All posts by DQ

No laughing matter

Alex Smith, creative director at Big Boys and Stath Lets Flats producer Roughcut, considers the challenge of moving into drama when you’re known for being funny as the company launches Channel 5 thriller Coma.

Alex Smith

Comedy writers often tell me, ‘I’d love to write drama, it’d be so great not to have to be funny every scene.’ And drama writers will say, ‘I’d love to write more comedy – no obsessing over tension and plot, just write pure character.’ The grass is always greener, for producers and commissioners too.

Drama people will see shows like Fleabag and In My Skin (both commissioned via comedy) cleaning up at awards ceremonies. They’ll see the low cost, quick turnaround and think, ‘Why are we doing this £2m, CGI-heavy battle scene when we could be grabbing headlines with a joke about anal?’ And you’ll have comedy folks looking at shows like Succession, Killing Eve and The White Lotus thinking, ‘We could be sitting on a tropical beach with an £80m budget – or even £8m – shooting sexy rich people talking about money.’

Indeed, many are crossing the sacred line into the ‘other genre,’ often with real success. But it’s not easy, and it takes time to change perceptions when you’re good at doing something.

Roughcut TV is good at comedy. We’re funny! Established 15 years ago by self-proclaimed ‘funniest producer in the biz’ Ash Atalla following success with The Office and The IT Crowd, Roughcut reached commercial success with returning series Cuckoo and Trollied, and critical acclaim with Bafta winners People Just Do Nothing and Stath Lets Flats.

Scope and scale then expanded with big glossy ambulance comedy Bloods, followed by the recently RTS-nominated ‘comedy drama’ Big Boys, grown up rom-com Smothered and issue-based comdram We Might Regret This, coming to BBC2 later this year.

Stath Lets Flats

The progression into more drama-leaning comedy is a natural one, but these are still comedies. Getting taken seriously in drama is another issue. A few years ago, Roughcut launched a dedicated drama department. We hired an experienced development producer and built a slate in the image of our comedy – bold British characters, irreverent in tone but relatable stories, with something to say about how we live.

The luxury of being a true indie meant we were able to approach this in a boutique fashion at first, being instinctive and picky, as we built the right brand. One of our approaches was to work with ambitious, story-savvy comedy writers who wanted to expand their range.

Ben Edwards was one such writer and we developed an idea for talented cross-genre actor Jason Watkins. That idea is now Coma, a four-part domestic thriller launching tonight and airing on consecutive nights this week on Channel 5. Ben had just had a strange true-life moment – a fight in a park with some ‘youths,’ but it was essentially comedic. No one was hurt, no one was arrested, nothing came of it. But we identified the inherent threat in the situation, the potential for a spiralling, dramatic character piece.

Coma is a four-part thriller starring Jason Watkins (right)

What if Ben had made contact, landing a punch? What if the kid had fallen down into a coma? What if the kid’s father was a dangerous man, who thought Ben had saved his boy’s life? And from there we built out a domestic thriller.

Developing for drama and developing for comedy isn’t a hugely different process. With comedy, you’re often looking at writing talent (stand-ups, online, sitcom) with a character they’ve created, stuck in a situation. You have a central dilemma, and you build a world around it, but the first thing on the page is the character.

With Roughcut drama, we want to take that same approach. Drama writers often start by pitching plot. I don’t blame them – our juiced-up industry is in such competition to keep viewers that shows need a twist every five minutes these days. But this can cause some writers to forget the central story engine – a human being, an often flawed person who drives the story because they’re unable to change themselves. That’s where a comedy producer can be useful to a drama writer, by bringing it back to character.

The Channel 5 drama is written by Ben Edwards and directed by Michael Samuels

In Simon (Watkins), Ben has created a flawed man, a beta male, who is scared of life, scared to stick up for himself, and as such tries to cover his tracks the moment he dares try to change it. It’s funny, in places, but cautiously so. We wanted the drama to be taken seriously and for it to deliver thriller. Laughs can undermine that tension.

Coma is skilfully directed by drama heavyweight director Michael Samuels, who guaranteed the pace and the thrill, but also recognised the inherent comedy in the situation and the range Jason offers. Michael wanted to emanate shows like Fargo, which are both witty and gripping without negating one or the other, and we believe that has been achieved. We’re confident that, as a calling card, it seats us firmly in the drama world and tees up our second commission – a six-part thriller – due to be announced soon.

Roughcut Drama now has developments with most major platforms, and our team, as well as our slate, has expanded boldly under head of drama Marianna Abbotts, who as well as sourcing the best of the drama world continues to look for those comedy writers who want to expand their range. We’ll always make comedy and always pride ourselves on being market leaders in this genre. The world needs laughs – especially now. But with our first drama out the door, we can now be taken seriously while still being funny.

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High drama

Showrunner Chris Brancato and director Guillermo Navarro invite DQ to stay at Hotel Cocaine, a crime drama set in 1970s Miami at the time of a huge explosion in the drug’s use and where a hotel manager is pitted in a war between federal agents and his drug-lord brother.

By the time the US actors’ strike began in July last year, the cast and crew behind period crime drama Hotel Cocaine had reached the halfway stage in their production run, filming four out of the show’s eight episodes.

Then when the walkout ended in November, showrunner Chris Brancato and lead director Guillermo Navarro had just a few weeks to get the series back into pre-production ahead of resuming the filming schedule at the start of this year.

That Hotel Cocaine would return to complete shooting was never in doubt, Brancato tells DQ from New York, where he is prepping the show before heading to the Dominican Republic, which doubles for 1970s Miami in the series.

“We had finished the scripts prior to shooting and prior to the writers’ strike [that ran from May to September], so we were able to go shoot,” he says. “Then of course, when the actors struck, we had to stop. And I must say, probably in retrospect, that while it was frustrating to be in the middle and have to take a pause, once the writers’ strike ended, it allowed us to go back and reread the last four scripts and make improvements.

“So in retrospect, it will have turned out to be a good thing in terms of the show quality because we’ve improved the last couple of scripts. But yes, it’s been strange.”

Chris Brancato

Finishing all eight scripts before production began put the team in a strong position ahead of the widely expected writers’ strike. “But we couldn’t have anticipated the actors striking as well,” Brancato continues. “So as that was getting closer, we knew then we were headed for a shutdown. In particular, the gains made by the guilds with regard to artificial intelligence were what necessitated the strikes. So now it’s over with, and now it’s time for everybody to get back to business.”

During the shutdown, several stages were left standing at Pinewood Dominican Republic Studios, which is home to the production. “But my main concern during the break was the fact the crew, which was a couple of hundred people, were out of work, or at least out of work on our production. Obviously the strikes had ramifications far beyond just actors and writers. So I’m happy everybody’s back to work, making money,” Brancato says.

Commissioned by US streamer MGM+, the series focuses on Roman Compte, a Cuban exile and general manager of the Mutiny Hotel, the glamorous epicentre of the Miami cocaine scene in the late 1970s and early 80s.

Described as ‘Casablanca on cocaine,’ the glitzy nightclub, restaurant and hotel complex sees Florida businessmen and politicians rub shoulders with international narcos, CIA and FBI agents, models, sports stars and musicians.

And at its centre is Compte (Danny Pino), who is doing his best to keep the party going while trying to fulfil his own American dream. That dream is put under threat, however, when DEA agent Zulio (Michael Chiklis) vows to make life difficult for him unless he infiltrates the compound of his estranged brother Nestor Cabal (Yul Vazquez), one of the city’s biggest coke dealers.

With the story largely told from Roman’s perspective, viewers will also get an insight into the Cuban-American experience, which Brancato identifies as very different from other immigrant experiences in the US.

The series centres on Roman Compte (Danny Pino), manager of the Mutiny Hotel

“Most immigrant groups came to escape from poverty in their homeland or were forcibly brought to the US. In this case, Cuban Americans were welcomed because they were leaving a communist regime, and so their immigrant experience is very different from the one that has befallen other cultural and racial groups,” he observes. “We explore that and we also set the stage for a second season where Roman’s journey is further affected by his past. You always want to be using the past to create drama in the present.”

Brancato is no stranger to this kind of subject matter, having previously created Netflix’s Narcos and Narcos: Mexico. It was while filming Narcos that he first heard about the real-life basis for Hotel Cocaine, when actor Maurice Compte mentioned that his father had been the manager of the Mutiny Club.

The showrunner was immediately intrigued by the idea of a series that could be pitched as Casablanca against the backdrop of Miami’s war on drugs, but at that time his focus was on Narcos. Five years later, Compte sent Brancato some notes on his father’s life.

“I realised that his father’s true experience needed to have some fictional creations in order to create drama, i.e. an older brother who was a drug dealer, which Maurice’s father did not have, and a DEA agent pursuing him,” Brancato says. “So with the fictional construct and using his father as inspiration, I mentioned it to Michael Wright, the president of MGM+. I just said, ‘This is Casablanca on cocaine’ and he said, ‘OK, I’ll buy it.’”

By then, Brancato was overseeing another MGM series, Godfather of Harlem, so he put it on the backburner. A first draft of the script also proved to be a little too comedic. Across several more drafts, he leaned more into the “muscularity” of the concept to create a dramatic historical fiction series that is rooted in authenticity, even if it doesn’t fully reflect the full reality of life during that period.

While Compte is based on a real person, Michael Chiklis’s Agent Zulio is a fictional character

“I tried to stay true to the spirit of what Roman was doing then, which was managing a big club and being surrounded by drugs, which was true,” he says. “I created the fictional constructs of the DEA agent, and the task of spying on his drug-dealing older brother at the potential cost of losing custody of his child, and then tried to operate within the spirit of the times and obviously to create the drama that is necessary for good television.”

Brancato wrote the pilot before overseeing a small writing team that included Michael Panes, Alfredo Barrios Jr and Kyle Hamilton, who worked together to shape the show’s eight-episode arc. Then it was a race against time to finish the scripts before the impending writers’ strike.

“We weren’t sure whether there was going to be a strike, but we moved very quickly,” he notes. “And then of course, we went to shoot what we had written. Once the strike finally ended, we were able to go back and work on the last four, which were written a little hastily.”

The other key element to developing Hotel Cocaine was bringing on board director Guillermo Navarro, as Brancato recognised that a story about Cuban Americans needed to be heavily influenced by Latin American creatives. Mexican filmmaker Navarro has spent many years working as a DOP on Guillermo del Toro’s movies – he won an Oscar for Pan’s Labyrinth – and worked with Brancato on Hannibal, Narcos and Godfather of Harlem. Brancato sought him out again for Hotel Cocaine and offered him the chance to take a lead on many of the decisions that would normally be the reserve of the showrunner.

“I said, ‘Guillermo, I want you to direct this pilot, and because we’re likely going to hire crew in a Latin country, I’m going to cede to you a lot of the decisions about who we hire, costuming and production design, because many of those people will either speak English as a second language or won’t speak English at all.’ What I did was something that I would very rarely do unless it was a very trusted colleague,” Brancato says. “Guillermo has a 40-year filmmaking career all over the world, so he was able to pull people on to the team who are really the very best in whatever department they lead. We had a spectacular crew.”

The production design used a vibrant colour palette to recreate 1970s Miami

As an executive producer, Navarro has an overview of the whole series. But directing the first and last pair of episodes, he wanted to create a world that leans into the nostalgia of the time in which the show is set, rather than shooting the reality of the period. “We’re definitely creating an atmosphere of our own,” Navarro says. “It’s today’s interpretation of what it would have been like then, with the resources we have now. I’m not trying to imitate what was shot in the 70s. If you see Scarface, you’re surprised how different it is from your memories. Here we’re using a colour palette that is very rich in wardrobe and production assignments, helping tremendously to make you feel at home in the 70s. It’s very well accomplished.

“This is a very strong drama between brothers but it’s also about how a load of cocaine from Colombia changed the city, going behind the curtain of what’s happening in Miami. It’s very exciting to reproduce a period of time in history and have a perception and a reflection on that.”

Leaning on his cinematography background, Navarro also used lighting and production design to create a film language that helped to build the narrative of the story. “I like the camera to tell most of the story, so it’s a camera that moves and is flowing with the story,” he says. “It’s not documenting, it’s building scenes and building that narrative. If I cannot create a film language, there’s no point in doing it. The camera is what makes this possible.”

When it came to recreating the past, the Dominican Republic was chosen because it best represented Miami during the 70s and 80s – more so now than Miami itself. “Because Miami’s been built up, you couldn’t possibly shoot in Miami and replicate the 70s without incurring enormous expense,” Brancato says, adding that the show’s version of the Mutiny is also grander than its real-life inspiration.

But despite the show’s title – and the large quantities of cocaine taken by characters in the series – Brancato was clear that he didn’t want the show to become an advertisement for drug use. Instead, he sought to show the juxtaposition of people using cocaine for pleasure without any regard to the violence and brutality behind it.

Hotel Cocaine ‘has all the glitter of the 70s, the colour and the music and that aesthetic,’ according to Guillermo Navarro

“The tagline of Hotel Cocaine is ‘Pleasure has a price.’ The goal here is, number one, to create something very entertaining for the viewer and, number two, to allow the show to explore themes about legality and the immigrant experience in America,” he says. “Further to that, it is to understand that for every line of cocaine that’s done in a pleasure setting, there’s actually a trail of dead bodies that leads all the way back to South America. Nobody considers that when they’re sitting there at a table in a club using cocaine, and maybe they should. Maybe if they did consider that, they’d be less likely to use it. I always think about the ramifications of presenting drug use.”

Brancato says the show’s club setting also serves to highlight how “harmless” many people viewed cocaine in the 1970s as use of the drug exploded in the US without knowing its true cost. But more than just a ‘drug show,’ Hotel Cocaine – distributed by Amazon MGM Studios – is also a family series and a dark, comedic show that skewers the 1970s. Following its premiere at Series Mania, it is set to debut this year.

“I believe the show is a little bit of a unicorn in this sense,” he says. “We do the standard stuff you would do in a drug show, where people are fighting for dominance and there’s violence and tension. We also have the owner of the hotel [Mark Feuerstein’s Burton Greenberg], who exemplifies the ‘me decade,’ this relentless self-absorption, and that adds a comedic element to the show. And then through Roman, there’s a familial element. I hope those different tones work together in the same hour, because you don’t often see that blend of tones attempted.”

Navarro adds: “Get ready for a ride. It’s a fantastic story and a very engaging drama. It has all the glitter of the 70s, the colour and the music and that aesthetic. There’s a lot to look forward to.”

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Gentlemanly appearance

Production designer Martyn John and costume designer LouLou Bontemps escort DQ into the world of The Gentlemen to detail how they created the look and fashion of Guy Ritchie’s series based on his own 2019 film.

As the director of comedy crime films including Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, Guy Ritchie knows more than most about taking viewers into heightened worlds featuring an eclectic mix of characters, from gangsters to the upper-class elite.

With his 2019 film The Gentlemen, the director returned to the genre with the story of a cannabis mogul whose plan to sell his marijuana empire following his retirement triggers an array of plots and schemes from those looking to pick up his business.

