Table Of ContentW
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ldlt.d by
THOMAS ELSAISSEII
JAN SIMONS
LUCETTE ••ONK
AMSTEPiO"'" UNIVERSITY PRESS
WRITING FOR
THE MEDIUM
Television in Transition
FILM CULTURE IN TRANSITION
Thomas Efsaesser: General Editor
Double Trouble
Chiemvan Houweninge on Writing and Filming
Thomas Elsaesser, RobertKievitandfan Simons(eds.)
(march 1994)
Fassbinder's Germany
Thomas Elsaesser
(summer1994)
Film and the First World War
KarelDibbetsandBert Hogenkamp (eds.)
(fall 1994)
WRITING FOR
THE MEDIUM
Television in Transition
Editedby
THOMAS ELSAESSER
JAN SIMONS
LUCETTE BRONK
x
.I~p
X
AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
C1P-GEGEVENS KONINKLlJKEBIBLlOTHEEK, DEN HAAG
Writing
Writing for the medium : television in transition / ed. by Thomas Elsaesser, Lucette Bronk,
Jan Simons. -Amsterdam: Amsterdam UniversityPress
With ref.
ISBN 90-5356-054-8
NUG1925/951
Subjectheadings: screenwriting;television / quality; television.
Coverdesign: KokKorpershoek(KO), Amsterdam
Typesetting: A-zet, Leiden
©Amsterdam UniversityPress, Amsterdam, 1994
All rights reserved. Withoutlimitingtherights undercopyrightreserved above, nopartofthis
publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into aretrieval system, ortransmitt
ed, in anyform or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording orother
wise), withoutthepriorwritten permission ofboththe copyrightownerandthe auhorofthis
book.
CONTENTS
7 General Introduction
Thomas Elsaesser
Part 1-QualityTelevision
15 Introduction
Thomas Elsaesser
21 Television in theAgeofConsensus without Sense
Lutz Hachmeister
35 'Quality'Television
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
41 Quality Television in TheNetherlands: Some HopefulReflections
on Breaking the Taboo
Sonja de Leeuw
49 On theQualityofSoap
Olga Madsen
54 Zapping One's Wayinto Quality:Arts Programmes on TV
Thomas Elsaesser
64 Definitions ofQuality
Ion Cookand Thomas Elsaesser
77 Questionable Qualityorthe UndiscoverableQualityofTelevision
lan Simons
Part 2- Literatureon Television
91 Introduction
Thomas Elsaesser
98 TheNovelist andTelevision Drama
Malcolm Bradbury
107 OnAchievingGood Television
FayWeldon
118 Speaking to Nations
Alan Plater
131 Television andLiterature
Ion Cook
5
137 LiteratureafterTelevision: Author, Authority, Authenticity
Thomas Elsaesser
149 Unwritable Films, Unfilmable Texts?
Jan Simons
Part 3-Science on Television
159 Introduction
Jan Simons
164 Gee-WizardsoftheBox?
Thomas Elsaesser
182 Scienceon Television
Aart Gisolf
186 On Being GodandDarwin
Graham Creelman
191 Citizen ScientistorADinosaurforAllSeasons?
Jana Bennett
194 ScienceandTechnologyon TV: FourEuropean Countries Compared
JaapWillems
203 Selected Bibliography
207 The Contributors
210 The Editors
211 Film Culture in Transition: on the series
6
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
THOMAS ELSAESSER
This collection of essays was inspired by a desire to bring together some of the
arguments that have, in recentyears and all over Europe, shaped the debate about
the future of television. It is undeniable that the commotion came from a certain
anxietyand senseofcrisis, although in some quarters (not represented in the pages
that follow), the crisis was perceived and seized as an opportunity: to dismantle
regulations and state controls, to discredit television's civic accountability, and
above all, to make lots of money. Those, however, who felt that public service tele
vision - in its old, government-monopoly form and in its advertising-funded, com
mercial manifestations- was something worth defending also seized the crisis as an
opportunity. It made it possible to reflect on what television had come to mean for
audiences and television makers, for oursense ofdemocracy, ofcommunity, and of
thecontemporarynation-state: the last in Europe paradoxicallyatoneandthe same
time on the verge of disappearing into aFederal Europe, and of reasserting itself in
the confused search for nationalism, regional autonomyand ethnic identity.
At this juncture, it seemed imperative to limit the topic somewhat and
start by studying the fault-lines along a more traditional fissure: the high-culture/
popularculture opposition, forexample, ormore precisely, the dividewhich issup
posed to separate writers - men and women of letters- from such astridently popu
list, easily demagogic and inherently ephemeral medium such as television. Under
the title of 'Writing and Filming', an international weekend conference was organ
ized by the Institute of Film and Television Studies atthe University of Amsterdam
and held at the Nederlands Filmmuseum on May 15th-17th, 1992. The event was
itself something of a follow-up to a seminar organized under the title 'Television:
Questions of Quality' by the Centre for Creative and Performing Arts at the
Universityof East Anglia in Norwich two years earlier. The presence of speakers
who attended both conferences (Cook, Bradbury, Hachmeister, Elsaesser) gave the
discussions some continuity, understated by the fact that only the revised version
of one paper - Jon Cook and Thomas Elsaesser's closing report from the Norwich
meeting- is included here.
