Shakespearean intertexts serve narrative and ideological functions in contemporary complex TV series. While scholars and press reviewers have pointed at this fact, few steps have been taken to explore the narrative implications of the Shakespearean intertexts in complex TV series. This article contextualizes complex TV series within a social, political and economic context of 'traumatic redemption.' With regards to this, Hannah Wolfe Eisner develops the chronotope of traumatic redemption. Moving away from previous accounts of trauma which stress healing and recovery too precipitately, Eisner develops the aforementioned chronotope via exploration of dialectics of trauma and redemption in contemporary narratives. If such dialectics taking place between affirmative narrative strands and strands which engage with in-depth exploration of suffering and trauma can be used to analyze complex TV series, it is instructive to observe which function(s) the Shakespearean references and intertexts fulfill within these popular TV works using the lenses provided by this chronotope. Taking Eisner's ideas into account, the article contextualizes the ideological and political spaces where complex TV series are developed. It explains, taking into account few previous scholarly works on serial Shakespeares, the theoretical tenets of traumatic redemption to lay down the foundations of analysis of serial Shakespeares as proposed. Finally, it explores the Shakespearean intertexts of Boardwalk Empire (HBO 2010-2014) and analyzes some examples of the serial's Shakespearean influences. The conclusions reveal that Shakespeare's intertexts might be powerful indicators of the dialectics of trauma and redemption, for their intertextual interweaving with the serial's script, narrative structure and characters situate such Shakespearean intertexts to ambivalently fulfill functions that strengthen redemption strands as well as traumatic strands in this complex TV narrative
