Once Upon a Time (2011-18) uses the police procedural television series format to draw equivalency between this form and the Disney fairy tale. However, in its treatment of this material, it exemplifies how neither the justice of the smalltown sheriff nor the medievalism-informed otherworld exists. Once Upon a Time enacts a fairy tale of justice and punishment coded through fairy-tale mores of good and evil, but as the show continues, the storylines extend and expand, and both narrative structures begin to break and thereby provoke questions about what justice looks like and who it is for in both the fairy tale and the police procedural.
Formula 1 has experienced a notable resurgence in the United States during the 2020s. This research examines the Netflix documentary series (docuseries) Formula 1: Drive to Survive and related US promotion as a key cause. Parasocial relationships and the documentary format itself have contributed to fan creation. The docuseries serves less as a re-enactment of a topic for historical perspective but rather as a public relations tool, garnering publicity for the sport but also creating fans. Sport promotion can use the documentary format for creating fans with little knowledge of a sport or its athletes. Research results indicated a strong positive correlation between viewership and better understanding of Formula 1 racing and its drivers, as well as becoming more interested in the sport and the lifestyle portrayed. Implications for promotions and marketing that increase use of the documentary as a dominant narrative tactic are discussed.
This research investigates the complex representation of healthfulness messages in early childhood television content, examining how health-related behaviours and attitudes are constructed and communicated to young viewers. Drawing on both health communication and television studies perspectives, the analysis of 330 episodes from children’s channels reveals nuanced patterns in the representation of sport and physical activities, nutrition and body image. The findings unveil a significant paradox in health messaging: while sport narratives lack explicit connections to health outcomes, nutritional content presents a clear dichotomy between healthy foods as wellness facilitators and unhealthy foods as entertainment elements. Furthermore, the study identifies distinct body image patterns, with child characters predominantly portrayed within a narrow range of body types, while adult characters display greater diversity. This research contributes to our understanding of how early childhood media shapes health literacy and suggests critical implications for content creators, health educators and policy-makers in fostering more effective health-promoting messages. The study’s theoretical approach integrates social cognitive theory with health-related motive orientation theory, providing a dual theoretical framework for understanding the construction of health messaging in children’s media.
This article examines how Internet Movie Database (IMDb) operates as a contemporary site of cultural legitimation by analysing its top 1000 highest-rated television episodes between 1975 and 2022. Rather than interpreting ratings as neutral reflections of quality, the study conceptualizes them as outcomes shaped by platform architecture, user participation and evaluative conventions. The findings reveal genre-based asymmetries in recognition, including drama’s dominance in representation alongside comedy’s stronger average performance, as well as the sustained visibility and consistency of animated series, particularly Japanese anime. The concentration of highly rated episodes in the streaming era further underscores the relationship between industrial transformation and audience-driven evaluation. Interpreted through cultural legitimation theory, the results demonstrate how participatory rating systems organize prestige, visibility and cultural hierarchy in digital media environments. The study contributes to debates on platform governance and digital cultural value by showing how audience metrics restructure definitions of television excellence.
HBO's The Last of Us (2023-present) stages a climate-linked dystopia in which institutional collapse renders distrust and violence as ordinary conditions of survival. This article introduces violent care to name a moral imaginary in which care emerges as emotionally and ethically legible through the willingness to do lethal harm on behalf of the few. Drawing on Fisher's narrative paradigm, Bormann's symbolic convergence theory and Berlant's account of affective life, I analyse Season 1 as a rhetorical artefact, tracing how recurring fantasy themes consolidate into a rhetorical vision that makes suspicion of institutions and strangers feel prudent and morally compelling. Across key sequences (the outbreak prologue, Kansas City, the encounter with David, and the hospital finale), the series repeatedly rewards guarded intimacy and lethal protection, framing family as the only trustworthy ethical unit. The finale crystallizes the cruel optimism of this logic. Joel's attachment to protectorhood sustains purpose and narrative closure while foreclosing more diverse imaginaries of solidarity, justice and responsibility for the many. The article argues that survivalist prestige television can function as a kind of affectively persuasive moral orientation, narrowing what forms of care and governance feel plausible under crisis.
Scholarship on how the audience perceives journalism in the real world through the image of the journalist in popular culture is growing, but little addresses how these professional portrayals can also showcase the personal identity of journalists. The Netflix dark comedy After Life (2019-22) follows community-based journalist Tony Johnson through his grieving process from the death of his wife, and his personal trauma appears to have had a direct effect on his professional role, as both identities are immersed in the local community where emotional post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) triggers are unavoidably present. However, individual behavioural patterns and protective factors such as social support contribute to resilience. Using the lens of popular culture and through a textual analysis of all After Life episodes, this article explores how personal trauma impacts a community journalist's professional role and the community's impact on the journalist's resilience.
