Shakespeare’s Serial Returns in Complex TV

Blurb

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.