SKAM

Another teen show that has swept adolescents across the seas is Skam. Originally a Norwegian web drama, Skam has been adapted in multiple countries and languages, including France, Germany, and Belgium to name a few. Looking at how the original product was either directly imitated nearly exactly to being changed and reworked in different versions, we got into the topic of franchising and what it means for the future of television.

According to our reading, franchise storytelling is "the creation of narratives, characters, and settings that can be used to both generate and give identity to vast quantities of interlinked media products and merchandise, resulting in a prolonged, multitexutal, multimedia fictional experience."

There are plenty of examples of franchise storytelling, one of the most pertinent being the comic book worlds of Marvel and DC. You can continue to engage with these characters in terms of video-games, cartoons, and in live-action and animation films with different narrative stories and actors depicting the same characters. Spiderman has had three different sets of actors and stories in the past two decades alone, allowing fans to continue experiencing their beloved superhero and choose which version they like best. There has been much debate over who the best Joker is with the arrival of Joaquin Pheonix's performance in Joker that came out this year.

In the case of Skam, if you are a fan there are many versions containing variations of the same characters to keep enjoying. Even though it was canceled after four seasons in Norway, other countries are continuing to make new material, deviating from the original and taking on a life of their own.

Franchise storytelling can be unstable though, as fans may reject rework of their beloved stories such as the new Charlie's Angels and the Disney live remakes. Filmgoers may feel like they're being exploited for monetary gain, and these films can be viewed as cash grabs with no originality. There is a fine line between creating an original rework and a cheap copy. Many franchise multitexts "come together as an array of versions, origin points, co-existing and overlapping".

Some may see France's portrayal of Even and Isak's romance in Season 3 as boring if they've seen the original since it follows Norway's version shot for shot. The Germany version, however, uses similar motifs and the same feeling of the original while adapting it differently to situate the culture and viewers there. Either way, with each adaptation, Skam becomes a franchise that holds a lot of sentimental value to the fans and reworks the characters and story in a quilt-like way, patching and overlapping with the original.