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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Researching European Crime Narratives and the Role of Television: An Introduction
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Introduction
2021-11-17
2021-09-19
2021-11-17
2022-12-30
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Cinéma & Cie
Federico Pagello
2021/11/17
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Researching European Crime Narratives and the Role of Television: An Introduction
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                                                                                       Researching European Crime Narratives
                                                                                       and the Role of Television:
                                                                                       An Introduction
                                                                                       Luca Barra, Alice Jacquelin, Federico Pagello




                                                                                         Television screens across Europe are more and more filled, in their                          Keywords
                                                                                       channels’ schedules as in the digital platforms’ libraries, with detectives,                   Television
                                                                                       investigators, police(wo)men coming from abroad. After a long-lasting                           TV series
                                                                                       prominence of US figures, reflecting a larger hegemony often read as                        Crime drama
                                                                                       cultural imperialism, the last decades have complicated the picture,                  European television
                                                                                       offering an increasing visibility (with different roles and resonances) to
                                                                                                                                                                                      Glocalism
                                                                                                                                                                                             DOI
                                                                                       characters coming from the UK, the Nordic regions of Scandinavia, the
                                                                                                                                                                       10.13130/2036-461X/16385
                                                                                       major continental markets as France, Germany, Spain and Italy, the
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       Mediterranean regions, the Eastern and Central European countries,
                                                                                       and so on. This partial yet relevant opening has been saluted as a change
                                                                                       of direction in global circulation flows, leading many to think about its
                                                                                       consequences on a larger, shared idea of European culture; at the same
                                                                                       time, many limits and complexities in this increased presence have also
                                                                                       emerged. In both perspectives, European crime narratives are seen as
                                                                                       complex objects and need therefore to be adequately researched. Television
                                                                                       detectives are national, and global, and often glocal. Their popularity and
                                                                                       circulation in European markets bring cultural diversity and put audiences
                                                                                       in touch with other not-so-far yet distinct cultures, while also – sometimes
                                                                                       – laying some ground for the development of a truly transnational, cross-
                                                                                       European, shared popular culture.
                                                                                         This special issue presents some of the research findings of the H2020-
                                                                                       funded project DETECt – Detecting Transcultural Identity in European
                                                                                       Popular Crime Narratives (2018-2021), led by Monica Dall’Asta (University
                                                                                       of Bologna) in collaboration with more than 40 scholars and professionals
                                                                                       affiliated to 17 institutions, located in 10 European countries.1 This large
                                                                                       consortium examined a set of questions about the emergence, circulation,
                                                                                       promotion and representation of European transcultural identities in the
                                                                                       field of popular media: are popular narratives conveying and supporting
                                                                                       the shaping of a new, shared feeling of belonging to a same continental
                                                                                       cultural heritage – or do they instead highlight the crisis in the process of
                                                                                       European integration that has been politically and socially visible during


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 21 no. 36/37 2021 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                  9
                                                                                         
       the last decade? Do private and public institutions across the continent
       encourage or hamper the production, distribution and consumption of
       European popular culture? What role can European policies play in this
       context? Do audiences take advantage of the increasing opportunities to
       be confronted with popular narratives coming from other parts of Europe?
       The research specifically examined the crime genre as a crucial vehicle for
       the circulation of popular narratives across the continent, facilitating the
       growth of transnational networks in European creative industries as well
       as a continuous cultural exchange among European citizens.
         DETECt built on a series of previous research programmes. With EU-
       funded project EPOP: Popular Roots of European Popular Culture in Film,
       Comics and Serial Literature (1850-1930) (led by Monica Dall’Asta in 2008-
       2010) and the AHRC-funded Visualising European Crime Fiction: New
       Digital Tools and Approaches for the Study of Transnational Popular Culture
       (led by another DETECt scholar, Dominique Jeannerod, in 2014-2015), the
       many ways in which European popular narratives have circulated across
       borders and across media since the rise of modern cultural industries
       in the last two centuries were explored from different perspectives.
       Other researchers have addressed more specifically the question of the
       Europeanness of European popular culture in the contemporary era. In the
       late Nineties, an international group led by Milly Buonanno looked at the
       issue of European cultural identity in television series for the ‘Eurofiction’
       project but their conclusion, in fact, was quite harsh: ‘Whether we like it or
       not, we have to conclude that “TV fiction expressing a European identity” is
       a fiction and will continue to be one unless something drastic happens in
       Europe these next few years’.2
         More recently, the findings of the HERA-funded project MeCETES:
       Mediating Cultural Encounters through European Screen (led by Andrew
       Higson, Ib Bondebjerg and Caroline Pauwels) supported a different, more
       encouraging view, emphasizing how significant changes have occurred
       in the European media industries, and in society at large, during the last
       couple of decades, promoting what they called ‘banal Europeanisation’.3
       Building on the idea of a ‘soft’ European integration promoted through the
       inclusion of European popular culture as a part of the everyday experience
       of the Union’s citizens, MeCETES highlighted the transnational dimension
       of the production and circulation of popular film and television in Europe,
       to insist on their ability to give shape to a variety of ‘cultural encounters’
       and, therefore, to the emergence of a shared European identity.4 At the
       same time, they warned against any simplistic assessment of this process,
       stressing how even the circulation of the most successful example of
       European TV series – including, not coincidentally, those in the crime
       genre – appear to be quite uneven and always in need to face the strong
       competition of US television.5
         In fact, while it is undeniable that a ‘European television fiction
       renaissance’6 has been really taking place during the last recent years,


