Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (Reading Contemporary Television (2024)

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“With 22 Episodes a Year”. Searching for Quality in US Network Television: the Cases of 'The Good Wife', 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' and 'Jane the Virgin'

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The notion of ‘quality television’ has undergone endless revisions over the last three decades. Given the technological, institutional, economic and aesthetic evolution of the medium, diverse scholars questioned and explored its forms of quality, especially focusing on the US scenario, notably a forerunner and leader in the development and international distribution of TV shows. Applied to the American industry, this ever-evolving definition bears some recurrent fea- tures that make it a sort of ‘super-genre’, a label for TV series that share some ‘prestige’ specifici- ties. Focusing on the US scenario, where nowadays ‘quality’ tends to maily label cable series, this paper aims to identify those prestige specificities and to answer the question: is there such thing as a quality network television in a cable-dominated market? After establishing a theoretical framework by tracing back the evolution of the notion of quality television, the article will focus on three contemporary case studies: CBS’ The Good Wife, The CW’s Jane the Virgin and FOX’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine. We will see how these three series share some aesthetic and narrative tropes that, making the best of broadcast television’s weaknesses and restrictions, aim to appeal to a certain upscale audience, resulting into critical acclaim and awards recognition. In the end, we will argue that several characteristics of quality cable television can actually be applied to a wave of network television productions that, although based on the standard for- mats of broadcast storytelling, could be critically compared to more acclaimed shows, ultimately fitting into the prestige series super-genre.

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Not That Kind of Quality. Prestige, Relevance and Value in U.S. Network Television

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Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (Reading Contemporary Television (2024)
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