TY - JOUR
AU - Aitaki,, Georgia
AB - The process of mapping a national television landscape can take many different directions and require multiple strategies if it is to secure visibility for media cultures and products that are neither easily accessed by foreign audiences nor immediately attractive to scholars.1 The academic study of Greek television now appears to be gaining momentum, ‘benefiting’ from unprecedented conditions resulting from changes to the country’s general media landscape. These unique circumstances stem from a long period of transition that began with, and was partly caused by, the financial crisis that hit the country during the late 2000s. Three key events have shaken the world of television in Greece recently: a record low in the production of local television fiction in 2009; an attempt at a re-regulation of the television landscape through an inconclusive licence auction in 2016; and the ‘crisis’ at MEGA Channel, the flagship of private television in Greece, which also started in 2016.2 It is in light of these circumstances that public and scholarly debate began to consider the past, present and future of Greek television.3 Television fiction, the field I address here, has been subject to two types of scholarly analysis: one adopting a macro-perspective in an attempt to organize the fiction output of commercial broadcasters according to thematic, generic or other criteria, and thus to inspire further analysis;4 the other focusing on case studies, promoting the in-depth analysis of specific television programmes on the basis of their status as socio-culturally informative.5 This essay is an attempt to reflect on both of these approaches, studying the common characteristics of television fictions produced for commercial broadcast, as well as their socio-cultural context, through the lens of authorship, another under-researched area within studies of Greek television. More specifically it looks at three television series, well known to Greek audiences for their combination of powerful dramatic elements and strong referential relationship to Greek social reality, but also as creations of director Manousos Manousakis. Drawing from studies that problematize the question of authorship in works of contemporary television, I am interested in demonstrating the network of authorial forces that contribute to the production of socio-culturally meaningful yet commercially oriented television programmes, and adopt a multi-methodological approach that combines the analysis of television content with insights acquired from the production side (Manousakis and executive producer Maria Manousaki). I draw on a multi-case analytical framework, providing scholarly visibility not simply for one particular director of Greek television fiction, but also for the specificities of fiction-making within a commercial production context. Viewing a television text through the lens of authorship has proved to be a challenging task. Although this approach has occasionally borne fruit in film studies,6 it has been argued that ‘the corporate and collaborative realities of contemporary television’7 pose restrictions for an analytical approach that tends to assign authorship of a programme to a single individual. Nevertheless, the value of authorship as an analytical tool and as an entry point for understanding both the content of a television text and the production culture within which it is created is still relevant. James Naremore argues that stripping television programmes – and also films – of their authorial signature might result in losing a grasp on the hierarchical mode of production that is usually present in the creative process of a television product.8 Naremore stands behind the idea that the study of authors can still be informative and rewarding, as long as it is understood ‘dialectically, with an awareness of the complicated, dynamic relationship between institutions and artists, and with an appreciation of the aesthetic choices made by individuals in particular circumstances’.9 Along the same lines, the question of authorship has been positively addressed as a means of saving television programmes from scholarly invisibility. Drawing from the study of auteurs in film studies, this line of argument has been associated with issues of evaluation and quality; as Rosalind Coward contends, ‘Individual personality, or distinctive traits of personal style, became methods of establishing value’.10 The study of authors is thus associated with arguments about the legitimacy of popular culture as an object of scholarly interest. In this sense, signs of individuality (based on aesthetic or other choices) function as markers of quality, which in turn justify the paying of scholarly attention to otherwise overlooked programmes that have been labeled ‘commercial’ (and therefore deemed unworthy of serious investigation). On the other hand, what complicates the concept of authorship in the case of television is the exaggeration that sometimes accompanies the quest to identify a singular and exclusive force responsible for stamping character onto a televisual product. As has already been mentioned, scholars emphasize the collaborative nature of television-making as well as the delegation of labour that occurs in the process of constructing contemporary television products, which is a significantly different process from that taking place in the literary or cinematic realm.11 Furthermore it has been argued that contemporary television (and film) must necessarily be considered as the result of ‘negotiated and collective authorship’, as a number of industrial mechanisms and behind-the-scenes negotiations shape the final result.12 Last but not least, scholarly criticism has scrutinized the notion of intentionality and has challenged its inherent connection with the power of authorship. While it could be that locating elements of intentionality supports the critical construction of an author, it has been argued that intentionality should embellish the study of authors but not be presented as necessary for cultural production in a commercial context.13 The contextualization of the study of authorship within an institutional frame – characterized by a complex network of relations and expectations involving channel executives, advertisers, critics, journalists and viewers – has been highlighted in the seminal study of authorship agencies in US television by Horace Newcomb and Robert Alley.14 Against the backdrop of industrial pressures and commercial incentives, the authors (building on their idea of television fiction as a ‘cultural forum’,15 a public platform for examining and renegotiating what it means to be part of a given culture) propose a conceptual differentiation between ‘lyric’ and ‘choric’ television. The former is associated with creators guided by a voice that is ‘personal rather than social’,16 while the latter invokes creators whose focus is placed upon ‘the shared systems of meaning and symbol that form our cultural life’.17 Television fiction can be described as a mix of creative decisions, formulaic conventions and, ideally, novelty. Consequently the representation of societal issues on the small screen is enacted through a cross-fertilization with various conventions, such as the framing of the central topic within specific physical settings (domestic or professional, urban or rural), the presence of identifiable characters and character types, narrative structure and tropes, and the generic framing of the topic (comedy, drama, thriller, sitcom, soap opera). Each of these elements plays an integral part in the fictionalization and serialization of the social world, guiding but not determining how audiences interact with television products and what kind of meanings they create. Keeping this in mind, I seek here to uncover the creative forces behind the production of television drama within a commercial context by touching upon the complexity of authorship in Greek television. My point of departure is the conventional understanding of the television author as ‘the single individual who provides the unifying vision behind the program’,18 and the popular identification of Manousakis as one of the most successful and recognizable Greek television creators. The essay constructs and focuses on a body of works with two common features – the authorial signature of Manousakis and the organization of the plot around the trope of ‘difficult’ romance. The analysis of three television series – Psithyroi Kardias/Whispers of the Heart (MEGA, 1997–98), I Agapi Irthe Apo Makria/Love Came from Far Away (ANT1, 2002–03) and Mi Mou Les Antio/Don’t Say Goodbye (ANT1, 2004–05) – is directed towards uncovering the extent and the limitations of the singular author hypothesis, here meaning the creative force that is indexically associated with the texts under investigation; and the collaborative forces that participate in the creation of a television programme, taking into consideration the poly-authorial nature of contemporary television fiction. My aspiration is to contribute to the ongoing debate on contemporary television authorship, as well