10   Barra, Jacquelin, Pagello, Researching European Crime Narratives and the Role of Television

enhancing both the quality and the quantity of series able to circulate
outside the national borders and to reach an international audience, it
remains dubious whether this phenomenon can be seen as the advent of
a truly European popular culture, since its circulation often stays within
the conventional borders of nations and other geographical and cultural
macro-regions, with the exceptions of a few shows that reach an urban,
cosmopolitan niche audience. To this day, the ironic consideration of the
Eurofiction research team thus perhaps still partially stands: ‘The closest
thing the researchers turned up, the one programme that fostered a pan-
European sense of identity and elicited dialogue sans frontières an indirect
reference also to the “Télévision sans frontières” European directive,
authors’ note, was the annual Eurovision Song Contest’ (and, we could
possibly add, the UEFA European Football Championship).7 Moreover,
cultural, economic and policy obstacles keep limiting the transnational
circulation and, crucially, the international reception of these European TV
series, to those sectors of the foreign audiences that are already inclined
to watch foreign products, confining them to a ‘large niche’ of affluent,
educated, culturally-savvy viewers.
  In what follows, we will highlight some overall considerations about the
transcultural significance of European crime narratives, before briefly
discussing the specific case of TV crime series, which are the focus of this
special issue. A short presentation of the articles will end the introduction.



From ‘Euro Noir’ to Glocalised,
Intermedial Crime Narratives
  The question about Europeanness of European popular culture, in
general, and crime narratives, in particular, can be addressed in radically
different ways: from exploring theoretical debates about the concept of
European cultural identity to analysing their concrete manifestations in the
current historical and political context; from studying industrial strategies
and EU policies promoting international cooperation to examining the
textual representation of cultural identities and the audiences’ responses
to it. As proven by the articles included here, the DETECt consortium has
engaged with all of these perspectives, trying to develop a comprehensive
framework and to identify some general trends. Two main perspectives
have been particularly helpful in approaching television crime series.
  A first line of enquiry concerns the labelling of contemporary European
crime narratives, and their role in defining how cultural identity is (re)
presented and marketed. In particular, DETECt scholars examined
whether a label as ‘Euro Noir’ could be fruitfully used to indicate the
emergence of a shared identity in European crime narratives. Fully aware
of the many objections to this hypothesis, the researchers examined how
and why popular culture in Europe is more often described using national


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                                                                                         
       or regional labels (e.g. Nordic Noir, Mediterranean Noir, Tartan Noir, the
       French polar, the Spanish novela negra, the Italian giallo, etc.), rather
       than by emphasising its European dimension. At the same time, the broad
       transnational circulation and influence of these localised labels (as in the
       paradigmatic case of Nordic Noir), and the inherently transcultural nature
       of these phenomena (as in the crucial example of Mediterranean Noir),
       have been emphasized. As Kim Toft Hansen wrote in the introduction to
       European Television Crime Drama, edited with Steven Peacock and Sue
       Turnbull, it is possible to argue that:

                  [if] the stories […] clearly cross borders in the narratives, and
                  if the films or television series also appear multilingual and
                  international in their financial and creative collaboration, then
                  Euronoir may indeed be a way of articulating transborder
                  identities and investigative collaboration. Euronoir is, then,
                  more than just crime fiction from a European place; Euronoir
                  may rather comprise narratives that identify, negotiate,
                  criticize, establish or even destabilize cross-continental
                  realities, translocal signifiers or transnational geopolitics.8

