10.13130/2036-461X/16387
Despite the advent of over-the-top platforms, linear television still remains the dominant medium in European markets. This article provides a case study of the circulation of non-French European crime series in the French televisual landscape. It is based on a diachronic analysis of the flow of TV crime shows produced in Europe and broadcasted in France from 1957 to 2018. The data was collected from the official French TV archives as well as from experts and professional sources such as TV programme guides, databases, newspaper articles or amateur sources. All national channels were taken into account, be they state television, mainstream commercial channels or cable channels, except for OTT platforms. The analysis, based on format studies, provides three main results. First, the circulation of European TV crime series in France is rooted in an industrial process. It entails a process of indigenization performed through human mediation in order to fit into the culture and industry of the broadcasting territory. The second result tempers the ideal of European cultural diversity. Indeed, a diachronic perspective highlights the limited cultural diversity in this field, as German, British and Nordic Noir productions dominate European TV crime series. Lastly, data indicate continued issues with gender and ethnic equality in media industries, as crime narratives are still construed by a white and male-dominated creative industry.
application/pdf
2036-461X
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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
European Circulation
On the Circulation of European TV Crime Series: A Case Study of the French Television Landscape (1957–2018)
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
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Thematic issue / Section thématique
2021-11-17
2021-09-19
2021-11-17
2022-12-30
41-56
Cinéma & Cie
Laëtitia Biscarrat
2021/11/17
10.13130/2036-461X/16387
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Université Côte d’Azur
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European Circulation
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On the Circulation of European TV Crime Series: A Case Study of the French Television Landscape (1957–2018)
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21
                                                                                       On the Circulation of European
                                                                                       TV Crime Series: A Case Study
                                                                                       of the French Television Landscape
                                                                                       (1957–2018)
                                                                                       Laëtitia Biscarrat, Université Côte d’Azur



                                                                                       Despite the advent of over-the-top platforms, linear television still remains the                       Keywords
                                                                                       dominant medium in European markets. This article provides a case study of the
                                                                                                                                                                                         TV crime series
                                                                                       circulation of non-French European crime series in the French televisual landscape.
                                                                                       It is based on a diachronic analysis of the flow of TV crime shows produced in            French linear television
                                                                                       Europe and broadcasted in France from 1957 to 2018. The data was collected from                          Archives
                                                                                       the official French TV archives as well as from experts and professional sources                   Format studies
                                                                                       such as TV programme guides, databases, newspaper articles or amateur sources.               European circulation
                                                                                       All national channels were taken into account, be they state television, mainstream
                                                                                                                                                                                                      DOI
                                                                                       commercial channels or cable channels, except for OTT platforms. The analysis,
                                                                                       based on format studies, provides three main results. First, the circulation of         10.13130/2036-461X/16387
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       European TV crime series in France is rooted in an industrial process. It entails a
                                                                                       process of indigenization performed through human mediation in order to fit into
                                                                                       the culture and industry of the broadcasting territory. The second result tempers
                                                                                       the ideal of European cultural diversity. Indeed, a diachronic perspective highlights
                                                                                       the limited cultural diversity in this field, as German, British and Nordic Noir
                                                                                       productions dominate European TV crime series. Lastly, data indicate continued
                                                                                       issues with gender and ethnic equality in media industries, as crime narratives are
                                                                                       still construed by a white and male-dominated creative industry.




                                                                                       INTRODUCTION1
                                                                                         Introducing the 2012 issue of Cinema & Cie dedicated to European
                                                                                       television series, Alice Autelitano and Veronica Innocenti stated that studies
                                                                                       on television serial narratives mainly focus on US productions.2 Almost ten
                                                                                       years later, this observation still proves relevant in the French case, though
                                                                                       some exceptions stand out, as the French academic and critic interest in
                                                                                       television series increasingly consider national productions. However, as
                                                                                       far as Europe is concerned, this geographical scale still remains largely
                                                                                       unexplored in French academia, except for certain case studies. For
                                                                                       instance, Spanish and/or Catalan television series are largely forgotten
                                                                                       by French scholars from both media and Spanish studies.3 Moreover,
                                                                                       the European scale is considered an uneasy framework due to its strong
                                                                                       heterogeneity.4