as to the recently initiated discussion on the authorial synergies and production processes taking place in Greek commercial/private television.19 Methodologically the study is informed by a textually oriented analysis of television texts, with an emphasis on thematic and narrative elements that can point to the identification of an authorial signature. Of equal importance is the use of data from interviews with the director, as the primary creative agent, as well as the executive producer.20 The latter is addressed in the Greek context as the person supervising the production as a whole, having a panoramic view of the artistic, communicative and financial processes at stake, while at the same time playing a mediating role between the creative vision and the industrial pressures. The study also draws from a talk given by Manousakis at a conference on Mass Media and the Shaping of Stereotypes.21 It thus utilizes a specific approach to production studies characterized by access to ‘elite’ or ‘exclusive’ informants – individuals with irreplaceable knowledge about the topic under investigation, a distinctive power over the production of media content, and a certain celebrity status.22 When talking about television authorship one must take into consideration that the concept itself is contextually informed, depending on the particular artistic, industrial or critical circumstances. Different methodological and analytical lenses applied in a variety of national contexts provide contextually informed understandings of how television authorship is perceived. In the case of French television, for instance, which inherited a form of the politique des auteurs from film culture, interviews with television creators suggest that ‘creativity is deemed to lodge with the director’;23 authorship is then associated with complete creative control and artistic vision. In the case of British television, industrial perspectives point towards authorship being associated with the role of the series producer, an individual who is described as a ‘latter-day Renaissance Man, capable of playing all parts’;24 in this context the author is someone who has hands-on control over the content of a programme and responsibility for various other aspects of production, including technical (technology, sound, lighting, sets), specific knowledge of genres, understanding of financial restrictions, organizational, motivational and diplomatic skills. US television, a heavily researched context from both an industrial25 and critical perspective,26 has been termed ‘a writer-producer’s medium’, emphasizing the role of the showrunner as a central creative and managerial force. This all testifies to the importance of production studies/approaches focusing on domestically produced television fiction, especially within the commercial/post-deregulation context, as a means to clarify the ‘special weight’ of creative talent within the nexus of political, economic and organizational forces and genre conventions.27 Currently within Greek television fiction the status of the ‘author’ is somewhat flexible, and the absence of empirically informed studies does not allow for definitive statements to be made. Thus the Greek television author is a recognizable entity in popular and critical discourses, but there is little or no debate on collaborative and negotiated authorship. A preliminary typology of the Greek television author is attempted here, focusing on potential candidates for television authorship based on critical and popular discourses, before a more detailed analysis of Manousakis is presented, encompassing insights from the production context. The first category of candidates includes the directors – individuals who are positioned at the helm of the creative process, with a particular thematic, narrative or aesthetic specificity, allowing for a personal style to be imprinted on the programme. A typical example is Kostas Koutsomytis, whose name is associated with adaptations of works of Greek literature broadcast by both public and private broadcasters;28 another is Panos Kokkinopoulos, credited as reinventing the narrative of crime series in Greek television.29 Then there are the screenwriters, individuals or creative duos whose particular writing style defines the overall tenor of the programme. Greek television teems with relevant examples, from the very beginning of private television until the present day: the writing team of Michalis Reppas and Thanasis Papathanasiou created the emblematic series Oi Treis Charites/The Three Graces (MEGA, 1990–92);30 Mirella Papaoikonomou is established as a master of dramatic stories that manage to combine the spectacle of intense, often impossible, love stories with the immediacy of everyday life;31 Eleni Mavili is a writer of many successful comedies in the 1990s remembered for their humorous lightness and narrative simplicity;32 more recently, Rena Rigga is well known to Greek audiences for comic series that make fun of the everyday incidents of family life.33 A third category includes actors/screenwriters, individuals who are credited with the authorship of programmes by dint of writing the script – and in the case of comedies, infusing it with their unique sense of humour – but who also participate as actors. A striking example is Dimitra Papadopoulou, creator of Oi Aparadektoi/The Unacceptables (MEGA, 1991–93), a programme from the early years of private television in Greece that developed a cult following. More recently Giorgos Kapoutzidis has emerged as one of the most promising screenwriters and is the creator of some of the recent hits of Greek television; his writing style is distinguished by a situational sense of humour and acute social commentary.34 An important additional category includes the joint role of director/screenwriter, for which Yannis Dalianidis35 and Nikos Foskolos36 should be considered paradigmatic. These creators, who already had long and influential careers in other formats and institutional contexts (such as video, or in public broadcasting), went on to leave a deep impression on the history of commercial television with their classic television programmes. There are also individuals whose creativity is channeled through a combination of different roles, such as actors/directors/screenwriters. Charis Romas is such an author, maintaining responsibility for the script (often in collaboration with Anna Chatzisofia) and the direction, while also taking the protagonist role in a number of television comedies that were mostly based on the humorous framing of the trope of odd couples.37 A similar example, though involved in completely different types of programmes, is Christoforos Papakaliatis, a prolific director and screenwriter, a charming protagonist and a music supervisor.38 Finally, there is the category of producers as authors. Although Greek television is definitely not a producer’s medium, this category includes people who have stamped television programmes with particular production values through financial or technical means. Characteristic examples include the late Giorgos and Elvira Ralli (and their daughter Froso Ralli), owners of the legendary Studio ATA, which thrived in the 1990s, as well as Nino Elmatzioglou, head of the production company TVE and producer of some of the most successful fictional series of the 2000s.39 Critics and audiences would assign Manousakis to the first category of people who could be identified as creators/authors in Greek television. Born in Athens in 1950, he studied film at the London School of Film Technique.40 His career in television started in state-owned channels, directing documentaries as well as fictional programmes. With the advent of private television in 1989 he started to focus more on directing fiction, and became well known to Greek viewers through his first two commercial hits, Tmima Ithon/Vice Squad (ΑΝΤ1, 1992–95) and Tavros me Toxoti/Taurus with Sagittarius (ΑΝΤ1, 1994–95, co-directed with Vasilis Tselemegkos). In 1993, together with his wife Maria Manousaki, a social anthropologist, he founded the production company Telekinisi, the vehicle for the realization of their televisual and cinematic projects. The works of Manousakis belong to the wide generic classification known as ‘general drama’, which for the production context of Greek television translates into a variety of programmes – ‘social’ stories, ‘historical’ or ‘sentimental’ ones, etc. – that share one main feature: the predominance of the characters’ evolution as opposed to action. Most of them include considerable outdoor shooting on one-camera video or film; hence the importance of the director’s role.41 More specifically, Manousakis is the flagship for what Greek television critics and audiences refer to as ‘sentimental drama’ or ‘social drama’.42 Apart from their significantly high ratings, the series belonging to this category are addressed as points of reference for the representation of romantic love on Greek television, stimulating the viewers’ interest with the negotiation of some kind of ‘unfamiliar’ social or cultural difference.43 Interestingly, Manousakis does not feel