Television Performance

James Walters, Lucy Fife Donaldson

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350316362
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Teatro

This innovative and timely collection offers a wide-reaching critical evaluation of performance in television, mapping out key conventions, practices and concerns while introducing performance theory and criticism to the established field of television studies. Chapters from leading scholars move through a range of examples from different styles and genres, from Game of Thrones to America's Next Top Model. Individual performances are analysed in close detail as the authors debate central questions of meaning, value and achievement. Opening out new pathways for inquiry and investigation, this book is an important touchstone for undergraduate and postgraduate students of television, media and theatre studies with an interest in the work of actors and non-actors on screen.

Part 1

Performance and Television Form

1

In Small Packages: Particularities of Performance in Dramatic Episodic Series

Sarah Cardwell

The accumulated amount of character knowledge that a long-term serial viewer accumulates gives a richness of interpretation to any single instalment.

(Smith 2014: 290)

The familiarity with characters that is furnished by prior episodes is sustained and built upon through the incorporation of gestures, moments, and events that are imbued with emotional weight based on information parcelled out previously.

(Nannicelli 2016: 70)

As the editors of this volume observe in the Introduction, attention to performance on television has, until recently, been relatively limited; this collection constitutes a welcome and significant expansion. Within existing scholarship, some of the most incisive and nuanced accounts of television performance are proffered in the context of focused analyses of specific programmes and characters, under the aegis of television aesthetics (which is also where this chapter situates itself).¹ One of the most important, obvious and immediately engaging functions of performance is, after all, to express and communicate the development of character. Thus valuable insights into televisual performance have arisen via critical and scholarly attention, such as that paid by Greg M. Smith and Ted Nannicelli as highlighted in the above quotes, to notable examples of extended character development in TV serials such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad.²

Notably, these are both long-running dramatic serials, proffering complex narratives stretched out over many series/seasons. Recent expressive and evaluative criticism of television frequently valorises TV’s seriality and the dramatic potential of long-running serial form, especially its manifestation in ‘quality US drama’. The episodic series, also a firmly established, persistent televisual form, composed of fully self-contained episodes (‘small packages’) in terms of plot, and dependent upon core characters supported and supplemented each week by changing cameos, lies comparatively neglected by aestheticians and cognitivists, and undervalued by critics.

The widespread preoccupation with serials is understandable, reflecting a desire to pinpoint some of the specificities of TV, its dominant forms and noteworthy achievements. In their collection on television aesthetics and style, Jason Jacobs and Steven Peacock identify extensive seriality as a primary difference between television and film, citing ‘the expansive structure of television fictions’ (2013: 6–7). Ted Nannicelli, in his philosophical account of the art of television, explores ‘temporal prolongation’ in his endeavour to establish the specificity of TV: ‘the television medium possesses certain qualities, including the capacities for temporal prolongation and liveness, that differentiate it from the film medium’ (2016: 80, 81). Others, such as Robin Nelson (2007) and Jason Mittell (2015), have commended contemporary ‘quality’ TV serials’ complex narrative and character development.

Furthermore, it is easy to see why television aestheticians, who seek particularly to pinpoint the singular achievements of notable works, might tend less often to be inspired by programmes that exhibit formula, repetition, conformity, lack of individuality. While episodic formats garner considerable attention from mainstream TV studies, within television aesthetics – which promises detailed attention to elements such as style and performance – serialised dramas are far more often the focus of recent close analyses than are episodic ones. The fact that episodic series are frequently generic – as in the case of Death in Paradise (BBC, 2011–), the police procedural which is my chosen focus – rather than ‘serious’ drama, compounds the problem.³ Scholars concerned with details of character and performance are understandably drawn to explore and appreciate the achievements of notable serials which allow for the extensive, intricate development of character.

From a distinct but potentially complementary perspective, nascent work undertaken by cognitivists interested in television adds weight to the focus on seriality. Cognitive scholars begin from a reasonable presumption that our engagement with characters is central to our relationship with and appreciation of the work in front of us, and that, moreover, moving-image narrative forms such as film and television exploit instinctive, deep-rooted ways in which we form real-life connections. It is clear, therefore, why the rise in profile of long-running serials has lured some cognitivists from their home ground of film studies to television studies. Television serials facilitate far more obviously than do films the ‘friendship metaphor’ as a model for our complex engagement with on-screen characters: cognitivists Robert Blanchet and Margrethe Bruun Vaage argue that ‘by generating an impression of a shared history, television series activate mental mechanisms similar to those activated by friendship in real life’ (2012: 18).⁴ As noted in the quotations that open this chapter, our memories of characters’ histories, accreted across the extended narrative arc of a serial, intensify our engagement with those characters. Cognitivists exhibit enthusiasm for the same long-form serials as do TV aestheticians, favouring them over episodic programmes, since the former appear to correspond more closely with their scholarly preoccupations.

