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ABSTRACT
This discussion explores innovation in true crime programming on streaming platforms and on-demand catch up broadcast television services. Altered consumption habits from long form programming and binge viewing on streaming services has prompted innovations in factual content through docuseries. Commencing with Reality Television police procedurals such as the long running US series Cops ([1989–2023]. Cops. TV Series. Fox. 1989–2013, 2023. Paramount Network 2013–2020. Fox Nation 2021–2023), the true crime genre has expanded into long-form docuseries. This expansion coincides with streaming platforms that service contemporary consumption habits based on unscheduled, on-demand spectatorship practices. Underbelly ([2008–2022]. Underbelly. TV Series. Screentime; Nine Network) is an Australian true crime franchise and early innovator of true crime serialisation. Spanning both broadcast and streaming eras, Underbelly serves as a counterpoint in this discussion of innovations in long-form documentary serialisation in the Netflix programs, Making a Murderer ([2015–2018]. Making a Murderer. TV Series. Synthesis Films; Netflix) and The Staircase ([2004–2018]. The Staircase. TV Series. Canal+, Episodes 1–10. Netflix, Episodes 11–13). Discussion of each series reveals how narrative innovation functions as generic transformation in response to new television on-demand platforms and delivery modes.
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Notes on contributors
Sean Maher
Dr Sean Maher is Associate Professor in the Film, Screen & Animation Discipline in the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT. In 2019 he was ranked as ‘Australia's leading researcher in Film’. In 2017 he was Visiting Scholar at the UCLA Film and TV Archives that contributed to his 2021 monograph, Film Noir and Los Angeles – Urban History and the Dark Imaginary, published by Routledge.
Susan Cake
Dr Susan Cake lectures in screenwriting at the Queensland University of Technology. In 2018 she was awarded Outstanding Doctoral Thesis for her creative practice-led research examining how writing narrative comedy performed creative resistance in her proposed television series, Fighting Fit. She recently completed a market analysis report for Screen Queensland on the feasibility of studio expansion on the Gold Coast and her current research explores technological disruptions to script development and writing for expanded notions of ‘the screen’.