In many ways Scandinavian film and television is a global cultural brand, connected with and exporting some of the cultural and social values connected to a liberal and progressive welfare society. This course deals with the social, institutional and cultural background of film and television in Scandinavia and in a broader European and global context.
8.3: Stories by instalment: Television and serial narratives, by Professor Ib Bondebjerg
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來自 University of Copenhagen 的課程
北欧电影和电视
303 個評分
從本節課中
Documentary and Early TV Drama
Scandinavian cinema has a long history of strong documentary film making. The seventh lesson moves from the early documentary filmmakers to the contemporary – global and digital – scene for Scandinavian documentaries. Television drama is important for the Scandinavian public service broadcasters, but the notions of good television drama have changed remarkably from the early days of television up until today. In the eighth lesson we focus on the main tendencies in these developments from 1960 to 2000.
與講師見面
Eva Novrup RedvallAssociate Professor
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication
[NOISE] In this last part of the lecture,
I will focus on the development of serial narratives
on Scandinavian television before 2000.
Well, serial narratives on Scandinavian television were, in fact,
imported from US television already in the 1950s.
And they began to develop as an original form in Scandinavia in the 1960s,
as I have already mentioned.
In both Sweden and Denmark, people could already in the 1950s
follow the legendary sitcom series I Love Lucy from 1951 to 1957.
And from that time and until today,
also different versions of Disney cartoons and
shows have been an integrated part of the life of children in Scandinavia.
The older children and their parents could, on the other hand,
amuse themselves often on Saturday nights with Western series like Bonanza or
the British police series Fabian of Scotland Yard.
Or in the early 60s, American private series like Perry Mason.
The really large global success of American serials like
Dallas in the late 70s, and the similar
international success of long-running series like the British Coronation Street,
already started in the 1960s and still running, are clearly an inspiration for
the Danish and Swedish and Norwegian long running series already mentioned.
The same goes for the long row of crime series from both England and
America and other countries.
Series which have clearly inspired the Scandinavian tradition in this area.
As we will hear people from DR traveled to both the US and
the UK to study the production and
creation of social drama and serial and crime serials.
This inspiration after 2000, however,
was also combined with a specific Nordic dimension and style.
Something that was noticed in the international reception of series' like,
for instance, Wallander and The Killing,
which will be dealt with by my colleague, Eva Novrup Redvall in the following lecture.
From the late 1980s, the serial, or
series format, became almost totally dominant in drama production.
These formats gradually spread to all genres,
contemporary drama, historical drama, crime, comedy,
and also long-running soaps as we've already seen.
But it is also worth noticing that there is a very strong American and European
tradition for historical drama, which has inspired the Scandinavian tradition.
>> [INAUDIBLE]
[MUSIC]
Get away from me!
>> The spectacular success of American historical dramas
like Roots in 1978 as a 12 part television serial, or
the four part series Holocaust from 1978 showed a European audience and
those responsible for programming in Scandinavia a new
way of combining a serious topic with a popular form.
Another inspiration was clearly the BBC heritage drama and
historical drama, The Family Ashton in 52 parts from
1970 to 1972 about a family during World War II.
Or Upstairs Downstairs in 68 parts from 1976 to 1978.
All the many adaptations of novels by Emily Brontë or
Jane Austen are all part of a historical drama tradition that is
widespread in the rest of Europe and Scandinavia.
Historical drama series based on national literary classics was, as we have seen,
one of the earliest and most popular forms of drama in Scandinavia.
One of the most classic and also internationally recognized drama series is
Jan Troell's The Emigrants, A New Land, from 1971 to 72,
made By SVT and based on Vilhelm Moberg's novel
about those Swedes that immigrated to the US around 1900.
With Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann in the leading role,
the series won both a golden globe as best foreign drama series and
Liv Ullmann won for best actress.
It's a broad, epic story of the hard life in the 19th century Sweden and
in the early US settlements of farmers.