Both aesthetic and cognitive approaches contend, with differing degrees of explicitness, that sophisticated characterisation and performance enable us to build intimacy with a character over a sustained period, and that this process is central to our engagement and appreciation. Thus across two key areas of television studies which concern themselves particularly with characters and performance, long-form serials have dominated recent discussion.

When performance is evaluated within this context (of long-run serials), an inevitable focus emerges on the profound exploration or long-term progression of characters, and the actors who develop with and through them. However, this is not the only possible route into television performance, nor does it cover the range of pleasures to be found in particular performances, especially where they exist in non-serial episodic forms and genres. This chapter addresses performance within conventional episodic form. Episodic form can be arguably more challenging for its creators and performers, given its restrictions and limitations. Herein, I recognise and explore some of the implications of episodic form for performance, and celebrate the respective achievements of one specific, oft-derided series, Death in Paradise. Within necessarily limited space, I hope to show that it is possible to proffer sensitive and appreciative explorations of particularities of performance within traditional episodic series. Underlying this chapter is a firm belief that sometimes good things come in small packages.

Counterpointing the Serial with the Episodic

The current dominance of serial form within television scholarship and criticism raises two potential barriers to the appreciation of performance(s) within episodic series.

First, important though the serial form is to contemporary quality TV, there is a risk that complex seriality begins to stand for the fully realised ‘televisual’, or at least for that worthy of close aesthetic attention; our understanding and appreciation of serial form consequently belies a lack of responsiveness to television’s other dramatic traditions and to the particularities of performance therein.

There is a tendency not only to acclaim recent long-running serials but also to proffer, if only for classificatory or rhetorical purposes, episodic form as their logical counterpoint. Some scholarship, while celebrating the open, evolving serial, comes close to caricaturing the episodic series as a dead counterweight: closed, constrained, simplistic, out of date. Bruun Vaage contrasts ‘regular TV’ as LOB (Least Objectionable Programming) for an ‘undifferentiated mass audience’ against newer, long-form US quality serials (2016: xii). Mittell’s work on ‘complex’ contemporary US television offers probably the most sustained deployment of this use of the episodic series as counterpoint. In one essay, extolling the virtues of recent US television serial dramas, he depicts episodic form as historical, and claims that narrative complexity develops in television only from the late 1990s; aligning the latter with serial form, Mittell argues that this ‘new TV is more “difficult”’ than earlier or other television (2010: 78, 79).

It must be acknowledged that most of the scholars cited above offer caveats regarding their preference for serials over episodic series. While Mittell allies complexity to serial form, he also clarifies in a later work that complexity is not necessarily to be equated with value, and that simplicity is sometimes artistically preferable (2015: 217). Jacobs and Peacock (2013) are careful to emphasise that neither quality nor value resides inherently within any particular form of TV, and Nannicelli asserts that there is no ‘direct, causal link between temporal prolongation and artistic achievement’ (2016: 81). In relation to close analyses of specific instances of television, Jacobs and Peacock further advocate an approach which explores the relation of a singular ‘moment’ to the whole, while Nannicelli offers a precise and nuanced account of the relationship between individual episodes and the entire serial/series (2016: 108–13). Thus in these scholarly accounts, the facet of seriality does not dominate, or undermine attentiveness to, the particular (however the latter is defined).

Nevertheless, the widespread prevalence of serials as examples, and the not infrequent use of juxtaposition (counterpoint and contrast) to highlight the value of extensive seriality compared with episodic form, tend to divert attention away from the particularities and achievements of episodic dramas, even though many of the ideas presented in relation to serials – and relevant to explorations of character and performance – apply with equal persuasiveness to episodic series.⁵ Enthusiasm for the recent long-form serial has unintentionally discouraged close attention to the specific qualities and achievements of episodic series; correspondingly, consideration of performance within dramatic episodic series lags behind.

Second, the overemphasis on serials impacts particularly upon the study of character and performance. Valuable analyses of performances within serials inadvertently begin to institute implicit notions of what successful, persuasive performances look like. The element of seriality leads us to value change, development, or at least deepening interrogation or uncovering of character. Performance contributes to narrative and/or character development: there is a sense of movement, progression, going somewhere. In these terms, the contrapuntal episodic series appears to go nowhere – and the same could be said of its characters who, especially in procedurals, must exhibit constancy, repetition, perhaps circularity. Tacit assumptions about successful performance thus risk leading us to a dead end when attempting to appreciate character and performance in the near-amnesiac episodic series, wherein character development is necessarily severely limited and each episode must be self-contained, plausibly absorbing any change, complication and resolutions.

