‘Quality television’ in the making: The cases of Flanders and Israel

• Bourdieusian field theory continues to provide a useful framework to analyze TV as a cultural field of production.
• Flemish and Israeli critics and creators discourses stress the artistic character of quality TV.
• Flemish and Israeli creators’ discourse also stresses practical and economic aspects.
• More than the Flemish ones, Israeli critics’ discourse stresses social and political subversion.
• Both Flemish and Israeli creators and critic's discourses are similar to the Anglo-American discourse on “quality television”.

This article discusses the properties of ‘quality television’ as constructed within the field of television production. It does so by analyzing the discourse of television creators and critics in two countries, Israel and Flanders, taking a theoretical approach based in part on Bourdieusian theory. Most academic work about ‘quality television’ concentrates on Anglo-American television drama series. In this paper we offer a different perspective by focusing on two small but prosperous television markets outside of the Anglo-American world. Our findings suggest that the quality discourse in both countries contains autonomous-artistic alongside heteronomous-capitalist ideological elements, apparently under the influence of the Anglo-American discourse of quality. Our findings also suggest that both ideological elements contribute to the cultural legitimation of the television drama series in both countries, though the capitalist discourse plays a more evident role among creators than among critics. Finally, we also discuss the differences between the Flemish and the Israeli discourses of ‘quality television.’