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 21 no. 36/37 2021 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                       41
                                                                                  
       To answer such a methodological challenge, this article studies the
     circulation of non-French European television crime series within the
     French territory. Which European series have been broadcast on French
     screens? When and where were they released? Which transcultural patterns
     emerge from access to these television series? Though sometimes vague
     due to its general stance, the concept of ‘circulation’ is interesting as it
     avoids the tendency towards homogenization (assuming that globalisation
     only means imperialism), as well as the drawbacks of the liberal viewpoint
     obsessed with individual agency.5
       Thorough academic research tackles the issue of European televised
     circulation, be it according to the crime series TV genre6 or from the
     viewpoint of transnational television7, sales of formats8 and European co-
     productions.9 Recent data shows that, in 2017, despite the incentive of
     the Creative Europe programme (2014-2020), few co-productions were
     broadcast in Europe10 whereas 58% of TV scripted titles originate from
     the EU28. Though not specific to crime series, these figures highlight the
     key-role of European circulation for the television industry. European TV
     fiction benefits from the 1986 French broadcasting obligations law,11 which
     makes mandatory for French channels, on behalf of cultural diversity, to
     broadcast 60% of European films and series — among which at least 40%
     must be originally in French language — during the high audience rates
     hours.
       According to Castelló12, television fiction plays an important part in the
     process of national culture building as a fictional nation is a politically
     conceptualized stage on which stories can take place. As such, foreign TV
     crime series broadcasted in France can be defined as ‘mediated cultural
     encounters’.13 In the European context of strong nation-states, and an
     important public service broadcasting tradition correlated with the absence
     of an integrated European TV market, the circulation of crime television
     series can thus be understood as a transcultural flow circulating within
     the French television landscape. Based on the French national television
     archives (INA), this case study provides a diachronic exploration of the
     market structure, highlighting its evolution regarding industrial factors.
     To this end, the first section shortly presents the framework of the study
     and the second section explains the methodology used. The four following
     sections display results regarding the transcultural circulation of television
     crime series on French screens.



     Key Concepts
       Historically, crime series have existed long before the advent of television:
     they first belonged to the realm of printed media, and were produced for
     the radio and as serials for the cinema before reaching TV screens. Crime
     series are strongly linked to the development of French television. As


42                              Biscarrat, On the Circulation of European TV Crime Series

early as 1950, the state television channel RTF (Radiodiffusion-télévision
française) broadcasted L’Agence Nostradamus (Claude Barma) featuring
two male detectives and Les cinq dernières minutes is commonly considered
as the first long French television crime series.14 Crime series on French
television present a historical picture of both local and international titles
available for French viewers. Such an historical approach of crime series
enables to label it as a genre. Indeed, genre can be analysed as ‘an historical
practice’ ubicated in the media interdiscourse.15 This definition of TV genre
circumvents the textualist assumption that there is a proper taxonomy of
a genre which can be found from its internal operations.16 On the contrary,
it highlights the need to understand cultural artefacts throughout ‘the
materiality of its communication’.17
   According to François Jost18, analysing TV genres as a ‘communicational
reality’ implies to focus on the relation that is built between producers,
broadcasters, intermediary mediations and audiences. TV genre operates
as a ‘promise’ that triggers repertoires of expectations amongst the
viewers. These repertoires of expectations depend on the social and cultural
background of the audience as well as the programming strategies at stake.
For example, expectations differ when watching daytime crime series on
the DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) and prime time crime series on the
cultural channel Arte. Consequently, the definition of crime series as a
communicational reality implies to focus on its materiality. In other words,
if the characteristics of a genre aren’t intrinsic to the TV programme, then
it becomes necessary to ‘locat[e] genres within the complex interrelations
between texts, industries, audiences, and historical contexts’.19
   To achieve such an aim, this study relies on the concept of format in
order to describe the communicational reality of European crime series
genre(s) broadcasted in France. Format studies are an internationally
emerging field of research in television studies20 and the concept of format
is still largely discussed. Marie-France Chambat-Houillon, who provided
an analysis of the uses of the notion in the academic and professional TV
spheres, highlights the diversity of its uses and definitions.21 According to
her, it can refer to a standard of production, a standard of programming
or an interpretive model. In a similar perspective, Kira Kitsopanidou and
Guillaume Soulez underline that format is studied either from a political
standpoint focusing on power relations, as a framework for partners’
cooperation or as an interpretive instrument for audiences. They insist
on the culture of formats that prevails in the audiovisual landscape.22
Lastly, Hélène Monnet-Cantagrel explains that studying television serial
narratives from a format perspective enables to articulate the commercial
logics of media industries, the creative process at stake and audiences.23
   While Albert Moran’s book Copycat TV24 is a landmark, this short review
of French theorizations confirms that the concept has moved from its
definition as a ‘cooking recipe’ towards a more complex reading. Based on
Chalaby’s four dimensions of television format25 (legal dimension, recipe,


