ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the sci-fi series Westworld (HBO 2016–) represents the Quality Telefantasy genre in a self-reflexive, post-classical stage of genre development. As the most recently produced of this book’s examples, Westworld can play with genre expectations because its audience is already familiar with Quality Telefantasy generic tropes. In many respects Westworld appears to be another classic example of Quality Telefantasy in the vein of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, but in a number of significant ways, it diverges towards the post-classical. Classic examples of Quality Telefantasy already display long-form serialised narratives, but Westworld exhibits a hyper-complex ‘puzzle plot’ (Buckland 2009). Westworld’s storytelling makes a game of untangling its mysteries and rewards audiences already familiar with the Quality Telefantasy narrative conventions it subverts. Likewise, Westworld engages with both ideas of believability and socio-cultural verisimilitude, only to continually overturn this well-established Quality Telefantasy convention in favour of fantastical sci-fi generic credibility.
