River, escape, clock, material, mirror: the height of fiction television series in the labyrinth of time

Abstract

TV series during the last decades have achieved a narrative maturity as well as a visual perfection which demand to be linked with the authorial tradition that has been usually just granted to film. If, on the one hand it is imperative to integrate its contribution to the centenary heritage of audiovisual fiction, on the other hand it is necessary to review its contribution in light of Cultural History, Literary Theory and Film Aesthetics, applying the series and serials the analytical tools credited through the thoughtful effort that, while going back to the ancient Greeks, encompass the current developments of formal analysis and creation preceptive. From this broad perspective applied to contemporary fiction series and serials the time conception analysis is undertaken. The two capital paradigms, the linear one and the iterative one, are placed into resonance with the narrative tradition to chart the modern genealogy of the different ways of serial storytelling and its contemporary variants. The new paradigms of textual expansion call into question the axioms currently ascribed to time management on film and ask for new premises liable to be applied to the time analysis of the new audiovisual fiction regarding to novel adaptations and biopics. From there, the analysis can be extended to the storytelling models which, while are deeply rooted on the cultural tradition, move towards innovative paradigms built on the tension between story and drama in contemporary fiction made for television. Nevertheless the most relevant fact about the time distension is may be the emergence of new ways to address narrative rhythm which confer to audiovisual storytelling the textual thickness and the sense of psychological durée that have been traditionally considered as belonging exclusively to novel.