Chinese 'big heroine' dramas have recently emerged as a prominent cultural form that symbolically showcases ideals of women's empowerment and gender progress. Yet beneath their surface narratives of autonomy and strength lies a persistent tension between symbolic liberation and structural constraint. Drawing on Norman Fairclough's framework of critical discourse analysis, this article examines how visual symbols, linguistic choices and narrative strategies in major big heroine dramas construct female subjectivity and gender consciousness. While these series appear to challenge traditional gender norms, they remain deeply entangled with entrenched stereotypes and market-driven imperatives. This paradox reveals how empowerment narratives are often appropriated by commercial logics, limiting their potential for cultural transformation. This article argues for deeper narrative reform and more diverse character representation, suggesting ways in which television can not only provide entertainment but also contribute to gender-equitable cultural development.
This article examines television in India as a case to argue for the role of comparative literature in analysing visual media within the context of the alternative humanities. It seeks to redefine the role of comparative literature as a reflective practice within the alternative humanities. Through the lens of gender representation, it explores how Indian television negotiates cultural narratives and offers a non-western perspective to comparative media studies. Since the 1960s, scholars have positioned comparative literature in relation to adjacent and competing disciplines to define its role within the alternative humanities. These debates highlight how comparative literature materializes in fields such as cultural studies, world literature, media studies and the digital humanities. In the context of visual media, comparative literature establishes a cultural framework for analysis and criticism. It bridges the study of television as both a communication medium essential to contemporary society and an aesthetic object that, through its narrative structures, engages with and interrogates the alternative humanities. This study challenges the view that comparative literature abruptly replaced traditional criticism and produced a revolutionary societal impact. Instead, its development is examined alongside that of television, which evolved gradually by integrating tradition with innovation. Television has served as a platform where the alternative humanities converge, particularly through representations of gender in advertising, news interpretations, political activism and discourse of justice. This process has contributed to the expansion of comparative literature. Comparative literature fosters plurality and social justice, while media studies, particularly visual media, offer a critical perspective on television.
By seamlessly blending comedy and music, Bluey (2018-present) effectively captures the emotional journey of parenting and reflects a broader Australian cultural focus on the local and mundane. In this article, I explore how humour contributes to the emotional impact of Bluey in combination with western classical music. The influence of Romanticism on the perception of classical music as transcendent contrasts with the everyday nature of Bluey's narratives and setting, resulting in moments of humour. This humour is ironic, as each element of the joke carries a sense of the other. This article draws on netnographic data as well as previous scholarship to explore how classical music operates within Bluey as a text in the broadest sense and how it can be situated within the history of Australian creative writing. Bluey is not just a phenomenally successful children's programme; it is a phenomenally successful Australian children's programme, and this aspect forms a significant part of its identity. This article, therefore, takes a moment to consider the programme's place within the broader context of Australian cultural production. In doing so, I explore the concept of the 'ordinary' or 'quotidian sacred' to delve into how music supports both the creation of humour in Bluey, its emotional intensity and its Australian cultural specificity. Drawing on Lyn McCredden and Ashcroft et al.'s research on the contemporary sacred in Australia, which highlights a uniquely Australian expression of the sacred as 'earthed, embodied, humbled, local, demotic, ordinary, and proximate', this article examines this concept as a lens through which Bluey's portrayal of the child can be understood. By bringing together the elements of the Australian sublime, the Australian sacred, humour and sound, I argue that the juxtaposition of the transcendent and the ordinary creates Bluey's emotional impact at the shared border between each element.
In the early 2000s, television witnessed the ascendancy of reality TV, profoundly influencing societal norms and behaviours. Taking the culturally situated phenomenon of Bigg Boss (2006-present) in India as a prime case study, this research scrutinizes the Hindi-language version through the frameworks of Michel Foucault's panopticon and Gilles Deleuze's concept of the 'society of control'. Utilizing close reading of episodes, the study examines how the show's surveillance mechanisms shape contestants' behaviour and the evolving power dynamics between producers and participants. The analysis explicitly traces a shift from traditional disciplinary surveillance towards post-panoptic, rhizomatic control within the Bigg Boss house. It reveals broader social implications for identity formation within mediated environments and critically reflects India's contemporary sociopolitical shifts, particularly the interplay of digital democratization, performative nationalism and the commodification of personal lives. Ultimately, the research illuminates how Bigg Boss both reflects and reinforces the dynamics of societal control and personal identity in the digital age, offering a critical perspective on the intersection of media, surveillance and social behaviour within the specific Indian context.
