HBO’s e-EUtopia

Abstract

HBO has carved out a unique position in the crowded European television marketplace among the many competing terrestrial, cable, and over-the-top streaming services. In a European Union fraught with political and economic divisions, where the dream of a pan-European identity is receding farther and farther into the distance, the values associated with the HBO brand-quality, flexibility, mobility, and cosmopolitanism forged across local affinitieshave conjured up what comes closest to a palatable and desirable European identification. There is a synergy between the European Union's cultural and economic policies, which have been visualized as a database of nimble, adaptable identifications among equally available national, regional, European, and global registers at once, and its media regulation directives, which favor borderless, increasingly Internet-based media services that are able to operate in a trans-European and global scope and offer an expansive catalog of viewing choices to the savvy, cosmopolitan European consumer. HBO is an exemplary match for this cultural, economic, and regulatory landscape. Its catalog of high-quality films and TV programs is available via cable and via streaming platforms, and its specialization in creating quality format adaptations and original television series combines a transnational aesthetic sensibility with themes and genres that resonate across countries but are delivered with local inflections.The HBO brand has given a viable representational form to a pan-European identity that has been criticized as idealized and exclusionary in the past few years. This is a complex phenomenon fraught with irony, where technology, production strategies, delivery platforms, and marketing as well as local histories, themes, narratives, genres, and aesthetics all play a role. I acknowledge this complexity when examining how the HBO brand has aligned itself with the elusive European brand, navigating across the various crises and divides that have afflicted the European Union in recent decades. I am particularly interested in HBO's work in bridging the political division between Eastern and Western Europe through establishing production companies and making original programs in countries

Nordic Noir from Within and Beyond: Negotiating geopolitical regionalisation through SVoD crime narratives

“…At present, two additional series (one Swedish and one Danish) are in development, while until now, content on the HBO Nordic platform has been HBO productions from other places, including their globally marketed American content and series produced for Eastern European territories. Rather, the impact of Nordic Noir on HBO must be located through productions for the Eastern European territories where trends and themes of the serials, as documented by Aniko Imre (2018) 2016also highlights a significant orientation towards Nordic crime narratives, emphasising a very literal adapted influence from Nordic crime serials. However, Imre also observes that the Romanian Umbre (2014-) rests on "the realism of Nordic noir" (2018: 60), while she misses the very literal intertextual relationship between the Czech Pustina [Wasteland] (2016) and Forbrydelsen [The Killing] (2007-2012) (Hansen, 2020a).…”

“…For Aniko Imre (2018), HBO Europe plays a decisive role not in establishing national or regional cultural unity, but rather a model for transnational, transcultural European identification. While "organically connecting with European trends such as Nordic Noir, HBO's status and mobility […] highlights similarities among audience sensibilities in the small nations of postsocialist Eastern Europe and the small nations of state socialist Scandinavia" (Imre, 2018: 60-61).…”

“…As a generic brand, Nordic Noir has been instrumental for the market penetration of various new players and streaming services in the Nordic region and beyond. In various ways, Nordic Noir has influenced the narrative and stylistic development in new television crime dramas, most significantly in pushing crime shows on television from a mostly episodic structure to a serial plot structure, as well as opening a new tendency towards a revised aesthetic of popular television crime series (Creeber, 2013;Hansen, 2020a;Imre, 2018). Of course, Nordic Noir did not come out of nothing, and especially an American and British influence has been noticed, for instance, from NYPD Blue (1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) and Prime Suspect (1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006) (Agger, 2011;Nielsen, 2016).…”

Familiar, much too familiar… HBO’s Hungarian original productions and the questions of cultural proximity

“…Constant financial problems, mismanagement, and debates over political issues made it hard, if not even impossible, to focus on the redefinition of public service values, and to produce and promote original content -for example, serial fiction. In the 2010s, and especially in the new illiberal democracies of Eastern Europe, overall skepticism and mistrust in public values and institutions, the loss of credibility of the public service media and of the cultural elite has resulted such a vacuum, that for some critics and for some parts of the audience, HBO's local productions can be received and welcomed as examples of public service content and representatives of cultural nationalism (Imre 2018). In the span of ten short years, HBO's transnational activities have undergone a major transformation, almost as profound as the transformation of Eastern European mediascape and society.…”

Streaming freedom in illiberal Eastern Europe

“…HBO thus appears to be the poster child for the kind of digital connectivity and choice-driven freedom that TV criticism and industry professionals unconditionally celebrate and that recent EU media regulation (Imre, 2018) also embraces. HBO Europe’s localised adaptations and originals appear to be precisely the kind of international TV that makes us recognise the continuities between globally shared histories and contemporary crises embedded in localised stories, the kind that might make viewers more open, more accepting and less ethnocentric.…”