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                                                                                  
     proof of concept, method of production), Keinonen defines format as ‘a
     technology of economic and cultural exchange’.26 As such, it has proven
     really useful in the field of adaptation studies, as it enables to tackle both
     the level of production with its various mediations and the reception by
     local audiences of the format adaptation. In this paper, I argue that the
     concept of format is also relevant to study transnational TV content
     circulation. The international circulation of TV products is commonly divided
     between adaptations and canned programming. The later refers to ready-
     made contents sold and distributed abroad. ‘“Canned” programming is
     typically the output of a specific national TV and media system, but it spills
     across borders when licensed into different territories, sometimes even
     globally’.27 But, though ready-made, canned TV products also undergo
     adaptation procedures, as for example with dubbing. Luca Barra states
     that there is ‘a series of sophisticated routines, on both the production and
     consumption side, that mediate between the cultures of countries of origin
     and destination, giving birth to a new, specifically created, product’.28 In
     other words, canned programming also implies adaptations, though they
     might operate on a more invisible level.
       The concept of format here proves useful to interrogate the characteristics
     of European crime series broadcasted in France, because it focuses on
     industrial and cultural negotiation. It also operates as a methodological tool
     to work on a transnational basis. Regarding European media transnational
     history, Jérôme Bourdon describes its main framework as the ‘mental
     jail of the nation’.29 Indeed, ‘methodological nationalism’30 constitutes a
     recurrent feature in the study of transnational television. Strong national
     traditions, linguistic diversity in Europe as well as the belief in national
     sovereignty of postcolonial nations31 can explain the strength of the nation
     framework. Focusing on the marks of cultural negotiation from the format
     perspective rather than the national characteristics conveyed by media
     contents is a way to identify the simultaneous dynamics of international and
     national, global and local that constitute the entangled layers of television
     broadcasting. Format operates as a methodological tool to debunk the
     nation framework: while the indexation of data relies on the country of
     production and destination, the analysis aims at subverting the national
     lens from within as it integrates other territorial layers.



     Collecting Methodology
       The corpus of European TV crime series imported in France is built both
     from the official French national archives (INA), experts and professional
     sources such as TV programme guides, databases, newspaper articles
     or amateur sources (e.g. fan webpages). All national channels were
     considered, be it state television, generalist commercial channels or cable
     channels, except for online streaming platforms such as Netflix or Amazon


44                              Biscarrat, On the Circulation of European TV Crime Series

Prime. The empirical material includes the title of the series both in
French and in its original language, the country of production, the original
broadcasting channel and year as well as the length of the episodes, the
date and channel it was first released in France, and the ‘creators’ of the
series, identified by their name, gender and race assignations. This category
needs to be explained. As the workings of production differ according to the
period and the national organization of media industries,32 ‘creator’ is an
umbrella designation which can refer, according to the UNESCO,33 either
to the screenwriter, the producer or the director of the series.
   The label crime series includes mostly ‘cop shows’, however, spy and
action TV series as well as legal drama were excluded from the corpus.
Indeed, police TV series work properly on the European exportation market.34
As for seriality, the definition referred to in this study encompasses long-
running dramas, as well as very short mini-series. European coproductions,
including France, were not taken into account. These operate from a
different industry strategy regarding the targeted audiences, which include
French audiences as one of the main goals.
   This collecting methodology has provided a corpus of 315 titles
broadcasted in France between 1957 and 2018. It is impossible to assert that
it encompasses all European TV crime series broadcasted in France since
the beginnings of television. Indeed, the logics of archives management, be
it the criteria of broadcasting rights, the pre-1995 archives or the human
factor in the indexation process as well as the scope of serialization would
make it highly unrealistic to claim for exhaustivity.



