Brevity and the Short Form in Serial Television - (Screen Serialities) by Shannon Wells-Lassagne & Sylvaine Bataille & Florence Cabaret (Hardcover)

About the Book

Focuses on television fictions as short forms rather than expansive narratives, and how this relates to their seriality.

Book Synopsis

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).

Review Quotes

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"

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"

About the Author

Shannon Wells-Lassagne is a Professor of Film and Television Adaptation in the English Department at the University of Burgundy, France.

Florence Cabaret is Lecturer in Postcolonial Literatures in the English Department at the university of Rouen Normandie

Sylvaine Bataille is a Lecturer in Literature and Film Studies in the English department at the University of Rouen Normandie