Introduction: Women’s Authorship and Adaptation in Contemporary Television

This special dossier examines issues in women’s authorship and adaptation in contemporary television. Recently, in the television streaming era, there have been a number of significant television shows adapted from an original woman-authored source text that have a prominent woman in a production role, such as showrunner, writer, director, or executive producer. This invites attention in the period of ‘quality’ television, where the figure of the television ‘auteur’, often in the form of the showrunner, has emerged. This dossier complicates this figure: firstly, by focusing on women authors, who are often excluded from notions of auteurism; secondly, by insisting on the collaborative nature of television authorship; and thirdly, by examining adaptations, which have proven to be productive sites for feminist explorations of women’s authorship. As the contributors in this dossier reveal, women’s authorship in adapted television is one of multiplicity, collectivity, and collaboration–but also competition, antagonism and struggle. Making evident the rich but complex landscape of women’s television authorship today, this dossier intervenes in discussions around women’s authorial agency and authority, while also evidencing women’s continued limitations in the contemporary television industry.