European Crime Series in France:
Scheduling Perspective
  From its beginnings, non-French European crime series have
supplemented the development of French television. From the state
monopoly to the process of privatization triggered in the 1980s and the
subsequent new channels until the advent of the terrestrial digital television
(TDT) in 2005, crime series have played a pivotal role on French screens.
Due to their tasks and obligations, the main providers of non-French
European crime series are public broadcasters (29% of the imported titles).
While the corpus includes a large time-scale, this number does not imply
a homogenization of the history of French television. Indeed, most of the
data was collected since the 1980s (for instance only eight titles could be
identified during the 1970s). Besides, this result coincides with a 2015-2016
four weeks’ analysis of television fiction in Europe: it states that public
channels play an active part in the circulation of TV series in Europe.35
  The second French providers of crime series are culturally-oriented
channels, which broadcasted 22% of the titles imported. Thematic channels


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                                                                                  
     such as Canal Jimmy (e.g. Trial & Retribution, UK, ITV; Code 37, Belgium,
     VTM) or 13ème Rue (e.g. Doppelter Einsatz, Germany, RTL; Annika Bengtzon:
     Crime Reporter, Sweden, TV4) have played an important part in bringing
     non-French European titles to France. It is also interesting to notice that
     the major generalist private channel TF1 has only played a minor role in
     this process of internationalization. Indeed, its editorial line focuses rather
     on movies, American drama and French series, the latter starting again to
     trust the biggest annual audiences in 2017 according to Mediametrie.
      As for TDT-born channels, they imported only 16 new titles between 2005
     and 2018. NT1 (TF1 group) imported eight titles: Ein Starkes Team, ZDF;
     Polizeiruf 110, ARD; Delitti e segreti, Rai 1; SK Kölsch, Sat.1; The Knock,
     ITV; Il capitano, Rai 2; SOKO Rhein-Mai, ZDF; The Guilty, ITV. W9 (M6 group)
     imported three new titles (GSG 9 - Die Elite Einheit, Sat. 1; Vermist, VT4; 48
     Ore, Canale 5) and Direct8/C8 (Bolloré then Canal Plus group) brought four
     titles (Der Letzte Bulle, Sat.1; Ripper Street, BBC One; Partners in Crime,
     BBC One; Bancroft, ITV). As for Virgin 17 (Lagardère), it imported one new
     title (SOKO Donau/Wien, ORF) during its two years of existence. These
     private commercial TDT-born channels run with low budget, hence making
     it difficult to invest in new broadcasting licenses. However, this does not
     mean that they do not feature European crime series, as these low-budget
     channels vehemently broadcast police drama reruns. For instance, a
     recent study from the CSA on TV fiction between 2015 and 2019 highlights
     that reruns on TDT channels TMC and TF1 films et series (formerly called
     HD1) of Poirot (ITV, 1989-2013) still make it one of the twenty non-French
     TV fiction titles most broadcast in 2019 on French TV.36
      Crime narratives, previously defined as mediated cultural encounters,
     play a part in the process of Europeanization both through first
     broadcasting and reruns. Though their share tends to be lower, due to
     their lack of novelty and subsequent location in the scheduling grid, reruns
     form a constant layer of European crime series on French television. As
     such, they contribute to the sedimentation of a social imaginary through
     repetition. Audiences are acquainted to reruns to such an extent that
     they belong to a common perception of Europe, hence performing a
     ‘banal Europeanization’37 process. Applying this concept to European
     TV drama, Bondebjerg asserts that ‘[b]y looking into the everyday life of
     other Europeans, past and present, our national reality is challenged and
     expanded. We experience diversity and difference, we get a new perspective
     on our own life and history, and perhaps we also discover that Europe is
     not just something over there in Brussels.’38 Looking at reruns from that
     perspective enables to shift the focus from the idea of European identity as
     a conscious political identification to the role of popular media in shaping a
     shared experience for many European citizens.


