Berlin as location and production site for transnational TV drama

Abstract

Berlin has had a long, often complex history as a location site and centre for production dating to the end of the 19th century. By the 2010s however, the German city had once more become a central location and production site for international and national television, in part because of changing media policy and shifts in the global media industry, as well as related to the mediated imagination of the city. The article charts those changes in local production cultures related to technology, politics and economics but also to the aesthetic and narrative representation of the city which affected audiences and producers. The central argument is that local production cultures are not homogeneous, but ambivalent and sometimes contradictory.