A Netflix series of the same name, produced by Moonage Pictures in association with Miramax Television, now revisits that setup with a new cast and story. MAking his small-screen debut, Ritchie co-writes and produces the eight-part series, as well as directing the first two episodes.

It stars Theo James (The White Lotus S2) as Eddie Horniman, who unexpectedly inherits his father’s sizeable country estate – only to discover it’s part of a cannabis empire. Moreover, a host of unsavoury characters from Britain’s criminal underworld want a piece of the operation.

Determined to extricate his family from their clutches, Eddie tries to play the gangsters at their own game. However, as he gets sucked into the world of criminality, he begins to find a taste for it.

Guy Ritchie (right) on set with actor Giancarlo Esposito

“The world of The Gentlemen is a little bit of me,” says Ritchie. “I’m thrilled that with Netflix, Miramax and Moonage Pictures we have this opportunity to inhabit it once again. We’re looking forward to bringing fans back into that world, introducing new characters and their stories.

“The aristocracy is somewhat embarrassed by money and the old-fashioned way it receives it. It tries to hide its wealth, whereas new money likes to show it off. But when you put the two together, the old money rubs off a bit on the new and the new rubs off a bit on the old. And that fusion of the two is really where all the fun lies.”

Ritchie and Matthew Read write the series with Haleema Mirza, Billy and Theo Mason Wood, Stuart Carolan and John Jackson. Other directors include Nima Nourizadeh, Eran Creevy and David Caffrey, while the ensemble cast also features Kaya Scodelario, Daniel Ings, Joely Richardson, Vinnie Jones, Giancarlo Esposito and Chanel Cresswell.

Meanwhile, the series reunites Ritchie with production designer Martyn John and costume designer LouLou Bontemps, who were charged with bringing the world of The Gentlemen to the small screen. They have both previously worked with the director on films including The Covenant and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre.

Here, John and Bontemps tell DQ about bringing the world of The Gentlemen to the small screen, partnering with Ritchie and the key elements to each of their roles.

Theo James stars as Eddie, who unexpectedly inherits his father’s estate – and cannabis business

How did you join the project, and what was your interest in The Gentlemen?
John: I was the supervising art director on the Gentlemen film, working for the designer Gemma Jackson, and I started to design for Guy after we finished that film. We knew it was a possibility that there might be a TV series as a spin-off. When that happened, Guy approached me and asked me if I’d design it for him, based on what Gemma had done for the film.

Bontemps: I had worked with Guy Ritchie previously, and after reading the first two episodes – and of course, being a fan of the film – I knew it was going to be a brilliant project.

How would you describe the world of the show? What were your first thoughts on reading the scripts?
John: The scripts were what attracted me to the project. They took the story in a different direction from the film – I thought the first two scripts I read were even better than the film, which was very exciting. I just fell in love with it.

Bontemps: There are many worlds, personalities and interesting cultures that are represented through the costumes. The Halstead family, the Dixons, Uncle Stan, Susie Glass. They’re all unique to their surroundings, their environments, the different worlds in which they grew up. So much happens in the first two episodes, and we needed to set the tone for each of these worlds – along with a little heightened fun and style in the true Guy Ritchie fashion.

The show features many characters with strong individual style, including Kaya Scodelario’s Susie

How big a role did the film play in your work on the series?
John: It was a continuation of the work we did on the film. It was exciting to be able to continue creating this world.

Bontemps: It’s so different from the film that there really wasn’t much, costume-wise, to link them. Our lead, Eddie, also doesn’t really dress like a Mickey P gentleman [Matthew McConaughey in the film] until much further into the story, intentionally so. There is some authentic but heightened country wealth fashion that we see, versus American, but it’s not really in the same light as the film.
But there is a moment I intentionally wanted to recreate, a little homage to the film, where we follow Susie [Scodelario]’s red-bottomed shoes into the market wearing a tweed co-ord and red Birkin. It’s so much fun and such a juxtaposition to her surroundings, so very Susie. This was a reference to the scene with Rosalind Pearson [Michelle Dockery] in the film, where we follow her red-bottomed shoes into the garage.

What is your approach to starting a new job?
John: After reading the script, I will research any subject that is involved and the types of sets. For example, for Billingsgate Fish Market, I’ll visit, collect pictures, books or anything that relates to that. From that, I’ll put a mood board together to share with Guy and see what he likes. The set design develops from there.

Bontemps: Discussing the key characters with Guy – he’s the inspiration behind it all, of course. You can absorb so much from him just by talking about who these people are, their personalities, who they hang out with and so on. Then I start work on my design boards per character and key crowds or stunts. Working closely with Martyn, the production designer, and Ed Wild, the DOP, we create the whole visual concept of each scenario.

A boxing ring was among numerous set builds required for the Netflix series

Martyn, what were the key sets or locations you had to design?
John: We choose Babington House as the exterior and one or two of the interior rooms for our manor house. But the costs meant we also had to design corridors and a drawing room in the style of Babington, which we built in a disused house. The boxing world was also key. We looked at numerous locations, but as it is a returning location, we just couldn’t get the availability, so decided to build a boxing ring, based on classic clubs like Repton and Harrow. What we created was an amalgamation of those classic clubs, which Guy loves, with a modern touch.
The series also features one of the drug dealers’ flats, so we explored lots of flats in South London, which we used as inspiration. We then built a set based on our research, but tripled the size to incorporate crew.

You’ve worked with Guy Ritchie in the past. How do you like to work together at different stages of the project?
John: To ensure the dialogue feels very fresh, Guy uses a script as a guideline and is always finessing and changing things. And because of that, you have to be able to react and adapt very, very quickly. It’s an incredibly creative process, but we don’t always know what we’re going to be asked for.
For instance, they could be doing a scene in the living room or the drawing room, and Guy would decide that they were in the dining room, eating lunch, let’s say, or they could be in the grounds having a picnic. So we’ve constantly got to have things on standby or be able to get things quickly. As you can imagine, somewhere like Babington House, you’re drinking wine out of beautiful crystal glasses, eating off silver. So all of that stuff has to be to hand. It’s challenging, but exciting at the same time.

How did you mix studio builds and location dressing? Do you have a preference?
John: I like to build sets. It depends on whether you can find the right location and if it is cost-effective to use that location. For instance, if you have to blow a hole in the floor, you need to build a set. If you can walk into a country house, that is perfect, we will use that, as more often than not they have the pictures, dining table and lighting, and if you build that it is expensive to prop. You have to weigh up what you’re doing there with what you can get out of the location, how long you’ll be there and the costs of putting it into a set.

Daniel Ings (as Freddy) in his chicken suit

Loulou, who were the key characters you had to design for and how did you settle on the final choices?
Bontemps: We establish most of the key cast in the first two episodes. I start with creating a capsule wardrobe or style brief for each one, then we shop, then we fit. We also have to focus on key events, and once each character board was created, we focused on the more stylised looks, like the ball or the ‘chicken suit,’ for example. For cast like Theo, there is a style evolution throughout the show. He starts as the humble soldier returning home to chaos, then slowly evolves into the gentleman gangster we end the series with. Susie is consistent throughout in her style, Freddy [Ings] plays around a lot, often playing dress-up. Uncle Stan [Esposito) makes a statement with each look, Lady M [Richardson] has a charming, unique sense of style and mystery. Geoff [Jones] remains quintessentially Geoff throughout. There are so many characters, so many looks and many iconic moments.

What’s the balance between making new and buying/renting costumes?
Bontemps: When I can make bespoke, I do, as it allows you to really be unique with the look you’re trying to create – unique to the actor and character. I also love to use vintage, as that also allows you to be completely one-off. Renting or loaning tends to happen more with uniforms or luxury items that are totally out of budget to buy. We used a lot of loaned luxury bags and watches on this show.

What challenges did you face ? Was there anything unique or unusual about The Gentlemen?
Bontemps: There were just so many looks, so many story days, so many characters, so many costumes that each episode really felt like its own film. You have to be careful to keep each character unique and true to who they are, who Guy Ritchie wants them to be, and to not overlap with anything you’ve done before. You can’t be too samey but you have to make it believable too. This was an insanely busy shoot from start to finish.

A country house is another key setting in the crime comedy

As the industry faces a difficult time, how is your job affected? What can you do to mitigate that?
Bontemps: I am incredibly fortunate that Guy Ritchie keeps me busy. Experiencing strikes [in the US] like those we’ve just had so soon after the pandemic has made everyone realise how vulnerable we are in this industry. There isn’t a safety net for crew. Most people lost their savings to the pandemic; those savings cover costs when you’re out of work. I recently visited New York and caught up with colleagues there who have been out of work for over a year. That’s devastating. I hope the industry gets back up on its feet as soon as possible.

What are you working on next?
John: I’m currently working on a big-budget Guy Ritchie film for Skydance Media called Fountain of Youth.

Bontemps: Since The Gentlemen, I have worked on [Ritchie feature] The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which comes out in April, and I cannot wait for the world to see it. It’s set in the late 30s and early 40s, some of my favourite decades in fashion history, and it’s another job where I am incredibly proud of what my team and I achieved together. Don’t miss it!

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Crossing over

Thereza Falcão and Alessandro Marson, the writers behind Elas Por Elas (Crossed Paths), reveal why they wanted to remake this 1980s telenovela for modern audiences and outline how they did it.

When it first aired in 1982, Brazilian telenovela Elas Por Elas (Crossed Paths) had all the hallmarks of the genre: suspicious deaths, love triangles, wrongful arrests, scheming and betrayals.

Now more than four decades later, the Globo series has been reimagined for a new audience. Created by Thereza Falcão and Alessandro Marson, based on Cassiano Gabus Mendes’s original story, it explores the parallel lives of seven friends, played by Isabel Teixeira (Pantanal), Thalita Carauta (All the Flowers), Deborah Secco (A Second Chance), Karine Teles (Pantanal), Mariana Santos (The Big Catch), Maria Clara Spinelli (Edge of Desire) and Késia.

Produced and distributed by Globo, the show’s artistic direction comes from Amora Mautner.

Here, Falcão and Marson tell DQ about their interest in remaking Elas Por Elas, their writing partnership and the daily demands of producing a long-running telenovela.

Alessandro Marson and Thereza Falcão

Introduce us to the story of Crossed Paths.
Crossed Paths tells the story of a group of seven friends who haven’t met up for 25 years. One of them, Lara, invites them to a reunion and from this reunion their lives undergo radical transformations.

Who are the main characters we follow through the series?
The seven friends are Lara (Secco), Taís (Estácio), Helena (Teixeira), Adriana (Carauta), Renée (Spinelli), Natália (Santos) and Carol (Teles). Lara is a rich and refined woman, Taís is a successful model, Helena is the president of a cosmetics company, Adriana is a veterinarian, Renée owns a bakery, Natália has a small farm that grows orchids, and Carol is a neuroscientist. In addition, there is Taís’s brother, detective Mário Fofoca, plus Helena’s son Giovanni and Adriana’s daughter Isis.

What can you tell us about how the story unfolds?
After the reunion, issues that were not resolved in the past return to the surface. Helena, for example, became pregnant by Jonas, who was Adriana’s fiancé. Faced with this, Jonas abandons Adriana to marry Helena. Lara doesn’t know, but her husband Átila is having an affair with Taís. And there is also a mysterious death: Bruno, Natália’s brother, died at her friends’ last meeting and she suspects one of them is to blame for his death.

What key themes or topics did you want to explore through the drama?
It’s a plot about friendship. There’s a lot of humour, there’s suspense, there’s melodrama – it’s a complete telenovela. Mário, Taís’s brother, is a detective and is hired by Lara to find out who her husband’s lover was. What he doesn’t even realise is that it’s his own sister. It’s a plot with high doses of comedy and a lot of romance, as Lara and Mário will fall in love.

There is also the impossible love story between Giovanni and Isis. Their mothers hate each other and Helena, our villain, will do anything to separate the couple because she doesn’t want her son involved with Adriana’s daughter. The reunion between Jonas and Adriana, in fact, will also yield strong emotions, as he realises he was never able to forget her. And the death of Bruno supplies good doses of suspense. There are emotions for all tastes.

You previously worked together on two period telenovelas – Novo Mundo and Nos Tempos do Imperador, which faced criticism for some of its characters and storylines. Two years on, how do you look back on that?
Novo Mundo did not cause controversy, it was a very well-accepted telenovela, both by critics and the public. Nos Tempos do Imperador was a telenovela that covered extremely complex themes. The history of Brazil, in itself, generates heated discussion and debate. We had centuries of slavery, which is shameful for Brazil as a nation, and we were one of the last countries to abolish this aberration. We also talked about the Paraguayan War, which was a terrible war.

Dealing with these heavy topics is always very delicate, and extreme care must be taken when approaching them. But looking back, we believe that raising a discussion about such serious issues is positive and necessary to evolve as a people. We are of the opinion that it is necessary to know history so as not to repeat mistakes already made.

Why did you decide to make Elas por Elas your next project, rather than continue in the historical period?
We had a desire to try other languages, to try telling a story that takes place today, with contemporary elements. And this was in line with the wishes of the network, which wanted to make a current telenovela to air at 6pm.

The telenovela follows seven friends whose lives change after a reunion

Why were you interested in updating the original Elas por Elas series for a modern audience?
Because we saw the potential for a good adaptation. It is a novela that was written more than 40 years ago but, in a way, remains current. Of course, we made changes; the world is very different. But the essence of the story remains quite pertinent.

What did you want to keep from the original series, and what elements did you decide to change or update?
We kept the main characteristics of the central characters, but transformed them into women who live today. Márcia in 1982 was a woman who lived at home and took care of her family. Her 2023 correspondent, Lara, starts the telenovela like this but soon takes over the law firm of her deceased husband. The same happened to Helena. Her version from 40 years ago was a housewife. She is currently president of the family company. There are many examples of changes, but seeking to respect the essence created by Cassiano Gabus Mendes. We also inserted a trans character, who did not exist in the 1982 plot.

How would you describe your partnership – and how do you work together on the series?
We have known each other for many years and this makes working as a pair a lot easier. Before the telenovela existed, we worked a lot on the synopsis, the concept of the story, the profile of the characters, and we define all of this together. Once the synopsis is approved and the telenovela goes into production, we begin writing the chapters. We wrote the first 24 chapters without the help of collaborators, to get the characters’ embouchure and the dynamics of the story, and to be very secure regarding the narrative we will present. Twenty-four chapters are the first month of the telenovela, it’s the beginning of everything. From there, we start working with the team and go with them until the end.

How do you work with other writers on the series?
We meet in person to make the stories and then distribute them to our collaborators, who work on the scripts. After that, we oversee the final writing of all chapters. It’s an industrial scheme – we need to guarantee the production of six chapters per week, with more than 150 pages of script being delivered to production every Monday. Our team currently consists of Carol Santos, Isabel Muniz, Lalo Homrich, Letícia Mey and Wendell Bendelack, with Leusa Araújo and Denise Dweck Butter working in research. It is a very talented team, on which we can count unconditionally. From time to time we also hold meetings with all collaborators to talk about the plots and characters.

