The Noughties have been notable for the development on Turkish television of the dizi, or serial. Broadcast in lengthy slabs and interspersed with regular commercial breaks and on screen ads, the diziler can last anything up to three hours, from 20.00 to 23.00. Some private television channels find them so profitable that they broadcast one after another during daytime, early evening and prime- time.
Shot on minimal budgets, invariably in and around the Istanbul metropolis, the diziler are remarkably similar in terms of structure and form. They comprise a series of interior sequences, where characters are photographed in close-up or two-shot in shot/reverse shot sequence. The beginnings and endings of scenes are signaled through an establishing shot - a pan of the Istanbul landscape, or an aerial tracking shot swoops in towards the characters from the air.
Plots are usually highly similar, centering on love, conflict and familial strife. The generations are usually well represented, with sets of characters from the pensioner, the middle-aged, the young pro, the ingenue and the youngster age-groups. Some of the diziler might be historical in terms of situation, but the plots remain remarkably similar: love-affairs that ebb and flow, overcoming obstacles or foundering on the rocks of parental disapproval. Emotions are worn on the sleeve, and enhanced by deliberately atmospheric music reminiscent of similar material in South America, for instance.
The diziler are the modern-day equivalent of Yesilcam: cheaply-made melodramas with a series of stock characters and situations, filmed on a shoestring. They attract huge viewing figures, but are not really sufficiently differentiated from one another in terms of plot and theme to warrant serious analysis.
CEMBERINDE GUL OYA (THE ROSE AND THE THORN) ran for forty episodes between 2004 and 2005. It is notable for the fact that it was written and directed by Cagan Irmak, who later went on to have a successful film career. Students of his oeuvre will find the series fascinating, as it shows where several of his preoccupations came from: for example, a certain nostalgia for the Seventies and early Eighties (even though it was a time of military strife); an emphasis on sentimentality; and a largely superficial approach to characterization. On the other hand the dizi is notable for its use of shot/reverse shot sequences, zooms in and out for dramatic effect, and an emphasis on incident. The series shows how, unlike many of his contemporaries, Irmak's cinematic style is explicitly televisual in origin and should be treated as such. Thematically speaking he might be interested in Turkish history, but as a filmmaker he is more concerned with arousing viewers' emotions at a visceral level rather than prompting reflection on history. This is not a criticism; on the contrary, this style works very well with a certain type of movie. It is just very different.