         The last few decades have seen a growing effort to develop strategies to
       increase the truly transnational dimension of European crime narratives,
       especially as a result of the creatives’, producers’, commissioners’ and
       policy makers’ awareness of the existence of a variety of obstacles. The
       articles included in a special issue of the European Review have engaged
       with the difficulty to offer a clear definition of ‘Euro Noir’,9 the limitations
       encountered by the distribution of crime films,10 the role of gatekeepers
       in the circulation of crime novels,11 the frequent absence of any labeling
       as ‘European’ for crime novels.12 Such studies show how, despite a clear
       diversification in the offer of crime narratives from across the continent, an
       immediately recognizable representation of European identity is hard to be
       found in contemporary popular culture.
         A second, connected, strand of inquiry concerned the notion of glocalism.
       A special issue of Academic Quarter edited by a group of DETECt scholars
       has particularly engaged with this concept to insist on the ability of crime
       narratives in all media to combine local, national and regional cultural traits
       with a transnational attitude.13 The label ‘Euro Noir’, it is suggested there,
       can be used to indicate the (qualitative) effects of a (quantitative) increase
       in the translation and marketing of European crime novels between the
       late 1990s and the early 2000s, which stimulated a variety of transcultural
       exchanges and transnational cooperation.14 The lens of glocalism proved
       to be particularly suited to address the field of television, as proven by
       other telling cases addressed in that publication: the circulation of Nordic
       Noir TV series in Eastern Europe and the emergence of what has been
       called “Hungarian Nordic Noir,” a paradoxical label;15 the increasingly
       cosmopolitan audio-visual industry in Berlin and the subsequent change


12   Barra, Jacquelin, Pagello, Researching European Crime Narratives and the Role of Television

in the perception of German popular culture throughout the continent;16
and the abandon of traditional urban settings to make use of a variety of
‘peripheral locations’ in Italy,17 a shift that can be found everywhere in
European TV crime series, as proven by two articles included as proven by
two articles included here.
  Glocalism is also linked to another key feature of crime narratives:
inter-mediality.18 Crime narratives are indeed able to cross borders
more easily than other genres also thanks to the peculiar success of
‘glocalised’ literary crime fiction in attracting international audiences,
which then leads to the creation of films and television series able to give
expression to local cultural identities as well as to circulate (again) on a
transnational level. In the last decades, European television in particular
has benefitted from the audiences’ wide interest in this particular form of
representation and cultural tourism, providing both the familiar pleasures
of globalised crime fiction and the unexpected flavour granted by unusual,
picturesque settings. A large number of successful European TV crime
series is adapted from literary works, and this is a specific characteristic
of this production (differently from its US competitor). To understand the
continental dimension of European crime narratives in particular, and of
popular culture in general, it is necessary to adopt a comparative approach
able to take into consideration the systematic links among different media.



This issue: European TV Crime Series
  This issue specifically focalises on television crime series, undoubtedly
the most popular kind of crime narratives in recent years. It is not surprising
that the trends highlighted above are particularly evident in this field. In
fact, a shift toward the production of TV shows that have a strong ‘glocal
appeal’ has become more and more evident. The idea of a ‘European
television fiction renaissance’ taking place since the mid-2000s is indeed
based on the analysis of the many transformations that, with premium
operators, on-demand platforms, and a renewed role of national public
service broadcasters, have strongly reduced the traditional tendency of
European players to address almost exclusively their national audience,
with more and more frequent attempts to produce serial narratives able to
reach a domestic and an international audience at the same time.
  Interestingly enough, DETECt’s focus on the crime genre helps us to
stress how both the increasing transnational success of contemporary
European TV crime series has benefited from such contextual changes and,
vice versa, crime television has been a push towards industrial, narrative
and consumption transformations. A significant number of the first-rate
international hits in contemporary European television are indeed crime
shows: from Sherlock to La casa de Papel/Money Heist, from The Killing to
Inspector Montalbano, from Peaky Blinders to Gomorra, from The Bureau