There are seven protagonists in the series. How did you ensure they all get an equal share of screentime?
There is no concern about equal time. We started very committed to multi-protagonism, to making chapters in which everyone appeared and had prominence. But as the story progressed, we felt the need to focus on some happenings/events. These happenings vary and, in some chapters, some of the protagonists appear more than others. Soon after, other stories begin and other situations and characters gain prominence. And so it goes.

Rayssa Bratillieri and Filipe Bragança as Isis and Giovanni

The setting of the story moves from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro. What impact did that have on the story?
Moving the story to Rio brought some subtle variations in the characters. Mário and Renê (who is now called Edu), for example, were characters who were always involved in nightlife, meeting in nightclubs, always surrounded by neon lights and cigarette smoke. Now they are more seen in daytime; Edu has become a personal trainer and Mário works a lot during the day. But it is difficult to determine which changes were caused by the change of city and which were necessary to adapt to the present day.

How involved are you through production? Do you work with the directors to shape the look of the drama?
We stay in touch constantly, whether by phone calls, messaging or email. Both direction and production keep us informed of everything that is happening, and we are consulted whenever there is a need to change something. Our director Amora Mautner and our producer Isabel Ribeiro are incredible professionals, highly qualified and experienced. Without their talent and competence, this telenovela would not exist.

What challenges did you face writing and making the show?
There are daily challenges. There are many chapters, and the big question is how to keep the public interested and following the same story for so long. Viewers’ attention is increasingly dispersed; there are so many things happening at the same time, so many things to pay attention to. Telling a story with 170, 180 chapters and making it interesting is, without a doubt, the biggest challenge telenovela writers face.

What are the key ingredients needed for a successful telenovela?
In theory they are: having a good story to tell, presenting thought-provoking cliff-hangers daily and creating charming characters that bring up different feelings in the audience and the desire to follow them. In practice there is something more, a certain magic that needs to be present too. Some stories have everything to [be successful] yet aren’t. Others have structural flaws but are successful regardless. Art has these things; there is no formula for success, but we work tirelessly pursuing it.

Is there a secret to keeping audiences hooked by such a long-running series?
If it exists, it remains a secret. Joking aside, you need to take every precaution to ensure the story moves forward every day. In a series, you take the shortest route. The telenovela takes the long way around. But this longer path has to be more beautiful and offer more enchantment so that whoever is travelling it finds it worth following and remains interested in reaching the end by going that way.

Why might the series appeal to international audiences?
The theme of reunion is a recurring theme present in dozens of series and films. It is a theme that speaks directly to the hearts of all people, regardless of their culture. We talk about friendship, about overcoming, about women who support each other and who love each other. And we also talk about love in different ways. These are universal themes that are easily understood by any audience.

What would you like to do next?
After a vacation? We’re exhausted when we finish a telenovela – it’s a huge amount of work, over a long period of time. It’s seven days a week, many hours a day. But of course, after that, we will start thinking about a new story to present. It could be a new telenovela, a series, a film…

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Love lessons

Spanish author Noemí Casquet tells DQ about watching her novel Zorras (Tramps) become a television series, the themes behind the story and her own on-screen cameo.

A series about women, friendship, self-love – and a lot of sex – Spanish drama Zorras (Tramps) is based on the trilogy of novels by author Noemí Casquet.

Debuting last year on Atresmedia and recently playing to audiences at the Berlinale Series Market, the show introduces three women who appear to have nothing in common but soon discover they each have a desire to have fun, take risks and empower themselves.

Alicia (played by Andrea Ros) longs for more excitement than her boyfriend Diego and life in her hometown can offer; Diana (Tai Fati) wants to break free from her traditional parents and the stigmas society places on her; and Emily (Mirela Balic) holds a secret that betrays her outwardly confident, energetic and impulsive persona.

The trio decide to found a new social club, the Sex Friends Club, where they have only one goal in mind: to fulfil their sexual fantasies.

But Zorras isn’t just about sex. It is also a story of friendship and female solidarity that aims to shine a light on real women, flaws and all.

Produced by Atresmedia TV in collaboration with Morena Films, the eight-part dramedy is based on Casquet’s novel of the same name, which has sold more than 100,000 copies and was followed by sequels Malas (Bad) and Libres (Free). Atrestmedia TV International Sales is handling distribution.

Here, Casquet speaks to DQ about the themes behind her novel, how involved she was in adapting the series for television and her own on-screen role.

Noemí Casquet

What are the origins of your trilogy of novels? Why did you want to tell these stories?
The origins were the need to find erotic novels with a feminist base. I love reading novels in general, and in the search for erotic novels, I realised they always revolved around women and men. Men were portrayed as the great liberators of women. Women were always portrayed as deeply troubled, and men were the ones who introduced them to a whole new world. Rarely, if ever, was the focus on the friendship between women in a process of sexual liberation. That’s what inspired me to write these novels – attempting to centre sexual liberation through friendship.

What were the main themes or ideas that you wanted to discuss?
Sexual liberation, without a doubt, and friendship. The tenderness that can exist between friends. The indispensable companionship and role that friends play in our lives.

I believe that, for a long time, the focus has been on romanticising relationships and couples in general, like the romanticisation of a man and a woman as a couple. Many books have been written and many movies have been made. There is a lot of cultural content around this, but we lack cultural content about friendship between women, and it is something essential.

What were your first thoughts about the novels being adapted for television?
My main thoughts were, ‘Wow! Really?’ I felt joy and then, on the other hand, a lot of fear. In adaptations, things get lost. One of my biggest concerns was that my characters would change. I insisted that the characters maintain the same characteristics. That’s what makes the story make sense, because of who they are in the end. I felt a lot of joy and a little fear too, of course.

As for the adaptation, what happened is that Alice’s universe [the one in the books], the framework of her thoughts and her psychological arc, was expanded and the universe of Emily and Diana came into play. That was fantastic because it truly was a change made to structure it in the audiovisual format, and it was one of the major changes that I believe greatly enriched the plot and experiences of all the characters.

Friendship is a particularly important theme in the show. How did you want to portray the lives of the main characters together and separately?
Friendship is at the centre of both the trilogy and the Zorras series. I believe it is crucial to reflect the importance of friendship. Many times, there is a prioritisation of romanticisation, where the focus is on the girl or boy meeting someone in a romantic context rather than developing friendship first.

In the end, it’s true that this portrayal has been achieved, both collectively and individually. You realise that when [the central characters] are apart, they are fighting numerous battles and facing obstacles, dealing with issues with their parents, undergoing their own personal evolution that they might not allow themselves, perhaps having a bit more fear to do certain things or venture into certain worlds. However, when they are together, they are capable of anything. They dare to do many more things thanks to the companionship of the three. That is the essence of Zorras.

How involved were you in the project, from its development and the scripts to being on set for shooting?
I took part in the development phase and the sales phase, when I went to Atresmedia to talk to them about the project. I was there as an advisor to the scriptwriters and I accompanied them throughout the learning process. As for the script, I was also reviewing or changing certain things, but my role was never as a creator, because it was important to leave room for other people. There are professionals who know a lot more about screenwriting. I was happy to give space in that sense.

You also have a role on screen as Carmen. What can you tell us about your character, and your experience appearing in the show?
Carmen appears in the novels but in a very distorted way, when the characters go to a sex shop and buy an erotic toy for Diana. It goes quite unnoticed, but for the series there was an intention to develop this a bit more to explore Diana’s bisexual tendency.

I loved appearing in my own series, in a scene that I had envisioned in my own head. It was very interesting because it happened very similarly to how I imagined and wrote it. It was like stepping into my own universe.

My experience filming was very interesting. I was clear I wouldn’t like to be an actress; it’s a very tough job. I don’t have that vocation, so I valued even more the work of all the people involved. I also got to see the entire team involved in filming; it’s impressive, and we are never aware until we see it and experience it. But the experience was a lot of fun. I had a great time, but I wouldn’t dedicate myself to it.

Did you also work with the main cast – Andrea Ros, Tai Fati and Mirela Balic?
They were the characters. It was impressive because there was very little interpretation; they put very little effort into preparing the characters because it basically involved being themselves. In fact, throughout the series, there are many lines that go beyond the script because it naturally comes to them how to say it, and that is crucial. It’s very interesting because we really wanted to maintain that essence.

Zorras focuses on the friendships and sex lives of three women

What do you think about the way sex is discussed and portrayed on screen – and how did you want to change that with Zorras?
For years and years, we have witnessed a distorted and fictionalised reality, and even a considerably idealised portrayal of sex on screen. We’ve seen depictions of women as quite submissive or at the mercy of men. Penetration has been the central axis of representing sex. You’d put on a movie, and you could see a few kisses, and immediately they are in bed, looking at each other romantically. No one grabs a condom from anywhere, and within 30 seconds, if that long, she has a super orgasm having barely touched herself, just through penetration.

Another thing that amuses me about sex scenes is that after going at it from every angle, a character grabs the entire duvet to go pee, as if [concerned that the other] person might catch a glimpse of a nipple. It seems quite hypocritical and unnatural, and somewhat dangerous, how sexuality is presented on screen because, in the end, we are beings who act by imitation, and no one has taught us a foundation of sexual education.

Everything we learn is through mainstream cinema and later through porn, so mainstream cinema obviously has a significant influence on how we engage in sex. That’s one of the things we wanted to break with Zorras. We wanted to portray a diversity of sexual orientations, lesbian scenes where the two girls are not perfect. They are real, they are two women. In one of the most important scenes, Diana sleeps with Ruth, and they are two women who are plus-sized, engaging in sex on screen. It is crucial because it has rarely, if ever, been seen on screen.

Through Zorras, we wanted to represent the broadness of sexuality and to break stigmas and prejudices. Zorras gives permission to fully enjoy sex.

Did you work with intimacy coordinators on the series?
Yes, this was one of the significant initiatives. In the past two years, we have seen at a general level, especially in the production scene in the US and Europe, the addition of a role that should have always been there.

As someone who advocates for sexuality, it was very interesting to see how intimacy is handled on screen and to call for the continuation of having intimacy coordinators in all films where there is any kind of connection or intimacy, whether it’s a simple kiss or a sexual scene. It is crucial so that the team, especially the cast, can be in sync and feel comfortable to offer their best and, above all, not to cross boundaries that might otherwise be exceeded.

What have you made of the reaction to the series since it launched last year?
The reaction was wonderful. Seeing Zorras prominently featured in the news was very interesting, especially considering the societal significance of [the word ‘zorra’], how it has stained women for a long time, and how we have reclaimed such words, so they don’t hurt us anymore. Most importantly, the audience often mentions that it feels very natural and that this kind of series was needed, with scenes between people of all body types, skin colours and genders. Cultural representation is essential for us to feel represented on the big screen and for a sense of liberation.

Why might the series appeal to international audiences?
Because we need more series that show the feminist reality of women, a reality of their sexual liberation. On many occasions there is a romanticisation around this liberation and around sexuality in general. We see many [sex] scenes that are in the shower and they are absolutely perfect, but we have all fucked in the shower and we know that this is not so.

I also believe series where friendship is the main point are essential. In this way we will also stop making films where it seems that the liberation of women is only established through the help of a man. Here there are women who save women. This is one of the basic pillars of feminism. We need more of them. I am grateful and proud that it has been one of the signs that things can be done differently, and hopefully it has inspired many – including an international audience.

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Introducing Echo

Stefan Draht, creative director of Sarofsky, walks DQ through the creative process behind designing the title sequence for Marvel Studios’s Disney+ series Echo, which follows the title character on a journey to reconnect with her Native American roots.

While some television series have done away with title sequences, replacing them with a single title card, others have proven that these short films can still play a vital role in establishing the tone and style of the show viewers are about to see.

One such example is Echo, the Disney+ series from Marvel Studios, which follows Echo, aka Maya Lopez, a deaf Native American Choctaw and former leader of the Tracksuit Mafia working for Wilson Fisk – otherwise known as Kingpin.

Taking place five months after events in Hawkeye, which introduced the character, Echo sees Maya (played by Alaqua Cox) being pursued by Fisk’s criminal empire. But when she finds herself heading home, she must confront her own family, reconnect with her roots and face up to her legacy.

Here, Sarofsky creative director Stefan Draht, who led the creative process on the main titles for Echo, tells DQ about the role these sequences still play in television and how the opening credits for the series were designed and produced.

Stefan Draht

In the modern streaming age, where viewers can choose to skip title sequences, what role do you think they still play in setting the scene for a series?
We tend to think of a good opening title as an ‘on ramp’ to an experience. Often when creating a title sequence, there are specific themes and ideas being explored that are a subset and often subtext of the show itself. This means that what gets built into the title sequence is a re-contextualising and remixing of the show’s ideas — so it’s a different, but related, take. It primes the viewer.

What are the ingredients that some of the best opening credits share?
The best opening-credits sequences express some of the core thoughts and feelings of the show as well as act in dialogue with the show’s content. They don’t try to just explain or summarise the show, but rather craft a world of ideas that upon first viewing seem intriguing and upon subsequent viewings continue to grow in meaning with the added context of each episode.

They all have a perspective – a take that is simultaneously appropriate to the show and unique from it.

How do you approach creating a sequence for a new show?
The process always begins by talking to the show’s creators and understanding what their intentions for the show are, what ideas they find interesting about the show and what they hope a viewer will feel after watching the sequence going into the show. Then we explore within these ideas and try to find a small set of those threads that we find interesting, unique and powerful. A really good title sequence should have one primary idea that can be quickly and easily articulated. This provides a strong foundation to build on visually and to fold additional ideas into.

Often this process leads us into finding visual metaphors for expressing complex and layered ideas from the show – iconic imagery that can capture many ideas in a single moment or a visual language that captures something essential about the show.

The Echo title sequence hints at several themes that are prevalent throughout the series

And what were your first thoughts when it came to working on Echo?
Echo contains a lot of complex ideas and several powerful themes, so our first thoughts were that we needed to find a core idea that could accommodate these themes – a diverse set of imagery – and span time and place. In seeing what the vision was for the show, we were also confronted with the notion that this title sequence needed to both feel like a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe visually and also stand a little bit outside as something unique and different for Marvel’s first Spotlight show.

You’ve worked with Marvel Studios before (Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier). What do they look for in the openings to their movies or series?
Every show has something unique going on despite being a part of the same broad cinematic universe. This means each show is looking for a title sequence that feels appropriate to its themes, characters and goals while maintaining that baseline Marvel quality. As a result, it can be hard to generalise beyond saying that everything should feel right for the specific show and give the viewer something new and engaging.

As partners, are they very prescriptive in what they want? How did you work together to develop a concept?
Everything about film is a team sport. Initially, we are tasked with crafting that core perspective in response to our understanding of the show – and while this exploration may have some guardrails, there is no prescription. Quickly the process becomes pretty collaborative and a dialogue of ideas. At the end of the day, the creators know the show better than anyone and they work with us to make sure our unique take evolves in a way that feels in concert with the show while retaining that core idea.

