Neither the Series nor the Serial: The Dizi as Televisual Form

Abstract

This talk concerns the dizi, the form of televisual seriality that has made Türkiye second only to the United States in international television distribution, reaching audiences from Japan to Chile and from South Africa to Sweden. Despite the extensive literature devoted to neighboring televisual forms, the dizi has attracted comparatively little sustained scholarly attention, least of all to its distinctive formal characteristics. Drawing on television studies, together with the historically contingent industrial conventions of Turkish television, I examine how the dizi both participates in and departs from established categories of episodic and serialized storytelling, the series and the serial above all. This double movement is perceptible in how different dizis organize continuity and resolution, such as through narrative arcs developed across seasons. Segmentation matters here, as in the distribution of narratively motivated hooks and larger unresolved questions; so too do characterization and the implications of recasting and dubbing. Beyond these, the dizi’s serialism demands further consideration through the distinction between structural openness and closedness, while the

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