A Storytelling Machine:  The Complexity and Revolution of Narrative Television

Alberto N. García

doi:10.13125/2039-6597/2081

Alberto N. García University of Navarra

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/2081

Keywords: tv series, television studies, narrative, seriality, narratology

Abstract

This article analyses how TV fiction, in the last fifteen years, has become one of the most stimulating and successful vehicles to narrate complex and daring stories. The article is divided into two parts. In the first, armed with narratological and poetic elements, we will define the serial story, stripping away the husk of its principal forms and explain why it is now the best media for telling lengthy stories. In the second part we will pause to examine specifically variations on the traditional story: alternate universes, time jumps, coincidence between diegetic time in the story and real time and other mechanisms that have made television fiction the most daring way for telling stories.

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Author Biography

Alberto N. García, University of Navarra

Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the Institute for Culture and Society (University of Navarra, Spain). He has been Visiting Scholar at the University of Stirling and Universidad de los Andes, Chile. His work has appeared in Post Script, Communication and Society, Zer and Analisi. He is co-editor of Landscapes of the Self: The Cinema of Ross McElwee (2007), author of El cine de no-ficción en Martín Patino (2008) and editor of Emotions in Contemporary TV Series (2016). He has also written essays about The Wire, The Shield, Breaking Bad, Supernatural or In Treatment. He is currently researching about emotions, narrative and TV Series.

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