For Echo, we had the opportunity to discuss the show’s ideas with all of the key contributors throughout the process. This collaboration allowed us to zero in on that central theme and then helped us to focus the imagery in a way that works for the show; showing enough, but not too much, of certain characters or ideas, and balancing the tone to reflect the careful balance the creators struck for the show.

How much of the show material can you see/read before starting work on a title sequence?
The volume of show material we are exposed to as we work on a sequence can vary widely between shows. There are times when we begin concepting very early in the process, with nothing but a draft of the screenplay, and other times when the show’s edit is nearly complete. In the case of Echo, we were able to digest preliminary edits of the episodes in order to understand not just how the ideas were translating to the screen but also what the show’s tone and visual style was. Additionally, it was important that the title sequence had a level of specificity to the imagery of the show, which required that we work with footage filmed for the show itself.

As well as the title character, the Marvel Studios show features classic villain Kingpin

Maya is a unique character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How did you want to reflect this?
We began by asking what it is exactly that makes Maya unique and how her story is being told in the series. While there are many characteristics of her person that make her stand out, it actually felt more appropriate to focus on the things that make her story human and relatable. The complex relationship she has with her past, with the idea of family, home and culture – the way she feels haunted by her own life – is what makes her the person she is, even more than any of her physical characteristics. So it was in these themes that we found inspiration.

The Echo opening is notable for its colours, character close-ups and the use of landscapes and shadows. Why did you make these choices and what did you want to achieve?
Maya is a very complex character living in a world of contrasts, layers and dangers. We had to find a way to express these dichotomies and tensions visually, and using this idea of two worlds provided a strong foundation. Sometimes this expresses itself through a blending and nesting of different worlds within each other, while other times this is expressed through the intrusion of shadow or silhouette into a scene – another world lurking beyond this one.

Shadows are a richly metaphorical image. They can represent history, danger, inner narrative and visual tension. In the show, there is a subtle but important reference to shadow puppetry as a storytelling tool, a way of recapitulating the past while linking the idea of hands with that of history and communication. In this way, quite a few of the show’s important ideas are tied together with this one visual metaphor.

Establishing a sense and feeling of place was important to the show’s creators from the very beginning. The landscapes and colour palette helped us to capture this. The wide grandeur of the Oklahoma landscapes is presented in opposition to the density and geometry of New York City, while the breadth of the environment is often juxtaposed with the intimacy of a character’s face. These close-ups invite the viewer to wonder what the character is thinking, and the imagery within gives a hint.

The warm colours in general feel a bit earthy, drawing inspiration from nature elements, while the cooler colours create opposition, contrast and counterbalance. We wanted the sequence to feel rich and colourful but without feeling hyper-saturated or aggressively stylised, which caused us to look for opportunities to increase contrast between colours without needing to crank up saturation.

Draht’s team ‘backed away’ from some of the more violent imagery initially included in the sequence

What other elements did you want to include and why?
Hands are an additional visual refrain – almost like a chorus throughout the sequence. Maya obviously communicates with her hands and they are an evocative visual element in the show. It seemed appropriate to use them in a similar role for the title sequence but in a more expressive way.

How did you choose the music that accompanies the sequence?
We rarely inform the final musical decisions for a title sequence and we are grateful for the work composers and music editors do to make the sequence sound just right, complementing or even enhancing our visuals.

What techniques or equipment did you use?
There was a lot of trickery involving manipulating and layering imagery from a lot of sources – combining show footage with stock footage, and elements created out of whole cloth in CG. Many of the camera moves in the sequence were simulated or heightened by reconstructing flat 2D source footage in 3D so that a camera could be moved through the space. Sometimes this required re-projecting 2D scenes onto 3D reconstructions, and other times this was achieved by completely rebuilding an idea in three dimensions.

All of the compositing work was done using Adobe After Effects, and the CG elements were created using Cinema 4D. Editorial work for timing and pacing was done in Adobe Premiere.

Can you tell us about some of the ideas that didn’t make the cut?
The most interesting ideas can be seen on the screen. Things that didn’t make the cut were more specific shots than entire ideas. At one point, there were shots that leaned a bit more into that ‘M’ rating [for mature audiences], and went a little far in implying the violent elements of the show. It feels better that we backed away from those in the opening sequence.

Alaqua Cox leads the cast of the Disney+ series

What are the biggest challenges you must overcome when creating a title sequence – and did Echo offer any notable obstacles?
The hardest part of creating a compelling title sequence is often the process of curating ideas and not letting too many new ideas later in the process dilute the core concept that inspired everyone at the beginning. As creatives, we are always finding new visual connections, and it’s inevitable that additional ideas creep into the process. It’s a challenging balance because this is generally a good thing in that you want inspiration and creativity throughout the production process, but you don’t want to stray too far from a strong central concept.
The unique challenge Echo offered was how many interesting and complex ideas the show wrestles with. We had to be careful not to allow ourselves to accidentally overload the visuals with too many layers of meaning.

Some series simply use a title card to mark the start of an episode. What is the future for opening-credit sequences?
I hope the future has a place for both quick, impactful title cards and longer, more elaborate sequences, because we love creating both – and as viewers, we love to see both. It all comes down to appropriateness, and different shows need different things. For example, the impact of the title cards we created for [Netflix series] Beef feel really right for the show, while I’m not sure Echo would have felt quite right with just a simple title card. I think viewers appreciate both, and the fact people say things like, ‘I didn’t want to skip the intro’ leads me to believe people appreciate the experience when it’s done right.

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Stealing the Shōgun

Writers and executive producers Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks discuss their ambitions for Disney+ drama Shōgun, an epic tale set in 1600 Japan, and explain how they pushed for authenticity throughout the series.

First published in 1975, James Clavell’s historical novel Shōgun tells of the epic saga behind Pilot-Major John Blackthorne’s integration into the struggles and strife of Feudal Japan, beginning with his shipwreck on the edge of an unfamiliar world and his rise from mistrusted foreigner to valued advisor and Samurai.

The novel was adapted for the screen in 1980, when a five-part series debuted on US network NBC. Now, more than 40 years later, Clavell’s story has been dramatised once again for a new audience – in a show that boasts spectacular costume and production design and a host of standout performances to give this epic story the scale and authentic detail it demands.

The new series, also called Shōgun, opens in Japan in 1600 at the dawn of a century-defining civil war. Lord Yoshii Toranaga, who is played by series producer Huroyuki Sanada, is fighting for his life as his enemies on the Council of Regents unite against him. But when a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village, its English pilot John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) comes bearing secrets that could help Toranaga tip the scales of power and devastate the formidable influence of Blackthorne’s own enemies – the Jesuit priests and Portuguese merchants.

Toranaga’s and Blackthorne’s fates then become inextricably tied to their translator, Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), a mysterious Christian noblewoman and the last of a disgraced line. While serving her lord amid this fraught political landscape, Mariko must reconcile her newfound companionship with Blackthorne, her commitment to the faith that saved her and her duty to her late father.

Produced by FX Productions for US streamer Hulu and Disney+ worldwide, the 10-part drama also stars Tadanobu Asano, Hiroto Kanai, Takehiro Hira, Moeka Hoshi, Shinnosuke Abe, Tokuma Nishioka, Yasunari Takeshima, Yuki Kura, Fumi Nikaido, Tommy Bastow, Yuka Kouri, Yoriko Doguchi and Ako.

Here, showrunner Justin Marks and executive producer Rachel Kondo, the husband-and-wife team who created the series together, tell DQ about adapting Clavell’s novel and their dedication to authenticity when producing the Japanese- and English-language series.

Huroyuki Sanada in Shōgun, which is based on James Clavell’s 1975 book

What were your guidelines when adapting the novel and the real history for the screen?
Marks: It was really important that we found a reason why this story needed to be told again today. This moment in Japanese history, where many cultures were coming to Japan to, in classic colonialist fashion, insert themselves and assert their own will, was a really interesting period to explore from a more intersectional lens, from this place that actually Clavell himself was exploring it from, which is this idea of how do we encounter other cultures and how do we encounter ourselves in those cultures, and can we really belong to another culture? And if we can’t, how do we find our place? All of those questions I thought were really interesting and worth [asking] again.

Kondo: We had this book and we’re all living in the after-effects of its success. So after reading the book, we realised our responsibility was to almost ask the same questions he asked, just through our lived experience of this day and age.

How did you use the source material during the scriptwriting process?
Kondo: We had a wonderful blueprint in the book. We had a guiding light and a source of inspiration that we went back to time and time again. James Clavell was a master plotter; a man of great talent when it came to plotting and character development. We had all of that to uphold the process for us.

The series also stars Cosmo Jarvis and Anna Sawai

With three main protagonists, and many more characters, how did you keep a grip on where the perspective of the story lay?
Kondo: It always came back to the braid, the braid of our three main leads – the character of Mariko, the character of Blackthorne and, of course, Lord Toranaga. Their woven story and individual stories, those were always the point we returned to. It’s always their story.

When you’re writing the script or even just taking on the project, you must be thinking about the ambition and the scale of the show you’re hoping to produce. What were some of the things at the front of your mind?
Marks: Well, hopefully we weren’t thinking about it. If we knew what we were getting into when we got into it, we probably wouldn’t have gotten into it. It’s a lot. It makes your knees weak when you get out there on the day and see what you’re about to do. There’s really an incredible appetite today when it comes to stories like this being told in a way that we haven’t seen before. For too long, stories like this might have been told in a fashion where our historical research just stops at our shores, and what we were really looking to do was reach across to our partners in Japan through our producer Hiroyuki Sanada, who also happens to be our star, and Eriko Miyagawa to hire Japanese crew to come to British Columbia and work with our Canadian crew to hopefully render something more authentic than we’ve seen before.
Forget about the scale of what we’re shooting on any given day, the scale of prep is just so far spread out because of the raw volume of meetings you have to do, in two languages, for weeks and weeks, if not months and months, before shooting certain scenes. There’s a Noh theatre performance where these Noh actors were brought in from Japan and we put on a show for the whole crew, a live show, and recorded it, with our actors in character. There was months of preparation to get it right. When you’re doing that, you’re not relying on your own instincts. You’re relying on the knowledge of the Japanese producers around you to do that.

Shōgun streams on Hulu in the US and on Disney+ internationally

In terms of that authenticity, is there something we should look out for that you’re most proud of or something that was very hard to achieve that stands out for you?
Marks: There’s a moment in episode two when Mariko is offering Blackthorne a bath. Her ladies-in-waiting shuffle in behind her and the lead lady-in waiting, Setsu, is performed by Akiko Kobayashi, who is also one of our show movement advisors for women. She is the definition of why you can’t fake what we’re trying to achieve. The way she moves [in that scene] across that Tatami [mat] is only done after a lifetime of practice to be able to move that way. You can’t just teach someone in two weeks how to look like that. When you’re looking at that, you’re looking at the real thing, and it’s just a throwaway detail right behind one of our actresses in one frame. But I think it speaks to the level of precision we were after.

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Family misfortunes

Tout va bien (Everything is Fine) creator Camille de Castelnau tells DQ about stepping into the showrunning hot seat for the first time on her own series, which follows a family dealing with the fallout from a devastating medical diagnosis.

Camille de Castelnau made her name as a writer on standout French series such as Le Bureau des Légendes, Dix pour cent and Drôle (Standing Up). In fact, she jokes that she “specialised” as a showrunner’s number two, working alongside Le Bureau’s Eric Rochant and Fanny Herrero on each of those series.

Now she’s stepping out on her own with her first original series, Tout va bien (Everything is Fine). Based on elements of de Castelnau’s own life, the comedy-drama explores the daily lives of the Vasseur family, whose members face numerous trials and tribulations – not least the serious illness of nine-year-old Rose, who requires a bone marrow transplant – while their relationships are pushed to the limit.

“If you really want to see your characters, you have to put them into an ordeal, a problem, a challenge,” she tells DQ. “This problem they have, the seriousness of the child’s illness, is a very good challenge to let people show who they really are because they are stressed, tired and anxious.

“This was a problem I knew because my family had to deal with this situation a few years ago, so that’s why I chose it. But it’s a fictional show really. It’s not about my family, but it’s about the emotions my family and I felt, and I tried to put these emotions into the show. I always write with that purpose, to give back emotions I have known, but everything is fake.”

The Vasseur family certainly face a multitude of emotions as they respond to Rose’s diagnosis, and each character offers viewers a chance to recognise themselves – and how they might react in a similar situation – through the story.

Camille de Castelnau

Nicole Garcia plays matriarch and self-help author Anne, who has been neglecting her husband Pascal (Bernard Le Coq) for years. Their daughter Claire (Virginie Efira) is extremely troubled by her niece’s illness, while dealing with her partner Antonio (Eduardo Noriega) and his ex-wife. Marion (Sara Giraudeau) is struggling to cope with her marriage to Stéphane (Yannik Landrein), her daughter Rose (Angèle Romeo)’s illness and her attraction to Louis (Mehdi Nebbou), whom she met at the hospital. Meanwhile, Vincent (Aliocha Schneider), Claire and Marion’s brother, finds his previously easy life as an air steward becomes more turbulent.

“Each character has a defence mechanism [for dealing with Rose’s illness], because if you don’t, you are too sad or too mad to take care of the situation or take care of the child,” de Castelnau explains. “You have to be efficient, you have to be there for her and to care for her. You have to find a way to go on. For some people, it’s over-caring; for other characters, it’s denial. For others, they escape, they run away from the drama because they don’t want to see it, they don’t want to know it. They don’t want it to exist.

“The grandfather, Pascal, is looking for meaning, but there is absolutely no meaning. The situation is absurd, but through the whole show he is thinking, ‘Why her and not me?’ It’s so absurd and illogical, and he tries to understand it but nothing works.”

But while Rose is at the centre of the story, she’s not a main character. Instead, the focus is on the family around her. “That’s because I really can imagine what Claire, Anne, even Pascal, all experience,” the writer continues. “But with her, I can’t. I have a lot of empathy for her but what she experiences in her mind and body, the loneliness, the pain, the fear, I can’t imagine. So I was not able to put my mind to her. It was not possible. That’s why she’s the centre of gravity of the show but the protagonists are the family.”

Produced by Maui Entertainment, Federation Studios and Petit Ermitage Production, the Disney+ original series is now streaming in the UK and Ireland after its local debut in November last year. De Castelnau is the showrunner and coproducer, and wrote the scripts with Gaëlle Bellan (La Promesse), Benjamin Adam (L’Opéra) and Christophe Régin (La Surface de Réparation).

Tout va bien focuses on a family being torn apart by a young member’s serious illness

With so many characters to squeeze into the series, de Castelnau first worked on the series alone, penning the first three scripts herself to establish the grammar of the show and bed in its structure. Notably, Disney execs told her at an early stage that this was “a show about women” and it needed more emphasis on its male characters.

