Audiences of popular European television crime drama: A nine-country study on consumption patterns, attitudes and drivers of transcultural connection

Abstract

This article presents findings of a mixed-methods audience study on consumption patterns and attitudes towards European television crime narratives among European viewers. Based on semi-structured interviews in Denmark, Germany and Italy, and a nine-country online survey (n1321), we asked how, when, where and why European audiences watch crime series, and whether watching non-domestic European crime narratives influences perceptions of the European ‘Other’. Our findings reveal preferences for Anglo-American content, combined with a criticality towards domestic content often perceived as stereotyped. While stereotypes and personal and previous non-mediated encounters draw viewers to European content, they do not necessarily challenge viewers’ perceptions of the European ‘Other’. It does, however, enable critical reflection on viewers’ domestic societies and TV cultures, leading to a process of banal cosmopolitanism.

Young Danish audiences and British screen content: A critical reflection on transnational consumption, geo-linguistic regions, and cultural proximity

“…And I watch it because I'm a Dane and I have the nationalist feeling, but […] it's grey and it's all conflict and there's no humour whatsoever. Dislike of domestic drama has been identified as a major contributory factor to the viewing of non-domestic content in Denmark (Jensen & McCutcheon, 2020) and across Denmark and Sweden (Bengesser et al, 2022a). Humour, mentioned in the above quote, came up repeatedly during the interviews and was pinpointed as a particular British strength by some respondents.…”

“…Johnson, Dempsey, and Hills (2020) have studied how audiences discover content online and decide what to watch, and Esser (2017Esser ( , 2020 and Hills (2017) have studied how British audiences consume and interpret subtitled television drama. Across Europe, there have been large projects on how audiences engage with diverse media experiences (Hill, 2018), how European screen content is consumed and interpreted across borders (Bengesser et al, 2022a;Bondebjerg et al, 2017;Jensen & Jacobsen, 2020a), and on how changes in distribution impact the media consumption of children and teenagers (Jensen et al, 2021;Potter & Steemers, 2022;Sakr & Steemers, 2019Sundet, 2020). Many of these studies have produced findings that suggest the need for careful revision of longstanding theorisations of international programme flows, notably around "cultural discount" (Hoskins & Mirus, 1988), "cultural proximity" (Straubhaar, 1991(Straubhaar, , 2007Straubhaar et al, 2021), and the closely related concepts of "linguistic proximity" (Collins, 1989) and "geolinguistic regions" (Sinclair et al, 1996).…”

“…The more recent DETECt project's (www.detect-project.eu) study on European audiences for crime series that focused more on on-demand viewing, showed that audiences in Denmark and Sweden have a stronger preference for domestic crime content than audiences in other European regions. The domestic series were, however, surpassed in popularity by British crime drama, which was also much preferred to American and non-domestic European crime series (Bengesser et al, 2022a). However, research among Danish children (aged 8-17) shows a pronounced preference for American content (Jensen et al, 2021).…”

Scandinavian success as European policy dilemma: creative Europe’s funding for TV drama co-productions, 2014-20

“…At the same time, there are significant internal differences between the Eastern European media markets, which means that the same natural affinities between broadcasters across borders do not exist to the same level as in the Nordics. While Czech TV production, for example, depends largely on (still scarce) public funding (Szczepanik 2018), the Romanian high-end TV industry depends on the transnationally active services like HBO (Bengesser and Keszeg 2020;Hansen et al 2021). Different general economic systems and production costs for TV production also creates differences that influence ways of collaboration.…”