• Its focused on two parents who go to France and lose sight of their son.
• The series was originally titled The Breakdown
• Filming began in February 2014 with help from the Belgian government’s tax shelter scheme
• The story is paralleled by flashbacks to 2014 and is set near a British army garrison in Eckhausen, Germany
• There are 16 episodes
• There are two series
• It was written by the brothers Harry and Williams

• Stephen Neale= is a British philosopher 
• Repertoire of elements= covers the theory that a certain genre of film will have similar characters.
• corpus= when genres evolve as new texts are added to the body of similar texts
• hybridisation= the combination of genre or subgenre
• historical specificity= genres that are associated with certain periods of times
• repetition= repeating something , objects words, actions
• sameness=  can be thought as contrastives to repetition, as can novelty and creativity.
• variation and change= changing something from how it is or how it should happen
• narrative image= uses the power of visual to tell a story
• expectations and hypothesis= what the audience think is going to happen
• suspend disbelief = believe what you see knowing its not real
• generic regime of verisimilitude= things that are similar and believable, engaging

• Stephen Neale – Invented the the idea of genre theory
• Repertoire of elements – A collection of static groups which consistently have similar elements.
• Corpus – When genres evolve as new texts are added to the body of similar texts.
• Hybridisation – The combination of genre or subgenre.
• Historic specificity – Genres that are associated with certain time periods.
• Repetition and sameness – Something repeated over and over again.
• Variation and change – Something different.
• Narrative Image – Telling a story in the moment or how its going or sequence of events unfolding over time.
• Expectations and hypothesis – What the audience think is going to happen.
• Suspend disbelief – To immerse yourself in a fictional narrative.
• Generic regime of verisimilitude – Refers to what is likely to happen in ina genre.

CATEGORY	SIMILARITIES	DIFFERENCES	THEORY
CHARACTERS	the detective who has a ‘natural’ instinct for law and order Both involve female children	The Killing, The missing has the main detective as female	PROPP
NARRATIVE	the first episode often introduces a lot of different characters	difference in what happens to the child (one gets killed, one goes missing)	TODOROV
THEMES	the use of binary oppositions around familiar themes: family, community, law and order, justice.	family justice	LEVI-STRAUSS
REPRESENTATION	reactionary representations of police, family, law and order, urban/rural	representation of a stereotypical victim	SEMIOTICS
TECHNICAL CODES / LANGUAGE OF MOVING IMAGE (music, setting, props, lighting, use of camera, editing etc)	opening montage sequence that often gives clues as to the whole series – themes, locations, characters, events etc.
SETTING	a forest & a more urban area	lake

In what ways is ‘genre’ beneficial for transnational audiences?

• a lot of the genres are very similar in content so you know what to expect
• reoccurring tropes in genre allow the content to be understood more easily for the audience

In what ways is ‘genre’ beneficial for transnational institutions?

• they can be consumed by an international audience as they know what to expect from a particular genre
• this brings in more money and a larger engagement with a wider audience

PSB stands for Public Service Broadcasting

It consists of radio and television programmes that are broadcasted with the main aim to provide entertainment, news or advice to the general public without trying to make a profit.

With reference to The Killing

• It is a co-production of Danish and German PSB companies (DK and ZDF)

• Exploiting the success of US long form drama with a local twist (20 episodes for a single crime drama)

• Exploring the economic possibilities offered by an international/ global market (e.g. success of Wallander): sold to over 120 countries

• Marketing prestige ‘serious’/literary drama for the boxset context (focus on aesthetic qualities: photography, narrative structure, character focus):  chasing international awards rather than a local audience

• Cultivation of the ‘celebrity’ detective: Sarah Lund and the actress Sophie Grabol who has extended these themes and their appeal by subsequent work

• Sanctioning of an American version

Issues to cover in my essay

 • media institutions as producers and distributors of cultural products (high status)

What media institutions do is that they collaborate with other companies to bring down their cost as well as attract a wider audience. For example, The Killing was created by both a Dutch and a German TV studio. The main one was the Dutch company , but they contributed with the German PSB in order to lower their costs of creating the programme as they would respectively pay 50/50 as well as attract audiences from both Germany as well as the Netherlands due to a German production company also being involved.

• the relationship between national and global audiences

The Killing was such a worldwide success that there has been many programmes based off this original programme which has been distributed in many different languages. For example, The Killing was so successful, American PSB Fox Television Studios in collaboration with Netflix recreated The Killing in English, which attracted a wider audience as English is the most widely spoken language worldwide. Due to Fox making an English version, a wider audience is attracted as it shows its popularity and due to it being based of the original one in Dutch, audiences are more likely to watch the original Dutch one as it follows the sameness and similarities of the English one.

• Ideas about the function of institutions in both ‘free market’ and PSB contexts:

The free market is an economic system based on supply and demand of something that has very little or no government control.

• issues of identity at both an institutional and programme level

The Killing follows sameness of other mystery genre programmers in order to provide a large target audience of those who enjoy the mystery genre. The institutions behind The Killing have used a production company in Germany to keep their costs down as well as attract the audiences from Germany. The Killing provides a clear narrative image for the people who may not speak the same language as the language the programmer is produced in, however can gain an understanding through the likeness of other programmes and the conventions and features of the genre the programmes is set in. For example, The Killing is set in the mystery genre, so follows the conventions of the mystery genre by including clues, a culprit, a detective and a victim, with the repertoire of the mystery elements to keep the sameness of the mystery genre programme.

• marketing within a globalised and transmedia context

Transmedia meaning = the telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms, such as television and formats using current digital technologies.

The Killing is available online meaning anyone can access it as it is not just available in the country where it originated from. The fact that it is available online to anyone means that anyone could stumble upon it and then watch the programme out of pure curiosity and enjoy it due to its generic regime of verisimilitude and the sameness it has as it has the same elements that are expected in a mystery genre programme.

• the importance to audiences of certain kinds of narrative structure, genre, talent

The Killing follows a generic regime of verisimilitude in order to allow the audience to connect with it. As it is aimed at social classes C1, C2 and DE which make up 80% of the population, it uses characters in that social class to create the verisimilitude and life-likeness of the programme, as well as serves as a source of escapism from reality and enjoyment for the audience. It also follows the general codes and conventions used and appears familiar to other mystery genres as it automatically indicates what genre it is, even just through the narrative image.

• the importance of technology in adding value to cultural products

By using technology, The Killing is very realistic as it mimics modern day life and the technologies available, therefore it gives a sense of inclusion to the audience as they are able to relate to the programme in the sense of how society acts.