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This anthropological analysis of the Serbian TV series Muddy Tires (Kaljave Gume), which aired in the spring of 2021 on the Radio Television of Serbia, aims to point out the principal meanings which can be subsumed under the three dominant problems faced by the protagonist Vesna when she finds herself in situations that demand a reexamination of previously accepted norms regarding older members of contemporary Serbian society. The analytical procedure, also applied to film, involved the construction and study of an ethnography which consists of production, content and reception, with primary emphasis on the first two elements. In this way, it was possible to distinguish several of the more important themes that underpin the basic plot structure, which, very briefly, follows the everyday life of a sixty-year-old former pianist who, following the death of her husband with whom she had an unhappy marriage, leaves for California to visit her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Her relocation from the environment in which she has spent her entire life has thus created the conditions for her to embark on a new relationship with an elderly American whom she met online, but also for the process of conflict with and resistance to norms which have typically dictated to her, as a widow, certain emotions, and actions in accordance with them, while challenging others. This process in which her age is foregrounded in contrast to actions which are labelled "out of time" and therefore inappropriate, even unacceptable for those closest to her, also involves actions by opponents dressed up in the specific form of ageism such as the so-called well-meaning ageism, when an older person is forced to accept unwanted expressions of "concern" and "assistance". Finally, a subsidiary but haunting motif is the motif of suicide of older members of society (in the series committed by Vesna’s brother-in-law Jovan), which functions as a reflection of easier acceptance and understanding by one’s community, unlike the decision to continue life in a new, late-life relationship following the death of a spouse. Finally, it should be observed that the attitudes, actions and censure of the adult members of one’s family are dominant.

One of the most popular TV series of the 21st century, Sex and the City, continues to have a significant media and cultural impact to this day, as shown by the production of two films which are thematically a continuation of the series, and a 2021 sequel series (And Just Like That…). In terms of genre, this series could be defined as hybrid (postmodern); its postmodern characteristics are also apparent in its considerable intertextuality and spilling over into other segments of culture, while its recycling and new iterations have given it a new lease on life, so that Sex and the City could be termed a series of extended duration. This paper discusses the two decades long public life of this media text, as well as the reception of the original series and its sequel in the local Serbian context. Particular focus is placed on the reception of the Sex and the City phenomenon by members of the media generation X in Serbia, on how much of an imprint the series has made, and what meanings and values are associated with it. The study was conducted with three focus groups, and the respondents can be characterized as members of a generation of extended youth, who originally watched the series in their late media formative period. Based on discussions with respondents, the reception of the recent sequel of this series (And Just Like That…) is also analyzed in order to shed light on the question of the possible creation and content of generational semantics relating to this element of TV culture. Twenty years after it first aired in Serbia, Sex and the City continues to be a highly recognizable product of television culture, and among local members of generation X there are numerous cultural references to the series, regardless of whether the viewers are fans or critics of the series. Among respondents there is a divergence in the perception both of the original series and of its sequel (most frequently related to the respondent’s sex), with almost universal agreement regarding the open and humorous character of the original media text, which, however, has not been recognized in the current sequel. It can be said that the original series continues to represent a significant segment of this media generation’s pop culture experience, while its latest iteration appears not to have added new elements to this experience among respondents.

The TV series Normal People (2020) is based on the 2018 novel of the same name by the young Irish writer Sally Rooney. The book achieved tremendous popularity, particularly among younger audiences – so-called millennials – and the TV series only added new layers of popularity and identification. The success of both of these works can be explained by the skillful way in which Rooney has managed to link and intertwine the romance between the protagonists with the social context in which it is set, thus depicting the generational experience of growing up with the consequences of ay social and economic crisis. This is something that young people could identify with, not only in Ireland but also in other societies affected by the economic crisis which began in 2008, and to which many new crises have since been added (the latest one being the health crisis due to the pandemic), while many earlier ones still reverberate in people’s experiences. Seeking to examine how the globally broadcast TV series Normal People has resonated with the local reception context and viewers’ experiences, in this paper I focus on the aspect of reception of this series by its audience in Serbia, aiming to shed light on the dimension of "viewer enjoyment" in viewing practice and to address the question of the importance of this aspect of "watching TV" for the understanding of the meaning and social impact of television texts. It turned out that the initial idea of collecting material for analysis through an open invitation to participate in online research, with an essay response to the question about the reasons why they enjoyed watching the show (or not), was flawed, as the response rate was lower than expected, which resulted in the empirical "thinning" of the research, but also provided an opportunity to consider some of the problems in qualitative (online) research on contemporary issues and media texts. Exploring these methodological and epistemological problems unexpectedly became an important part of the paper, alongside the research results. The research itself pointed to a new type of viewer, namely, expert viewers, who have become experts through being active in complex technological environments in which they watch TV content, and which they use to inform themselves about it. In addition, the results indicate that the practice of bingeing, linked to the intensification of enjoyment and identification of female viewers, is very widespread. Finally, the most important themes mentioned in their comments were the themes of gender relations/sexuality and the questions of class and social inequality, along with mental health. A "symptomatic reading" of the comments of Normal People’s female viewers in Serbia reveals shared concerns and anxieties in dealing with a rapidly changing world, which is constantly being faced with crises – past ones, current ones, those that have just subsided or those that are yet to come, creating a new sense of "collective fragility", individual, economic or political.