46                              Biscarrat, On the Circulation of European TV Crime Series

A Contained Cultural Diversity
Led by United-Kingdom, Germany
and Nordic Countries
  The analysis of the main channels broadcasting crime series has revealed
some patterns in their circulation: public channels as well as thematic
channels play an important part while TDT-born channels form another
actor of this ‘banal Europeanization’ through reruns. A closer look at the
geographical origin of imported titles reveals that the UK, Germany and,
related to the more recent spread Nordic Noir titles, the Nordic countries
dominate the picture.
  Regarding all type of TV fiction, the European Audiovisual Observatory
(2019) highlights that UK leads in terms of number of episodes and hours.39
Besides, UK productions are available in the largest number of countries
of EU28. In 2017, eighteen out of twenty-one TV scripted shows present
in at least seven countries were produced or co-produced by the United
Kingdom. For instance, Sherlock (BBC One) was broadcasted in twelve
countries, Midsomer Murders (ITV) in ten and Wallander (BBC One) in nine
countries. Historically, the UK television landscape is organized around a
private-public system, which is reflected in the France import with the BBC
and ITV as the main sources of crime series.
  Regarding Germany, the European Audiovisual Observatory establishes
that, all formats considered, it is the runaway lead fiction TV-producing
country, in terms of number of titles and number of hours. Both in France
and Germany, the crime series genre is the most important of the twenty
biggest audience in TV fiction: in 2018, sixteen out of twenty titles were
Krimi (CSA/Médiamétrie / Eurodata TV Worldwide). Not only does Germany
broadcast successfully crime series, but it has also been exporting titles to
France since Hafenpolizei (Das Erste, RDA) was broadcasted in 1967 on the
State channel ORTF. Titles such as Derrick (ZDF), Der Alte (ZDF) or Alarm
für Cobra 11 Die Autobahnpolizei (RTL) were huge audience success and
have been rebroadcasted endlessly on French screens.
  Regine Chaniac states that German television producers in the 1970s
successfully developed crime series inspired by foreign blockbusters rather
than adapting national crime fiction literature, which may have influenced
its intercultural exchange opportunities. She states that German series
‘answer the format, length and ‘neutrality’ criteria which ensure a good
circulation in Europe’,40 an observation shared by Henry Larski according
to whom Derrick and Alarm für Cobra convey the stereotype of ‘a nowadays
respectable country, were effort, work and success sum up both from an
individual and a collective path. They operate like “diplomates of a too
normalized Germany”’.41
  Moreover, from an industrial perspective, both countries benefit from
important economic resources42 and from a televisual landscape that


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                                                                                                      
                          matured earlier than in France, giving them a head start regarding both
                          internal production and export possibilities. Instead, the history of French
                          television is characterized by late development followed by state monopoly
                          and a subsequent progressive privatization. The market was a concentrated
                          and quite isolated audiovisual landscape for a long time. For instance, in
                          1939, there were about 20.000 TV sets in UK and Germany, whereas this
                          number was achieved in France only in 1950. In 1992, there were only one
                          million French homes connected to cable TV whereas there were more
                          than ten millions in Germany.43 The corpus of this study encompasses this
                          long history, from the state RTF in the 1950s to the current richer supply
                          of television programming. This pre-history, as well as the legal quota
                          obligations, are reflected in the increasing number of new European titles
                          imported to France.
                             In 2007, Nordic crime series appeared on French screens. In only a
                          decade, the number of Nordic titles on French television has increased
                          dramatically and was in 2018 only surpassed by the number of titles from
                          the UK and Germany, which have been dominating the history of French
                          crime television series imports.
                             The development of the Nordic Noir brand has modified the structure
                          of the market, starting in the first decade of the 2000s. Interestingly, a
                          similar pattern appears at the same time in the French press regarding
                          Noir novels from Northern Europe. The Nordic Noir label is constructed by
                          the media as a key-actor of the noir novel industry.44
                             The arrival of a group of Northern European countries as a third leader
                          in the market of TV crime series needs to be contextualized regarding the
                          French television landscape. The development of digital television, the
                          multi-channel system and delinearisation of the viewing experience have
                          resulted in an increase of shows, as well as a simultaneous erosion and
                          specialization of audiences. As a consequence, in France, most Nordic noir
                          titles were broadcast on pay-tv channels (e.g. Livvagterne, Denmark on
                          Canal Jimmy or Sorjonen, Finland on Polar +) or the cultural channel Arte

