The Birth of the Post-Socialist Eastern European Televisual Collectivehood: Crime and Patriarchy in Shadows [Umbre, 2014-]

The global proliferation of media distribution platforms, such as Amazon Video, Netflix, Hulu or HBO Go, and their support for local productions have entered the Eastern European region into a new quality televisual age. Thanks to the innovative industrial and technological framework and the transformation of production, exhibition and distribution practices in the era, the post-2000 epoch gave local filmmakers and media practitioners the opportunity for national self-expression that contributed to the birth of new narratives and aesthetic forms. By focusing on the Romanian series Shadows [Umbre, 2014-], the present article investigates the very local tone of Eastern European crime series produced by HBO Europe. This paper examines and enumerates the reasons for the proliferation of the genre, while discussing its local characteristics that, as argued below, gave birth to a collective Eastern European televisual collectivehood.