Rai/HBO co-production L’Amica Geniale/ My Brilliant Friend (2018–) provides an illuminating example of changing strategies for transnational drama co-production in television’s burgeoning ‘multiplatform’ era. Foregrounding institutional over textual analysis, the article places My Brilliant Friend ( MBF) within the industrial, creative and cultural contexts that have facilitated it. Important to these contexts is that transnational co-productions between non-US broadcasters and US-based premium networks are not only increasing but also exhibiting a new degree of cultural diversity. The article examines MBF’s origination as a literary adaptation, its genesis as a ‘cross-platform’ co-production, and its exemplification of changing drama commissioning strategies for Rai and HBO.

Public service broadcasting (PSB) objectives have played an important role in New Zealand television since the medium's inception in 1960. In particular, they have helped to ensure that, in a context in which primetime broadcasts can be so easily dominated by cheaply acquired foreign programmes, television can offer a diversity of locally produced material, including some with the potential to foster a sense of 'New Zealand' identity. Nonetheless, the pursuit of public service in New Zealand television has been a struggle in three main respects. First, with a market size of just 4.2 million, it has been difficult to fund the full range of PSB objectives, with related programming and services being undermined by fluctuations in public funding. Second, there have been inconsistencies in the expectations of, and provisions for, public service TV in broadcasting policy and legislation. A third problem -most overt in the period 1989-2000, during which Television New Zealand (TVNZ) was devoid of PSB obligations and non-commercial funding -has been political ambivalence as to the importance of public service television. Examining the changing role of public service TV in general before outlining its cultural roles in New Zealand, this article will evaluate its pursuit in three phases of New Zealand television: the public monopoly before 1989; the deregulated 1990s; and the post-2000 era. The evolution of public service idealsPublic service broadcasting ideals became influential during television's first decades -its era of 'scarcity' (Ellis, 2000: 2). Two important facets of the

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Devised to introduce the themed section of this MIA issue and the ‘popular’ area of TV drama that is its focus, this paper examines the contemporary drama series form and outlines some key institutional and cultural conditions for its production in non-American countries.1 Interested in the commercial pressures being brought to bear on drama by intensifying prime-time competition and increasing audience fragmentation, the paper looks at how the series, in particular, has adapted to these. It assesses the contribution of three pervasive approaches to this area of drama: ‘recombination’ (Gitlin, 1994), ‘flexi-narrative’ (Nelson, 1997) and ‘must see-TV’ (Jankovich and Lyons, 2003). To foreground some specific challenges for locally produced drama in the emerging era of television ‘plenty’, a case study of New Zealand TV drama follows. Although its domestic TV drama has a 40-year tradition, New Zealand's efforts to maintain profile and diversity in this meta-genre have been frustrated by its position as a small, English-speaking country for whom leading American and British imports have been popular, affordable and available. Risky and commercially fragile in comparison with these imports, the position of New Zealand TV drama has never been guaranteed to the extent that it is reliant on the support and supply of public funding. Since the mid-1990s, these problems have combined with the challenges of multi-channel competition in television. While the resulting pressures have left some forms of local TV drama as ‘endangered species’, it is the popular, long-form genres — the drama series, soaps and sitcoms — that have shown the greatest resilience.

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