This practice-based, doctoral research conceptualises, articulates and realises a new mode of fictional nostalgic television I describe as hypernostalgiavision, inspired by a stillrecent wave of innovative television productions from the United States: Mad Men (AMC, 2007-2015), Stranger Things (Netflix, 2016-2025), This Is Us (NBC, 2016-2022) and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Prime Video, 2017-2023). Building on the work of Svetlana Boym in The Future of Nostalgia (2001), hypernostalgiavision explores, challenges and/or subverts nostalgia through an experimental juxtaposition of aesthetically or tonally hegemonic nostalgia with substantive content, tone or form that critiques or deconstructs the nostalgic world.
The project generates its contribution to knowledge through the creative development of a series bible and three original episode screenplays for an Australian hypernostalgiavision limited television drama Talent Quest. The series draws upon personal experience of growing up in 1980s Sydney in a multi-generational migrant family with a complex history, as Italian and Maltese foreign nationals previously living in Egypt under British occupation (mutamassirun). Extending this contribution, a speculative Australian case study evaluates the prospective industrial environment for hypernostalgiavision through Talent Quest, identifying the opportunities and constraints that may shape its development, commissioning and circulation within Australian and transnational television industries. The creative practice also generates insights relevant to interdisciplinary scholarship on nostalgia, psychology, history, memory, migration, culture, trauma and colonisation.
My research identifies hypernostalgiavision as a promising and emergent transnational mode of fictional nostalgic television. The mode offers audiences a means to navigate tension between nostalgia and progress in a world increasingly shaped by fragmentation, nostalgic indulgence and polarisation. Additionally, it demonstrates the capacity to critically examine dominant nostalgic narratives within nation-states. However, the limited scale of the Australian market and the rapidly changing global television landscape suggests that the production viability of hypernostalgiavision remains contingent upon future industrial developments.