such as Jacques Lacan’s model of the human subconscious in his famous text on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter”. It will furthermore illustrate the use of Transaction Analysis as a model of the interactions between fictional characters.

Discussing the prominence of game terminology in inquiries from political and social studies, I will, furthermore, review approaches to “political aesthetics” and show how scholarship has come to regard “game” and “play” as foundational principles denoting politics’ increasing reliance on structures of spectacle and distraction.

This chapter will (2) examine current media industry research pertaining to processes of production, circulation, and reception within popular culture and contemporary TV. I will illustrate how media scholarship has differentiated between the evolving technological affordances of television circulation as channels, portals, and platforms and how it has theorised the impact of this evolution on economic and textual structures alike. It will become clear that the streaming portal Netflix, in particular, has become a focal point for media and industry scholarship describing the ambivalent recent ‘disruption’ of linear TV.

Being interested in agential relations within popular TV industries, I will examine long-running discussions surrounding power distribution within popular culture. They reach from the Frankfurt School’s concept of patriarchal industrial dominance over ‘mass culture’ to visions of participation and democratization in the light of the emerging web 2.0 to more tempered current approaches that see a conservation of established asymmetrical power structures in a largely professionalized digital entertainment industry. Following this essentially political perspective, I will likewise examine the scholarship surrounding the politics of TV authorship as a depersonalized and discursive phenomenon of devolved influence.

This chapter will (3) examine the comparatively recent research efforts concerning popular seriality as a distinct characteristic of multi-part narratives and cultural commodities that causes the emergence of specific narrative standards, schemes, and cultural and industrial practices. A growing body of research in cultural and media studies, as well as several studies of national literatures (e.g., German and North American) and notably the homonymous research unit of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG),2 have described popular seriality as a unique narrative phenomenon, which produces distinct effects both with regards to storytelling and the networks that determine it.

As I will show, there exists a remarkable asymmetry between the advanced state of research on popular seriality and its rare considerations in textual analyses of TV series in general3 and of polit-series in particular. This thesis follows the assumption that the specific mechanisms and conventions of popular seriality significantly alter the perspectives of textual analyses. It will pursue the conjecture that, from an analytical perspective, popular seriality constitutes a conceptual bridge between aesthetic and industrial affordances.

I will (4) review the rich body of textual criticism and impact research on contemporary polit-series (and pertinent examinations of polit-cinema that predate it). I will point out that, until recently, there has been a notable scholarly bias towards so-called Western productions, with a significant imbalance in favour of anglophone US and UK productions and a lack of comparative analyses.

Furthermore, I will illustrate how textual criticism has struggled with the disputed notion of ‘realism’ in polit-series and discuss TV scholarship’s anxious observation of polit-fiction’s ability to alternatively instruct, influence or reveal truths about its audiences.

This section will go on to examine pertinent examples of textual criticism of contemporary polit-fiction. It will show that the narratives’ use of simplifications, personifications and moralisation often disturb more literal scholarly notions of realism as historical accuracy and even lead to generalising claims of cultural incompatibility between specific national polities and fictionalisation.

Examining the body of textual criticism concerned with the normative evaluation of fictional politics, I will discuss early notions that regarded polit-series from the UK and the less prolific western European continent as largely pessimistic (with the British monarchy being the only positive part in an otherwise largely dystopian moral wasteland) while perceiving US polit-fiction as more optimistic. In this context, I will review literary and cultural scholarship’s examinations of the idealised hero-president that remains a dominant trope in less prestigious US productions to this day.

However, I will demonstrate how textual criticism of more contemporary polit-fiction has suggested a shift in high-profile series’ normative evaluation of politics in the late 2000s and early 2010s. It will become clear that there has been a cynical turn in US polit-series with high cultural capital that has moved US productions towards a more pessimistic portrayal of politics and presidents. The frequency of such (implicit) diagnoses indicates a temporary globalization of narrative conventions concerning high-profile polit-series. They show a notable tendency towards cynicism, fatalism, and absurdity as a presumed reaction to the seemingly inevitable ailments of capitalist reality.

Discussing the more recent uptake in research on gender representations in both TV criticism and political and cultural studies, I will go on to show how research has come to regard both traditionally male and female roles within the binary gender spectrum as an uneasy fit with the requirements of politics.

The chapter will conclude by indicating a variety of gaps in extant research. It will point out ways to consolidate the various aspects of popular serial television’s complex systems into an analytical approach and discuss its importance for further understanding the ever-accelerating developments of the increasingly complex nonlinear TV era.