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                                                                                         
       to Babylon Berlin. Nordic Noir television series have been widely studied
       both for their circulation and for their ability to influence several productions
       across the continent.19 A crime show as the Welsh Hinterland has been
       convincingly discussed as paradigmatic of the glocal strategies adapted
       by producers and consumers of popular culture, well beyond this specific
       genre.20 What is most relevant, perhaps, is how the success of European
       TV crime series reflects both quantitively and qualitatively the changes that
       impacted the whole of television, and popular culture more broadly. As in
       other cases, in fact, common and often discussed labels as ‘quality TV’ or
       ‘complex TV’21 clearly work here in two ways: on the one hand, they are
       used to facilitate the creation and critical appreciation of crime shows that
       thematically and stylistically aim to detach themselves from the classic
       procedural crime series traditionally produced by national broadcasters;22
       on the other hand, they are part of a promotional discourse that producers
       and distributors are never tired to repeat when discussing the international
       appeal of their new products.23 In the DETECt framework, therefore, the
       complexity of contemporary TV crime series became a perfect example of
       transnational and transcultural European popular culture.
         All the articles included in this special section have been researched
       and written by members of the DETECt consortium. Coming from seven
       different countries and looking at television series in almost every corner
       of the continent, these studies present a multi-faceted analysis of the
       diversity of contemporary European crime television. With no ambition to
       provide an exhaustive mapping of the enormous, and constantly growing,
       production in this field, the articles nevertheless touch on all the analytical
       perspectives adopted in the DETECt project, taking into consideration
       phenomena pertaining to the production, distribution, consumption of TV
       crime narratives in Europe as well as their ability to give shape to significant
       representations of its varied cultural identity.
         The first contribution – ‘BBC’s Sherlock and Europeanness: A Case
       Study on the Circulation of a European TV Crime Series in Italy’ –, by Luca
       Antoniazzi and Sara Casoli, closely follows the creation, international
       dissemination and reception of one of the most relevant European TV
       crime series. Sherlock can be first seen as a quintessentially British show,
       but this specific case study helps to emphasise the contradictions at the
       core of the process of European integration, focusing first of all on the
       obstacles and resistances to its emergence. The production, distribution
       and reception of Sherlock can be seen as exemplary of the development of
       contemporary quality crime shows in Europe, a trend that was crucial for
       the creation of truly transnational series in Europe but that also highlights
       their difficulties in becoming truly popular phenomena at a European level.
       The article closes with an analysis of the Italian circulation of the series,
       showing how even though a significant section of the audience has deeply
       engaged with the show, its quantitative success remained comparatively
       limited.


14   Barra, Jacquelin, Pagello, Researching European Crime Narratives and the Role of Television

   Laetitia Biscarrat’s ‘On the Circulation of European TV Crime Series: A
Case Study of the French Televisual Landscape (1957–2018)’ also combines
the study of the distribution and the consumption of European crime series
to explore the circulation of non-domestic series in a specific territory.
Building on a far-reaching quantitative analysis of the foreign shows
imported by French TV over seven decades, Biscarrat is able to highlight
the increasing diversification in the type of shows broadcast by linear
television in France, as well as the obstacles that persist in promoting a
deeper kind of diversity both behind and in front of the camera.
   Valentina Re and Kim Toft Hansen’s ‘Producing Peripheral Locations:
Double Marginality in Italian and Danish TV Crime’ takes more literally
the topic of glocalisation, working in the framework of ‘location studies.’24
The article examines in parallel two case studies, offering an unusual and
thought-provoking analysis comparing two TV industries in the North and
South of Europe. As it is currently the case with crime narratives on a global
and intermedial level, both Italian and Danish TV series have engaged
more and more with locations far from their typical metropolitan settings.
Re and Hansen explore the idea of “peripheral locations” and discuss
how the production and the representation strategies both contributed to
strengthen this phenomenon.
   A rather similar subject is at the centre of the fourth article included
in this special section, ‘Away from London: Crime and Regional Film
Commissions in the UK.’ Here, Markus Schleich explores closely the policy
background against which this widespread move away from the traditional
use of the capital cities as the privileged setting of TV crime series happened.
In particular, the author examines the impact of United Kingdom’s film
policies through the case of the Yorkshire Film Commission, and discusses
a specific crime series, The ABC Murders (BBC One, 2018).
   Anna Keszeg and Roxana Eichel’s ‘Paths to Quality Television in Eastern
Europe: Where Hungarian Romanian HBO From?’ takes again a wider
perspective, looking at different aspects of the production, distribution and
representation of Eastern European TV crime series to illustrate some key
traits of the important development in this market. The article focuses
on Hungarian and Romanian shows produced by HBO Europe. Eastern
European crime series confirm larger trends that shape the creation and
circulation of popular narratives in general, and crime stories in particular:
the strategies of the US corporation, the strong ties to Nordic Noir, the role
of remakes as well as the connection with art cinema and the film festival
circuit prove once again how a fully comparative perspective, looking at
intermedial relationships and critically building on glocalism, can be
crucial to understand the complexity of European crime narratives.
   After a first part taking more an industrial perspective and completing
it, in a systemic analysis, with narrative and consumptions aspects,
the last two articles collected here forward with more strength some
relevant questions about the politics of representation and reception of