the question of genre is a defining parameter of his style, nor that television genres perform different sociocultural functions: They [genres] amount to the same thing. When you want to say something, you can say it through a comedy, through a drama. I mean, the carrier of the expression of your idea can be anything. Whatever genre, a comedy, drama or comédie44 or a surrealist narrative, which of course will not be equally appealing to the people as linear narratives [are] and which television would not approve of either, [it would not approve] a surrealist, a non-classical narrative form. But I think that you choose what the vehicle is going to be, as long as you have passengers to put inside […] In the beginning was the Word […] the logic, apart from the written word, I mean the logic, the why.45 Manousakis’s evaluation of the power of genre does not seem to encourage any deeper reading regarding the symbolic or sociocultural needs that genres can be said to fulfil for audiences. Although he does not entirely negate the understanding of genre as a category defined through ‘cultural interactions with industries, audiences and broader contexts,46 he tends to view genre as a kind of packaging, a tool at the disposal of the creator, which is not necessarily synonymous with a bold creative statement. The thing that is honestly a source of happiness for a creator is the coincidence between what he/she wants to make and what society wants to see. I mean this concurrence of dispositions is ideal and it happened for us many times. I mean we wanted to do something, we did not use statistics, whether the people want it or not, add five kilos of violence, half a kilo of sex, three punchlines, as if you are making a cooking recipe. If what you impulsively feel like and want to do coincides with the people, that’s an ideal moment for a creator […] and we were lucky this coincidence happened for us many times, almost every time […] Of course, your experiences create your feelings, create the need for expression, what you want to say. You don’t live in a bowl, you are not a goldfish […] The ideas come to you within society, on the bus, not in the limo.47 For Manousakis, not only is genre perceived as being somewhat neutral, it is also reduced to the notion of a recipe, a formula that can be successful with the addition of specific ingredients. What he prioritizes is the logic behind each project, and that is where he identifies the spot where his signature can be applied. He also stands behind the idea of the creator as not so much a genius but an intuitive individual who somehow manages to align his creative vision with what the audience wants to see, based on his mundane interactions with ordinary reality. This resonates with the popular perception of Manousakis as the master not of a specific genre but of a particular storytelling device. As mentioned above, the directorial stamp of Manousakis is based on the general trope of ‘forbidden’ or ‘difficult’ love, developed over a number of series and epitomized in the ones that form the focus of this essay.48 A familiar trope undoubtedly helps both the producers and consumers of a television programme in the encoding and decoding process, since it promises to fulfil certain story-telling and story-consuming expectations. The trope, however, should not be understood only as a customary story-telling device, used to introduce, unravel, develop and conclude a given story. Within the context of contemporary fiction, tropes are defined as ‘flexible structures and constitute narrative frameworks that can be adapted in original ways to new stories, rather than fixed elements of narrative that appear nearly identical in all of the stories in which they are found’.49 It could be argued, then, that tropes are identified not only with narrative familiarity but also with narrative originality as ‘they tie into real-world values and representations’.50 It is this ‘hooking’ capacity that allows the creator to embellish a story with a unique socio-cultural background; and it is this exact characteristic that differentiates the television made by Manousakis from other series that are also built on the general premise of romantic incompatibility. Manousakis repackages the universality of the trope into a contextually motivated love affair that is based not simply on the standard struggle to reconcile two opposites, but emphasizes the particularity of the conflict: the forbidden romance is the icing on the cake, the cheese in the mousetrap, it’s not a goal in itself. Incompatible romance gets you thinking about other stuff; I mean, our incompatible romance always had to do with the manifestation of the absurdity of bigotry, of racial discrimination, of prejudices, they were a denunciation of the prejudices against ethnicities, religions or any groups that do not belong to the majority […] A forbidden romance through which we manifest a social reality.51 Manousakis’s words highlight an intentional instrumentalization of romance for the sake of dressing it in a particular socio-cultural attire, one that elevates the trope from the status of a narrative formula to a social message informed by a particular social reality. The translation of this trope into socio-cultural terms – thereby alluding to socio-cultural functions of television fiction – is made possible through a further deconstruction of the trope into the following common components: Lovers from different worlds. The trope opens by establishing the differing points of departure for the two people involved in the romance and, as a consequence, the conflictual nature of the potential love affair, since ‘the motif of love is there to curve, widen or problematize even more the indomitable gap between two different social positions, which are depicted as two different “worlds”’.52 The romance between two individuals from different worlds offers an opportunity to explore two different value systems or ethical codes, and the normative constraints of each world. This often takes the form of a deeper exploration of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, since the trope, as adapted by Manousakis, frequently brings together one member of a dominant group and one of a minority group. In this sense, difference and conflict, apart from being a narrative catalyst, also work as a lens that provides visibility to under- or misrepresented demographics. Mutual attraction. The trope continues with the admittance of common ground between the two individuals involved in the romance. They are represented as motivated and courageous people who, while seemingly acclimatized to the social and ethical expectations of their group, develop a desire to defy convention and tradition. In this sense the trope defines the nature of the romance, which essentially takes the form of a social experiment testing the consequences of a socially unexpected, perhaps unwanted, attraction. This is a concept that ties in very well with the imaginative potential of television fiction, but has also been addressed in studies of media and risk, where it has been argued that it is through fiction, rather than journalism, that the media most thoroughly contemplate future challenges that risks might pose, including what happens when things go wrong, thereby enabling us to explore moral, ethical and social consequences of certain actions.53 Internal and external struggles. An important component of the trope is the depiction of the lovers’ continuous struggles, which on the one hand stem from their internal dilemmas, and on the other hand concern their love’s resilience to outside pressures. In psychoanalytic terms, the two lovers are presented as subjects who have internalized the attitudes, values, standards and opinions of others, thereby allowing them to define their character and personality. The love story is then depicted as an internal battle to overcome what their subconscious considers to be ‘forbidden’ and therefore problematic. But the romance is also presented as a provocation to the social status quo, as a destabilizing and incendiary factor that forces the involved parties to re-examine their belief systems. External pressures enter the picture through the participation of the wider social milieu (the main characters’ partners, relatives, friends and colleagues), which functions as a continuous reminder of insoluble conflicts and unbridgeable gaps. This echoes John G. Cawelti’s formulaic view of romantic narratives as centred on the overcoming of ‘some combination of social or psychological barriers’.54 It also brings to mind John Fiske’s argument about the dual reading of characters through a realist and a discursive viewpoint: on the one hand the realist reading of the character sees it ‘psychologistically as the representation of a unique individual’, but on the other hand the discursive reading gives way to its being understood as ‘an embodiment of social value’.55 Open ending. The trope includes a narrative closure that remains open to interpretation. The stories refrain equally both from happy endings that invoke the classical Hollywood cliché, bringing with them