Every facet of the TV industry is adapting in this contemporary era of media convergence, from the ways in which shows are transmitted and consumed to the changing nature of the relationship between networks and the audiences they court. The cultural kudos of the medium as a purveyor of quality drama, in what has come to be termed the current ‘golden age’ of TV , characterised by the increased involvement of creatives from a seemingly more prestigious film industry who are lured by the greater control offered within the industrial terrain of TV production and by the time-rich potentialities of TV seriality , is also changing. Part of this increasing kudos can be attributed to the emergence of a more innovative and boundary-pushing approach to the adaptation of pre-existing stories within the unique context of TV’s long-form serial narrative. TV is a medium which is historically and industrially primed to view the art of adaptation as profitable industry practice: it embraces the recycling of narrative forms as an established mode of TV production. The recent unprecedented rise in adapted TV scripted drama commissioned by an ever-expanding number of media outlets, from seasoned cable channels like HBO and rivals FX or Showtime to new streaming providers like Netflix and Hulu, serves as a clear indicator of the industry’s ongoing investment in adaptive practices. Scholarship that focuses on TV remakes , reboots , prequels and sequels as established adaptive modes is similarly on the rise and Adaptable TV: Rewiring the Text builds on this scholarly interest. However, instead of concentrating on the traditional aforementioned types of adaption, this study explores experimental adaptive practices that are currently generating a body of prestige serial drama within an ever-evolving TV landscape.
I argue that these serialised TV reconceptualisation of existing narratives serve as a provocation: they posit a reassessment of our understanding of adaptation as a cultural, theoretical and creative process by inviting us to rethink questions of authorship and ownership of narrative and to take into account both the impact of media-specific industrial production contexts , and of sociocultural influences at play in the reconfiguration of pre-loved stories. My aim, with particular reference to the serial narrative form, is to contextualise the process of adaptation within the parameters of TV production and consumption by employing an analytical matrix which applies not only a theoretical approach that examines the affinities between an adapted text and its prior source or sources, but one that explores the paratextual discourse that surrounds them. As a means to interrogating these processes at work in the reconfiguration of narratives to the serialised TV format, I employ a range of case study texts, all of which offer something new to adaptations discourse. The study opens with a focus on two experimental serial adaptations, Penny Dreadful (Showtime 2014–2016) and Fargo (FX 2104–) ; the analytical focus then shifts to the more traditional yet equally ground-breaking Orange is the New Black (Netflix 2103–) and The Night Of (HBO 2016). The selected series are products of a contemporary American TV industry committed to the production of serial narratives adapted from other forms, and all share a preoccupation with branding and authorship. However, the synergies of each are counter-balanced by their points of difference: each series employs a different serialised format and a different approach to the reconfiguration of the precursor text or texts, and the media outlets that produce and disseminate them are notably diverse as are the audiences they attract.
Writing back in 2007, Creeber and Hills predict a ‘radical transformation’ of the ‘economic and cultural worlds of television’ in terms of TV production, distribution and consumption (1–2). Having moved from what Ellis terms the ‘scarcity’ of TV product that characterises the TVI phase of the medium’s evolution to the TVII period which marks its greater ‘availability’, the current TVIII era is all about ‘choice’ (Ellis cited in Creeber and Hills 1).1 The ‘choice’ factor has revolutionised television in ways that have shifted beyond those anticipated by Creeber and Hills. In this contemporary era of convergence, De Fino argues that current changes to the TV landscape are in the main a response to the ‘legacy’ provided by American cable channel HBO ; by adopting a creative approach to programme content and to programme delivery ‘in a medium notoriously averse to risk’, HBO has found ways to generate a niche audience for its product (3), providing other cable channel competitors like Showtime , FX , AMC, Bravo, Pivot and TLC with an alternative industry model that has since facilitated TV’s emergence as ‘the pre-eminent narrative medium of our time’ (7), for a new type of ‘boutique audience’ that traditionally did not engage in TV viewing (Mittell Narrative Complexity 31). However, it is the recent arrival of streaming providers like Netflix and Hulu as generators of ‘original content’ that has further enhanced the dominance of the TV medium as a purveyor of quality risk-taking drama in this digital age. Having evolved from their origins as video streaming libraries back in 2007, streaming outlets of this kind are challenging the long-held position of more established and prestigious cable channels like HBO , and this increased competition leads to further ‘choice’ for consumers in terms of not only what to watch but when and how. While HBO may be attributed with ‘revolutionizing TV aesthetics and narrative structures’ streaming outlets like Netflix and Hulu are at the forefront of equally revolutionary changes to the way programmes are currently released and consumed (Jenner 261), giving streaming providers the capacity to build ‘even smaller “niche” audiences’ who have the capacity to control their own viewing, to access whole seasons on demand, and to engage with ‘increasingly complex narrative structures’ (269–270). These changes in release patterns introduce what Mittell sees as a potential destabilisation of the serial form: to ‘for[go]’ the traditional ‘gap-filled serial broadcast experience’ works contrary to the norms TV consumption (Complex Poetics 41), and the ways in which we engage with stories before, during and after release are similarly disrupted by that change in consumption habits. Kustritz echoes Mittell’s observations noting that both the ‘function of seriality in the absence of fixed instalments’ and the increased ‘dispersion of potential story elements across a diverse collection of media platforms and technologies’ have the potential to further de-stabilise fixed notions of seriality (M/C). But with destabilisation comes opportunity—opportunity to expand the narrative boundaries of the serial form, taking it into evermore complex adaptive realms as the case studies focused on here demonstrate. In the interim, what we continue to consider scripted serial drama remains central to the re-evaluation of TV as a medium, and with serial drama’s increased capacity for narrative complexity comes the capacity for writers and producers to develop evermore complex serialised long-form narratives, the visual quality of which equates with that of cinema due to today’s advanced digital technologies.
In this postmillennial TV climate, TV’s ‘evaluative stock’ has risen, affording it a kudos comparable to historically more prestigious modes of creative expression like the novel, theatre or cinema (Mittell Complex Poetics 37); moreover, this ‘change in perception’ of the medium’s ‘legitimacyʼ enhances its appeal to creatives working in other fields (31). As the rising number of successful TV series of varying types testifies, TV is no longer deemed the fall-back option for creatives working in the field of narrative adaptation . For the adapter working with densely layered narratives of pre-existing texts, contemporary TV seriality lends itself to a more labyrinthine unravelling of and/or potential expansion of existing story worlds within a TV production context that is less rigid and less time-constrained than its cinematic or theatrical counterpart. Since the 1990s, the long-form narrative has become what Innocenti and Pescatore term the ‘canonical form of new TV seriality ’, its shape evolving from the ‘multilinear’ and ‘complex’ series of the nineties to include a range of series types that in recent times has also embraced the return of the anthologised series , a format once considered ‘antiquated’ and cost prohibitive (3). Instead of providing continuity of plot or character, the anthology series foregrounds its stylistic and thematic points of continuity across seasons, allowing for the emergence of seasonally discrete storylines that are nevertheless part of a unified whole; in much the same way, anthologised TV series adapted from prior t...