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                                                                                         
       European crime narratives, with a direct focus on issues of identity and
       diversity. Contemporary crime narratives, in all media, have indeed also
       become the ideal terrain to present new form of gender, ethnic as well as
       ‘neurodivergent’ identities. This process obviously challenges all simplistic
       notions of European identity as a self-evident, one-dimensional cultural
       construct and has been used to diversify the representation of stereotyped
       or marginalised communities both politically and commercially.
         Álvaro Luna-Dubois’s ‘Constructing Ethnic Minority Detectives in
       French and German Crime Television Series’ looks at how contemporary
       television crime series offer more room for the protagonism of characters
       from underrepresented social, cultural and ethnic backgrounds when
       compared to the past trajectories of the genre. After developing a taxonomy
       of different types of detective figures from a minority background, Luna
       concludes that, while we are certainly witnessing an important increase in
       the representation of minorities in European popular culture and society,
       the shows he analysed do not provide an entirely satisfying expression of
       the complexity of their rich cultural identities.
         The closing essay, ‘European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics
       of Autism Representation,’ has been written by the principal investigator of
       the DETECt research project, Monica Dall’Asta, addressing a much-less
       discussed yet crucial kind of social and cultural identity through the frame
       of ‘neurodivergence.’ The article first offers an introduction to the current
       debates about the political significance of autism, a condition which has
       been widely, and controversially, re-defined in the last decades. The topic
       is suited to address contemporary crime series, as many protagonists of
       these shows are explicitly or (more often) implicitly portrayed as subjects
       with autistic traits. Through an insightful analysis of viewers’ and critics’
       responses to a corpus of European TV crime series focused on ‘autistic’
       detectives, Dall’Asta proves how the concept of ‘neurodivergence’ can be
       used to address how popular crime narratives represent, promote and
       question new cultural identities on both a national and transnational level.
         The articles included in this special issue offer a rich and compelling
       account of the many perspectives, theoretical frameworks and
       methodologies that can be applied to better understand contemporary
       European television crime series, while at the same time touching and
       building upon some crucial, transversal concepts able to emphasize the
       relevance and variety of European crime narratives across nations and
       across media. While not providing a systematic mapping or a complete
       understanding of the many questions at place, we hope that this collection
       could give the reader at least a number of useful inputs on relevant
       concepts, issues, spaces, examples, and provide grounds for much needed
       further research in television and media studies.