the soothing effect of a ‘secure and “proper” final situation’,56 and from unhappy endings that predetermine the failure of such an incompatible pair of individuals. Instead of offering a rewarding, satisfying or even disappointing resolution, the open-ended story sustains the tension and communicates to the viewer television’s hesitation to side with any one solution to this social quandary. Hence the idea of the difficult romance as a social experiment connotes readings of racially or ethnically mixed televisual couples as metaphors of possibilities for social change and cultural integration.57 The first part of Manousakis’s self-identified trilogy is one of the most successful programmes of Greek private television. Psithyroi Kardias was a big hit in terms of television ratings, reaching an unprecedented record high of 1,948,800 viewers during February 1998 and achieving an impressive advertising revenue of 578.1 million drachmas, leading to its characterization as the Greek television equivalent of Titanic (James Cameron, 1997).58 It tells the story of the difficult romance between a yuppie architect, Antonis (played by Apostolos Gkletsos), and a young Romani woman, Erato (played by Anna-Maria Papacharalambous), who meet when Antonis’s employer, the Greek Ministry of Physical Planning and Environment, begins negotiations with a Romani settlement, pushing for their relocation and the gentrification of the area. Despite the fact that both Antonis and Erato are romantically involved with other people – Antonis is dating the minister’s daughter in what appears to be a relationship based on social compatibility and convenience, while Erato is engaged to a man approved by her family – the magnetism between them is evident from the beginning, and they come together in spite of outside forces that challenge and even sabotage their co-existence. The conservative and sterile environment from which Antonis comes means that those he leaves behind cannot understand his rejection of their value system, which revolves around professional achievement and social ostentation. Similarly Erato’s background does not seem to allow for any deviance from ethical codes that prioritize tradition, with a world-view that emphasizes the twin notions of honour and shame. The pressure on the protagonists becomes even greater with their gradual realization that Greek society as a whole is also not ready to accept their relationship. Romani people have been present on Greek territory for over 600 years, with an estimated population of between 200,000 and 350,000, and have been described as ‘one of the most underprivileged and marginalized social groups in Greece’.59 In the sphere of entertainment, the iconography of the Romani people has been primarily shaped by the character of Tamtakos (created and embodied by Michalis Mosios), who featured in a number of video movies that were particularly popular in Greece in the 1980s.60 Greek authorities and the general public tend to associate Romani people with a problem of unresolved integration, while their visual representation is packed with portrayals that reduce the complex history and tradition of communities to negative stereotypes and folkloric imagery. Since the opening title sequence informs the viewers that the programme is ‘based on an idea by Maria Manousaki’, her insights add another layer to how a particular facet of social reality finds its way into the world of television fiction: I can tell you how these [programmes] were created. I was teaching at the time. In order to go to work […] I needed at least 30 to 45 minutes in order to transition from one state and enter the other, to enter a different world. I walked by Nomismatokopeio […] and headed to work. There were Tsigganoi61 there […] with little houses put together from plastic materials, and these increased every day. This was at around 7:30 in the morning. And I would watch these women and children. Already at 7:30, they had hung out their clothes to dry, they had washed them […] they were sweeping and I would admire this effort, at 7:30 in the morning, to be able to complete such rough housework. And just like that, we started looking for Tsigganoi. And they were at Nomismatokopeio, just a few blocks away from my house and I had never seen them […] And I said [to Manousos], we are after the exotic […] in Morocco, different places in Africa, Thailand, and here it is, next to us. And that’s how Psithyroi Kardias started. And it was a huge, huge experience.62 This extract sheds light on the very first moments behind the birth of an idea. It appears that the inspiration for the series is informed by an existing and dominant trend in Greek society, namely the contact with foreign cultures through ‘exotic’ trips. The trend is then cross-fertilized with Maria Manousaki’s everyday visual stimuli, which results in the distant exotic ‘other’ becoming the familiar exotic ‘other’. As such, the fictionalization of social reality seems to be informed by an inward-looking procedure aimed at gaining a better understanding of a group that is spatially close yet culturally unfamiliar. The next step includes the transformation of this initial idea into a written pitch that is submitted to the television channel, then the wait to be given the green light to kick off the production. Manousakis describes this process as an intense yet rewarding negotiation between the creative team (which, in his case, includes the director, the producer and the screenwriters) and the channel: we collaborate with the channel. The channel assigns the supervision of the script to certain people. We discussed a lot and quite often their opinion was valuable […] I will narrate something that happened with Psithyroi Kardias. The first summary had been written […] the screenwriters had written that she [Erato] sings at a nightclub […] and then Mr Kalimeris very wisely said: ‘She has to be the flower that is protected from everything, a flower nobody can touch. She can’t sing at a nightclub.’ It was an amazing piece of advice, it gave the series its imprint. It could not have been otherwise, he was entirely right. This kind of give and take with the channel is always done in co-operative terms […] the channel’s people were not there to impose their opinion. They were not enemies, they were collaborators. In case of a disagreement […] our opinion prevailed. There is a risk there because you are charged with a potential failure. But the director always, or at least in our case, had the final word. But this collaboration was always constructive, it was in synthetical, not antithetical terms.63 In this example, the collaborative nature of Greek television fiction is demonstrated through an understanding of the production process as a synthesis between the creative team, who shape the core of the idea, and the broadcaster’s representatives, who engage in a supervisory/reviewing role. In the anecdote above we discover how Johnny Kalimeris – the General Director of Programming of MEGA at the time – helped in the construction of one of the most emblematic characters of commercial television in Greece.64 Manousakis explains that the channel always has a say in the casting process, an important procedure at the heart of a programme’s budgeting, branding and audience targeting. Yet as well as the directorial orchestration, the insights provided by the producer and the screenwriters, and the feedback provided by the channel executives, the events on-screen are also shaped through the audience’s attachment to the characters: It’s a collaboration that, when it is not based on a book […] is not an easy task, you actually create a story. Then you have a sequence, but the story is also shaped by the popularity of the characters […] For instance, in Psithyroi Kardias, the character of the grandmother was scheduled to die in the ninth episode, but she – the series was shot and broadcast at the same time, we were always four episodes ahead so we had an idea about the people’s reception – was a priority for the viewers. She got sick, she warded off the evil eye, she got well.65 Although these observations on the collaborative climate surrounding Psithyroi Kardias relate to the production context of MEGA Channel, Manousakis notes that they reflect the conditions present in Greek private television more generally, since the structure of the hierarchical pyramid was more or less the same and the people involved in the process of reviewing the scripts came from the same background. It was quite often the case that individuals moved between the two major private channels, MEGA and ANT1, and held similar positions in both. The following two cases concern television series that were broadcast by ANT1, the private channel that the Manousakis couple describe as ‘home’. At the core of I Agapi Irthe Apo Makria (ANT1, 2002–03) sits the controversial love affair between an Albanian worker, Ilia (played by Kostas Sommer), and a Greek housewife, Vasiliki (played by Lina Sakka), set against the rural backdrop of Thessaly. Vasiliki is married to a rich landowner, and the couple are trying to have a child. Ilia is