But it is also a universal story of belonging, of love, death, and
memory, that also speaks to a contemporary audience in Sweden.
As already mentioned, Swedish historical drama also won international
recognition through historical drama series based on Bergman's memoirs.
He wrote and directed Fanny and Alexander himself whereas Bill August told
another part of the story in Best Intentions.
Together, the two serials tell a dramatic tale of Sweden in the early 1900,
and at the same time again,
a story of universal conflicts between different forms of life and values.
[MUSIC]
Another important Swedish historical drama serials include Godnatt Jord,
Goodnight Earth,
in six parts from 1979 based on Ivar Lo-Johansson's novel of the same name,
representing a working class perspective on early modern Swedish history.
In Denmark, we find the same kind of historical drama
based on literary classics, but also as already mentioned,
historical series created directly for television like Matador,
Or we had the very popular pictures
made on the basis of a novel by Gustav Wied called Livsens Ondskab and the more historical,
realistic drama, the Fisherman, from 1977 based on Hans Kirk's novel
about the lifeforms in western Jutland in early 1900 and the connection to religion.
Both productions that represent the kind of historical description
of national history that is so popular in all the Scandinavian nations.
DR also tried more adventurous productions based on popular novels,
for instance, Gongehovdingen from 1992 about the wars between Danes and
the Swedish in the 17th century.
Mostly, they stuck to stories based on national literary classics or
historical biopics of famous Danes.
For instance the star in Call Me Liva from 1992 or
the man behind the Danish Carlsberg Breweries and
his life in Denmark in the golden age from the mid 80s.
The turn towards the series and serial format, in the late eighties,
is a general tendency in Scandinavia.
But the disappearance of the single play did not
mean that experiments with television drama did not take place.
Serial formats are much more costly to produce of course, and
therefore broadcasters focus more on how large
an audience they can attract to make the investment legitimate.
But since public service television is not directly dependent on viewers and
income from advertising, diversity in the making of different forms of
serial drama was also on the agenda.
We have seen this happen as Lars von Trier was invited by DR to make The Kingdom,
an example of inviting an avant-garde director and
provocateur inside the popular medium of television, and with great success.
In Europe, this tendency to create a more demanding,
avant-garde television drama developed both in the UK and in Germany.
The television series by the now late Dennis Potter set a new standard for
what kind of television style and narration was possible.
And he clearly mixed genres belonging both to popular culture and
avant-garde culture.
[MUSIC]
A work like Pennies from Heaven from 1978 was a historical series
about the depression years, but told as both a musical and historical melodrama.
And the different forms were constantly clashing.
This was even more the case with The Singing Detective.
By now a modern classic where a story of a writer
of detective novels, his problematic childhood and
traumas are told with a mixture of genres from comedy, love story, crime to musical.
In Germany Rainer Werner Fassbinders very innovative.
Adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz in 14 parts from 1980,
based on Alfred Döblin's classical novel, is an example of the same.
Describing Germany and Berlin just before the birth of Nazism.
The film, or the serial, is at the same time a colorful, powerful story
of decadence and decay, told in a stunning and grotesque visual form.
>> [LAUGH]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> [LAUGH]
[LAUGH]
>> This development and
the experiment with television as a narrative form, of course,
also had an American dimension when David Lynch got his international breakthrough
to a large audience with Twin Peaks from 1990 to 1991.
This is another example of avant-garde and
experimental television, but using popular genre formats.
Many of the elements we find in this development of new form of quality
television has influenced the Scandinavian television after 2000, which will,
as I have said ,be the theme of Eva Novrup Redvalls next lecture following this one.
The development also points towards a new television culture with the decline
of traditional broadcast television, the birth of cable channels like HBO and
online channels like Netflix that are not dependent of a traditional mass audience,
but can cater to different segments of the audience in a new way.
This is a development we will return
to in the last lecture of this course on Scandinavian Film and Television.
Thank you for your attention.
[MUSIC]
