“Quality TV”: The reinvention of U.S. television

Abstract

This thesis examines the rise to prominence of a new form of “quality television” that has appeared in the U.S. since the 1990s. There are competing and sometimes conflicting ways to define “quality television”, depending on different histories and prioritising different characteristics - sometimes production methods, sometimes viewing and distribution practices, and sometimes genre hybridity and transformation. For each, however, the 1990s is a watershed decade. The mainstreaming of cable television, the new dominance of video and then DVD collections of series, a decline in broadcast television’s audience share and the rapid expansion of the internet as an entertainment media option together created new opportunities for a more ‘cinematic’ television that hailed an active audience interested in formally and narratively challenging television. Every account of quality television turns on claims to exceed and subvert the expectations of existing television formats and genres while also using those to attract an audience. This is famously exemplified by the 90s HBO slogan “It’s not TV. It’s HBO” (since 2011 just “it’s HBO”). This apparent difference is only partly about heightened production values. Quality television tends to foreground genre hybridity, genre self-reflexivity, and intertextuality, and its viewers have become associated with dedicated fandom and new viewing practices such as “binge viewing”, the increasing frequency of watching “off-air”, and torrent culture. The quality television viewer is appealed to by, and not in spite of, their status as a niche audience, and the cultural value accruing to their niche status has transformed investment in casting, scripting, acting directing, producing and critically evaluating television. Quality television has not only become a dominant television format but the benchmark against which “mainstream” television is measured. To develop this argument I employ textual and discourse analysis and critical theory, and refer to a range of series produced between 1990 and 2013. These include Twin Peaks (1990-91), The X-Files (1993-2002), The Sopranos (1999-2007), The Wire (2002-2008), Breaking Bad (2008—), Game of Thrones (2011—), Girls (2012—) and House of Cards (2013—). These examples offer an historical range of U.S. television since 1990 with emphasis on developments that I argue have brought quality television to its current visibility.