The fictional and transmedia representation of the urban space in the historical thriller: La Peste

Abstract

La Peste series (Movistar Plus+) represented a pre-pandemic benchmark in transmedia and hybrid (online and offline) fictional storytelling. This research delves into the keys for the construction of suspense through the development of interactive actions that place the public in a leading position in the story through the dialogue between geographical, fictional and expanded space. Therefore, we will examine the resignification of the city through the image built up by the participation of the viewer –in the series– and the user –in the transmedia actions–. We address both the study of the fictional and augmented space, taking into account the territory occupied by the different strata that made up the city in the sixteenth century, and the processes of expansion of the contents through interactive cartographies, movie maps, and Alternative Reality Games (ARG). As a result, we observe an expansion of the series through the metaphor of the map in an expedition that flits between past and present; fiction and reality; geographical space and cyberspace; the traditional medium –television series– and multiplatform formats, which produces at the same time a novel approach to the urban space of Seville from an experiential perspective.