ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the relationships that complex serial dramas have forged with authorship. The formal and cultural distinctions of complex serials owe much to their conceptual innovation, crucial to which has been the relative creative freedom that is often acknowledged by the originators of these dramas to develop and pursue a particular, and sometimes personal, concept. Despite these constraints upon its practice, the idea of individual authorship for complex serial dramas has been strategically mobilized by networks and is frequently invoked by media industry commentators and TV critics. In British television, 'auteur' discourses have been applied to short-form dramas with a notably 'art television' sensibility, as exemplified by the idiosyncratic and critically acclaimed collected works of such celebrated TV dramatists as Dennis Potter and Stephen Poliakoff. The construction and representation of Chase as sole author of The Sopranos initiated the tendency to develop similar discourses around the creator-showrunners of other complex serials.