“They were absolutely right and they helped me to push them up. It was very helpful,” she says. “Then once you have the grammar in the pilot, it’s OK. It’s a lot of work but it’s OK once you know where you’re going.”

While working with other showrunners on their series, de Castelnau found she had to adapt to their tone of voice when writing scripts. Now running her own show, she found her own “realistic” style for the series, which aims to reflect the ups and downs of real life.

“Life is sometimes very tragic but with pleasant moments. That’s the tone of Tout va bien,” she says. “We love life even if life can be very difficult and painful.”

Then when she had those three early scripts, she worked with Bellan, Adam and Régin to develop the rest of the episodes and co-write first drafts with each of them, before she would take the final pass.

De Castelnau drew on her own experiences to create the drama

“With Le Bureau and Drôle, we had writers rooms. I liked it; I think it can be very interesting and a lot of ideas can come from it, but for this precise project it was something very personal,” she says. “It was the first time I had to manage writers, and I was not comfortable with having a lot in the room, so we were three people – the writer, the script co-ordinator and me – and it was perfect.”

Behind the camera, Tout va bien sees a Le Bureau reunion between de Castelnau and Rochant, who directs the first two episodes. Further episodes were directed by Xavier Legrand (Jusqu’à la garde), Cathy Verney (Vernon Subutex) and Audrey Estrougo (Suprêmes).

“We speak the same language, so it was a great pleasure to see him again, with different roles,” she says of Rochant. “On Le Bureau, we were co-writers. He was the leader, but we worked together. On my show he didn’t write a line, but he was a producer and the director, so it was new because we were not in the same place.”

Filmed in and around Paris, the series adopts a warm visual style that is resplendent with bright colours – an intentional contrast to the greys and blues that accompany the frequent hospital scenes. Then there’s episode five, which was shot in Guadaloupe, with the Caribbean location unsurprisingly standing apart from the other episodes.

The French series is now streaming on Disney+

“I had to pick costumes and I was on the set almost every day, except when I had to prepare with the next director,” de Castelnau says about her role through production. “But I learned a lot.” One of those lessons is that it’s better to pause and regroup than try to rush and make up time when delays occur. Another was about money.

“As I was an associate producer, I learned about money and where to put it. It’s not very romantic or poetic but it’s very important,” she says. “We also had a lot of visual effects issues, since the little girl didn’t shave her head [to replicate the effects of Rose’s treatment], so it was fake. There is one episode where she’s very swollen because of her medicine, and this was very expensive to achieve. For an adult, you can take four hours to put on make-up. But for a child, they can only be on set for three hours a day. So you have to do it afterwards with visual effects. It was very interesting.”

The universal subjects of Tout va bien mean the series will be accessible to anyone who tunes into Disney+ to catch the eight-part series, demonstrating how frail outward appearances can be in the face of devastating events.

“This ordeal is a very universal one. It’s the worst nightmare of every parent in the world, and luckily it’s pretty rare,” de Castelnau says. “Unfortunately, few families don’t know this kind of very tough period when someone is ill and the life of the whole family has to change. Even when it’s a grandparent, which is sadly normal, it’s still very difficult and can separate people or make links stronger. It’s very universal.”

But despite the problems that lie ahead, the Vasseur family resolve to remain as positive as they can and deal with every situation with hope and humour. As Anne says, “Everything is fine.”

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Series to Watch: March 2024

DQ checks out the upcoming schedules to pick 10 new series to watch this March, from a Swedish psychological thriller and an innovative Kafka biopic to a historical psychodrama and Kate Winslet’s return to HBO.

The Regime
From: US
Original broadcaster: HBO
Starring: Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Guillaume Gallienne, Andrea Riseborough, Martha Plimpton and Hugh Grant
Launch date: March 3 (US), April 8 (Sky Atlantic, UK)
Telling the story of life within the walls of a modern authoritarian regime as it begins to unravel, this series centres on Chancellor Elena Vernham (Winslet), who has grown increasingly paranoid and unstable after not leaving the palace for some time. After she turns to a volatile soldier Herbert Zubak (Schoenaerts) as an unlikely confidant, his influence over the chancellor continues to grow as Elena’s attempts to expand her power eventually result in both the palace and the country fracturing around her.
Watch trailer 

La Peste (The Plague)
From: France
Original broadcaster: France 2
Producer: Siècle Productions
Distributor: Oble
Starring: Frédéric Pierrot, Hugo Becker and Sofia Essaïdi
Launch date: March 4
An adaptation of Albert Camus’ classic novel, La Peste takes place in 2029, in a slightly dystopian future against a Mediterranean backdrop. Having barely emerged from successive waves of Covid, a seaside town is gripped by an even more terrible virus: a new variant of the historic plague bacterium, named ‘YP2.’ Denial and chaos will follow among the population and politicians.
Watch trailer 

Mary & George
From: UK
Original broadcaster: Sky
Producers: Hera Pictures, Sky Studios
Distributor: NBCUniversal Global Distribution
Starring: Julianne Moore, Nicholas Galitzine and Tony Curran
Launch date: March 5
Described as a historical psychodrama, this show stars Moore as Mary Villiers, a woman of humble beginnings and formidable ambition who moulded her second son, George (Galitzine), to seduce King James VI of Scotland and I of England (Tony Curran) and become his all-powerful lover. Through audacious scheming and seduction, Mary and George claw their way to the centre of court to become the most powerful family in England. But as George grows in power, his relationship with his mother is pushed to the limits.
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The Marlow Murder Club
From: UK
Original broadcasters: Drama (UK), Masterpiece (US)
Producer: Monumental Television
Distributor: ITV Studios
Starring: Samantha Bond, Jo Martin, Cara Horgan and Natalie Dew
Launch date: March 6 (UK)
Written by Death in Paradise creator Robert Thorogood, and based on his novel of the same name, this two-part murder mystery is set in the titular picturesque riverside town, where retired archaeologist Judith Potts (Bond) lives alone in a faded mansion, filling her time by setting crosswords for the local paper. During one of her regular wild swims in the Thames, Judith hears a gunshot coming from a neighbour’s garden and believes a brutal murder has taken place. When the police are reluctant to believe her story, Judith finds herself forming an unlikely friendship with local dog-walker and empty-nester Suzie (Martin) and unfulfilled vicar’s wife Becks (Horgan) as they start an investigation of their own. Eventually asked to assist with the official police investigation, headed by newly promoted Tanika (Dew), the women must piece together clues, grill suspect witnesses, and face down real danger as they work against the clock to stop the killer in their tracks.

White Lies
From: South Africa
Original broadcaster: M-Net
Producer: Quizzical Pictures
Distributor: Fremantle
Starring: Natalie Dormer, Brendon Daniels
Launch date: March 7
This eight-part psychological crime drama stars Dormer as investigative journalist Edie Hansen, who gets caught up in the dark underbelly of Cape Town, dragging her back to her past. Following her estranged brother’s murder in his luxury home, Edie’s world plunges deeper into chaos when her brother’s teenage children become prime suspects for the crime. As Edie investigates, she finds herself at loggerheads with veteran detective Forty Bell (Daniels), and grapples with the crumbling local police force, a corrupt political system and the secretive world of extreme Cape wealth. The series is described as an urgent exploration of race and privilege, inequality and identity, entangled in a riveting murder mystery.
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Apples Never Fall
From: US
Original broadcaster: Peacock
Producers: Heyday Television, Universal International Studios
Distributor: NBCUniversal Global Distribution
Starring: Annette Bening, Sam Neill, Jake Lacy, Alison Brie, Conor Merrigan-Turner and Essie Randles
Launch date: March 14
Based on Lianne Moriarty (Big Little Lies)’s novel, the story centres on the seemingly picture-perfect Delaney family. Former tennis coaches Stan (Neill) and Joy (Bening) have sold their successful tennis academy and are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. While they look forward to spending time with their four adult children (Lacy, Brie, Merrigan-Turner and Randles), everything changes when a wounded young woman knocks on Joy and Stan’s door, bringing the excitement they’ve been missing. But when Joy suddenly disappears, her children are forced to re-examine their parents’ so-called perfect marriage as their family’s darkest secrets begin to surface.
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3 Body Problem
From: US
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Producers: Primitive Streak, Plan B Entertainment, T-Street
Starring: Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Rosalind Chao, Liam Cunningham, Eiza González, Jess Hong, Marlo Kelly, Alex Sharp, Sea Shimooka, Zine Tseng, Saamer Usmani, Benedict Wong and Jonathan Pryce
Launch date: March 21
This genre-bending mystery from Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff & DB Weiss and Alexander Woo (The Terror: Infamy) is based on the book of the same name by Liu Cixin. It tells the story of a young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China that reverberates across space and time into the present day. When the laws of nature inexplicably unravel before their eyes, a close-knit group of brilliant scientists join forces with an unorthodox detective to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history.
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Veronika
From: Sweden
Original broadcaster: SkyShowtime
Producer: Bigster
Starring: Alexandra Rapaport, Tobias Santelmann, Arvin Kananian, Olle Sarri, Isac Calmroth, Per Graffman, Sarah Rhodin, Wilma Lidén and Eddie Eriksson
Launch date: March 22
In this crime thriller with a paranormal twist, Rapaport plays small-town police officer Veronika Gren, a mother-of-two who struggles with her complicated family life and a secret pill addiction. When strange things start to happen and a deceased boy appears before her, Veronika thinks she’s lost her mind, but she is forced to accept that the boy may not be an illusion. Soon she finds herself in a murder investigation that goes deeper than anyone in town would like to believe, when she learns about the murder of two teenage girls. She must uncover the truth and find the connection between the cases to prevent the killer from striking again. But will anyone believe her?
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Kafka
From: Austria, Germany
Original broadcasters: ORF (Austria), ARD (Germany)
Producer: Superfilm
Distributor: ORF Enterprise
Starring: Joel Basman, David Kross, Nicholas Ofczarek and Liv Lisa Fries
Launch date: March 24 (ORF), March 26 (ARD)
Marking 100 years since Franz Kafka’s death in June this year, this six-part series charts the life of the world’s most widely read German-language writer through a dramatic and humorous biopic, with each episode examining a different aspect of his life, from his love affairs with Felice Bauer, Milena Jesenska and Dora Diamant to his difficult relationship with his tyrannical father and his close friendship with Max Brod, who would ultimately come to betray his terminally ill friend, yet assured his enduring fame in the process.
Watch trailer 

A Gentleman in Moscow
From: US
Original broadcaster: Paramount+
Producers: Lionsgate, Popcorn Storm Pictures
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Alexa Goodall, Johnny Harris and Fehinti Balogun
Launch date: March 29 (US, UK, Canada and Australia)
Based on Amor Towles’ novel, this series stars McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov, who in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution finds that his gilded past places him on the wrong side of history. Spared immediate execution, he is banished by a Soviet tribunal to an attic room in the opulent Hotel Metropol, threatened with death if he ever sets foot outside again. As the years pass and some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold outside the hotel’s doors, Rostov’s reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. Building a new life within the walls of the hotel, he discovers the true value of friendship, family and love.

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Defying gravity

Showrunner Peter Harness and director Michelle MacLaren reveal how they conceived, planned and filmed spectacular zero-gravity sequences set aboard the International Space Station for the first episode of Apple TV+ series Constellation.

On the legendary Studio Babelsberg sound stages in Germany, the second oldest film studio in the world, the experience of being up in space was brought down to Earth for Apple TV+ drama Constellation.

The story introduces Swedish astronaut Johanna ‘Jo’ Ericsson (Noomi Rapace), a member of a five-person team of international astronauts conducting a research mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in Earth’s low orbit.

The crew, representing NASA, Roscosmos and the European Space Agency (ESA), has been in space for nearly a year conducting scientific tests, including experiments with NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory quantum physics module under the direction of Henry Caldera (Jonathan Banks), chief science consultant at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a former Apollo mission astronaut.

Jo is tasked with studying the psychological effects of long-term space travel and, while away, she deeply misses her English husband, Magnus (James D’Arcy), a primary school teacher, and their nine-year-old daughter Alice (Davina Coleman and Rosie Coleman), who reside in a suburban home near the ESA compound in Cologne, Germany. Despite regular communication with her family, the extended separation takes a toll on her.

Then when the station is struck suddenly by a mysterious object, Jo performs a spacewalk to better understand what has happened and is shocked to discover that the mummified body of a Soviet-era female cosmonaut collided with the ISS – but was it real or a hallucination?

With life-support systems damaged, the surviving crew members face a critical decision: they must return to Earth using the operational Soyuz 2, but one must stay behind and repair the second, damaged, return capsule, Soyuz 1. Jo selflessly volunteers to remain on the ISS, but with her oxygen supply rapidly falling, she is left to confront the haunting silence of space in the hope of reuniting with her family.

The first episode of the series, which launches today, features these spectacular zero-gravity sequences, which were filmed over five weeks aboard a fully reconstructed ISS that was built at Studio Babelsberg under the supervision of production designer Andy Nicholson (Gravity).

He was tasked with designing the near-life-sized replica of the station, though the American and Russian sections were constructed on opposing sides of the studio because they were too big to connect together. With no blueprints to follow, the ISS was recreated as authentically as possible using video footage and the huge archive of photographs of the station.

Before filming the zero-gravity sequences, the five astronaut actors – William Catlett (who plays Paul Lancaster), Henry David (Ilya Andreev), Yazmina Suri (Sandra Teles), Carole Weyers (Audrey Brostin) and Rapace – took part in a boot camp that saw them hooked up to an elaborate wire harness system, while NASA astronaut Scott Kelly offered advice and insights based on his own record-breaking 520 days in space across four missions.

On set, wires were used as little as possible, owing to a preference for in-camera techniques to capture the feeling that the actors were moving unrestricted, in all directions, aboard the ISS. The views of Earth from the ISS windows were actually photographs, rather than green-screen projections.

Then for the spacewalk sequence, Kelly again spoke about his experiences of being inside freezing, incredibly rigid spacesuits. A female perspective on space flight was also sought from fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir.

Produced by Haut et Court TV and Turbine Studios, the series comes from creator and showrunner Peter Harness, who teamed up with lead director Michelle MacLaren to bring these space-set sequences to life.

Here, Harness and MacLaren tell DQ how these scenes aboard the ISS established their ambitions for the series and how they were realised from the page to the screen.

Noomi Rapace stars in Constellation, playing Swedish astronaut Johanna ‘Jo’ Ericsson

Peter, what were your ambitions with those opening scenes in space?
Harness: The ambition was really to make it look as realistic as possible, because the story goes to some weird and wonderful places, and you earn the right to do that by being very grounded and authentic in the reality you’re conveying in the world you’re building – not only emotionally, in terms of real people in real situations, but also texturally with how you technically make the scenes. I wrote this and I was fully aware that it was going to be very difficult to film and very expensive. And then I gave it to Michelle.

