Quality Telefantasy: How Us Quality TV Brought Zombies, Dragons and Androids Into the Mainstream

This book explores the relatively new genre of ’Quality Telefantasy’ and how it has broadened TV taste cultures by legitimating and mainstreaming fantastical content. It also shows how the rising popularity of this genre marks a distinct and significant development in what kinds of TV are culturally dominant and critically regarded.

By expanding and building on the definition of US Quality TV, this book brings together a number of popular science fiction, fantasy and horror TV series, including Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and Westworld, as case studies which demonstrate the emergence of the Quality Telefantasy genre. It looks at the role of technology, including internet recap culture and subscription video on demand distribution, in Quality Telefantasy’s swift emergence, and analyses its success internationally by considering series created outside the US like Kingdom (South Korea, Netflix) and Dark (Germany, Netflix). The book argues that Quality Telefantasy series should be considered a part of the larger Quality TV super-genre, and that the impact they are having on the global TV landscape warrants further investigation as it continues to evolve.

This is a valuable text for students and scholars studying or undertaking research in the areas of television studies, new media and pop-cultural studies.

Andrew Lynch teaches cinema and screen studies in the department of Media and Communication at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. He has previously published work on telefantasy, genre and Quality TV in Quarterly Review of Film and Video and Refractory. His current research focuses on the diverse approaches of niche and marginal streaming services.