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Category talk:British television miniseries

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Fayenatic london (talk | contribs) at 18:25, 8 January 2007 (Remove closing sig (which was only added in case the bots would have flagged the initial paste as unsigned)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Category:British television miniseries

Hello there. I was just wondering about whether this category was really accurate, given that "miniseries" is not a term that's ever really used in the UK for home-grown products; "serial" is generally used, "miniseries" being an Americanism that tends to only be used here in reference to US imports. Therefore I would suggest that the category ought to more accurately be called "British television serials". Angmering 23:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Paul, thanks for your note. Although the article miniseries agrees with you, I think it's out of date. I'm pretty sure I have read the word mini-series in UK TV guides, and I suspect that it will become more used here even if it did originate in America (wouldn't be the first time). As for the category Category:British television miniseries, I was wondering about adding a definition, at least on the British page, namely series consisting of 3 to 12 programmes. If there's only 2, it's a "two-parter". I just checked Google UK: there are 319,000 hits for "(tv,television) serial" and 123,000 for "(tv,television) mini-series", so it's certainly used here, even if it is mostly used for TV imports and exports.
Also, even if it's not used much in the UK, it is used about our productions, so I think it's a valid category. Evidence: over a dozen British shows were already in Category:Television miniseries before I moved them down. I considered renaming the new one as "British television serials", but that would emcompass longer-running series. So, I'm inclined to keep it. Fayenatic london 07:37, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see the presence of some British productions in the general miniseries category as evidence of usage here — they could just as easily have been added to the category by Americans. Definitions of the term may be trickier — the British Academy Television Awards include two-parters in the "Best Drama Serial" category, so basically it's any production of more than one but a finite number of episodes, where one over-arching story is told and concluded in the final instalment. The Forsyte Saga, for example, was a 26-part serial. Angmering 07:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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