Quality vs value: The Case of the kettering incident

In order to get to grips with notions of ‘quality’, this chapter briefly considers how judgements of taste have been made with regard to television more broadly and the television crime drama in particular. It also considers how the concept of ‘value’ might offer a much more useful approach, especially within the Australian context. As an Australian television show produced for an international audience on a global digital network, The Kettering Incident offers an illuminating case study for arguing that a far more useful criterion for judging the importance of current screen productions, especially crime drama series, might lie in the concept of ‘value’, rather than in the notion of ‘quality’. To understand the economic value of a television program, it is necessary to look beyond simple price estimates to the monetary, non-monetary, cultural and social values that may be derived from a screen production for all involved.