hired by Vasiliki’s husband to help out wherever required, while his long-term plan is to be joined by his girlfriend, who still lives in Albania. Despite their clear plans for the future, both Ilia and Vasiliki feel something is missing: Ilia has made a promise to marry his girlfriend not because he is in love but rather from a sense of duty or responsibility, while Vasiliki feels trapped in an unhappy marriage to a husband who is more interested in his property, football and other women. The ethnic difference that features in Psithyroi Kardias is substituted here by an emphasis on the parties’ national, cultural and class backgrounds. What brings them together, apart from a romantic and physical attraction, is an unexpected feeling of mutual understanding, despite their distinct life experiences; but love, again, is hindered by a number of obstacles. Both of them face the ethical dilemma of being already involved in relationships, burdened with the expectation of respecting the promises they have made towards their current partners; their social surroundings work strongly towards keeping them on the right path, which for them means not succumbing to the ‘forbidden romance’. In addition, the couple have to deal with local unease over the idea of an affair between an Albanian and a Greek, an element of the plot that reflects the tensions in Greek society. Albanians constitute the largest immigrant group in Greece, first arriving in the country at the beginning of the 1990s, mainly in search of employment, following the collapse of the communist bloc. Greek scholarship has been particularly interested in how this phenomenon was treated by media discourse, noting that news reports and representations […] are generally characterized by a significantly stinging negative tone, racist expressions, appeals for the deportation of all Albanians from Greece, a general prodding towards prejudice and hatred against these people and stereotypical images that categorize all of them as ‘criminals’, ‘lowlifes’ or ‘beasts’.66 The influx of Albanians and the framing of them as involved in criminal activity, which maintained a prominent position on the media agenda, especially during the mid 1990s, seem to have attracted the attention of the executives of ANT1. According to Maria Manousaki, I Agapi Irthe Apo Makria was actually commissioned by the channel, which specifically asked for the creation of a drama that would respond to this powerful topic: That was amazing because the idea came directly from the channel […] Make a series about Albanians. Simply that. At the time, crimes were a big topic […] and Manousakis and I sat down and put together a first synopsis […] And we were very lucky because we worked with migrant workers who were actors and had a lot of knowledge to offer. Not in terms of big schemas but simple things, very simple things. I will tell you a detail that one of them told us and became part of the scenario. You know, kids, they have quarrels and fights, and his kid does that as well. And he rushes to grab him because he is a foreigner and he is afraid something bad will happen. That they will tell him, it was the little Albanian kid’s fault. This was described to us and we used it. So there were a lot of small details, human details, that were included.67 There seem to be at least two creative forces shaping the story that appeared on-screen. First, the practice of commission that reflects an institutional/commercial logic; the channel wanted to capitalize on the public and media interest in Albanians with a product suitable for prime-time entertainment, where the largest advertising revenue is traditionally concentrated. This resonates with the tendency that Milly Buonanno identifies in Italian fiction of the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to which topical issues and news events constitute the basis for fictional stories. The newsworthy is developed into the fiction-worthy, possibly through the belief that proximity and topicality promise an attractive product for the viewers.68 Second, a process of a fruitful collaboration with actors who carry the identity that the programme sets out to represent. In common with the preparation and shooting of Psithyroi Kardias and Mi Mou Les Antio, Maria Manousaki describes how the ‘lived experience’ of actors not only informed but defined the shaping of both characters and on-screen events. It is important to mention here that the actors/carriers of the ‘other’ identity were arguably cast in secondary roles or as extras, although Maria Manousaki does not agree with this characterization: I don’t know if I would describe them as extras because we didn’t tell them what to do. It was them who were telling us what to do […] [They] contributed to the realism and the truth of the topic. Because every topic and the characters will have a certain truth if it is actual people that tell you the truth.69 The common understanding that the personal background of the actors will help in the physical and psychological development of their characters70 is here extended to the elevation of actors as both informants and active co-authors. Their understanding of their own identity, their individual experience of tensions within Greek society, as well as their language, all play an important role in the construction of authentic characters, according to Maria Manousaki. While this is an important finding in terms of the creative input made by actors/informants, one cannot help but notice that, in all three cases, the central couple roles are reserved for actors who do not carry the identity they are called on to play. Manousakis explains that casting at this level is primarily informed by discussions and negotiations with the channel, taking into consideration parameters such as an actor’s talent and popularity, but also the budget and other limitations: The choice of actors is always done in collaboration with the channel […] There is always a discussion about the actors, based on the competence and the suitability of the actor for the part, on finances – which is an important parameter – which actors you can have and which not, and how many of them you can afford to have […] the popularity of the actor was also weighed. All these things are discussed with the producer and the channel – in our case it was the channel. These are creative discussions, there were no conflicts, there was no bullheadedness.71 According to Manousakis, the decision to address the concept of representation in its dual meanings was what made the experience not only rewarding for the creative team but highly impactful for the (Greek) viewers, despite their initial suspicious reactions: When the series with the economic migrant started [we received negative reactions], during the first episodes. Afterwards, however, this disappeared, the people loved it. ‘Hey Manousakis, are the Albanians fucking us now?’, people would stop me in the streets. This was an intense reaction, but after a few episodes it went away. I mean, this wasn’t the point, the point was something different, something a nurse told me […] ‘Mr Manousakis, with this series I changed the way I look at the economic migrant, the Albanian, I realized he is human, that he is not a tool that will fix something for me’. And another friend of ours told me the exact same things. She told me, he is no longer a tool I hire to do some digging in the garden, to make repairs in my home. I realized he has a mother, a lover, a wife, kids and so on.72 This reflection confirms the remark that the dominant trope of the story only functions as the bait that allows the director and his team to tell a story about social change and integration, at least on an imaginative level.73 It could then be argued that fiction such as I Agapi Irthe Apo Makria fits what has been termed usable stories, that is, stories that are […] a form of inquiry to which people can turn in their efforts to answer questions that invariably spring up through their lives. What is possible for me, who can I be, what can my life consist of, how can I bring things about? What is it like to be someone else, to be particular kinds of other people, how does it come about that people can be like that?74 While such stories invite viewers to contemplate possibilities and limitations, the extent to which certain people or relationships become ‘accepted’ is put to the ultimate test by the way that narrative closure is constructed. As the director explains: Look, we wanted these endings to be open as a psychological state. That you can never conclude such a story. Without it being dissuasive that such relationships can exist, the preoccupation never ends, the contrast never ends, the conflicts between the two cultural groups, the two religious groups, they are always there and the relationship is always pending, always put to the test, always in an adventure. That’s why the endings have open question marks. Although we always give something […] the Albanian guy leaves with the Greek woman to go to Athens, but they don’t leave among rose petals, they leave to deal with new problems, to confront more