Exploring Narrative

A couple wake up, go downstairs to breakfast, and do not realise that they are being watched. The couple leave the house where they seperate each to go to the seperate jobs. Both are followed. The women is taken and kept prisoner. The man comes home to find no wife and she is not picking her phone up. He calls the police who send out a search party. They say she's being held at ransom and the police we'll not negotiate. The man gives himself up in a swap for his wife and while the switch takes place a sniper takes out the terrorists.

In this I have used Todorov's equilibrium-disruption-equilibrium as well as Levi Strauss' binary opposites such as good and evil. I can also use some of Propp's characters such as the damsel in distress being the wife and the hero being the police.

Most stories end happily as the audience do not want to see characters they relate to or like, end up in bad circumstances at the end. It also doesn't feel like it has ended if it is a sad ending as nothing seems to be resolved and this makes the audience wonder if anything else is going to happen.

Spooks uses Todorov's classic narrative structure of equilibrium-disruption-equilibrium. This is what makes the start feel like the beginning of a narrative as everything is normal but as you can see from the terrorists something is obviously going to go wrong. We also feel the binary opposites that the terrorists are evil and the couple are good as we already have the thought in our mind that terrorists are bad and when they say how the couple are still in love and thats why they choose them it makes them seem very evil. We also see the couple as very normal, loving people so we are more inclined to see them as good.

Single drama/film: Margaret
A single drama would normally follow Todorov's ideas of equilibrium-disruption-equilibrium as it wants to leave on a happy ending. It would also contain binary opposites to cause this disruption.

Two-nighter: Trial & Retribution
This would follow Todorov's narrative structure only it would maybe leave it in the middle of the disruption at the end of the first episode and then resolve it in the second. This would mean they would contain binary opposites as there needs to be conflict.

Soap: Eastenders
These normally have many stories running at one time so many narratives following Todorov and Levi-Strauss' ideas. These will run for different characters and the normally have single episodes or having a runniong narrative which lasts maybe 3 episodes.

Serial: Bleak House
A series has one main narrative which follows Todorov and Levi-Strauss' ideas but in the episodes there are also other mini-narratives going on which also follow these ideas. Such as in Prison Break the quilibrium would be waking up in his cell working on his plans to escape and the disruption would be the cops inspecting his cell. In not every episode the disruption for that episode is resolved as they can leave it on a cliffhanger so the audience can wait to see next week.

Anthology Series (self-contained episodes, each based on different characters): Skins
Each character gets there own episode where they face their own Todorov narrative structure and the conflicts caused by binary opposites. Some characters however can remain in disruption and maybe have it resolved in someone else's episode or at a later time.

Long-form Series: Lost
This narrative does follow the Todorov structure to start with, i.e. it follows the equilibrium then disruption however anytime it gets close to reaching a resolution another disruption appears. All the episodes follow to try and solve this disruption.

Long-form Series with some narrative experimentation: 24
A series that never really resolves the disruption as another one always occurs however one disruption is normally resolved but that is only a part of a larger disruption e.g. putting on criminal is only one part of the fight on crime