Fig. 1: An increasing
number of Nordic
Noir titles imported to
France (2007-2018)




48                                                  Biscarrat, On the Circulation of European TV Crime Series

(e.g. Øyevitne, Norway; The Lava Field: Hraunið, Iceland). The increase in
number of channels has caused an increase in import of new titles, as
much as twenty-four in 2018. However, the following fragmentation of
audiences means that, excluding the audience of platforms such as Netflix,
Nordic crime series are consumed by a smaller percentage of the global
TV audience than other crime series imported to France. If we compare
the audience share of the first episode of two non-French European series
broadcasted in 2018, for instance, it appears that Elven (TV3, Norway)
broadcasted on the cultural channel Arte reached a 5.80% share for a
992.188 global audience while Maltese – Il Romanzo del Commissario
(Rai Uno, Italy) broadcast on France 3, a public channel with a popular and
ageing audience, reached a 14.10% share for a 2.626.380 global audience.
This indicates that such exported titles tend to become niche-programmes
in foreign territories like the French. In other words, the number of titles
imported does not equate strictly an extension of cultural diversity for all
viewers.



The Multi-Layered Mediations
of Crime Series Circulation
  The format studies perspective lays the emphasis on the mediations
that provide cooperation for canned products broadcast. Dubbing plays a
pivotal role in this market. Relying on an ethnographical study of Italian
editions of two sitcoms The Simpsons and How I met your mother, Luca
Barra highlights the key-role of adaptation and dubbing mediations in the
global circulation of media products.45 Dubbing is crucial to a successful
export/import of TV drama, and so in the efficiency of crime series to be
appropriated by a wide audience, not restricted to its literacy and cultural
capital. As such, the success of non-French fiction in programming
strategies, as well as the development of a VOD offer, has increased
revenues for dubbing and subtitling industries. In the French audiovisual
sector, it is the third market (15%) of all technical industries in 2017.46
  Besides, it is interesting to notice that these mediations don’t operate
strictly at the national level. On the contrary, the adaptation process can
provide relevant insights into the sites of negotiation between various
territorial scales. From a format perspective, not all German crime series
are marketed for a national German audience. To interact with local
audiences, the ARD group produces different local versions of Tatort,
another famous krimi on French screens. Besides, the international level
is also relevant as crime series can also be adaptations of American drama.
For example, Post Mortem (RTL, Germany) is an adaptation of CSI, and Law
& order has a London version (ITV, UK). At the European scale, Countdown
– Die Jagd Beginnt (RTL, Germany) is an adaptation of the Spanish crime
series Cuenta Atrás (Cuatro).
  All these series — both originals and adaptations — were exported to