challenges.75 The anxiety characterizing the narrative resolution of the story, which in reality is a form of irresolution, could be interpreted as a mechanism for avoiding the need to make a bold statement about a topic of significant societal weight. The director’s comment above insists that, in consciously keeping the ending open, they deny the rewarding and pleasurable effect of the classical happy-ending narrative, engaging instead in what has been conceptualized as a ‘less conventional, more vibrant relation with real experience’.76 The creators are more interested in accentuating the continuous nature of the difficult co-existence than in offering an illusion of resolution. Therefore the ‘unrecorded existence’ of characters that takes place in-between episodes of serialized fiction, according to Christine Geraghty,77 could be found here too; only in this case, when the end titles appear, the fictional characters turn into social beings and are set free into a social reality where challenges will continue to come their way. The final part of the trilogy, Mi Mou Les Antio, more or less follows the same logic as the previous examples. Set in Komotini, a town in western Thrace that is home to the largest numbers of Greece’s Muslim minority (the only minority officially recognized by Greek law), it follows the passionate but troubled romance that develops between Christina (Thaleia Matika), who moves to Komotini from Athens in order to study at the local university, and Murat (Memos Mpegnis), an enthusiastic Muslim teacher at a minority school. The usual complications are there, inasmuch as both have other romantic commitments – Christina has a boyfriend who regularly visits from Athens, while Murat is in a relationship with his childhood sweetheart. Other difficulties include an initial concealment of Murat’s true identity, due to the negative views towards Turks held by Christina’s parents, who carry with them the historical trauma of the deportation of Greeks from Istanbul in the 1960s. Consequently the story is inspired not only by the pendent issue of a minority’s claims for political and cultural rights, but also by the historical roots of an ‘othering’ process based on religious, but ultimately ethnic differences, in which ‘others’ are viewed as a threat to the (Greek) nation.78 Unlike the other two series, Mi Mou Les Antio was not based on an original idea but was adapted from a novel by Anastasia Kalliontzi. This, according to Manousakis, significantly altered the creative process, since the director already had at his disposal ‘a passable story, a development, a gallery of characters, given that the sequence of events ends up somewhere’.79 This does not necessarily mean that the authorial imprint of the director is less visible, since the adaptation process requires a narrative transformation that has to respond to the specific demands of the new medium. Previous literature suggests that, at least in the case of literature-to-film adaptation, elements of authorship should be directed towards a clarification of the role of the screenwriter(s).80 The extent to which this is the case for literature-to-television adaptation remains an under-researched topic for Greek television fiction; in this case neither interviewee mentions any perceived increase in the importance of the screenwriters’ role. What is emphasized once again is the close collaboration with the minority communities: I was lucky enough to work on a number of television series with topics that allowed me to participate in demographics culturally different than my own. I did not succeed in making these series on my own, I made them with the remarkable and multifaceted contribution of these groups. They all wore stereotypical labels on their foreheads placed there by the dominant demographic, but there have also been stereotypes created about the other side, the ‘dominant society’.81 Mi Mou Les Antio and the other two social dramas discussed in this essay are defined by a significant amount of location shooting that the director – at the helm of the creative process – evaluated as a necessary element of the mise-en-scene. It seems that this choice was not so much a consequence of artistic or financial criteria, but a means through which he hoped to enhance the societal premises of the television product, a way to construct the ‘other’ of the story through a process that resembles entering the ‘field’ in ethnographic terms: When the preparation for the series Mi Mou Les Antio began, we travelled to Komotini many times […] They [the local contacts] introduced us to a lot of Muslims belonging to different ideologies, political orientations, opinions. The discussion took months, a lot of reading. They introduced us to others, friends, relatives. These experiences helped us to construct the Muslim side of the story.82 The anthropological background of the executive producer, Maria Manousaki, emerges at this point as the interpretative lens through which we can read the creative team’s fixation on not presenting an etic understanding of the minority but instead providing the space to incorporate the emic viewpoint, by means of linguistic and other cultural specificities. Segments where the minorities are shown speaking their language, or scenes of locals celebrating and dancing, constitute elements that reflect the participation of the communities not only as background actors but also as ethnographic subjects. In the case of Mi Mou Les Antio, Maria Manousaki notes that the filming took place in real houses located in Komotini, and the production was greatly supported by actors who also functioned as consultants, providing valuable information on small but important details such as community-specific dietary habits and clothing. Consequently location filming can be read as a creative decision that defined the product in visual terms, thereby supporting the idea of a director as an author/socio-cultural commentator, interested in emphasizing ‘the effects of environmental factors’ on the characters and the trope.83 At the same time, the strong dependency on actors/informants highlights the importance of ‘the micro-social world of social relations’ as a significant shaper of the story as a whole.84 I have argued that the authorial imprint of Manousakis is based on a skilful manipulation of a common trope of the ‘difficult romance’ and its infusion with socio-cultural elements pertaining to the Greek context.85 Manousakis is not a director who uses the medium for individual expression, nor does he incorporate an idiosyncratic style that would provide his series with a particular aesthetic aura. Instead these three series fit the model of ‘choric’ television, where the creator takes on the role of a socio-cultural commentator,86 putting together a cultural space in which current affairs – events with a significant socio-political character – are reproduced, interpreted, intensified or downplayed.87 My analysis sheds light on the production conditions for each case, affirming the collaborative nature of commercial television, in which significant emphasis is placed on the role of the executive producer, characterized as ‘the other side of the coin of a director’,88 actively participating in the staging of the story as well as the job’s traditional organizational and financial responsibilities. Interestingly, the notion of the creator as a David fighting the industry’s Goliath89 did not arise in the interviewees’ recollections, at least not in any sense that suggested they had compromised their vision. Manousakis painted a picture of a productive negotiation and exchange of views between the creative team and the channels’ executives, which primarily took place in good spirits and often contributed to executive decisions that determined the shows’ success. The poly-authorial nature of television fiction has been highlighted through studying how the idea for each series came to light, be it the result of an everyday stimulant (Psithyroi Kardias), a request from the channel (I Agapi Irthe Apo Makria) or an adaptation of a literary work (Mi Mou Les Antio). Moreover, I have shown that the participation of minority communities was an essential contribution to the overall shaping of the stories discussed in these works. The use of real settings, as well as the incorporation of community-specific language, cultural expression and visuals played an important role in a realistic merging of fiction and reality. Most importantly, however, it was the ethnographically informed approach and the treatment of the community members as informants – perhaps a result of Maria Manousaki’s anthropological background – that added another layer of authorship. This combination of interview data and textual analysis confirms what some scholars have described as the value of the study of authorship for contemporary television, namely its complementary – and not exclusive – character ‘for thinking through the artistic and commercial significance of television drama’.90 The study of authorial collaborations reveals facets of the production process, and can guide the analysis of the final product