ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how the negotiation of spatial capital inherent to television distribution shapes how space and place are articulated within specific programs, exploring how circumstances of production and storytelling overlap with the either presumed or explicit demands of international marketplaces. I use the example of the U.S./Canada co-production Orphan Black as a series set in a “polysemic place,” wherein spatial capital exists but in ways that allow different audiences to read the series as local in different markets. The chapter then shifts to how these strategies apply in the case of original, local programming produced by Netflix in markets outside of the United States. The latter reveals an inscrutable approach to spatial capital that reinforces how distributional capital continues to limit and restrict how space and place function across television markets, even within a purported global network provided by the streaming service.
