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TV Miniseries show a vast array of genres to captivate audiences: charming
and exuberant families, courageous priests in peripheries, crime and police
and love and adventure stories. In short, there is something for everyone;
all you need is to do some zapping. We are talking about the hugely
successful Fiction series that are dominating the TV. It would be safe to
say that TV fiction is in its “golden age”, either in small format
(mini-series with 2-4 episodes) or series spun out over seasons. Whatever
the format they continue to enjoy success and have high ratings in prime
time.
The globalisation and diffusion of the Internet have contributed to
increasing their social influence as well as influencing or forming new
habits and customs or, as they say in jargon, setting trends. The secret of
all this success is a cocktail of well-blended ingredients. The narrative
style used in these series has been used since ancient times by numerous
classical writers and in literature and continues to be enjoyed by
audiences as it presents an infinite range of possibilities and
combinations regarding the development of the plot, characters and themes.
Not only this, the quality of the TV production and cast is much higher
than ever before and cannot be compared less than what we see in films at
the cinema.
The enormous impact and growing importance in popular culture of fiction
brought the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (PUSC) in Rome to
dedicate a two-day conference on this theme and whose Proceedings have been
published at Christmas time – a nice present for colleagues and those who
are interested in this question. Happy Reading!
Presentation of the Acts of the Convention
By Enrique Fuster
“The Figure of the Father in TV fiction series” was the theme of the
conference organised by the Faculty of Church Communications at the
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross held in Rome on 22nd and
23rd April 2013, and whose Acts have been compiled in this
volume.
Behind the idea of the conference there was an awareness of the influence
that television has and also the importance of the father figure in the
family and in society as a whole. The starting point was to look at the
relationship among fatherhood, family and society as represented on TV
nowadays. As the field of TV is vast, we opted to focus our studies on
mini-series and TV fiction series which appear to be living in a new golden
age.
Whether it is in small format (mini-series in two parts) or in series which
last for various seasons, TV fiction series have reached in the last few
years a high level of technical quality almost like in films. The
globalisation and diffusion of the Internet has helped to spread their
social influence and ability to change lifestyles to the extent that
someone has called them “The great storytellers of 21st
Century”. As we know well the narrative style has been used since ancient
times by classical writers and in literature. The prolonged success spun
out into chapters and episodes captivates audiences because they offer
numerous possibilities to develop plots, characters and themes. However, it
could also be argued that they generate perverse mechanisms that diminish
the unity and narrative identity as they are strongly influenced by the
general public and their audiences. The conference has sought to show the
merits and limits of TV fiction series especially with regard to the way
the family is represented and in particular how the image of fatherhood is
portrayed on TV.
The first volume is in two parts. In the first pars the speeches are
presented in the respective order of the conference. In the second part
there are nine presentations written in the alphabetical order of the
speakers. We have included as an introduction the welcome speech given by
Rector Mons. Luis Romera to the speakers and participants of the
conference.
The first day of the conference began with Professor Alberto Nahum García
from the University of Navarra who defined the phenomena of fiction series
and identified the reasons for their success by showing examples mainly
from popular American TV series. He was followed by the Italian RAI
journalist Costanza Miriano who described the main features of the father
figure today and the characteristics which a father should have. Dr.
Alberto Fijo, director of the Spanish movies magazine “Fila Siete” gave an
analysis of tradition and modernity and parental roles in three British
Fiction series: Downton Abbey, Luther and The Hour.
The second day was dedicated to US cable programmes, Nordic Noir and
Italian fiction. Paolo Braga, from the Catholic University of the Sacred
Heart analysed the flaws and blemishes of the fathers in Mad Men, Breaking Bad and In Treatment. He was followed
by Professor Juan José Garcia-Noblejas, from the Pontifical University of
the Holy Cross, who introduced the world of the detective Wallander and
described the crisis of the Swedish welfare state and the existing
nostalgia in Swedish society. The morning ended on a lighter note with
Armando Fumagalli from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart who gave
some examples of well combined positive vision of fatherhood and audience
success, as seen in series like
Don Matteo, Ho sposato uno sbirro (I’ve married a cop), Che Dio ci
aiuti
(God help us!)and films like A Beautiful Mind, Billy Elliot and The King’s Speech.
Apart from the main speeches, the reader will find in the book other papers
presented at the Conference addressing cross-section subjects such as the
decline of the father as a hero and model, the varying types of fatherhood
in vogue today. Although they sometimes repeat the main ideas of the key
interventions, they offer the analysis of additional worthy titles to those
mentioned before such asEmma, John Adams, The Kennedys, Father and Son orPadre Coraje. Classic series like Brideshead Revisited, The Little House on the Prairie and more
recent series like
The Good Wife, The West Wing Revolution, Game of Thrones, Sons of
Anarchy, La familia P. Luche, The Gorge Lopez Show, Smallville, The
Sopranos, The Walking Dead, Touch,
but to name a few. There is also the Web series The Confession.
We hope that you find it a pleasant and worthwhile reading!
