Television Narrative

Abstract

Television blends many inheritances: the corporeal presence of theater, the imaginative immersion of the novel, the episodic structure of the short story, the intimacy and regularity of radio, and the technical language of cinema. Television's distinctiveness comes from its ability to draw on its predecessors while creating forms, combinations, and innovations that are recognizably televisual in their practices and effects. This chapter identifies the characteristics that have structured the organizational narrative patterns of the medium. It discusses both foundational and more recent versions of several core storytelling habits. The chapter provides a narrative-centric vocabulary of televisual properties and options, and illustrates how they have been deployed in selected TV genres over the past 70 years. In the broadcast era, television series followed lockstep schedules requiring viewers' presence in front of the TV set on a certain day at a certain hour every week.