Introduction: Considering Television Series as Literature

In this introduction, Víctor Huertas Martín and Reto Winckler argue that despite the fraught critical history of comparisons between the two art forms, reading television series as literature provides valuable perspectives from which to comprehend and appreciate one of the predominant forms of popular storytelling in the twenty-first century. After providing an outline of the recent resurgence of the literature-television association in popular discourse, the authors explain the almost complete absence of academic writing on the subject through an analysis of the complicated relations between the fields most directly involved in the study of television in the university and argue that literary theory and television-specific approaches can complement each other, rather than being in competition or mutually exclusive. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021.