‘Europudding’ or European co-production? The archaeology of the television series Eurocops (1988–94)

Abstract

This chapter examines the case of Eurocops, a crime TV show produced by the European Coproduction Association – composed by one private and six public service broadcasting (PSB) channels of seven European countries – from 1988 to 1994 (71 episodes). Although it is one of the first European co-productions of its kind, Eurocops was a critical and commercial fiasco: what were its faults? Following Ib Bondebjerg’s methodology, this article aims at exploring the failure of this ‘Europudding’. The first section places Eurocops in the media landscape of the late 1980s and explains why this series can be considered as a ‘Europudding’ trying to enforce Europe’s cultural sovereignty against the North American hegemony. The second section analyses how the decentralized PSB production of Eurocops implied the use of an inconsistent narrative structure making the single episodes appear as part of a loose ‘collection’ of crime fiction. This partly explains the lukewarm critical reception of this television programme. The third section examines the cultural meaning of the series and is based on the analysis of the 48 episodes we had access to (through the INA French archives). The lack of transnational ‘encounters’ or dialogues – compared to other more recent cop shows such as The Team, The Killing and The Bridge – reveals the absence of a strong European identity at the time of production.