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

This article surveys the fiction productions that received funding from Creative Europe’s TV Programming scheme 2014-2020. Evaluating the geographical distribution of the funding and the genre-affiliation of the high-end TV productions that have received funding, it becomes evident that most of the funding went to North-Western Europe with Scandinavia and its “Nordic Noir” series 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 Scandinavian crime fiction, which appears to be the engine that drives forward international collaboration. This trend is an example of European policy dilemmas emerging from television’s role in the intersection between economy and culture., North-European countries appear to have been well-equipped in advance to meet the criteria of Creative Europe through already 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, in this way, have strengthened already strong relationships rather than creating new ones.