Ethnic and regional stereotypes as simplified views of a people within a certain community based on their ethnic and regional affiliation are observed in this paper through the TV series “Konak kod Hilmije” (konak, local small private hotel with a restaurant), broadcast in 2018 and 2019 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, as well as in the diaspora countries of the former Yugoslavia. Ethnic and regional stereotypes were found during the analysis of the series’ rhetoric and discourse. The series is set in Sarajevo during World War II, more precisely in a restaurant with an overnight stay run by a local Sarajevo host. A handful of different characters moving through the tavern and konak has produced ethnic and regional stereotypes, in addition to their personal interests and allegedly reduced national tensions. These stereotypes run through the series as an important part of ethnic humor, whose content is primarily on an ethnic/national basis, but also contain geographical/regional or social foundations. Humor at the expense of various social groups, religious and other greetings, cultural background of the inhabitants of the old part of Sarajevo, retraditionalization in the domain of religion and language, indicates that the TV series “Konak kod Hilmije” is critical of these phenomena and processes in public discourse, mostly towards the simplified view of ethnic/regional communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the cultural memory of peoples or individual groups, there is always a certain temporal point around which complex socio-political discourses develop. In Serbia, it was the 1990s. Many studies analyzed this period from different and opposite perspectives, but research on TV programs from that era has been rather neglected. This paper focuses on TV series and audience attitudes in order to determine their role in this period. The methodology is based on secondary data from previously conducted research since it is difficult to determine the audience's attitudes towards a serial program that was broadcasted in the 1990s from this temporal distance. The reports from the RTS (Radio Television of Serbia) Research Center were used, and a brief analysis of individual achievements from that period was made to define a more general picture of the television series offered. The methods used were: historical analysis, content analysis and comparative analysis, therefore, the qualitative approach dominates. Ideology has long been identified as an increasingly common component of popular content, so particular attention was paid in this paper to detailed analysis and „reading between the lines.“ Although at first glance it was expected that clear ideological representational matrices would be recognized in TV series broadcasted in the 1990s, our research shows that this is not the case. Detailed analysis provided answers to the newly discovered meanings of a complex and never-completed process of cultural formation within the peculiarities of everyday life in a territory that was largely isolated and at a time pressed by various phenomenological and axiological categories. That everyday life was human, lively and inevitable, and its representation in the series does not cover the semantic paradigm of the most difficult of all times in contemporary Serbian history. In a deeper reading of the attitudes and thinking of the audience, it is noticed that the perception of the socio-political crisis of the time was projected on the wishes of the audience, as it pleaded for more fun, optimism and humanity, which became part of the basic viewing preferences. More than that, viewers have expressed a need for much more love content in future recorded series, which shows a certain measure of saturation, on the one hand, and a culmination of optimism and relaxation regarding the expectations of the serial content, on the other. The audience's desires were turned toward distraction from reality, wars, sanctions and dark topics.

This paper discusses the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, more specifically, its enormous popularity in the United States, Western Europe and Australia, and the absence of any reaction to the series in Serbia. By comparing themes regarded as important in western societies to the current situation in Serbia, the analysis shows that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a series that could not have gained popularity in Serbia because it uses the language of fantasy to speak about reality and pose unpleasant questions, which the Serbian public does not wish to hear.