Selling ‘Cinematic TV’ and its Consequences: Nicolas Winding Refn’s Too Old to Die Young

My article analyses promotional, extratextual and critical discourse to explore Nicholas Winding Renf’s role in packaging and promoting Too Old to Die Young [TOTDY]. Speaking at Cannes in 2019 following the screening of two middle episodes, for instance, Renf asserted, ‘This is a movie … It’s a 13-hour movie. It’s not TV! TV is like reality shows and news channels. This is the future, which is streaming’ (Setoodeh, 2019). Renf added, “Streaming is like an ocean of possibilities. The idea that I could make something that had no control was so interesting. Every day we would come to work and paint until I ran out of money’ (Setoodeh, 2019). With such comments in mind, I argue that Renf mobilizes his reputation as an auteur filmmaker responsible for creating edgy and unusual features, to promote TOTDY as autonomously produced quality television. The article scrutinizes Renf’s claim that streaming offered him complete artistic freedom, arguing instead that his work conforms to broader industry logics, and that his move to television, like that of many of film auteurs during the 2010s, must be understood partly as an attempt to exploit increasing competition between channels and platforms over premium scripted television. By taking a cultural production approach, the article goes on to argue that Renf’s promotional activities around TOTDY contribute to problematic legitimation discourses, which, as Newman and Levine (2012) outline, elevate certain forms of television, usually those aimed at fee-paying audiences, over traditional forms and genres associated with women, the working classes, the elderly and other often maligned groups. Contrary to the rhetoric of innovation and progress, therefore, the article argues that Renf’s role in branding TOTDY reinforced familiar and old-fashioned cultural and social hierarchies.