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                                                                                   
     France and appropriated for local French audiences via dubbing/subtitling
     and scheduling. Scheduling a crime series may re-negotiate its cultural
     status. For example, Vis a vis (Antena 3), a Spanish crime series that
     originally targeted a national Spanish audience, was aired during summer
     2018 at a ‘graveyard slot’ in France on Teva, a private channel targeting a
     popular female and family-oriented audience. As a result, the scheduling
     of the series caused a drop in the series’ cultural status. Also, episodes
     were cut from the Spanish standard of seventy-five minutes to fifty minutes
     instead, increasing the number of episodes in the first two seasons of the
     show. Consequently, there are eleven episodes in the original first season
     of Vis a vis whereas the French version encompasses sixteen.
       Lastly, in France, the consumption of TV series is strongly structured by
     cultural hierarchies.47 The two channels best embodying this feature are
     the private pay-TV channel Canal Plus and the German-French culturally-
     oriented channel Arte. Yet, they represent respectively only 9 and 10% of
     European importations. Launched in 1984, Canal Plus based its editorial
     line on sport, humour and sex for an upper-class male audience. ‘While
     you’re on Canal Plus, at least you’re not watching TV’ stipulated the 1996
     motto, echoing HBO famous tagline. Canal Plus has not really laid the
     emphasis on TV series until the 2000s. It then launched its own series label
     ‘original creation’ inscribed in the distinction strategy of the channel.48 As
     for Arte, created in 1992, it only broadcasted few titles during its first years.
     The two first imported European titles found were Die Gerichtsreporterin
     (ARD, Germany) and Monaco Franze – Der ewige Stenz (ARD, Germany),
     both in 1995. More recently, the interest of cultural elites, both academics
     and critics, for ‘quality television’, as well as the trend of the Nordic Noir are
     reflected in Arte grid. Since 2009, the scheduling of newly-imported crime
     series has increased with titles such as Norskov (TV2, Denmark) in 2016 or
     Elven (TV3, Norway) in 2018. To put it in a nutshell, dubbing as well as the
     scheduling strategies of the channels perform ‘invisible mediations’49 that
     reshape both the form of the product as well as its symbolic, and therefore
     economic, value. Thus, crime series circulation implies a process of
     ‘indigenization’50 to fit into the local industrial and cultural pattern.



     Circulating TV Series, Circulating
     Inequalities: Indications of a White,
     Male-Dominated Creative Industry
       While various European countries as well as the European Commission
     reflect on the possibility of conditioning funding to gender equality, the
     corpus provides an insightful mirror of the inequalities at stake in media
     industries in Europe. Though the 1995 Beijing Conference on the Rights
     of Women has provided a framework to achieve gender equality in the
     media, women in media industries still suffer from precarity, low wages,


50                               Biscarrat, On the Circulation of European TV Crime Series

vertical and horizontal segregation, sexist and sexual harassment.51
Nowadays numerous European countries provide indicators about gender
representation in the media, yet data regarding women in creative industry
are still scarce. The 2013 European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)
report was the first to deliver comparable data on the number of women in
decision-making positions in European media, hence highlighting that ‘the
organisational culture of media remains largely masculine’.52 In 2018, the
European Platform of Audiovisual Regulatory Authorities (EPRA) issued a
report on the representation of women in the audiovisual media industry
which also emphasizes the existence of pervasive disparities.53 Lastly, the
2020 European Audiovisual Observatory report on female directors and
screenwriters in European film and audiovisual fiction production states
that women were involved only in the direction (i.e. directed or co-directed)
of 16% of all episodes of audiovisual fiction between 2015 and 2018.54
   The circulation of non-French European crime series in France is shaped
by this prevailing gender gap. Based on data from non-French European
crime series aired in France, it appears that television fiction remains a
male-dominated industry. Only 18% of creators of European crime series
broadcast in France are female, giving a clear impression of a lack of gender
equality. Unsurprisingly, the crime series created by women broadcast in
France mainly derive from the main providers, UK (thirty-nine women) and
Germany (eleven women). Besides, Nordic countries, described as ‘leaders
on gender equality’,55 by OECD stand out with fourteen female creators,
most of them from Norway (eight), in a short time lapse. A diachronic
perspective based on the first original release year of each title reveals a
pattern regarding the dynamics of gender equality and innovation. Indeed,
we can observe that women are present in the early years of television
creative industries. For instance, Hannah Weinstein, famous for inventing
and producing the television series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955–
59), was the female producer of Colonel March of Scotland Yard (ITV, UK)
as early as 1956. Yet, they tend to become increasingly invisible whilst the
field gains in maturity. Such a pattern has already been identified by the
film historian Ally Acker56 and more recently Deborah Gay57 showed its
recurrence in the French web series industry.
   In the period 1956–1999, there are only five female creators/producers in the
sample. June Wyndham Davies produced Sherlock Holmes (ITV), Pat Sandys
produced The Agatha Christie Hour (ITV), Lynda La Plante created Prime
Suspect (ITV), Jenny Reeks and Michelle Buck were executive producers for
episodes of Wycliffe (ITV) — whose producers were all men — and Beatrice
Kramm produced Helicops (Sat.1, Germany). Most of these female creators
appear repeatedly in the corpus. There is no clear pattern of improvement in
the process of gender equality until 2014. From 2014 to 2017, the number of
female creators rose to seven in 2014 and 2015, and ten titles were produced
by women in 2017. This slight improvement is correlated with the increasing
number of Nordic Noir titles broadcasted in France.


