As a queer television scholar, I first became interested in Downton Abbey because of the character of Thomas Barrow (played by Rob James-Collier). The show’s treatment of his sexuality became particularly interesting to me in the third season, when he is outed as gay but not banished from the Downton estate. I started wondering through what lens is this character informed? My own research places Thomas, as well as a cluster of queer characters that have emerged on contemporary television set in the historical past, as informed by post-gay ideology. I also have argued that the insertion of gay themes in television programming set in the historical past is a strategy used by showrunners and industry insiders to capitalize on the interests of contemporary “savvy” viewers. I’m also interested in how the Downton Abbey merchandising empire is spared the fate of being equated with “crass commercialism.” Similarly, Downton is rarely compared to the less prestigious television “soap” format (with which it shares much in common). I argue that the show’s appeal to upper class taste aesthetics as well as its role as a form of gay consumer culture has significant impact on its prestige. That said, Thomas has become a fascinating character if not for anything other than the way internet-based fan communities have united to recuperate him from his reputation as conniving evil-doer.

Sponsored by local public television network Twin Cities Public Television (TPT), the series premiere event was also the launch of TPT’s Rewire, “TPT’s spunky new project that loves the internet (and PBS) as much as you do.” During the screening, attendees were invited to participate in the “second screen” experience of Twitter fandom with the “MustTalkTV” hashtag. Although the TPT/Rewire premiere event was straightforwardly celebratory in one sense (of the aristocracy, of the show’s conservative leanings), the attendee’s enthusiastic dual-participation (both on-site and virtual) complexly registered as earnest, campy and ironic. That TPT/Rewire’s rebranding efforts hinged on the uniquely popular Downton Abbey, a culturally elite British import, speaks to the shifting definitions of “popular” and “elite” in today’s post-network television era.

Before the screening of Downton Abbey, a representative of TPT announced Rewire’s new initiative to host monthly television-centered “book clubs.” The event, “Must Talk TV: A Book Club for Binge Watchers,” promotes itself as akin to a previous event series “Books and Bars,” where attendees presumably gathered to discuss books over a couple of beers. But this new event, Rewire assures us, does not require “all that pesky reading.” On the event website the host prompts potential attendees with a suggestion, “Let’s treat these modern day TV dramas like the high art and literature they’ve aspired to be.”

Along with my dissertation advisor and a handful of my colleagues, I attended the inaugural event of the “Must Talk TV” event series focusing on Downton Abbey – future events will feature House of Cards, The Bletchley Circle, Game of Thrones and Mad Men. The event was moderated by a host, who prompted the room with a series of fast-paced questions that had to do with identifying one’s favorite character, recounting why one started watching the show, or concerned with the details about one’s personal viewing practices. I found that it was a difficult conversation to participate in, mostly because I am ambivalent about my role as a Downton Abbey fan. Sure, I love and appreciate Maggie Smith and her one-liners, have a fondness for Daisy and Mrs. Padmore, cried when they killed off Sybil… but mostly I watch with a certain amount of apprehensive distance. My hope is that by tuning in week to week I might better understand Downton Abbey as a cultural phenomenon.

TPT/Rewire’s “book club” event seems to be an attempt to cultivate a particular kind of fan and/or a particular kind of community around television fandom. The kind of fan or fan community where “binge-watching” is elevated to levels of prestige and participants do not have to bother with “all that pesky reading.” As such, the rebranding of TPT/Rewire reveals much about the way public television is implicated amidst shifting questions of quality, worth, taste, class and legitimacy.

First, a definition: transnational television co-production is the practice through which a producer/distributor based in one nation agrees to contribute up-front funding to a program produced by a company based in another nation in exchange for distribution rights as well as for some degree of creative input into the production.  Often the subject matter of such a production reflects or refers to its transnational roots by self-consciously including elements of cultural negotiation within the narrative situation; other times transnational convergence can be seen in elements of style, structure, aesthetics, or address. It is specific to television, with its strong national basis and its unique serial form, as well as its semantic flexibility enabled by practices such as scheduling, presentation, and promotion.  It is a transcultural form.

Though much attention has been paid to the reality format in the scholarship on global television, my focus here is on prime-time drama and documentary, where issues of national culture, media policy, audience specificity, and authorial integrity are more difficult to negotiate and often become the subject of considerable debate.  This type of production also differs from the more traditional “international co-ventures” that scholars such as Serra Tinic, Barbara Selznick, and Timothy Havens have discussed.  There are important and interesting distinctions to be made here, between a co-venture and a co-production, between co-financing and off-the-shelf sales, between format and fiction, but I will skip over these for now to focus on why and how transnational co-productions come about.

Co-production screen credits for Sherlock.

Most explanations go right for the money: co-production is a way of bringing in another source of finance that can have an immediate effect on the production, enabling bigger stars, better locations, and a glossier production all around.  This usually comes with exclusive distribution rights in a specific territory; so, for instance, when WGBH/Masterpiece puts a million dollars or two into a BBC production it expects to have the first, sole window of distribution in the United States.  BBC Worldwide, the BBC’s commercial sales arm, might be slightly miffed to miss out on chance to sell Sherlock more widely in the States (though in this case they participated as a co-production partner as well) but the existence of co-production funding can be the ticket to getting a high-cost production greenlighted when others are not.

Yet because success on the global market means an ability to address and attract broader- than-national audiences, another rationale for entering into transnational partnerships is precisely the opportunity to think trans-culturally.  Inclusion of characters or production teams from both countries (the easiest technique), narratives and subjects that span cultural locations, properties (like Sherlock) that already have transnational recognition and can work that imaginary identification into their narrative focus:  these are qualities that mark the most successful co-productions, and that draw together transnational publics.

Co-production can also help to support other forms of programming that are necessarily more nationally-specific and often of higher priority.  For WGBH, in this example, the investment of a relatively small amount of money in a co-produced prime-time drama, as opposed to sinking many more millions into an original production, means that scarce funding can go into news, public affairs, and children’s programs that are a more central part of PBS’s mandate.

Rebecca Eaton, Executive Producer of Masterpiece, with Benedict Cumberbatch at a season kick-off event in New York.

However, given the strong national focus of television – particularly for public broadcasters, though commercial channels also have their home markets to please – this kind of cultural negotiation can have its drawbacks.  Most notably on the British side this has involved accusations of cultural dilution, of using the television license fee paid by all British TV viewers on programs made for Americans.  Implied here is that making programs that appeal to Americans somehow weakens their essential Britishness.  This has come out in criticism of the recent transnational hit Downton Abbey (an ITV/WGBH co-production) for its substitution of melodrama for historical accuracy, though it has proved very successful with British audiences as well.  More to the point, both the BBC and ITV (Britain’s two central broadcasters) are specifically charged with producing a high proportion of original British programming in all categories – how much co-producer influence can there be before this claim becomes weakened?

Yet co-production is on the rise.  Changing structures in the British TV industry since the 1990s – from the “outsourcing” mandate of the 1990s to the 2004 Code of Practice that acted something like the fin/syn rules in the US – have greatly increased the number of independent producers and strengthened their hold on program rights (Chalaby 2010).  How can the rise in global partnerships be reconciled with mandates for national specificity?  What kinds of creative practices have been employed on both sides of the British/US co-production nexus to work within these constraints?  I’ll pursue those questions in my next post.