2.1 Describing Narrative and Structural Complexity

The relationships between the various industrial, economic, and political actors that shape a TV series and other central commodities within popular culture have, at least since the breakthrough of digital production and circulation technology, been the focus of increased scholarly attention across Media, TV, narrative, literary, cultural and information studies. A promising approach to contend with these numerous material and interactional interdependencies (proposed, e.g., by Mittell4) seems to be to regard TV and its series as inherently complex systemic phenomena, often implicitly following contentions from ANT or systems theory.5

Evoking systems theory’s concept of “emergence”, Marie-Laure Ryan, examining complex narratives, postulates that complex systems produce “patterns and behaviours that could not be predicted by simply looking at the rules” that govern that system.6 In other words, the behaviour of an emergent (narrative) system exceeds the sum of possible behaviours of its parts. Narrative complexity, according to Marina Grishakova and Maria Poulaki, refers (1) to the “relations between narrative […] representation and mind”,7 that is, the creation of meaning through narrative. This assumption harkens back to reader-response criticism’s idea of active involvement of the interpretative recipient in the actualisation of text.8 In what was later to become cognitive poetics, David Bordwell made a similar argument for film,9 which Mittell has applied in his examination of how complex linear TV makes meaning.10

However, according to Grishakova and Poulaki, narrative complexity (2) refers to the “complexity of narrative representation contingent on media and technological affordances”.11 Analysing complexity in linear TV, Mittell likewise argues for a systemic origin of narrative complexity, stating,

in the digital era, a television program is suffused within and constituted by an intertextual web that pushes textual boundaries outward, blurring the experiential borders between watching a program and engaging with its paratexts.12

While the latter perspective still assumes narrative complexity to be rooted in various ways of reception, following Ryan, Grishakova, and Poulaki, narrative complexity appears much more as a product of emergent, multi-agential networks that operate according to a set of common rules but without a central directional impetus.

Accordingly, Stuart Hall, likewise taking a systemic perspective, describes mass communication such as TV not as a closed system but as an open network that draws its meaning “from other sources and other discursive formations within the wider sociocultural and political structure of which they are a differentiated part”.13 According to him, mass communicational messages are created and framed through their production structure which is itself “framed throughout by meanings and ideas”.14 This contention is reminiscent of what Marsha Kinder, with a more agential focus, has called TV’s “supersystem” that is “a network of intertextuality constructed around a figure or figures from pop culture”.15 These alternatively systemic or agential perspectives on narrative complexity have significant consequences for television series’ aesthetic and narrative composition.

2.1.1 Complexity and TV Aesthetics

Research within film, TV and literary studies has long attempted to define a particularly ‘televisual’ aesthetics, that is, “a complex of formal tendencies that shape television works and their reception”.16 Unsurprisingly, however, TV aesthetics has proven as dynamic as the medium itself. It is questionable if, faced with increasing media permeability (e.g., the growing tendency for films to serialize, select TV series to sport blockbuster budgets and star casts, and a rising similarity in the digital means of circulation and reception), the distinction between specific ‘televisual’ or ‘cinematic’ aesthetic modes is feasible at all.

Caren J. Deming and Deborah V. Tudor have remarked that linear, advertising-based TV classically refers back to the established practices of Hollywood aesthetics to structure the medium’s segmented flow.17 Jeremy Butler describes the conventions of classic linear TV aesthetics as “continuity editing” or “invisible editing”.18 It aims to “create a continuity of space and time”19 and arranges the individual audio-visual fragments of a scene into a continuous order that “supports the progression of the story”.20 The result is the impression of a “continuous flow”21 that hides the image’s fragmented nature and the audio-visual narrative’s technical composition. Standard formal conventions might, e.g., be the shot/reverse-shot technique to present a seemingly natural flow of images that follows the progression of the characters’ conversation.

As Butler points out, the “continuity system” and its associated conventions have been a pervasive influence on TV aesthetics.22 Classic linear television has long been associated with (albeit problematic) notions of ‘realism’ due to its, as Hickethier notes, “strongly conventionalised cinematic forms of representations”.23 This formal composition works to hide the artificial nature of TV storytelling, thus causing a “transparency of the medium”, seemingly drawing in audiences and creating an “appearance of reality”.24

However, more structurally complex systems and their resulting ‘complex’ narrative and formal aesthetics, particularly in nonlinear subscription-based services, show what Jane Shattuck, with recourse to Richard Dyer, calls a more “novelistic approach” that breaks with both formal and narrative “common TV and media traditions”25 of continuity.26 With obvious recourse to Butler and Hickethier, Joan Bleicher has described TV narrative as shaped by either “invisible dramaturgy” or “constructed dramaturgy”.27 In the latter, a series’ artificial nature is emphasised – instead of hidden – through visible (often novel) formal and dramatic means.

With the realisation of the multi-agential interplay that constitutes popular TV series, the term complexity has gained an aesthetic dimension. As Mittell, following his reception-centred approach, argues, narratively complex TV is no longer a “producer’s medium”28 but instead a self-aware “operational aesthetic”29 that demands “intensified viewer engagements”, “formal awareness”,30 and a “procedural literacy”31 in audiences. This assumption evokes notions of the Brechtian idea of a self-aware and aesthetically distant “epic theatre” that fulfils its cathartic function through its second-order observability.32