Scandinavian success as European policy dilemma: creative Europe’s funding for TV drama co-productions, 2014-20

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ABSTRACT This article surveys the fiction productions that received funding from Creative Europe’s TV Programming scheme 2014–2020. The evaluation shows that most funding went to North-Western Europe with Scandinavia surpassing Europe’s big TV producing nations. The geographical and genre imbalances in the TV scheme must be seen in the light of the long-established close collaboration between Germany and primarily the Scandinavian countries and the profiled position of ‘Nordic Noir’ crime fiction as the engine that drives forward international collaboration. This trend exemplifies European policy dilemmas emerging from television’s role in the intersections of economy and culture. North-European countries appear well-equipped in advance to meet the criteria of Creative Europe through established collaboration, while differences in the media systems and production cultures have kept producers in the South and East of Europe from even applying. The EU funding scheme may, thus, have strengthened already strong relationships rather than creating new ones.