Introduction

The introduction establishes the central research question: How have television professionals in Germany negotiated the so-called quality TV drama from 2015 to the present (2024)? The central hypothesis is that practitioners have adapted quality TV drama from the US into a national context and, through this concept, have dealt with recent broader transformations of television and the local television industry. The introduction places practitioners’ discourse on quality TV drama and its writing and storytelling in the context of recent television history in Germany. Subsequently, the introduction elucidates the book’s particular focus on screenwriting and situates it in the research fields of media industry studies and screenwriting research. In doing so, this chapter takes a closer look at television-specific media industry studies and discusses interfaces with cultural studies. Following its broad understanding of “culture”, the introduction elaborates on the concept of “production culture”, which is an important basis for the subsequent study of German television, as it looks at both economic and cultural aspects. The project’s specific geographical and temporal contexts are described in more detail and justified against the background of theories on transnational and “glocal” media. Finally, the introduction presents the book’s structure.