The Syrian television sitcom al-Kherba (‘the Ruin’, 2011-present) can be viewed as a political allegory that dramatises the authoritarian Ba’th regime in Syria (1971–2024). Analysing the village-setting and character dynamics in numerous scenes distributed throughout the entirety of the musalsal ’s 30 episodes, the paper argues that al-Kherba invites an allegorical reading of the humoristic discourse arising from the integration of sociopolitical realism and idealism. The paper concludes that al-Kherba , making available an allegorical reading of authoritarian governance, testifies to the capacity of television comedy drama to transmit political messages beyond the limits of everyday laughter.

Political consumerism is the expression of political demands through economic activities. Existing research identifies locationally ambiguous product origination as a major barrier to political consumption. This paper presents a case study based on in-depth interviews with 27 young Hong Kong viewers of Chinese Mainland television dramas. Rather than distinguishing products by origin, they differentiate consumption modes to more effectively express dissatisfaction with Chinese government policies toward Hong Kong. This represents a new form of political consumerism rarely identified in prior studies. As globalization blurs product origins, this finding may inform other cases of political consumerism.

Much of the foundational work on small-nation screen industries in Europe was developed when linear broadcasting was the norm. Digital distribution and subscription video-on-demand business models have since reshaped sector dynamics. This study examines whether existing frameworks still capture the dynamics shaping audiovisual sectors in small nations. The findings show that the small-market perspective remains a useful analytical framework in a multiplatform environment as many of the established patterns of smallness persist in the streaming age. However, streaming also reshapes traditional definitions of small-nation broadcasting and screen sectors and reveals important qualitative differences among European small markets, opening up new opportunities to overcome some of the constraints of smallness.

This study analyses the features of the recently created Virtual Audience System (VAS), designed for viewers’ remote participation in television shows. The VAS creates a new audience, known as the ‘prodience’, which lies halfway between on-site and online audiences. The main characteristic of this new audience is its ability to remotely and synchronically participate from different sources and become part of the broadcast. The VAS audience blurs the boundary between medium and audience, expands the set and production and calls into question the unidirectionality of television. However, the VAS currently has a bigger impact on production than on reception.

This article argues that the transnational appeal of post-apocalyptic narratives lies in the fact that, even as they depict new forms of domination, they also envision the end of a world in which one of capitalism’s defining ideology of homo economicus is non-existent and its concurrent malady, the axis of alienation and exploitation, has been extinguished. Accordingly, through analysis of four post-apocalyptic television series – Station Eleven (2022), The Last of Us (2023), The Collapse (2019), and Offworld (2022) – the article shows how these televisual texts articulate utopian possibilities emerging through the dystopian conditions generated by societal collapse.