What does the script look like when you write scenes like this? How descriptive are you in terms of how you see the scenes playing out?
Harness: I write fairly visually; I’m able to picture it in my head. And the further I get on with the script, I can go to bed at night and kind of watch the episode in my head. But when you get into the practicalities of making it and there’s a whole design for the ISS and we’re doing things in a certain way, we map it out together really, in terms of what we think we can achieve. Sometimes we realise we probably can’t achieve that, but we can achieve something else which is equally cool, so then it becomes a real dialogue between us and everybody working on it.

A huge replica of the International Space Station was constructed for the Apple TV+ series

Michelle, what were your first thoughts reading the script about how you would film these scenes?
MacLaren: I spent a lot of time in pre-vis and with storyboard artists designing the sequences, because you really have to break it down into the minutiae, into every single shot. So that was a lot of work in prep. You have to be very specific because the stunt people need to train and they need to design the set to break apart where you need to put wires or cameras or whatever it is you need from a technical point of view. Each shot has to be designed ahead of time.

We did that with a combination of pre-vis and storyboards, so you almost get to see it before you shoot it. But in actual execution, it’s very difficult because you’ve got actors hanging on wires, you’ve got cameras sometimes on wires, cameras on dollies or cameras on cranes. Or if we’ve used a drone or a bunch of gimbal camera rigs – it’s a real combination. We had to learn what’s the best camera rig for this particular action or this particular moment. We had to rehearse all these moves because it’s just not a simple explosion, it’s an explosion in space. And then you’ve got the special effects element of flying debris.

Some of that was practical and some of it was CGI. It’s an incredible collaboration with an awesome team. Andy Nicholson built the ISS, Martin Goeres was our stunt coordinator, and our cinematographer was Markus Förderer. We all worked really closely together to design and execute the sequence. It was painfully time-consuming because it’s like saying, ‘OK, we’re going to do an action sequence, and now you have to stand on one leg and put your hand on your head and jump while you do it.’ It’s a completely different animal, but very exciting and challenging.

Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul’s Jonathan Banks portrays a NASA scientist

How did you find the balance between special and practical effects?
MacLaren: I prefer to do as much in-camera as possible. That’s the way I always approach things. But it’s inevitable something like this is a combination of green screen. There’s a lot of CGI in this, but we did do a lot practically. For example, when they’re fighting a fire [on the ISS], the actors did actually spray off fire extinguishers, but not all the fire extinguisher smoke is real. Some of it is CGI. Obviously the fire is all CG, but them flying backwards, that was all done practically on rigs. You’ve got wires coming through your ceiling, so there’s no ceiling on fire. You have to put that in.

Our visual effects supervisor, Doug Larmour, did an amazing job. So it was a massive collaboration with visual effects, special effects, stunts, the art department, the props. But much of it is practical. We never did anything that was just against a green screen. We were always on a piece of the set, even for the exterior spacewalk. They built pieces of the exterior of the ISS that were hung in the stage, and our actors and our stunt people are on wires and we would shoot against pieces of this exterior set and then they would do a set extension [in visual effects]. So again, that was all designed in pre-vis. It was so expensive. We had to basically create that in pre-visualisation ahead of time, get that signed off by everybody and then go and shoot it – and shooting it was a whole different animal because things change, challenges come up.

Two real – and very heavy – spacesuits were acquired for the production

Harness: Those exterior set blocks were life-sized. They were massive. We had a whole extra studio for them. You walked out of the main ISS studio and then there were these guys building these enormous things – and those space suits as well. The suits weigh something like 350kg.

MacLaren: They’re real spacesuits. We got two of them because they were really expensive. But they were incredible in their design. They come off in pieces so if you’re shooting above the waist, they wouldn’t have the legs on, but it was very hard for the actors to move in. I put one on and it is so claustrophobic, it’s absolutely terrifying, and they were flying while doing it.

We actually had this really cool rig that Noomi used where she was attached to the end of a solid arm, and they could move the arm around. So rather than having wires, it was like they drove her around on the end of a crane, so to speak, and that actually worked really well because we could put it on a dolly. So when she was flying back, they were actually pulling her back on the dolly. Martin Goeres invented that. A lot of rigs were designed specifically for the action on the show.

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Lost and found

Bertrand Cohen, CEO of Terence Films, reveals the adaptation process behind French psychological thriller Rivière-Perdue, a series about the search for a missing girl that is based on Spanish drama La Caza: Monteperdido.

In the mountains between France and Spain, a terrible car accident leads to the miraculous discovery of a teenage girl who had been missing for the past five years.

However, when Anna disappeared, her friend Lucie was with her. As the police reopen their investigation to find Lucie, Captain Alix Berg is determined to solve her first big case – but to do so she will need the support of her senior officer, Commissionner Éric Balthus, and must team up with a local policeman, Captain Victor Ferrerr.

This is French series Rivière-Perdue, a six-part drama produced by Terence Films – led by MD Stéphane Meunier and CEO Bertrand Cohen – and Gétéve Productions for TF1. Barbara Cabrita stars as Alix, with Nicolas Gob as Victor and Jean-Michel Tinivelli as Commissaire Balthus.

The show is adapted from a series that was originally produced in Spain by DLO Producciones for RTVE, under the title La Caza: Monteperdido, itself an adaptation of Agustín Martínez’s novel Moteperdido.

Agustín Martínez, Luis Moya, Antonio Mercero, Miguel Sáez Carral and Jorge Díaz wrote the Spanish series, with Eugénie Dard, Sylvain Caron and Elsa Vasseur steering the French translation. The latter is directed by Jean-Christophe Delpias. Banijay Rights is the distributor.

Here, Terence Films’ Cohen reveals how the original series was translated for a new audience.

Bertrand Cohen

What can you tell us about the story and how the reappearance of a teenage girl after five years is at the centre of this psychological thriller?
It’s the peak of summer in the heart of the majestic Pyrenees. A longboard goes down a winding road, causing a terrible accident, but in the passenger seat we find Anna Casteran, a 16-year-old teenage girl who disappeared five years ago. The police decide to reopen the investigation to search for Lucie Perez, who was taken at the same time as Anna. However, we quickly realise Anna is reluctant to help the police in the search for her friend. Her questionable behaviour fuels the intrigue and makes us wonder what she’s trying to hide.

How did the project come about and why were you interested in remaking La Caza: Monteperdido for French audiences?
I started hearing about the series and the novel through conversations with Banijay France’s scripted team, as this series was first created by Spanish label DLO Producciones. I decided to watch the first episode of the Spanish version and switched over to the novel, which got me thinking of a potential adaptation.
However, there was one key element I wanted to change. Instead of starting with the abduction of the two teenage girls, I wanted to focus on the mysterious reappearance of Anna. I kept the same elements that made the original series stand out, but this small adjustment made for a thrilling and unexpected debut. I think switching the order around helped push this project across the line in France.

What stood out to you about the original series?
The initial premise of La Caza: Monteperdido is extremely powerful and emotional: two teenage girls are abducted and only one reappears five years later. You can imagine the mixed emotions and feelings it brings for the families involved and the questions that follow as to why. We quickly want to unravel the secrets as we follow the story through the different perspectives of the police, the parents and other family members, until we come across shocking twists that leave us wanting for more.

TF1’s Rivière-Perdue stars Barbara Cabrita as Captain Alix Berg

What elements have remained the same in the French remake – and what changes have you made?
The most notable difference is how we decided to start Rivière-Perdue. We wanted to begin this thriller with Anna’s reappearance and show the touching and joyous reunion with her family, which quickly takes a dark turn, immersing us in a more sombre atmosphere. We’ve also changed the dynamics between men and women, as the novel was written a few years back and we wanted to make it more relevant to today. Most importantly, we’ve kept the spectacular twists and turns from La Caza: Monteperdido, leaving you on the edge of your seat.

How would you describe the writing process with Eugénie Dard, Sylvain Caron and Elsa Vasseur?
It’s been great working with such talented writers. They kept the main storyline but didn’t hesitate to rewrite and add certain elements for the local audience. The quality and level of detail were as elevated as the original series, weaving perfectly through the key themes of action, adventure, love and the complex relationships between characters. The great thing about adaptations is you get to be creative with your own preferred talent to suit local tastes and enhance the narrative even further.

Did you return to the Spanish novel on which the original series is based?
We watched the series created by DLO Producciones in collaboration with RTVE and read the novel by Agustín Martínez. They both had different elements that inspired us to write our own local version.

Berg plays opposite Nicolas Gob as Victor Ferrerr, with the pair investigating the case of a missing girl

How did you work with the Spanish production team on the remake?
José-Manuel Lorenzo is a well-known producer in Spain, and we were able to directly liaise with him and the wider Banijay scripted team, as well as RTVE, on how we could bring La Caza: Monteperdido to France. We felt very supported in the process, making sure the version was as powerful as the original series while taking some liberties to make it relevant to our audience.

Why did you choose to shoot in the Pyrenees and what did the location bring to the series?
The natural setting is a key element in the series. We wanted the viewer to be immersed in the vast and light-filled surroundings of the Pyrenees, contrasting with the dark tone of the story. The most challenging part was having to move the set and the equipment to very remote locations that were only accessible through small narrow paths and dirt roads. It was a real logistical feat that didn’t come at a low cost, but seeing the quality of the rushes and footage made it all worthwhile. We also needed to be quite close to Spain, as there is a small part of the series that takes place there as a nod to the original series.

La Caza: Monteperdido, the Spanish series on which Rivière-Perdue is based

Did you face any challenges in development or production?
The biggest challenge was getting the funds, as some of our initial partners fell through, and we had to balance this with the talented cast and writers we had on board, as well as the dozen big action scenes we needed to film. The production was challenging, but we pushed through and we’re so proud of the whole team when seeing the successful ratings on TF1, with 6.2 million viewers tuning in for the launch. The average market share of all six episodes was 30%, which is a record audience for a miniseries on TF1 over the past three years.

With so many original series in production, why are remakes and adaptations still so popular? Might there be a rise in the number of local remakes in the future?
It’s difficult to say. An adaptation can be a confident investment for a broadcaster, as it comes with a proven track record of success. Having said that, it always depends on the projects and the broadcasters, as the private and public channels in France have a different approach when it comes to adapting series from other markets.

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Sooner or later

The past confronts the present in South African crime drama Soon Comes Night. Executive producer Stan Joseph, writer Paul Rowlston and distribution exec Rodrigo Herrera Ibarguengoytia reveal the background to the series and why its story resonates today.

Stan Joseph

Set against the background of 1990s South Africa, a six-part drama depicts the country’s emergence from apartheid through the battle between two men with something to prove.

Soon Comes Night pitches a liberation hero-turned-heist king and a broken cop seeking redemption together in a gritty crime drama that is based on real events.

Kwenzo Ngcobo stars as fictional freedom fighter Alex Shabane, who returns to South Africa and turns to crime when the promised ‘spoils of war’ fail to materialise. When his brazen cash heists and subsequent redistribution of loot embarrass the new government, detective Sakkie Oosthuizen (Albert Pretorius), a former apartheid cop, is appointed to find and arrest him.

But while the charismatic Shabane endeavours to carve out his empire in audacious defiance of the law, Oosthuizen is a broken man, struggling with his health, grief and a dysfunctional police force. As their lives collide, these very different men reflect the complexity of the old and new South Africa, where a painful past with dark secrets is pitted against the hope and expectation that freedom promised. But also, a place where freedom is never really free.

Written by Paul S Rowlston and directed by Thabang Moleya and Sanele Zulu, the series is produced by Ochre Moving Pictures for Netflix (Africa) and SABC (South Africa Broadcasting Corporation). Distribution is handled by Red Arrow Studios International.

Following its local launch, the series will be screened at the Berlin International Film Festival as part of the Berlinale Series Market Selects showcase this month.

Speaking at Content London 2023, Ochre CEO Stan Joseph, writer Rowlston and Red Arrow’s Rodrigo Herrera Ibarguengoytia revealed the origins of the project and why its period story still resonates today.

Albert Pretorius plays apartheid-era cop Sakkie Oosthuizen

Soon Comes Night emerged from Ochre’s ambitions to evolve beyond being a service producer in South Africa, with plans to build and invest in original projects that could reach audiences beyond the country’s own viewers.

Stan Joseph, CEO of Ochre: We began a writers development programme with Media Xchange and out of six [ideas], this is one that came through. We were very privileged; we took the risk to spend the time investing in it. We got a very modest interest from SABC but Rodrigo took the first step and saw it as a universal story of an everyday Robin Hood guy up against the system. It was inspired by the true story of an activist who went on to become this larger-than-life heist gang [leader], but he did it because he was disappointed and disillusioned by what he fought the war for. With Red Arrow’s interest, that also gave Netflix the reassurance and then they came in for African rights. That’s how we put it together.

Paul Rowlston

Writer Rowlston was drawn in by the “compelling” story idea and the complex dynamics of the central pairing.

Rowlston: To me, it was always a compellingly simple top line: a former freedom fighter turns cash-in-transit robber. We all love an anti-hero. Robin Hood is a consistent story among most cultures, but what made this interesting for me was the person they set to catch our character was a former apartheid policeman, someone who was a holdover from the previous government now working with the ANC government and is being set to catch this man by the people who trained him, one of his former comrades.

Now we have this antagonist and protagonist, whose past defined their future and neither of them were looking at a satisfying future. Because Ochre was developing its own IP, we had the luxury of a long development process – the best part of five years from initial pitch to writing and at least two years of multiple drafts reimagining and rewriting.

The series doesn’t just focus on Shabane and Oosthuizen, however. The creative team also sought to introduce a third character that would add further complexity to the central relationships.

Soon Comes Night follows a freedom fighter who resorts to crime

Rowlston: Where we started with two men and this compelling idea, into this we inserted the character of Thato (Didintle Khunou), born free, a woman coming of age in the new South Africa. She represents the hope for the future, the newly emerging South Africa, but her past is linked to these two men and she is as defined by the past as they are.

It has all the aspects of a genre piece: it’s a heist show, a cop procedural in places, a thriller in places. But actually, because we had so long to play with it, it became a character piece, a piece about people. It’s hard to decide who the antagonist and protagonists are, because ultimately the system is the enemy. The world they find themselves in, the shadow underneath the rainbow nation is the protagonist.

Rodrigo Herrera Ibarguengoytia

It was the period setting of Soon Comes Night that particularly attracted investment from Red Arrow Studios International, believing the themes of the series would also resonate with an international audience.

Rodrigo Herrera Ibarguengoytia, VP scripted acquisitions and coproductions, Red Arrow Studios International: I was immediately drawn to the complex dynamics of the time and how it was shifting at this pivotal time in history. The approach was of it being a character-driven show; not trying to tackle overarching politics but instead focusing on these characters and how they’re navigating these shifting dynamics. That’s what I think helps it resonate widely.

Early in the process, it happened to be around the time of many protests in the US and around the world following the death of George Floyd and it was sparking a debate that in many ways mirrored issues in the series. It became really apparent how topical the series can be.

