The genre of the “complex narrative” is an interesting one, particularly in the style of the “serial”. A serial is slightly different than a normal TV series. They tend to have a multiplicity of characters to progress the various simultaneous story-lines and create a large, more intricate narrative web where most of the main characters are connected. A good example of the complex narrative as it pertains to the serial is HBO’s “Game of Thrones”.
The series follows a series of characters across a giant medieval-fantasy realm, complete with drama and excessive amounts of sex and violence. Because the show doesn’t just focus on one character’s story-line (Tyrion, Arya, Sansa, Jon, Daenerys, etc), this means that the characters can have more complex histories. Serials aren’t as segmented as much as a normal series. In regular TV, a “one hour” drama is really forty minutes with about twenty minutes worth of ads in various parts in the episode. In a complex narrative serial like “Game of Thrones”, however, a “one hour” drama is much closer to being an hour long, sometimes a bit longer. “Game of Thrones” (or GOT from now on) is also famous for killing off so many central characters (Ned Stark, for example), which continues to add to its usefulness as an example of a serial. It combines the mystery and soap opera style of characters while emerging itself in a fantasy realm, creating a hybrid show. Serials, like GOT, don’t resolve stories over an episode, but rather over a number of episodes, and even over a number of seasons, it seems. They don’t deliver the same tight, concentrated narrative each episode.
The concentrated narrative of the show also means that it is very difficult for a viewer to be “casually” watching the show. An audience member has to pay close attention in order to comprehend the show, especially in terms of story and characters. Sometimes the series (and, indeed, many other complicated narrative serials) needs to be re-watched in order for the viewer to understand or be reminded of everything that is happening or has happened, and to get what the characters are doing. On top of that, the audience is forced to be open to open to mystery and engage with the wide variety of characters in GOT (and other serials) as well as different interpretations of different events from the viewpoints of the different characters. This has caused the show to gain a lot of attention and a wide amount of fans interested in watching and even coming up with theories and ideas about characters secrets, pasts, and futures (sometimes called “fan-fiction). Thoughts as to Jon’s real parentage, if Jon Snow is really dead, what will happen with Jorah’s greyscale, and many other questions and theories.
Obviously, some of the fans look at the books for answers and inspiration for the theories. However, the shows creators have taken several liberties in recent seasons (particularly season 5), having some characters omitted from the show, adding other characters instead, having other characters go on different paths and storylines, meeting each other when in the book they are meant to be miles apart, and killing off at least half a dozen people that are still alive and well in the books. Whatever the reasons for these changes (both the good and the bad changes, although as a fan of the books I hold a stance that the vast majority of changes have been terrible and nonsense) has meant that both the shows fans and the book-readers can create many ideas as to what direction the shows will go, and the fact that the shows are now caught up on the books adds to the mystery of what the characters and story of the show will do next.
Shows like “True Detective”, “Twin Peaks”, “The Walking Dead”, and “Game of Thrones” create a world and scenario that makes people curious and then places in characters that the audiences want to watch to see what happens. The complex narrative of the serial seems to rely on the love, attentiveness, and curiosity of the audience and its fans.