This article examines the representation of female political leadership in Netflix original political dramas through quantitative content analysis of four central characters: Claire Underwood (House of Cards [2013-18]), Queen Elizabeth II (The Crown [2016-23]), Birgitte Nyborg (Borgen [2010-22]) and Kate Wyler (The Diplomat [2023-present]). Using automated sentiment analysis and stereotype classification algorithms, the research reveals significant patterns in how streaming platforms construct female political authority. Results demonstrate a predominance of the Maternal Nurturer archetype (50 per cent of characters), alongside the emergence of a Professional Expert archetype that is prominently featured in recent productions. American characters exhibit marked divergence, with Claire Underwood displaying the highest Iron Lady stereotype scores (75.76) and a negative sentiment polarity (-0.089). At the same time, Kate Wyler demonstrates strong Professional Expert characteristics (62.0) with a positive sentiment polarity (0.334). European characters maintain positive sentiment orientation (0.36-0.45) aligned with collaborative leadership representations. These findings suggest that, despite global distribution, distinct cultural frameworks persist in Netflix's construction of female political authority, with recent productions introducing competence-based representations that potentially expand available leadership models. The research contributes to an understanding of how transnational media platforms balance global reach and local cultural specificity in their representation of women's leadership in politics.
This article analyses the evolution of the phenomenon of television from its beginnings to the present day, exploring how this reality has adapted to social and technological change. Using a documentary analysis methodology, this exploratory study proposes four main phases: the early years, the maturing years, the technological transition and the present and future. The analysis suggests that, in each new phase, television has not completely broken with its past but has 'only' adapted and/or added new features to what was already there. Compared to the past, television is no longer so dependent on a specific device, place and time but is increasingly diluted across a variety of devices, places and times. This study concludes that television is less and less an object of communication and more and more a phenomenon of communication. Less an object, more a phenomenon - this is what television is today, and this also seems to be a clear and growing trend for what television will be in the future. This evolution also calls for a renewed notion of public service - less focused on devices and more on phenomena.
Creating an inclusive TV industry requires intentional adaptation of production practices to support the participation and success of Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) actors. This article explores strategies for fostering accessibility and equity on TV sets, with a particular emphasis on high-production environments like those involving visual effects (VFX). Through the lens of a case study interview with Amy Murray, a Deaf actor who starred in the fantasy series The Witcher: Blood Origin (2022), the research examines real-world challenges and solutions for enhancing accessibility and integrating VFX workflows with inclusive practices. Murray provides insights into her experiences, including navigating communication barriers, the use of on-set interpreters and the importance of visual aids, written cues and pre-visualization tools during the production process. The article highlights how the production team of The Witcher: Blood Origin implemented inclusive practices, such as hiring sign-language interpreters, providing captioned scripts and fostering an inclusive work culture while collaborating with VFX teams. Key to their success was the use of visual storytelling tools and technologies, including VFX pre-visualizations and accessible digital interfaces, to ensure Murray and other team members could effectively visualize and interpret scenes involving complex effects. Murray's reflections underscore the significance of authentic representation, noting how her presence as a deaf actor enriched the storytelling and brought depth to her character within the highly visual medium of VFX-heavy productions. The article calls for a collective shift towards a more accessible, equitable and visually inclusive TV industry.
Star Trek (ST), with millions of fans and recognized as one of the longest-standing science-fiction franchises, offers numerous opportunities for scholarly examination. This article draws on a range of ST episodes to explore international relations, particularly questions related to human nature, power dynamics and global governance. It argues that the United Federation of Planets's actions closely mirror the principles of power politics, positioning it as a prominent player in the multipolar landscape of the ST universe. The selected episodes also offer insights into the feasibility of compromise in situations where conflict seems inevitable. Additionally, they highlight that idealism and realism are two sides of the same coin. In other words, while it is possible to prevent war and achieve world unity, as suggested by liberal assumptions, humanity must still navigate power politics within the context of new geopolitics and realist policy preferences. Ultimately, the analysis identifies smart power as a crucial policy tool due to its capacity to enable the Federation to both optimize and sustain a dominant position within the multipolar context.