The great thing in terms of international appeal of a series like this is it has a very commercial vehicle. At its core it’s a heist thriller, with all the elements you would come to expect, then it’s also set in a very distinctive time and place, infused with local elements that add so much texture and complexity. But that straightforward engine makes it very broad and accessible to international audiences.

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Icons of a movement

The stars of Genius: MLK/X – Kelvin Harrison Jr, Aaron Pierre, Weruche Opia and Jayme Lawson – reveal how they got into character to play icons of the US civil rights movement in this eight-part drama.

Their work leading the US civil rights movement ensured their place in history as two of the most iconic figures of the 20th century. Now the lives and achievements of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X have been dramatised in the fourth instalment of National Geographic’s anthology series Genius.

Jayme Lawson as Betty and Aaron Pierre as Malcolm X

In a first for the franchise, the new season – titled Genius: MLK/X – marks the first time two people have been featured at the same time, and for good reason. Though they may have taken different paths, both Dr King (Kelvin Harrison Jr) and X (Aaron Pierre) shared the same goal of equality at a time of widespread racial segregation in the US.

In the eight-part limited series, those journeys are explored from their upbringings and the injustices that shaped their identities to their only ever meeting at the US Senate in 1964, when they came together to urge president Lyndon B Johnson to pass the landmark Civil Rights Act that segregationists were attempting to filibuster. Both men were later assassinated aged 39, X in 1965 and Dr King in 1968.

Also taking centre stage are Coretta Scott King (Weruche Opia) and Betty Shabazz (Jayme Lawson), who are revealed to be formidable equals to their husbands. In particular, episode five, Matriarchs, is told from their perspectives as the pressures and expectations of their public and private lives take their toll.

Now airing on National Geographic, Genius: MLK/X comes from 20th Television, Imagine Television and Undisputed Cinema. Showrunners Raphael Jackson Jr and Damione Macedon executive produce with Reggie Rock Bythewood, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Francie Calgo, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Kristen Zolner and Jeff Stetson.

The series follows previous Genius instalments about Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and Aretha Franklin.

Here the show’s stars tell DQ about making the series and how they got into character to play the real-life icons.

Now it’s airing, how do you reflect on making the series?
Jayme Lawson: What you see was a labour of love from everyone involved, and it required and asked a lot of everyone. To get to see the show, you’re waiting with bated breath. How did it actually turn out? Did we actually do what we set out to do? Now we’re in a place where we can breathe and enjoy the labour of love we’ve all put in.

Weruche Opia: It’s almost like reliving it. It’s been a year [since filming wrapped] but it definitely was a labour of love and it’s so beautiful to see the project evolve from the cast, the crew, costume and make-up, the producers, the showrunners and the writers. It’s so beautiful to see this project that we all poured ourselves into coming out. I’m quite proud of what we’ve done.

The series follows two key figures in the civil rights movement’s battle for equality

What were your first impressions of the script and the opportunity to play such iconic real-life figures?
Kelvin Harrison Jr: When your agent calls and says they want you to play Dr King, you go, ‘Oh I’m sorry, this is Kelvin. Did you mean to call someone else?’ Then you hang up and they call you back and you say, ‘OK, what’s happening?’ After some time, after some serious prayer, you get to a place where you’re really excited to embark on this journey and get to know these men. What a beautiful privilege it is to be able to relate to someone; your assignment is literally to relate to these icons that helped me to be here in this moment. That has been such a beautiful experience so far, and a challenging one, but these men didn’t become who they were without challenges and it’s because they decided to step into this moment that they became them. It says a lot that we chose to do it and I’m really proud for making it to this moment.

Aaron Pierre: When you get the call, when you get the offer, in a situation like this, in a context like this, it can be terrifying. It can be very unnerving to make the decision to commit to embarking on a journey of portraying these tremendous individuals but I’m very grateful to have had the cast and crew, my community and my loved ones to lean into and be loved on throughout this experience. You question your capacity, you question your endurance, you question your stamina to be able to do something like this, particularly for six months. It’s a long time to be immersed in something mentally, spiritually, emotionally and physically, and oftentimes I would lean into Malcolm’s power, strength and essence to get me through this. But I’m very grateful for the experience. It’s definitely evolved me creatively but also personally. It’s a gift to have that privilege.

The series begins with that meeting between Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X at the US Senate, before rolling back to their childhoods. What can you say about how their individual stories intersect with each other?
Pierre: A key element in the story is we have the opportunity to see Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Malcom X’s connected experience. We also get to see what is perceived as opposing forces running parallel towards the same objective, but they’re just taking different routes, and the synchronicity between that and their different approaches ultimately complement one another.

Genius strives to bring to the fore the contribution of Malcolm and MLK’s wives

The series focuses on Dr King Jr and X, but Coretta and Betty are equally prominent. What did you learn about them?
Opia: For me, it definitely was an education. Not many people are aware of how instrumental these women were in the lives their husbands lived and the legacies their husbands left behind. For this, it’s a huge educational moment but at the same time, it doesn’t feel like heavy education. It’s easily consumable, so I’m really excited for everyone to get to know more about these women. I didn’t know anything, if I’m quite honest, until I embarked on this journey and I felt robbed that I didn’t have this information before – and a lot of people don’t have this information. That was also putting a pep in my step and gave me an onus and responsibility that I had to tell this story as best as I could so that more people know about these women and their contributions to modern life as we have it now.

Lawson: I was so grateful that from the beginning, creatively, they [the producers] always wanted to bring the women to the forefront. That was always a part of the conversation from the get-go. They invested in, ‘How can we fully tell their stories alongside their husbands, so these aren’t the women behind the men but beside the men?’ Having that opportunity to delve into and bring that out, I’m really excited for that.

Playing real people with whom many viewers will be familiar, was there a secret to your performance?
Lawson: I like to find little personal things for myself. When I was doing research, one thing that jumped out to me about Betty was the way in which she made her hands useful. I even fought for a line in the script about that because it’s quite a moment as an actor to have that. What does it mean to want your hands to be useful – before your husband leaves, to want to touch him, or to lay your hands on him, whether that’s adjusting his tie? What is that? That’s a deeper conversation as to her own need and that’s an actor’s work of crafting a fully realised individual, but that was one little thing that always helped me get into the body of Betty, especially because we span so many years with these women, so throughout her ageing, throughout her raising children and losing her husband, to always have that as a thing for me was really important.

Opia: Coretta was a very skilled woman. She was an opera singer; music was her first love and her main desire and that’s what she wanted to do in life. She put it aside, her desire to go to the Metropolitan Opera House, to support her husband, although she did use her singing for fundraising later on, so she never really did relinquish her gift. That was something we worked on. I was so fortunate to be able to work with an opera singer, Lauren Michelle, who showed me the posture a lot of opera singers have in order to access your singing. That hugely helped me. I also had etiquette classes – I’m a little bit of a tomboy sometimes – so I really needed to be a lady to be Coretta and those physical things, having the opera training and etiquette classes, allowed me to put myself to the side and be the refined character I imagined and think Coretta was.

Genius: MLK/X comes from 20th Television, Imagine Television and Undisputed Cinema

Harrison: I found these YouTube videos of Dr King talking to LBJ [Lyndon Johnson] and it was so relaxed and chilled, but at the same time there was an understanding he was talking to a president. He makes a lot of jokes and his laugh is very specific, and I took those things and they became my touchstones to create the ‘at home’ MLK. That was my secret little gem that I locked away. It made me feel connected to him as a person.

Pierre: For me, when I’m on set, oftentimes I would have my AirPods in and I would listen to one of Malcolm’s most famous speeches, The Ballot or the Bullet. The energy that is present throughout that speech is something that really fuelled me and guided me. In addition, I’m somebody who chooses to stay in accent for the entirety of the shoot, walk the way he walks and gesture the way he gestures. Two-thirds of the crew didn’t know I was from London until they said, ‘That’s a wrap, Aaron.’ That’s just a personal choice, but for me it keeps me present. It keeps me in alignment with the task at hand and hopefully fulfilling that.

Harrison: Sometimes I had to go on my phone and Google where he was from, just in case I was tripping a little bit, but yes, he was from England.

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Baking Black Cake

Black Cake showrunner Marissa Jo Crear and author Charmaine Wilkerson tell DQ how they partnered to create a show that blends family drama and murder mystery with a story set over several decades and in numerous countries.

A globe-trotting, decades-spanning murder mystery wrapped in a family drama, Black Cake begins in 1960s Jamaica where a runaway bride named Covey disappears into the water and is feared either drowned or a fugitive after her husband’s murder.

Lashay Anderson as Bunny and Mia Isaac as Covey

Then, in present day California, a widow named Eleanor Bennett loses her battle with cancer, leaving her two estranged children, Byron and Benny, with a flash drive that holds recordings of previously untold stories of her journey from the Caribbean to America. Narrated by Eleanor, these stories shock her children and lead them to challenge everything they thought they knew about their family’s origin.

Based on Charmaine Wilkerson’s novel of the same name, the series stars Mia Isaac (Covey), Adrienne Warren (Benny), Chipo Chung (Eleanor), Ashley Thomas (Byron), Lashay Anderson (Bunny), Faith Alabi and Glynn Turman, as well as recurring guest stars Ahmed Eljah, Simon Wan and Sonita Henry.

Showrunner Marissa Jo Cerar executive produces with Oprah Winfrey, Aaron Kaplan, Carla Gardini, Brian Morewitz, Wilkerson and Michael Lohmann. The series is a Two Drifters, Harpo Films, ABC Signature and Kapital Entertainment production.

Debuting on Hulu in the US in November last year, all eight episodes have now launched on Disney+ in the UK and Ireland.

Here, Crear and Wilkerson discuss the themes of the novel, how it was adapted for television and the global collaboration that helped bring the production to screen.

Charmaine, what were some of the themes and the topics that you wanted to talk about through the story?
Wilkerson: Of course, there’s so many, but some of the themes that were close to my heart that I saw being transferred very well to the screen were the power of the physical relationship, and the visceral connection between the person and nature – being in the water, being on the land – and how that imbued two young characters, the girls who were growing up on a Caribbean island, with a physical strength but also a determination, a personality. Of course, things go wrong for them, but they are able to face them in part because of that.

Chipo Chung plays widow Eleanor who narrates the story

Another is the diversity of faces and characters. One of the things that fiction can do for us now, which is a little different from before, is bring us a little closer to the truth. People always talk about wanting to see themselves in stories. Well, I’m happy also seeing people who are different from me. The real issue is I’d like to see more of the world that is around me, the people who are like me and the people who are not like me. Fiction actually brings us closer to that, in books and on the screen, than other kinds of communication often.

And then the other thing is just the story. This is a tale that has a little bit of everything. There’s a lot of drama, there’s a bit of melodrama, there’s love, there’s friendship, there’s deep lifelong loyalty, there’s betrayal. And of course, there are things that go very, very wrong. One of them is a murder.

Marissa, what was your interest in adapting the novel?
Crear: I read it before it was published and it all came together very quickly. It’s very rare that something like this, especially this big in terms of scope, comes together as quickly. But I just knew [I wanted to do it]. I’m not exaggerating, the moment I read the final word on the last page, I called my agent and I said, ‘I have to do this.’ Covey, the main character, is this Chinese-Jamaican girl, coming of age in 1960s Jamaica. She travels around the world and we get immersed in her entire life.

I just fell in love with her and her best friend. She has this amazing relationship with this young Jamaican girl, the swimmer named Bunny. The relationship moved me so much and I thought of 16-year-old me, desperately wanting to see myself in a story, desperately wanting a friend like Bunny who would be there for me no matter what. I just wanted to do whatever I could to bring this to screen.

Central character Covey is a Chinese-Jamaican girl coming of age in the 1960s

I loved the book so much, and Covey and Bunny are just two of the characters I loved. I love the diversity, I love the world. I was transported into this world in Jamaica in the 1960s in the Caribbean. I’d never been to the Caribbean until I went location scouting, and we were in Portland, where we filmed it, and then we filmed in Wales and Italy and my home here in Southern California, all over the world.

I wanted to tell this story that was big and splashy, and it was a family drama but also a murder mystery with women of colour as the main characters. We just don’t get those types of shows, and I wanted to do whatever I could to bring it to life. I was honoured that I was given the opportunity and I’m so proud of the hundreds of people around the world that helped see this through because it was a global collaboration.

This isn’t an entirely linear story. It starts in the present and goes back into the past, and there’s a narrator with Eleanor telling her own story. Was it clear how you would adapt the novel for television?
Crear: It’s very complex, in terms of the structure and point of view of the book. But for me, for whatever reason – and this happens when it’s just something you love – the story gods and the characters just start speaking to you. It wasn’t like you just take a book out and say, ‘Hi, I’m a writer. I can adapt this.’ I had to pitch a very detailed explanation of what I was going to do, how many episodes I thought it should be, what the stories were for each character, when the main plot points were revealed, how it was more than one season worth of material, and what the big storylines were for the three seasons I pitched.

I just mapped it out and immersed myself in the book and thought, ‘This is a family drama, but do not lose the murder mystery aspect of it.’ That really helped me to craft the structure and the in’s and out’s of when we’re in the past, when we’re in the present, and when is it time to meet certain characters we meet. We might meet them in the book very early on, but we meet them in the show later, and I just had to know that before I took it out. Then I pitched it and I put together a writers’ room after I wrote the first episode and the bible, and then we all came to expand the world and bring the dialogue and populate the worlds that Eleanor in the book might have summarised. She chose not to reveal all the details about certain moments of her life but we had to.

You have to really build the world, which makes it exciting for directors because each episode is like a movie. It really has a different location, different characters, different cast, different costumes for different time periods. It was hard – but it was easy because the material spoke to me so much that I just listened and the story gods, Charmaine’s book and the characters just helped me write them out.

Adrienne Warren as Eleanor’s estranged daughter Benny

Charmaine, how involved have you been working with Marissa to adapt your novel?
Wilkerson: I was tumbling down a hill to publishing my debut novel after having worked in other careers for years. What mattered to me and what I connected with was the emotional investment that I saw early on from Marissa in pulling out aspects of the story: the importance of identity, the diversity, the strong women and the beauty also of the story in terms of physical locations.

From the start, these questions would come along and I would fill in by answering questions like where did that come from? Was this imagination? What’s the research on that? Tell me more about what this person in your mind really does. I would feed more research than was necessary to Marissa and her team, I’m sure. So really, when it came to the pitch of the series, that was up to Marissa and Oprah, their whole team and taking what they knew to do well and putting it before people who were interested. I thank you, MJ, because you did a wonderful job, and you found a group that saw how much you could do with that story.

What were the logistical challenges of filming the series, with so many characters and locations to include?
Crear: The first was casting. Finding Covey, finding someone who could play the age, who had the actual ethnic make-up. They had to do an accent. She had to age, starting at 16 and going into her 20s. And we had to find another actress who could portray the same human being at a completely different stage of her life, so finding Mia Isaac and Chipo Chung was a miracle. People have literally thought that we CGI’d Mia and made her into an older woman. The casting was the first big obstacle, but it was like gifts from above.