and inform explorations of the audience’s reception. The multi-case analytical framework helps in the differentiation process discussed by Naremore,91 that is, the construction of an oeuvre that, as well as highlighting some kind of authorial specificity, functions as a vehicle through which certain products – and television cultures – can gain scholarly visibility. This essay necessarily comes with a set of limitations that indicate the need for further research in the fields of Greek television or commercial television in general. The role of the screenwriter, for example, described in this context as being of only instrumental value, is one crying out for more clarification. Moreover, a deeper exploration of the subjectivities (especially ethnic and religious background) involved in the production process, could inform a more directly political/ideological reading of the cases. It is also important to acknowledge that the status of the interviewees as ‘exclusive informants’ comes with certain methodological risks. As Bruun points out, the fact that exclusive informants may have their own agendas – painting situations in a certain light, presenting insights that reflect favourably on them – should be regarded as an unavoidable part of the research findings.92 It would also be interesting to assess whether the minority communities involved and represented in the series regard(ed) them to be as beneficial and realistic as Manousos Manousakis and Maria Manousaki clearly do. Last but not least, I have addressed the question of industrial and commercial pressures here only as an element of the general context within which Manousakis was operating. Further studies can potentially provide more focused investigations of the dominant production logics and practices of private television in Greece, especially when it comes to the consequences of increased competition on creative incentives in a more established television ‘industry’ in Greece in later years. It also remains to be seen whether cases such as that of Manousakis, who claimed himself creatively satisfied with the opportunities that were afforded him by the channels, constitute the exception or the general rule for private television in Greece. This would doubtless make for promising further research on the private channels of the Greek media landscape.93 Footnotes 1 A phenomenon that has been termed ‘invisible television’. See Brett Mills, ‘Invisible television: the programmes no-one talks about even though lots of people watch them’, Critical Studies in Television, vol. 5, no. 1 (2010), pp. 1–16. 2 After a turbulent period of financial hardship, MEGA Channel ceased broadcasting in 2018. In 2019 the company Alter Ego Media S.A., owned by Greek businessman Evangelos Marinakis, obtained the valuable audiovisual archives and logo of MEGA TV. On 17 February 2020 MEGA resumed broadcasting. 3 In addition to their visibility in the public sphere, these topics played a prominent role in the ‘50 years of Greek Television’ conference, organized by the Laboratory of Cultural and Visual Studies in the Department of Journalism and Mass Media Communication at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in December 2016. 4 Vassilis Vamvakas, ‘I ysteri metapolitfsi me ti matia ton tiletheaton stis ellinikes seires’ (‘Late post-polity through the eyes of TV viewers in Greek fiction’), in Vassilis Vamvakas and Grigoris Paschalidis (eds), 50 Chronia Elliniki Tileorasi (50 Years of Greek Television) (Athens: Epikentro, 2018), pp. 213–31. 5 Georgia Aitaki, ‘Laughing with/at the national self: Greek television satire and the politics of self-disparagement’, Social Semiotics, vol. 29, no. 1 (2019), pp. 68–82; Georgia Aitaki, ‘Domesticating pathogenies, evaluating change: the Eurozone crisis as a “hot moment” in Greek television fiction’, Media, Culture and Society, vol. 40, no. 7 (2018), pp. 957–72. See also Filmicon: Journal of Greek Film Studies, no. 6 (2019), Special Issue, ‘Introduction to Greek Television Studies: (Re)Reading Greek Television Fiction since 1989’, ed. Georgia Aitaki and Spyridon Chairetis. 6 According to Jeremy G. Butler, ‘The auteur theory originated in French film criticism of the 1950s, where it was initially theorized that auteurs could be drawn from the ranks of producers, directors, scriptwriters, actors, and other filmmaking personnel’. See Butler, Television: Critical Methods and Applications (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 368. 7 Ibid., p. 369. 8 James Naremore, ‘Authorship’, in Toby Miller and Robert Stam (eds), A Companion to Film Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), p. 9. 9 Ibid., p. 21. 10 Rosalind Coward, ‘Dennis Potter and the question of the television author’, Critical Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4 (1987), p. 80. 11 Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2015), pp. 87–88. 12 John Thornton Caldwell, Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), p. 199. 13 Tom Steward, ‘Making the commercial personal: the authorial value of Jerry Bruckheimer Television’, Continuum, vol. 24, no. 5 (2010), p. 736. 14 Horace Newcomb and Robert S. Alley, The Producer’s Medium: Conversations with Creators of American TV (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). 15 Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsch, ‘Television as a cultural forum: implications for research’, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, vol. 8, no. 3 (1983), pp. 45–55. 16 Newcomb and Alley, The Producer’s Medium, p. 37. 17 Ibid., p. 43. 18 Robert C. Allen (ed.), Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), p. 7. 19 For an auto-ethnographic reflection on logics and decisions that have diachronically defined MEGA Channel’s entertainment content with a particular emphasis on domestically produced television fiction, see Jo Frangou, ‘MEGA mou: an insider perspective on working for Greece’s first private television channel’, Filmicon: Journal of Greek Film Studies, no. 6 (2019), pp. 138–52. For a more extensive production study of television fiction in Greece since 1989, see Georgia Aitaki, ‘Making television fiction in a commercial context: commercialization, ideology and entertainment in a production study of Greek private television’, Journal of Greek Media and Culture (forthcoming). 20 The interviews with Manousos Manousakis and Maria Manousaki were conducted on 14 and 20 July 2016 respectively, at the headquarters of Telekinisi in Chalandri. The interviews were audio recorded and subsequently transcribed and translated by myself. Both interviewees have provided permission for the reproduction of their words in this essay. I would like to thank them both for their availability and willingness to share memories and insights. 21 The conference took place on 14 February 2007 and was organized by the Hellenic Audiovisual Institute. Manousos Manousakis, alongside other media professionals and scholars, was asked to analyse ‘how media content projects, but is at the same time affected by, stereotypes, and how it can contribute to the elimination of racist behaviours’, and to present both positive and negative examples of such practices. A copy of the conference talk was kindly provided by the director. 22 Hanne Bruun, ‘The qualitative interview in media production studies’, in Chris Paterson, David Lee, Anamik Saha and Anna Zoellner (eds), Advancing Media Production Research: Shifting Sites, Methods and Politics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 131–46. 23 Susan Boyd-Bowman, ‘Television authorship in France: Le Réalisateur’, in Robert J. Thompson and Gary Burns (eds), Making Television: Authorship and the Production Process (New York, NY: Praeger, 1990), p. 51. 24 Jeremy Tunstall, Television Producers (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 6. 25 Alisa Perren and Thomas Schatz, ‘Theorizing television’s writer–producer: re-viewing the producer’s medium’, Television and New Media, vol. 16, no. 1 (2015), pp. 86–93. 26 Jane Shattuc, ‘Television production: who makes American TV?’, in Janet Wasco (ed.), A Companion to Television (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 142–54. 27 Bruun, ‘The qualitative interview in media production studies’, p. 135. 28 See, for example, Vammena Kokkina Mallia/Dyed Red Hair (ANT1, 1992), O Megalos Thymos/The Great Anger (MEGA, 1998) and Oi Magisses tis Smyrnis/The Witches of Smyrna (MEGA, 2005–06). Koutsomytis is often credited as writing, or contributing to the writing of, the adapted screenplay. 29 For an in-depth analysis of the unique narrative style of Panos Kokkinopoulos, see Evangelia Theodoridou, ‘Panos Kokkinopoulos’ three-act narrative: familial triangulation, line of flight and reterritorialization in 10h Entoli/10th Commandment’, Filmicon: Journal of Greek Film Studies, no. 6 (2019), pp. 69–89. 30 For a detailed study of how Reppas and Papathanasiou introduced the codes of sitcom to Greek television through Oi Treis Charites, see Betty Kaklamanidou, ‘Introduction to the Greek sitcom: the case of I Tris Charites/The Three Graces’, Filmicon: Journal of Greek Film Studies, no. 4 (2017), pp. 138–54. 