How does one partner's television consumption impact their romantic partner? While romantic relationships often centre on shared values and interests, media preferences - particularly television shows - are not always mutually embraced. This study explores the concept of 'second-hand fanship', a phenomenon in which one partner adopts fanship behaviours based on their significant other's enthusiasm for a fan object, such as a television show, without ever directly engaging with the content themselves. Television, as a central and enduring form of popular media, often serves as more than entertainment - it becomes a part of daily conversation, routine and identity. When one partner deeply connects with a television series, their passion can influence the relational environment, prompting the other partner to respond in ways that mimic fanship: learning character names, referencing plot points or expressing emotional investment, even in the absence of first-hand viewing. Second-hand fanship plays a pivotal role at the intersection of media studies and interpersonal communication by illustrating how television's cultural reach extends beyond individual screens into the intimate spaces of romantic partnerships. Through a survey-based design of open-ended questions, this study examines 283 individuals in long-term romantic relationships. The findings demonstrate that aspects of fanship can be transferred interpersonally, not through media exposure but through emotional connection and communication. Yet, the study also uncovers avoidance behaviours among some partners, highlighting that media influence can foster both connection and tension within relationships. Ultimately, this research offers a new lens for understanding how television's influence transcends individual viewers, shaping relational dynamics and fanship culture. Future work should investigate how second-hand fanship functions in other interpersonal contexts, including friendships and family systems.
Though arguably an ensemble series, BBC spy drama Spooks (2002-11) often focused upon a single character as its ostensible lead. As such, this article focuses upon one of those leads, Tom Quinn, who was the leader of Section A from Season 1, Episode 1, to Season 3, Episode 2 (with a brief appearance in the series finale; Season 10, Episode 6). I will argue that the series uses Gothic tropes throughout these episodes to illustrate and make intelligible to the audience Tom's increasing moral injury which takes him from the series' initial moral compass to his final diegetic appearance as an 'outside agency' about to commit an assassination at MI5's unofficial order.
Set in Chicago, the Emmy award-winning series The Bear (2022–present) overlays its diegetic world over the city’s architecture, charting its urban geography across a fictional map of sites and culinary spots, imbued with personal histories and narrative significance. As the series intersects the city’s real locations with its fiction, it creates a network of places and non-places that affect individual characters’ narratives and embody their memories. The juxtaposition between meaningful urban spaces and transitional locations in The Bear ’s diegesis illustrates Marc Augè’s commentary on supermodernity’s enforcement of needless progress and productivity, and the subsequent fragmentation of the human experience that results from such exertion. The following article employs Augè’s place/non-place binary and his interpretation of supermodernity’s effect on the metropolitan experience in an analysis of the city’s significance to The Bear ’s commentary on accelerated gentrification and the individual perception of such frantic and expedited progress. Organized in three parts, this article’s analysis investigates the ways the series intertwines Chicago’s architecture and local culture with the characters’ own lives in order to deliver its critique on supermodernity’s impossible expectations, the city’s place as a formal tool of narrative development and its role in structuring the series’ culinary achievements.
This article presents a new methodology for analysing film and television scripts using freely available subtitle files and commonplace spreadsheet tools. It analyses gendered communication patterns in animated television programming and details step-by-step instructions with links to instructional videos. Results obtained using this new methodology are used as part of an ongoing research project on the representation of female characters in the Netflix series, Masters of the Universe: Revelation (2021–present).
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly influenced the way people do social interaction. One of the more recent forms that has become a phenomenon is watching online content together via Netflix Party, a subscription video-on-demand platform. Utilizing the uses and gratifications theory as the conceptual framework, the main objective of this research was to determine the factors that influence the virtual group-watching of Netflix Party. The 391 respondents who took part in the survey willingly responded to twenty statements broken down into five categories. SEM, or structural equation modelling, is implemented in the goodness-of-fit model. The outcomes of SEM brought to light that the factors of entertainment, engagement, social influence and binge-watching had a significant impact on group-watching in New Zealand through the Netflix Party feature on various digital channels during the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, an informational factor was not shown to have an important aspect of the group-watching activities.
Despite the success of the show Yellowstone (2018–24) and its spin-offs, creator Taylor Sheridan is a controversial figure in the industry due to his unconventional approach to TV series production. By rarely employing writers’ rooms and taking on the daily activities of showrunning on multiple series simultaneously, he has bypassed traditional chains of command with regard to drama production. In an interview that came out weeks into the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, Sheridan asserted his status as the sole voice on his productions and refused to play by any industry rules that affect his authority. As he tells his stories in his own way, Sheridan provides a key case study of the role of the branded showrunner in today’s contentious television landscape.