The Amsterdam meeting wanted to be aforum forwriters and television
programme makers and to extend the boundaries by including factual writing,
7
alongsidethe views ofhistoriansand scholarsoftelevision. Anumberoffilmmakers
were also invited, well aware that they might open up an intriguing double front:
wary of television lest it swallow them, filmmakers sometimes feel they have to
keep atarm's length thewriters whose work theyare suspected ofbetraying to the
imageand spectacle.
Yet theirthoughts on the topics we proposed- 'the unwritablefilm' and
'the unfilmable text' - were key elements of the conference: the disputes writers
havealways had with directorsand which both have had with producers, aswell as
the changing status of the director as author, give a much-needed historical
dimension to the current controversies over how these roles are distributed in
television. Writing and filming have always been perceived as sharing somefunda
mentals. Not only do film directors expect their unique stylistic and thematic 'sig
nature' to be recognized by an audience, similarto the way writers are recognized
by their readers, but films are often called 'texts', a sign, beyond the jargon, that
they are beginning to receive the kind of close attention traditionally reserved for
works of literature. More generally, filming presupposes writing: a film is usually
produced on the basis ofascript, aform ofwriting which has acomplex butabso
lutely crucial status in the commercial film industry, while its need to exist at all is
often challenged by personal, independent or avant-garde filmmaking. Finally,
once afilm hasencountered apublic, it becomesthe subjectofother kinds ofwrit
ing: articles byjournalists, criticsand academics.
Writing, furthermore, is crucial for television. While one tends to think
thatthe unique qualityoftelevision derivesfrom its 'Iiveness', itis in fact amedium
dependent on 'writing'. Yet much writing for television - and not always the
worst - remains more or less anonymous: for factual programmes, news and
political commentary, science programmes, children's television, game shows.
Little attention is usually paid to the kinds and qualities of this writing. For all its
visual impact, television remains very much a medium of speech and sound,
historically derived from radio and currently competing not, in the first instance,
with the cinema butwith the press and newspapers.
In order to keep this perspective in the foreground, Writing for the
Medium has been divided into three sections. The first is devoted to an analysis of
what is atissue in the fight overthe future(s) oftelevision, singling outthe slippery
term 'quality television' in order to probe what is meant by quality in a popular
medium, and howitcan be defined ordefended.
The second section focuses on literature and television. With wit and
passion, the authors discuss some ofthe ways television and the written text have
influenced and changed each other in the past decades. Going beyond the
8 THOMAS ELSAESSER
question of literary adaptation, writers with experience in several media and
genres, such as Malcolm Bradbury, FayWeldon and Alan Platervoicetheirconcern,
but also their continuing engagement for a tradition of quality television writing,
which they see under siege in the new world of deregulation and international
co-productions. In Great Britain, the writeron television seems, for the time being,
to have maintained a certain authority, not least thanks to the independence
enjoyed by producers and commissioning editors. The situation is more precarious
on the Continent, where authorsfeel that theircraft often goes unrecognized. And
yet, the skills required for television writing need to be more widely understood, if
television is to retain the loyaltyofnational audiences.
The final section examines 'science on television', with series editors from
Britain and Germany giving first-hand accounts of the scope for serious science
reporting on television, but also considering the entertainment expectations of
audiences when watching wildlife programmes or learning about current contro
versies in the sciences. Acomparative study points out the different traditions and
cultural debateswhich shape programming in this area across Europe.
Writing for the Medium will, it is hoped, stimulate the debate about the
future of quality television and the place of writing, not least by suggesting that
this place need not be confined to drama and fiction. The essays also document
the readiness with which writers accept television as an important medium in its
own right, instead of expecting it to derive its importance merely from the mess
age it may be made to deliver. Given the tendency towards deregulation and the
so-called 'market orientation' of broadcasting in Europe, it is important to under
stand moreclearly, and acrossthe whole spectrum of programming, which aspects
of the public service remit in television - and, by extension, what sort of national
film culture - are in need ofsupport orneed to be given anew purpose. As we no
tice, information and entertainment- two key elements of public service broadcast
ing as well as ofthecinema - becoming increasingly intermingled and 'global', the
meaning of a national audiovisual culture for the survival of democracy has to be
much morewidely discussed than it isat present. The prospectsofahealthy media
culture are important notjustfrom the pointofview ofeconomics. An 'ecological'
perspective is necessary to understand film and TV's relation to national literature,
to developments in science, to concerns about the environment and to techno
logical change. It may even remind us of the basic political arguments for
maintaining anationallyspecific, but nevertheless international audiovisual culture,
in the face of what some see as the increasing dominance of one or two nations'
cultures overeveryotheron the globe.
Another outlook one might take away from the following essays is that,
9 GENERAL INTRODUCTION
