From a Television Performance to a Television Series

Abstract

1. Since its creation, television has combined two major public institutions - media and culture. For many decades, Soviet television has given priority only to culture, and therefore has given great importance to such a television genre as TV play.

2. The first Georgian TV show (“The elderly”) was created in the early 1960s, starring twentieth-century Georgian theater stars Cecilia Takaishvili and Alexander Zhorzholiani.

3. Through the TV theater, the audience visited the theatrical art at home and did not need to go to the theater to see their favorite actors. The simultaneous nature of television turned out to be in full harmony with the specifics of the play. The viewers were convinced that they can keep an eye on everything live, real time, including the dramatic performance.

4. The eappearance of the TV theater in the Georgian media space coincides with the period when the Georgian artists began to criticize the socialist system in various fields of creativity. Most of the Georgian TV plays also strongly criticized the current regime (“Bridge”).

5. The first precedent in the history of Georgian television, when the TV product was followed by an instant response from the audience and made the first and strongest statement that public could not be indifferent to the TV product, was not a political, public or news format project, but a TV play. („Djako’s guests“).

6. The TV theater, which has created dozens of interesting TV plays, existed until the end of the last century, and then gave up the stage to a new genre for Georgian television - the TV series, originally called in the Soviet TV - multi-series TV feature fi lm.

7. Although the TV series was originally used as a propaganda tool for political ideology (“Seventeen Spring Glows”) for Soviet television, the fi rst Georgian multi-series television feature films were of interest, either modern, daily life (“Shepherd of Tushi “), or classical literary works. (“ Data Tutashkhia “).

8. The main order of modern Georgian TV companies is for two types of TV series: one, which is used to create the political mood of the viewers (“Rustavi 2” TV’s social drama “My Wife’s friends”) and the other - to dispel public dissatisfaction, to move from the main to the less important. Even for fun (TV “Imedi”, situational comedy “in the middle of the city”). In both cases, we are dealing with propaganda,
and therefore, we can consider modern Georgian TV series as propaganda television production.

9. In the 70s of the last century, TV shows and serials of the American media mostly was covered by kind of
feminist sentiments. TV screen has increased in the social environment of a full place in the militant women’s portrait, which is almost half a century later appeared on Georgian TV now (“Public broadcasting”, the TV series “is perfect i Mother “)

10. In addition to the feature series (drama), TV broadcasters are actively using documentaries, especially political ones. The format of the audiovisual narrative, which is often supplemented by the dynamic sequence of the publicist
text, makes documentary polishers particularly attractive to the viewer.

11. Georgian TV documentary includes many interesting films. It is noteworthy that in 1981, when Georgia was still a Soviet Socialist Republic, a TV documentary series “The Road” was created. (Directors: M. Kokochashvili, J. Gabunia, D.Gugunava), which begins with the origin of Georgia as a state and ends with the loss of its state independence.

12. Today, media broadcasters that do not like the existing political fi eld and serve the oppositional political forces, that want to solve the reality, are especially interested in political documentaries. Consequently, the modern Georgian political documentary TV series are in fact propaganda
products aimed at infl uencing the political vision of the population (voters).