16   Barra, Jacquelin, Pagello, Researching European Crime Narratives and the Role of Television

Notes
  1
    For more details on DETECt, see the presentation of the project in this issue.
  2
     Gunhild Agger, ‘Fictions of Europe’, NORDICOM: Review of Nordic Research on Media and
Communication 22.1 (2001), p. 43.
  3
    Ib Bondebjerg, ‘Transnational Europe: TV-drama, Co-production Networks and Mediated Cultural
Encounters,’ Palgrave Communications 2 (2016), https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2016.34.
  4
    The main findings of the MeCETES project are presented in: Ib Bondebjerg, Eva Novrup Redvall,
and Andrew Higson (eds.), European Cinema and Television: Cultural Policy and Everyday Life
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Ib Bondebjerg, Eva Novrup Redvall, Andrew Higson (eds.),
Transnational European Television Drama: Productions, Genres and Audiences (Cham: Palgrave
Macmillan 2017).
  5
    An insightful study of the circulation and reception of European crime series in the UK, Belgium
and Denmark is found in the chapter ‘The Dark Side of Society: Crime Drama,’ in Bondebjerg et alii,
Transnational European Television Drama, pp. 223-255.
  6
     See Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni, A European Television Fiction Renaissance: Premium
Production Models and Transnational Circulation (London, New York: Routledge 2021).
  7
    Agger, ‘Fictions of Europe,’ p. 43.
  8
     Hansen, Peacock, Turnbull, ‘Down These Mean European Streets,’ European Television Crime
Drama and Beyond, (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2018), p. 6.
  9
    See Jan Baetens, Ana Schultze, Fred Truyen, ‘Donald Westlake’s Ordo: Not Euro, not Noir, but Euro-
Noir?’, European Review, published online 15 July 2020, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798720001180.
  10
     See Stefano Baschiera, ‘European Crime Cinema and the Auteur’, European Review, published
online on 10 August 2020, 1-13, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798720001143.
  11
     See Migozzi, Jacques, Natacha Levet, and Lucie Amir. 2020. “Gatekeep-ers of Noir: The Paradoxical
Internationalization of the French Crime Fiction Field.” European Review, published online on 16 July,
2020, 1-17, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798720001118.
  12
     See Lucie Amir, Biscarrat Laetitia and Jacquelin Alice, ‘Impossible Euronoir? Le polar européen
dans sa réception critique française,’ ¿Interrogations? 32 (2021), https://www.revue-interrogations.
org/Impossible-Euronoir-Le-polar [accessed 1 October 2021].
  13
     Monica Dall’Asta, Natacha Levet, and Federico Pagello (eds.), Glocality and Cosmopolitanism in
European Crime Narratives, special issue Academic Quarter 22 (2021), https://journals.aau.dk/index.
php/ak/issue/view/411 [accessed August 23, 2021].
  14
     See Jacques Migozzi, ‘Crime Fiction Import/Export in European Publishing: The Emergence of Euro
Noir through the Process of Translation’ Academic Quarter 22 (2021), doi: https://doi.org/10.5278/ojs.
academicquarter.vi22.6599.
  15
     See Sándor Kálai and Anna Keszeg, ‘Is There such a Thing as a Hungarian Nordic Noir?: Cultural
Homogenization and Glocal Agency,’ Academic Quarter 22 (2021), doi: https://doi.org/10.5278/ojs.
academicquarter.vi22.6600.
  16
     See Lothar Mikos, ‘Berlin’s Cosmopolitan Production Culture,’ Academic Quarter 22 (2021), doi:
https://doi.org/10.5278/ojs.academicquarter.vi22.6602.
  17
     See Massimiliano Coviello and Valentina Re, ‘Translocal Landscapes: La porta rossa and the Use
of Peripheral Locations in Contemporary Italian TV Crime Drama,’ Academic Quarter 22 (2021), doi:
  https://doi.org/10.5278/ojs.academicquarter.vi22.6601.


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 18
      See Federico Pagello, ‘Dal giallo al crime. Glocalismo, transnculturalità e transmedialità del
poliziesco italiano contemporaneo.’ mediAzioni 28 (2020), 30-47, http://www.mediazioni.sitlec.unibo.
it/index.php/no-28-special-issue-2020/ [accessed 1 October 2021].
   19
       On the impact of Nordic Noir see, among other sources: Glen Creeber, ‘Killing Us Softly:
Investigating the Aesthetics, Philosophy and Influence of Nordic Noir Television,’ The Journal
of Popular Television 3.1 (2015), doi: 10.1386/jptv.3.1.21_1; Kim Toft Hansen, Steven Peacock,
Sue Turnbull (eds.), European Television Crime Drama and Beyond (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan
2018); Linda Badley, Andrew Nestingen, and Jallo Seppälä, Jaakko (Eds.) Nordic Noir, Adaptation,
Appropriation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2021).
   20
      See Elke Weissmann, ‘Local, National, Transnational. Y Gwyll/Hinterland as Crime of/for All
Places,’ in European Television Crime Drama and Beyond, eds. Kim Toft Hansen, Steven Peacock
and Sue Turnbull (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2018), 119-137.
   21
      See Kim Akass, Janet McCabe (eds.), Quality TV. Contemporary American Television and Beyond
(London: IB Tauris 2007); and Jason Mittell, Complex TV. The Poetics of Contemporary Television
Storytelling (New York: New York University Press 2015).
   22
      See Lindsay Steenberg, ‘The Fall and TV Noir,’ Critical Studies in Television, 18.1 (2017), 58-75,
https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476416664185; and Federico Pagello, ‘Images of the European Crisis:
Populism and the Contemporary Crime TV series,’ European Review, published online on July 2020,
1-14, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798720001167.
   23
      See Valentina Re, ‘Crime sì, ma di qualità. Sulla circolazione transnazionale del prodotto televisivo,’
Imago 21.1 (2020), 167-183.
   24
      For an introduction the methodology of location studies see Kim Toft Hansen, Anne Marit Waade,
Locating Nordic Noir (Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2017), 53-76.




18                       Barra, Jacquelin, Pagello, Researching European Crime Narratives and the Role of Television