Episodic Form and Character Development, Revelation and Performance

If we seek, above all, complex and elongated diegetic development as the epitome of successful characterisation and performance, we can only be disappointed by the episodic series.⁶ The conventional episodic series does not generally allow for notable change or progression. However, it extends us the pleasure of repeated confirmation of character, and it can proffer an elucidation of character in increasing detail, enabling us to get to know a character more intimately each week, deepening our rapport, regardless of the presence, length, complexity or profundity of that character’s individual journey. While the form is amnesiac in terms of plot, it need not be so in terms of character: a nuanced performance that is straightforwardly accessible to new viewers can simultaneously allow fresh insights into a character’s disposition that will be detected and appreciated by the regular audience.

Scholars and teachers of acting have noted the potential continuity between screen performances and social relationships. Patrick Tucker, in his practical guide to screen acting, avers ‘We are all stage actors’ (1994: 3), in the sense that our words and bodies present a performance that others may interpret as expressive of our characters, thoughts and feelings. It is through how others act that we come to know and appreciate them. Importantly for our purposes here, what matters most to us is a person’s recurring traits: the details of how they habitually behave, speak, move.

Though cognitivists appear in thrall to serial form, it is striking that in terms of performance there are clearer correspondences between our engagement with characters in episodic form and with others in real life. How often, after all, do we scrutinise and invest in the individual, life trajectories of those around us, their personal ‘development’, in the same way as when we watch a long-form serial? We can befriend someone over a decade without having privileged access to his or her ‘narrative’, inner life, intimate relationships and memories. Instead, as we get to know someone better, we may take pleasure in their very consistency: in the reiteration of words and actions that typify the person. Over time, in some cases, we might deepen our understanding and appreciation of their character via our observations, and this can constitute a significant and pleasurable relationship even if the person undergoes no striking changes or development.⁷ In short, we get to know those around us well precisely because of repetition and reliability. In this way, an appreciation of the kind of performances found in episodic series might chime with our appreciation of other people in real life.⁸

Thus in the episodic series, enjoyment and satisfaction can be sought in performances which particularly exploit our common experiences of friendship and acquaintanceship in the real world. If we shift our focus from the extensive development of character, and from the contribution of performance and character to narrative progression and complexity, we can attend instead to the ongoing pleasures of the revelation, shaping and affirmation of character via accreted details of performance. (Indeed, we can also relish those details for their own sake, in the moment, even if they prove evanes-cent, adding nothing noteworthy to our perception of the character or any broader narrative arc.)

Those details of performance will have their own specificity. As James Naremore neatly defines it, acting is the ‘systematic ostentatious depiction of character’ (1988: 23); we must recognise that the context or ‘system’ differs between serial and episodic forms. Successful performances in episodic series must effectively deploy the essential trope of repetition (present also in serials, but more marked in episodic series), while avoiding tired repetitiousness, and delicately balance several things, including forward momentum with equilibrium, and character revelation with the need for immediate recognisability, all the time avoiding caricature.

There are other important facets to be considered when attending to a performance within episodic form. Most such series are patently ensemble pieces, and the ensemble is a primary source of delight. Therefore performances are likely to be interdependent, each actor/character allowing others to play their part. Relationships between characters must exhibit constancies and continuities to allow the programme’s format to persist, and any changes must be absorbed without undermining the entire equilibrium of the work. Death in Paradise, for example, has faced several times the departure of key actors, whose roles and functions must be thoughtfully and plausibly replicated.

Even more fundamentally, the episodic series requires that we trouble the simplistic connection between performance and character. Performance in the episodic series fulfils additional functions and offers alternative satisfactions. Death in Paradise exploits repetition as a source of pleasure, as repetitive motifs of performance are central to the programme’s broadly comedic tone.

Death in Paradise: Detective Inspector Richard Poole

Death in Paradise is ignored by scholars and sneered at by critics, but loved by audiences. This light-hearted police procedural is conspicuously conventionally structured – more so than some other recent examples (such as Castle (ABC, 2009–16) or The Doctor Blake Mysteries (ABC, 2013–17; Seven Network, 2018)), which incorporate recurrent back stories and protracted relationships between characters. Death in Paradise, defiantly old-school, embraces episodic form wholeheartedly. Each episode is entirely self-contained – the complete package⁹ – following a predictable narrative format, and comprising a central, constant cast complemented by weekly cameos.

The programme is set on Saint Marie, a fictional Caribbean island; it is filmed on location in Guadeloupe. The island is a star in its own right: Death in Paradise is shrewdly scheduled in British winter, allowing viewers to savour the stunning scenery, sandy beaches, vibrant bars and Caribbean music. Indeed, the progra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Critical Introduction
• Part 1 Performance and Television Form
• Part 2 Television Performance and Collaboration
• Part 3 The Television Performer
• Bibliography
• Index