Shakespeare's Serial Returns Complex TV in Bloomington, MN

This book examines how Shakespeare’s plays resurface in current complex TV series. Its four case studies bring together
The Tempest
and the science fiction-Western
Westworld, King Lear
and the satirical dynastic drama of
Succession, Hamlet
and the legal thriller
Black Earth Rising
, as well as
Coriolanus
and the political thriller
Homeland
. The comparative readings ask what new insights the twenty-first-century remediations may grant us into Shakespeare’s texts and, vice versa, how Shakespearean returns help us understand topical concerns negotiated in the series, such as artificial intelligence, the safeguarding of democracy, terrorism, and postcolonial justice. This study also proposes that the dramaturgical seriality typical of complex TV allows insights into the seriality Shakespeare employed in structuring his plays. Discussing a broad spectrum of adaptational constellations and establishing key characteristics of the new adaptational aggregate of serial Shakespeare, it seeks to initiate a dialogue between Shakespeare studies, adaptation studies, and TV studies.