With 22 Episodes a Year. Searching for Quality in U.S. Network Television: the Cases of "The Good Wife", "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and "Jane the Virgin"

The notion of ‘quality television’ has undergone endless revisions over the last three decades. Given the technological, institutional, economic and aesthetic evolution of the medium, diverse scholars questioned and explored its forms of quality, especially focusing on the US scenario, notably a forerunner and leader in the development and international distribution of TV shows. Applied to the American industry, this ever-evolving de nition bears some recurrent fea- tures that make it a sort of ‘super-genre’, a label for TV series that share some ‘prestige’ speci ci- ties. Focusing on the US scenario, where nowadays ‘quality’ tends to maily label cable series, this paper aims to identify those prestige speci cities and to answer the question: is there such thing as a quality network television in a cable-dominated market? After establishing a theoretical framework by tracing back the evolution of the notion of quality television, the article will focus on three contemporary case studies: CBS’ The Good Wife, The CW’s Jane the Virgin and FOX’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine. We will see how these three series share some aesthetic and narrative tropes that, making the best of broadcast television’s weaknesses and restrictions, aim to appeal to a certain upscale audience, resulting into critical acclaim and awards recognition. In the end, we will argue that several characteristics of quality cable television can actually be applied to a wave of network television productions that, although based on the standard for- mats of broadcast storytelling, could be critically compared to more acclaimed shows, ultimately tting into the prestige series super-genre