Television Drama from Germany

This open access book examines how TV professionals in Germany have negotiated “quality TV drama” from 2015 to the present. As practitioners have adapted quality TV – a term most strongly associated with US series – to their own national context, they have simultaneously dealt with shifts in screenwriting and storytelling as well as with broader transformations of the local television industry. As in other European countries, in Germany this has included a crucial upheaval: the emergence of various streaming services, which has multiplied the television market. As a systematic study of this changing fiction industry, Television Drama from Germany will be of great interest to both academics and practitioners working both within and outside the German-language television market.

“Television Drama from Germany is an important piece of research into TV drama that combines industry access over several years with excellent knowledge of the field. Florian Krauß offers a fascinating account of how the German TV drama ecosystem has developed in response to public subsidies, private channels and streaming, contributing invaluable insights for Screenwriting and TV scholars around the world.” (Adam Ganz, Professor of Screenwriting, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom)

“Television Drama from Germany is an excellent key text on contemporary German television and production culture that brings academic research and the industry closer together. With a focus on script development and screenwriting, Florian Krauß explores “quality TV drama” in Germany as an industry discourse that has led to transformations in production practices and, as a result, to a significant increase in drama series production. The book is well researched and offers invaluable insights by drawing on more than 30 interviews with practitioners from the German television industry. It is a great resource for students, scholars and professionals trying to understand transformative changes in European screen cultures.” (Susanne Eichner, Professor in Analysis and Aesthetics of Audiovisual Media, Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Potsdam, Germany, and Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Journalism Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark)

“Television Drama from Germany offers a captivating investigation into the institutional aspects of German television production, particularly emphasising contemporary drama series and their alignment with the discourse of “quality TV.” Focusing on the pivotal period between 2015 and 2023, it serves as a long-awaited continuation of Knut Hickethier’s seminal television history. Television Drama from Germany delivers compelling insights into diverse distribution channels, spanning public and commercial broadcasting organisations, public media archives, and private streaming platforms, all of which play a significant role in shaping the landscape of drama series production today.” (Judith Keilbach, Associate Professor in the Media and Culture Studies Department at Utrecht University, the Netherlands)

“With his book, Florian Krauß makes an extremely important contribution to the debate on quality TV series by analysing the structures and production conditions of the German television market. His interviews with players in the production landscape – scriptwriters, producers, directors and others –took place at a time when the television landscape was transformed by streaming platforms. Krauß succeeds in unravelling this transformation process from the perspective of those working in the field, thus making a very important contribution to the production studies of high-end drama series in a specific market that is influenced by global processes.” (Lothar Mikos, Professor Emeritus of Television Studies, Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Potsdam, Germany, and Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Free University Berlin, Germany)

“This is an innovative study of recent German quality television series and their production and distribution. Florian Krauß’s book presents far-reaching empirical findings on the ongoing transformation of serial television drama, including perspectives from its creators, while casting a critical eye on the economics of the industry.” (Daniel Stein, Professor of North American Literary and Cultural History, Dean of the Faculty Arts and Humanities, University of Siegen, Germany)

Florian Krauß is a lecturer at the University of Siegen, Germany, and a freelance script editor. He has held visiting scholar positions at the universities of Bologna, Copenhagen and Utrecht and served as visiting professor at Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, and as research associate at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Germany.