Essay of Series 'taken'

Through close textual analysis of an individual episode of an American television series of your choice, discuss how it either does, or does not, conform to the tenets of 'Quality TV'. In addition, outline the problems/benefits that defining this series as 'Quality TV' has, in other words, assuming your chosen series is 'Quality TV', why is that significant?

Fig 1

For this analysis I have chosen the series of Taken to find out whether it conforms to the tenets of 'Quality TV'. Taken chronicles 50 years of alien abduction and government conspiracies, all circling around three families. The whole saga begins during World War II. We witness a bomber go down with its crew, who then miraculously all survive. But what follows is more terrifying than the crash. Crew member Russsell Keys is plagued by nightmares of the crash and when he learns that his fellow crewmen are dying he is plagued by much more.

Meanwhile, Sally Clarke is unhappily married with kids, a lonely woman on a farm. When she gets a strange visitor things begin to change for her but these changes set into motion a chain of events that will take 50 years to culminate.

Finally, Captain Owen Crawford discovers that he has the perfect means by which to ascend to power in the military. He gets involved in the crash of an object outside of Roswell, New Mexico. The crash consumes him and drives him, his story interjecting with that of Keys and Clarke.

Quality TV

According to Robert J. Thompson (1997) the first criterion of a quality television programme is that it is not regular television and that it belongs in prime time, however low the ratings (Elsaesser, 1994, p.28). It must break the established rules of television and be like nothing that has come before it. To do this the format has to be consistently different to that of the usual four camera, studio production that is often seen within shows such as Friends or Cheers. The Taken production had close to 200 shooting locations, replicating everywhere from Roswell in the 1940's, to 1970's Alaska, to modern day Seattle. However, Dreamworks, the creator of Taken and Spielberg's own company, decided that the best place to recreate 50 years of American history wasn't in America at all, but in Vancouver, Canada. This also emphasises the large- scale production values that Taken has had as opposed to the limited locations of smaller in-house production companies. The shooting style is of 'movie' quality and an audience will view it exactly that way, as a huge movie but separated into many parts. Hand-held camera work is used extensively and 'tungsten lighting' is filtered to give the feel of an older time-period. The first voice heard in Taken is of the form of a voice over narrative, giving insights into the behaviour of the current characters that are being shown. This 'voice-over' technique is not usually attributed to a television series and this lends credence to the fact that this is different from other television serials and is 'Quality TV'. Also, the actress heard in the voice-over is not actually a character that the audience will see for many more serials. This also helps the audience to want to know more and be drawn into the narrative.

Fig. 2

In the above picture (Fig 2) we can see the 1950's Clarke family.

Writerly Based

For a quality television pedigree we have to also look at the writer and in the case of Taken this would Leslie Bohem (Fig 3). He has experience of production work such as a writer for the films Daylight (1996), Dante's Peak (1997) and The Alamo (2004). He is also a producer for the upcoming television series Nine Lives (2007).

Fig. 3

Initially recruited to write only the first three episodes, Bohem was asked By Dreamworks to script the entire series himself

Due to the large ensemble cast Bohem has created a complicated and realistic form of character development that is rarely seen within many televised series.

Taken takes its form within a 10 part series, each episode lasting for an hour, thus each episode is almost like a mini film in terms of its running time. Rather than episodic, Taken takes the form of the serial. It requires audiences to memorise previous details from the narrative. Whereas episodic television can allow each episode to be a singular story with no need for continuation, Taken requires its audience to follow each episode onto the next in anticipation of the continuing unfolding events. Also the incidents within the series do not necessarily conclude at the end of the episode. For example, Russell Keys finds out that his crew members are almost all dead; will he see the same fate? This is not answered until a future episode. This idea therefore depends upon the opening serial to be gripping enough to gain a mass audience within its first showing

Hybridity

The essence of 'Quality TV' tends to incorporate mixed genres within its substructure. Taken involves many of these aspects, Sci-fi being the most obvious. But also drama, horror, romance and historical elements are combined to give the overall feel to the production and it is this combination that we call hybridity. This is evident within Jill Marshall's analysis of the subject where it is said that a hybrid is the combined result of two or more original forms and retains some characteristics of those forms (Marshall, 2002, p. 47). It is these other genre elements that would lead to a larger demographic viewing of Taken and although sci-fi is its main attribute one cannot simply pigeon hole the series in this way. Each episode of Taken runs for just over an hour and this is clearly different from television sitcoms that almost always run in a pre-determined time slot, easily recognisable by their audiences for being half an hour in length. These sitcoms invite the viewer to 'switch off' their connection with the real world for half an hour and relax, whereas Taken makes the audience take stock of the unfolding events, and with the historical elements blends fact with fiction and makes the viewer 'think' about what is happening rather than merely watching.

Controversial Subjects

The series of Taken mainly involves controversial issue of U.F.O. abduction and this is a subject of continued debate amongst scientists,