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                             Moreover, it is remarkable that female creators most often work in
                           collaboration with men, as opposed to female pair-working or a unique
                           male creator. For instance, Stephen Smallwood et Emma Kingsman-Lloyd
                           produced DCI Banks (ITV, UK), Anne Sewitsky and Hans Christian Storrøsten
                           created Monsters (NRK1, Norway), etc. A similar pattern appears in the
                           recent report of the European Audiovisual Observatory (2020): women
                           are proportionally more likely than men to work in gender-mixed teams.
                           In other words, while men possess fully their power positions, women
                           often share the creative process with a man, be it due to individual career
                           development or to gender mainstreaming legislation pushing for gender
                           parity.
                             Lastly, it is important to notice that the cultural industry circulating
                           popular products in Europe also contribute to the normalization of
                           whiteness in Europe ‘behind the camera.’ ‘Critical white studies’ imply
                           that whiteness is a social experience of domination characterized by an
                           hegemonic position within race power relations.58 Here, data collection
                           supports that assumption. Only 1% of the creators come from ethnic
                           minorities, which means that there is almost no ethnic diversity among the
                           creators of crime series. While European history and culture are strongly
                           entangled in postcolonialism, the market of imported crime series remains
                           characterized by its lack of diversity.



                           Conclusion
                             Two sets of conclusions may be drawn from this study. First-of-all, the
                           contribution of this research lays in its theoretical framework. According
                           to Jérôme Bourdon,59 there are two main drawbacks to the study of
                           television in Europe. The first one is the topos of the Americanization of

Fig. 2: First appearance
of female creators
amongst crime series
sold to France




52                                                   Biscarrat, On the Circulation of European TV Crime Series

culture. Looking at the circulation of non-French European crime series
broadcasted in France between 1957 and 2018 has shown a long history of
cultural exchanges through France, hence debunking that assumption. The
second drawback is the hegemony of the national frame for a transnational
analysis. Following Heidi Keinonen’s definition of television format as a
‘technology of economic and cultural exchange’60 has provided a relevant
theoretical framework to discuss the entangled layers of circulation through
the French television landscape. Applied to this case study, this approach
has given insights into the French television flow, for instance regarding the
multi-layered mediations at stake in the circulation process. As such, this
article also works as a programmatic basis for future research. Another
contribution comes from its transferability. Indeed, both the framework
and the results can be used for further or comparative analysis.
   The second set of conclusions stems from data analysis. Three main
results may be drawn from this study. Firstly, the circulation of crime
series is rooted in an industrial process. It always entails a process of
indigenization performed through human mediations in order to fit into the
culture and industry of the broadcasting territory, while the import/export
pattern indicates an increasing interest in non-French European titles on
the French television market. Secondly, transcultural identities signaled in
the increasing exchange of series appear heterogeneous in nature, although
Germany, the UK and the Nordic region dominate the image. However,
it is important to emphasize that such heterogeneity in the circulation of
European titles still display a rather traditional view on cultural diversity, as
the data indicates continued issues with gender equality in European media
industries, including the production of crime series. If crime narratives
disseminates such a thing as a transcultural culture, they are still construed
by a white and male-dominated creative industry.




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Notes
 1
     The research presented here has been financed by the research project DETECt — Detecting
Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives (Horizon 2020, 2018–2021) [Grant
agreement number 770151]. I also would like to thank the INA office in Toulouse.
  2
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     Exceptions deserve to be mentioned: Jennifer Houdiard, ‘Confusion des genres et trouble dans
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PULIM, 2016). Jennifer Houdiard, ‘Adapter, c’est (parfois) trahir: fiction et stéréotypes de genre
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[accessed 21 October 2020]; Laetitia Biscarrat, ‘Idéologie raciste et fiction télévisuelle. L’exemple
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