31 Characteristic examples include Anastasia (MEGA, 1993–94) and I Zoi pou den Ezisa/The Life I Didn’t Have (MEGA, 1998–99). 32 See, for example, Hi Rock (MEGA, 1992–94) and Love Sorry (MEGA, 1994). 33 See, for example, Eftyhismenoi Mazi/Happy Together (MEGA, 2007–09) and Piso sto Spiti/Back Home (MEGA, 2011–13). 34 Kapoutzidis’s works include Savvatogennimenes/Born Lucky (MEGA, 2003–04), Sto Para Pente/In the Nick of Time (2005–07) and Ethniki Ellados/National Team of Greece (MEGA, 2015). 35 Dalianidis is the creator of To Retiré/The Penthouse (MEGA, 1990–92), well known to Greek audiences for its cult status and endless re-runs. The particular style of Dalianidis is discussed in Orsalia-Eleni Kassaveti, ‘Me ton tropo tou Dalianidi: I gennisi kai i katastrofi enos mikroastikou retiré’ (‘By the way of Dalianidis: the birth and destruction of a middle-class penthouse’), in Vamvakas and Paschalidis (eds), 50 Chronia Elliniki Tileorasi, pp. 263–74. 36 Foskolos is considered the father of the Greek soap opera, creating, supervising, co-writing and co-directing Lampsi/Shine (ANT1, 1991–2005) and Kalimera Zoi/Good Morning Life (ANT1, 1993–2006). 37 See, for example, Konstantinou kai Elenis/Konstantinos and Eleni’s (ANT1, 1998–2000) and To Kafe tis Charas/Chara’s Café (ANT1, 2003–06, 2019–20). 38 Alexandros Rigas could also belong to this category, as the creator of programmes characterized by witty humour and romantic nuances; the difference from the previous examples is that Rigas tends to take minor roles for himself. 39 Elmatzioglou was the producer of the iconic MEGA hit To Nisi/The Island (MEGA, 2010–11), an adaptation of the 2005 novel by Victoria Hislop. 40 Now known as the London Film School. 41 Angeliki Koukoutsaki, ‘Greek television drama: production policies and genre diversification’, Media, Culture and Society, vol. 25, no. 6 (2003), pp. 715–35. 42 Manousakis has also worked with other genres, directing the police series Tmima Ithon/Vice Squad (ΑΝΤ1, 1992–95), Oi Dromoi tis Polis/City Streets (ANT1, 1995–96) and the comedy Gia Mia Gynaika kai Ena Aftokinito/For a Woman and a Car (ΑΝΤ1, 2001–02). 43 Vamvakas, ‘I ysteri metapolitefsi me ti matia ton tiletheaton stis ellinikes seires’, pp. 220–21. 44 Comédie is a popular subgenre of Greek television fiction, usually combining elements of comedy and romance. 45 Manousos Manousakis, in interview with the author, 14 July 2016. 46 Jason Mittell, ‘A cultural approach to television genre theory’, Cinema Journal, vol. 40, no. 3 (2001), p. 12. 47 Manousakis, interview. 48 Elements of the trope of difficult romance can also be identified in earlier works of Manousakis, such as Tavros me Toxoti/Taurus with Sagittarius (ΑΝΤ1, 1994–95), a comic police series centred around the incompatible yet sexually tense relationship between a geeky journalist and a laid-back private investigator, as well as in a recent film, Ouzeri Tsitsanis/Cloudy Sunday (2015), the love story of a Christian man and a Jewish woman between 1942 and 1943, during the German occupation of Thessaloniki. The trilogy discussed here may also be joined by a fourth work, Aggigma Psyxis/A Touch of Soul (ANT1, 1998–99), although this one highlights a slightly different type of incompatibility. The components of the difficult romance here are not divided by ethnic, cultural or religious differences, but rather by an ethical code based on a different lifestyle, since the couple comprises a young woman and an archimandrite, an abbot in the Greek Orthodox Church. 49 Cécile Cristofari, ‘Time travel as trope in television series’, in Sherry Ginn and Gillian I. Leitch (eds), Time-Travel Television: The Past from the Present, the Future from the Past (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), p. 27. 50 Ibid., p. 28. 51 Manousakis, interview. 52 Vamvakas, ‘I ysteri metapolitefsi me ti matia ton tiletheaton stis ellinikes seires’, pp. 220–21. 53 Vian Bakir, ‘Media and risk: old and new research directions’, Journal of Risk Research, vol. 13, no. 1 (2010), p. 9. 54 John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 42. 55 John Fiske, Television Culture (London: Routledge, 1987), p. 154. 56 Richard John Neupert, The End: Narration and Closure in the Cinema (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1995), p. 71. 57 Sharon Bramlett-Solomon, ‘Interracial love on television: what’s taboo still and what’s not’, in Mary-Lou Galician and Debra L. Merskin (eds), Critical Thinking About Sex, Love and Romance in the Mass Media: Media Literacy Application (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007), pp. 90–91. 58 Ntenis Antypas, I Sezon, 1997–1998 (The Season, 1997–1998) (Athens: Patakis, 1998), p. 21. 59 Lena Divani, ‘I katastasi ton Tsigganon stin Ellada’ (‘The situation of Tsigganoi in Greece), Ethniki Epitropi gia ta Dikaiomata tou Anthropou (National Commission for Human Rights) (2002) <http://www.nchr.gr/%20category.php?%20category_id=61> last accessed 1 August 2017. 60 Orsalia-Eleni Kassaveti, I elliniki videotainia (1985–1990): Eidologikes, koinonikes kai politismikes diastaseis (Greek Video Movies [1985–1990]: Generic, Social and Cultural Dimensions) (Athens: Asini, 2014). 61 In the Greek language, Roma and Tsigganoi are terms that have been used interchangeably to describe Romani groups, although the former is more common nowadays, as the latter is considered a pejorative term. 62 Maria Manousaki, in interview with the author, 20 July 2016. 63 Manousakis, interview. 64 The character of Erato appeared in mass-produced graphic T-shirts, particularly popular with children and teenagers. Τhe character even became part of custom-made Greek Easter candles. 65 Manousakis, interview. 66 Anna Triandafyllidou, ‘Metanastes, meionotites kai ellinika mesa mazikis enimerosis’ (‘Immigrants, minorities and the Greek mass media’), in Maria Kontochristou (ed.), Taftotita kai MME sti sygxroni Ellada (Identity and Media in Contemporary Greece) (Athens: Papazisi, 2007), p. 218. 67 Maria Manousaki, interview. 68 Milly Buonanno, ‘News-values and fiction-values: news as serial device and criteria of “fictionworthiness” in Italian television fiction’, European Journal of Communication, vol. 8, no. 2 (1993), pp. 177–202. 69 Maria Manousaki, interview. 70 Tom Cantrell and Christopher Hogg, ‘Returning to an old question: what do television actors do when they act?’, Critical Studies in Television, vol. 11, no. 3 (2016), pp. 283–98. 71 Manousakis, interview. 72 Ibid. 73 The term ‘imagination’ is used here by means of paraphrasing Stuart Hall’s notion of the ‘fictional rehearsal’: that is, the view of popular culture as allowing audiences to evaluate characters’ behaviour in media texts and experiment with possible versions of the world. Hall, qtd in John Mepham, ‘The ethics of quality in television’, in Geoff Mulgan (ed.), The Question of Quality (London: BFI Publishing, 1990). 74 Mepham, ‘The ethics of quality in television’, p. 60. 75 Manousakis, interview. 76 Neupert, The End, p. 62. 77 Christine Geraghty, ‘The continuous serial – a definition’, in Richard Dyer (ed.), Coronation Street (London: BFI Publishing, 1981), pp. 9–26. 78 Christina Borou, ‘The Muslim minority of western Thrace in Greece: an internal positive or an internal negative “other”?’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, vol. 29, no. 1 (2009), pp. 5–26. 79 Manousakis, interview. 80 Jack Boozer (ed.), Authorship in Film Adaptation (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2008). 81 Manousakis, interview. 82 Ibid. 83 Julia Hallam and Margaret Marshment, Realism and Popular Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). 84 Birger Langkjær, ‘Realism as a third film practice’, MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, vol. 27, no. 51 (2011), p. 41. 85 For an analysis of the trope in a different context, see Miri Talmon, ‘A touch away from cultural others: negotiating Israeli Jewish identity on television’, Shofar, vol. 31, no. 2 (2013), pp. 55–72, and ‘Utopian transgressions: intimate relationships across social boundaries’, in Gilad Padva and Nurit Buchweitz (eds), Intimate Relationships in Cinema, Literature and Visual Culture (Cham: Springer International, 2017), pp. 185–97. 86 Newcomb and Alley, The Producer’s Medium. 87 Newcomb and Hirsch, ‘Television as a cultural forum’. 88 Manousakis, interview. 89 Butler, Television, p. 368. 90 Steward, ‘Making the commercial personal’, p. 746. 91 Naremore, ‘Authorship’, p. 22. 92 Bruun, ‘The qualitative interview in media production studies’, p. 142. 93 All translations of quotes, titles of television programmes and books from Greek into English are my own. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Screen. All rights reserved This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - In search of the Greek television author: the social dramas of Manousos Manousakis
JF - Screen
DO - 10.1093/screen/hjaa040
DA - 2020-09-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/in-search-of-the-greek-television-author-the-social-dramas-of-manousos-ChOESMnrpI
SP - 403
EP - 422
VL - 61
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -