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Brevity and the Short Form in Serial Television
Edited by Shannon Wells-Lassagne, Sylvaine Bataille and Florence Cabaret
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Book Presentation:
Focuses on television fictions as short forms rather than expansive narratives, and how this relates to their seriality
• 12 case studies focusing on the short form in television fiction
• Covers a wide array of television, be it network, cable, or streaming, from several different national origins
• Focuses not just on fiction, but on relatively unstudied aspects of television: miniseries, web series, video essays as a form of brevity in television aesthetics
• Studies both television production (the TV series themselves) as well as reception (video essays)
• Features an extended interview with a television practitioner (Vincent Poymiro, the screenwriter of the French series En thérapie, an adaptation of BeTipul/In Treatment)
This book offers various approaches to understanding the short form in television. The collection is structured in three parts, first engaging with the concept of brevity as inherent to television fiction, before going on to examine how the rapidly-changing landscape of "television" outside traditional networks might adapt this trope to new contexts made accessible by streaming platforms.
The final part of the study examines how this short form is inextricable from a larger context, either in its relation to seriality (from the crossover to the "bottle episode") and/or a larger structure, for example in the reception of a larger whole through short but evocative clips in order to better weigh their impact (from "Easter Egg" fan videos to "Analyses of").
The collection concludes with an interview with award-winning screenwriter Vincent Poymiro about his French series En thérapie (an adaptation of BeTipul/In Treatment).
About the authors:
Shannon Wells-Lassagne is a Professor of Film and Television Adaptation in the English Department at the University of Burgundy, France.
Sylvaine Bataille is a Lecturer in Literature and Film Studies in the English department at the University of Rouen NormandieFlorence Cabaret is Lecturer in Postcolonial Literatures in the English Department at the university of Rouen Normandie
Press Reviews:
This rigorous, insightful, and often delightful collection grapples ably with an ongoing and constitutive dialectic of television: series is constituted by episode. Brevity makes possible serial duration. As television undergoes massive, rapid change, this volume carefully tracks those transformations through a series of brilliant, brief analyses. The result? Required reading.– Samuel A. Chambers, Johns Hopkins University
This is a timely, brilliant volume by sterling scholars. Through its focus on the many reflexive forms of brevity (scenes, episodic anthologies, special episodes, shortcoms, miniseries, paratextual videos) and its emphasis on the fragment as well as the whole, it enriches our understanding of television seriality in a decisive way.– Sarah Hatchuel, Professor in Film and Media Studies, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
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