Landscapes in the frame: exploring the hinterlands of the British procedural drama

Abstract

Landscapes in the frame: exploring the hinterlands of the British procedural dramaLes Roberts department of media and Communication, school of the arts, university of liverpool, liverpool, uK ABSTRACT In the wake of the much discussed phenomenon of so-called 'Nordic Noir' , the significance of landscape in relation to the police procedural has had something of a small-screen renaissance. In this paper, I discuss this with specific reference to recent productions set and filmed in Britain. Broadchurch (ITV, 2013-present) shot in West Dorset, Southcliffe (Channel 4, 2013) filmed in and around Faversham and the North Kent marshes, and Y Gwyll/Hinterland (S4C/BBC, 2013) filmed in and around the Welsh coastal resort of Aberystwyth in Ceredigion, all share something of a 'post-Nordic-noir' family resemblance insofar as landscape and location are themselves presented as central characters, prompting reflection on what these narratives reveal about ideas of place and the role of topography and landscape in the cultural imaginary of the British procedural drama.

Landscape, Geopolitics, and National Identity in the Norwegian Thrillers Occupied and Nobel

“…Landscape -in its original, most orthodox form -is a northern European innovation (cf. Lefebvre, 2007a;Norberg-Schulz, 1996;Roberts, 2016). The term -which brings together the components of the "land" and the idea of "shape" or "constitution" (Olwig, 2004) -is used across all major Germanic languages.…”

“…Thus, this intervention provides an original contribution by critically assessing the use of place-based imagery in relation to geopolitics and IR, therein going beyond extant scholarship focused on landscape as a televisual tool that supports character development, visualises the intended mood, and serves other aesthetic ends (cf. McElroy & Noonan, 2019;Hansen & Waade, 2017;Roberts, 2016). As a "repository of meanings and associations", television series -and especially geopolitical dramas -serve as toolkits "from which people can draw to make sense of innovation and their consequences" in the world around them (Turner et al, 2014: 988).…”

“…As I have discussed elsewhere, the depiction of landscape is never neutral, and typically relies on the viewer's (often jaundiced) geopolitical understanding of place; moreover, "failure to aesthetically produce an intelligible 'place' will result in a disconnect that will undermine the final cultural product" (Saunders, 2017: 188). Thus, landscape -in its screened depictions -instrumentalises place (Roberts, 2016), moulding it to the needs of cultural production. In the aesthetic representation of this place or that place, ideologically inflected assemblages of information are conveyed without a single word of dialogue being uttered.…”

Wainwright's West Yorkshire: Affect and Landscape in the Television Drama of Sally Wainwright

“…I offer here a distinctly gendered reading of television's recent 'spatial shift' (Roberts: 2016) by framing Wainwright's affect-driven storytelling as part of a layering of female gazes and voices that has rendered the West Yorkshire region across different creative mediums. In particular the novels and poems of the Brontë sisters and the legend that surrounds them, fragments of Sylvia Plath's poetry, and the landscape photography of Fay Goodwin.…”

“…Happy Valley (Donaldson 2016: 11) have seen the genre -particularly Nordic Noirdominate discussions of television drama's use of landscape (Roberts, 2016;Piper 2016). The programmes I discuss here share Nordic Noir's use of landscape imagery to signal mood and emotion, underscore emotional states, and create a distinct visual style (Marit Waade 2017: 388).…”