ABSTRACT

This introduction presents some key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses with the nature of television adaptation, and how it differs from other forms of adaptation into other media. It also focuses more specifically with the structural ramifications of adaptation into an episodic form. Adaptation and television share the common problem of authorship, and an analysis of this quandary for academic study has been explained. Both adaptation and television are taxed with similar grievous faults, being more commercial than their 'purer' brethren the cinema in general for television, and the art film in particular for film adaptations or being too tightly tethered to their texts to take full advantage of their visual media. As such, television adaptations become a fundamentally different enterprise from film adaptation and one deserving of closer analysis. Adaptation has long been a favored means of reappropriating a story from one form, from one culture, or from one period to another.