ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of the Cold War, numerous television dramas have set out to explore the nature of bureaucracy and reveal it as a tainted, albeit pervasive, concept. This concern with the failings of modern bureaucracies has something to do with the fall of state socialism and the way in which the lifting of the Iron Curtain, after the collapse of the Berlin wall, lead to the exposure of centrally controlled economies’ tendency to justify the inefficiency of their own systems. However, for many television dramas it is the role of bureaucracy in late capitalist democracies that is the main focus of critical investigation. In the last few years, two facts have confronted the representatives of social leadership and order within society: firstly, the policy of suspicion, settled by the destruction of the Twin Towers and its consequences, and secondly, the recent economic crisis. It is through their dramatic exploration of the shadows of bureaucracy that such dramas bring to light the normally concealed and corrupt forces that continue to operate in modern societies.
