In film and television, drama is a category of narrativefiction intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-genre, macro-genre or micro-genre such as "police crime drama", "political drama", "legal drama", "historical drama", "domestic drama", "teen drama" or "comedy-drama". These terms tend to indicate a particular setting or subject-matter, or else they qualify the otherwise serious tone of a drama with elements that encourage a broader range of moods. All forms of cinema or television that involve fictional stories are forms of drama in the broader sense if their storytelling is achieved by means of actors who representcharacters. In this broader sense, drama is a modedistinct from novels, short stories, and narrative poetry or songs. In the modern era before the birth of cinema or television, "drama" within theatre was a type of play that was neither a comedy nor a tragedy. It is this narrower sense that the film and television industries, along with film studies, adopted. "Radio drama" has been used in both senses—originally transmitted in a live performance, it has also been used to describe the more high-brow and serious end of the dramatic output of radio.
Types of drama in film and television
The Screenwriters Taxonomy contends that film genres are fundamentally based upon a film’s atmosphere, character and story, and therefore the labels “drama” and “comedy” are too broad to be considered a genre. Instead, the taxonomy contends that film dramas are a “Type” of film; listing at least ten different sub-types of film and television drama.
According to the Screenwriters Taxonomy, all film descriptions should contain their type combined with one of the eleven super-genres. This combination does not create a separate genre, but rather, provides a better understanding of the film. According to the taxonomy, combining the type with the genre does not create a separate genre. For instance, the “Horror Drama” is simply a dramatic horror film. “Horror Drama” is not a genre separate from the horror genre or the drama type.
Some film categories that use the word “comedy” or “drama” are not recognized by the Screenwriters Taxonomy as either a film genre or a film type. For instance, “Melodrama” and “Screwball Comedy” are considered Pathways, while “Romantic Comedy” and “Family Drama” are macro-genres.