Then filming in Port Antonio in Jamaica; it’s beautiful just being in the ocean but shooting in water is very difficult. You don’t know what the sea is going to do. We were filming with children, Mia learning to surf on camera – that shot of her surfing is her surfing for real for the first time – the water, the rain, the lightning, filming through all of that. Then we took a massive production and moved it to our soundstages in Wales. That is where the interior of Eleanor’s home is. That is where the interior of Covey’s home is. The exterior and the porch was in Jamaica and in episode five, we go to Italy and we were actually in Italy. We were also filming in Southern California for the exterior of Eleanor’s home.

For me, the biggest challenge was being in Wales eight hours ahead, editing, filming, casting, writing and trying to work with people in California. I’m still not recovered physically or psychologically from that. I would never recommend doing that. But I had to, it’s the job. So it was very difficult. It’s a miracle that it exists and that it’s so great. It was very hard.

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Scandi best

As the winner of the Nordic TV Drama Screenplay Award is announced, read DQ’s interviews with all five nominees, whose work includes the series Descendants, Estonia, Painkiller, Power Play and Prisoner.

For the eighth year, the winner of the Nordic TV Drama Screenplay award has been handed out in recognition of outstanding writing in a Nordic drama series. As is now the tradition, five series were nominated – one each from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden – with the winner announced at a ceremony held last night during the Götenborg Film Festival’s TV Drama Vision event.

Supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond, the award was first won in 2017 by Mette M Bølstad and Stephen Uhlander for Nobel, followed by Adam Price for Herrens veje (Ride Upon the Storm) a year later. Finland’s Merja Aakko and Mika Ronkainen picked up the prize in 2019 for Kaikki Synnit (All the Sins), while Sara Johnsen won in 2020 for fact-based drama  22 Juli (22 July).

In 2021, Maja Jul Larsen took home the award for Ulven Kommer (Cry Wolf), a Danish series that followed a social worker tasked with investigating an allegation from a young girl that threatens to tear her family apart, and the 2022 winners were Gísli Örn Gardarsson, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson and Mikael Torfasonn for Icelandic series Verbúðin (Blackport), which charts a power struggle set against the backdrop of the country’s fishing industry in the 1980s.

Last year, Kenneth Karlstad claimed the prize for Norwegian drama Kids in Crime, a dramatic coming-of-age story about a teenager who turns to a life of crime.

Find out more about the winner and fellow nominees in this year’s competition, with links to DQ’s interviews with each writer.

Winners: Johan Fasting, Silje Storstein and Kristin Grue
Series title: Makta (Power Play, pictured top of page)
From: Norway
Original broadcaster: NRK
Produced by: Motlys and Novemberfilm
Distributed by: Reinvent Studios
Starring: Kathrine Thorborg Johansen, Jan Gunnar Røise and Anders Baasmo
Air date: October 29, 2023
Blending a story taking place in 1973 with a 2023 setting, Power Play charts the rise of Norway’s first female prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, against a backdrop of truth, lies and bad memory.
Read DQ’s interview with Johan, Silje and Kristin here.

Nominee: Kim Fupz Aakeson
Series title: Huset (Prisoner)
From: Denmark
Original broadcaster: DR
Produced by: DR Drama
Distributed by: DR Sales
Starring: Youssef Wayne Hvidtfeldt, David Dencik, Sofie Gråbøl and Charlotte Fich
Air date: September 1, 2023
The six-part series depicts the life of four prison officers whose jobs are put on the line when the prison’s future comes under threat, leaving them fighting for survival against bad press, an inmate hierarchy and an illicit drug trade.
Read DQ’s interview with Kim here.

Nominee: Miikko Oikkonen
Series title: Estonia
From: Finland
Original broadcaster: MTV, TV4
Produced by: Fisher King
Distributed by: Beta Film
Starring: Jussi Nikkilä, Claes Hartelius, Seidi Haarla, Kaspar Velberg and Pelle Heikkilä
Air date: October 12, 2023
A dramatisation of the tragic sinking of the MS Estonia ferry in 1994 and the subsequent investigation into the disaster, in which 852 people lost their lives.
Read DQ’s interview with Miikko here.

Nominee: Tinna Hrafnsdóttir
Series title: Descendants
From: Iceland
Original broadcaster: Síminn
Produced by: Polarama, Freyja Filmwork and Projects Production
Distributed by: Red Arrow Studios International
Starring: Tinna Hrafnsdóttir, Vignir Rafn Valþórsson, Þuríður Blær Jóhannesdóttir and Hanna María Karlsdóttir
Air date: November 2, 2023
When three siblings inherit a whale-watching business and a summerhouse built by their parents, they clash over their individual claims to the legacy.
Read DQ’s interview with Tinna here.

Nominees: Gabriela Pichler and Johan Lundborg
Series title: Painkiller
From: Sweden
Original broadcaster: SVT
Produced by: Garagefilm International
Distributed by: Reinvent Studios
Starring: Snežana Spasenoska and Dodona Imeri
Air date: January 26, 2024
When proud Balkan mother Dijana is left in chronic pain, with no respite provided by the health service, her live-at-home artist daughter Andrea decides to treat her herself – leading Dijana to become the involuntary protagonist in Andrea’s new art project.
Read DQ’s interview with Gabriela here.

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Taking the pain

Swedish writer and director Gabriela Pichler reflects on moving into television for the first time with Painkiller, which tells the story of a unique mother-and-daughter relationship, and her personal connection to the series.

Dijana and her daughter Andrea, the protagonists in Swedish drama Painkiller, have a lot to answer for. Not only are they central to the latest project from award-winning writer and director Gabriela Pichler, but they are also responsible for Pichler’s first move into television.

“We had no choice. Some characters refuse to be talked about in only a feature film format. They demand an entire TV series about themselves,” she says. “They forcefully elbow their way into the script and demand six episodes. And they are convinced that the audience will love them.”

Gabriela Pichler

Painkiller, a six-part series for SVT, introduces Dijana, a proud Balkan mother who has exhausted her body with cleaning and factory work. Meanwhile, her daughter Andrea is a successful artist, but still living at home. When Andrea manages to get her mother to start treatment for her chronic pain, the course is unexpectedly cancelled, leading Andrea to decide to treat Dijana herself. Suddenly, Dijana is the involuntary subject of her daughter’s new art project.

Starring Snežana Spasenoska (Dijana) and Dodona Imeri (Andrea), the series is co-written and directed by Pichler, produced by Anna-Maria Kantarius for Garagefilm and distributed by Reinvent International Sales. Filming took place in Gothenburg and Skåne between October and November last year, with the series now airing on SVT and SVT Play.

Here Pichler tells DQ about bringing Painkiller to television, her partnership with co-writer Johan Lundborg and her personal connection to a story that confronts healthcare and class with humour.

You have had a hugely successful film career. Why was now the right time to move into television?
Working with the half-hour format in six episodes felt incredibly liberating. I was curious about another kind of storytelling, playfulness and different dramatic structures that you sometimes struggle with in feature-length. With SVT, I could also reach a broader kind of audience.

Painkiller was inspired by Pichler’s experiences coping with her mother’s fibromyalgia

What are the origins of Painkiller?
My mum has fibromyalgia, a chronic pain syndrome, and went untreated for two decades. The situation reached its lowest point when I tried to enrol her in a pain programme at a local hospital. They promised a lot, but the programme was abruptly shut down before the patients could even see the pain specialist, because of a lack of resources. We gave up. We had tried everything up to this point.

But in my various productions, I’ve often featured my mum on camera. Those moments served as brief respites for her, sometimes offering a distraction from the pain (if we were lucky). We incorporated this idea of using creativity and imagination as a distraction into the script.

What were the themes or topics you wanted to discuss through the story?
The series revolves around an unfair and crumbling Swedish healthcare system, and the cultural in-betweenness and social class differences of a working-class mother and an artist daughter. It is told with a lot of humour and with two unconventional female protagonists.

The theme of gentrification in Gothenburg also forms the backdrop for Painkiller, noting the tendency to build and plan away socially vulnerable groups, and those without economic capital.

Johan Lundborg

What is the background to your partnership with Johan, and why did you decide to write the scripts together?
Johan Lundborg is my partner-in-crime in both work and life. He was the director of photography and co-editor both on Äta sova dö [Eat Sleep Die] and Amateurs, my previous films. We went to the same school of film directing in Gothenburg and have worked together since then. He actually started to write on this idea and convinced me that now is the opportunity to tell this story.

Throughout scriptwriting, casting, pre-production, shooting and post-production, it is both practical and fun to be the script writers at the same time as DOP, director and co-editors. We quickly sense what works in relation to our story, we can treat the script as a living material and we can adapt the script to different practical circumstances when they occur, as they always do.

What challenges did you face, in writing or directing the series?
It was a challenging project due to the intense shooting schedule compared with my feature films. Many of those in front of the camera were acting for the first time in their lives, like Snežana, one of the main actors, who plays the mother, Dijana. That always requires immense preparation, more time and patience.

What lessons have you learned after working in television for the first time?
That long working relationships and having a fantastic film crew and actors around you means everything, especially when you work in a new kind of fast-paced industry like the TV industry.

For many of us involved in this project, the themes are quite personal and we can identify with the story, and we share many similar experiences. I worked with my producer, Anna-Maria Kantarius, these last 10 years – she is also my and Johan’s creative partner – and she’s with us every step of the way, inspiring us with creative ideas and solutions. She is one of a kind – empathetic, clever and has great sense of humour. Working the way we do requires a brave producer who dares to take risks. I admire that in her.

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Five Minutes With… Michał Rogalski

The director of Polish spy thriller The Bay of Spies discusses the real-life inspirations behind the 1940s-set series, his directorial approach and how he seeks to distinguish his work from other filmmakers.

Second World War thriller The Bay of Spies opens in 1940s Gdynia, where young Nazi officer Franz Neumann discovers his real father was Polish.

Using this information to his advantage, he becomes a spy for the Allies and is tasked to obtain information about the Germany navy, leading him to become embedded in the German elite.

Debuting earlier this month on Polish broadcaster TVP, the nine-part series is produced by Akson Studio, with a screenplay co-written by Michał Godzic (Chasing Dreams) and Wojciech Lepianka (My Father’s Bike).

DQ caught up with director Michał Rogalski to discuss the inspiration behind Franz’s story and the challenges of creating an authentic period drama.

Director Michał Rogalski on set filming The Bay of Spies

What inspired you to make The Bay of Spies?
Franz Neumann is a fictional character. We didn’t have any real characters that led us to tell this story, but one important thing to know is the history of [Polish city] Gdansk, and then the character of Franz Neumann becomes clearer. Gdansk and the Pomeranian region was always contested between Poland and Germany. Until 1793, it was Polish land, then it became German land until 1920 and then a free city. The population of the city was very mixed, and so the identity of the people there was extremely mixed.

Franz Neumann didn’t exist exactly, but there were tens of thousands of Franz Neumanns who were suddenly discovering their mixed identity. During the time of the Nazis, this national identity became very important, especially for Germans, because they could separate the German nationals from the Poles or the Jews. For people like Franz Neumann discovering they were mixed, it was a burden and a source of moral and emotional tension.

Why was it an important story to tell?
This is important for today. Dictatorships like uniformity; they like to keep things pretty simple. Democracy, on the other hand, is more anarchistic and chaotic, but that’s the power of democratic societies. They are different, quarrelling, but they are more flexible and self-conscious. In dictatorships, you give part of your identity to the regime and you don’t have to have internal moral doubts. In a democracy, you have to choose by yourself. That may be a moral for the whole story.

When the Germans invaded Poland, particularly this region, they immediately executed Polish intelligentsia. They cut the head off of society, or so they thought, which makes this choice for Franz to commit to his Polish descent even tougher.

The Polish series stars Bartosz Gelner as a Nazi officer who becomes a spy for the Allies

What was your approach behind the camera in filming the spy thriller?
The spy thriller is always only about emotions, and people like spy thrillers because you can meet the ultimate danger, the ultimate emotion of fear.  You have two approaches [to making a spy thriller]. One is like James Bond, the other is like a John le Carré novel, where the spies are not super elegant in tuxedos but rather sweaty, tired people who have to do jobs that are difficult and boring, and also super dangerous. One of my favourite films is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy [based on the le Carré book of the same name].

Given those examples, we were not exactly able to shoot a super-realistic spy story. We had to keep a line between those two genres, because I wouldn’t like this to just be a James Bond situation. We decided it should be quite spectacular – the scenery, the beaches, the beautiful city – but on the other hand, Franz has this heavy burden and finds himself in dangerous spy situations. We had to find the middle ground between those circumstances. What it became is partly a pop TV series but also a pretty realistic psychological, emotional drama.

What were the creative and technical challenges you faced realising this historically authentic period drama?
As usual, the modernity. You have to find angles without plastic windows, modern benches and lamp posts. But the world is changing, aesthetics are changing. You can’t find any preserved, ready-to-film locations. Some time ago, I spoke to Maria Djurkovic, the set designer for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Ferrari, and she had the same issues, with budgets way bigger than ours.

Some things you can fix in CGI. It’s normal practice now that you don’t take out satellite dishes or anything like that because they can be easily removed by the computer. But it is a little more difficult if you have a building with hundreds of windows and half of them are clearly plastic, so you have to deal with those and do a lot of research about what the lamp posts and benches should look like. I tend to think that big budgets can damage the artistic imagination. Sometimes imagination works better than millions of dollars. You have to find the small cracks in modernity to find the right angle for the camera.

Akson Studio produces the nine-parter for local broadcaster TVP

How is the genre growing in popularity in Poland?
Last year we had a spy drama set in Communist Poland, and a couple of years back we had a contemporary spy story. It’s popular with the audience but it’s not popular [with television producers] because it’s super expensive – and the further back in time you go, the more expensive it becomes. But The Bay of Spies was great fun to make. First of all, with my DOP Maciej Lisiecki, we are always looking for inspiration for pictures, for photographs, for works of art that can bring an atmosphere of the period to the drama. We decided to base our aesthetic on the cinema noir of the 1940s, which is quite appropriate to this period. It worked fantastically for spy dramas.

We were also searching for landmark buildings in Gdynia and Gdansk so it could be easily recognisable but would also give the right atmosphere of the city. In Gdansk we have the Amsterdam-style buildings. If we’re talking about Gdynia, we’re going for modernism. It works quite well creating the right atmosphere of these places. And it was fun because building the sense of imminent danger on screen and all these moral and fears and tensions within the character is always tempting for actors to play. The more emotional it is, the more they like it.

You’ve worked on a lot in Polish television. How is Poland facing current industry challenges?
There is nothing super specific about Poland. It’s a question for the whole industry in Europe. Whether it’s Poland, France or Britain, it’s just a question of scale. We are doing a little bit less because we have a smaller market. But the problems stay the same. The good thing is technology, for example, made this whole project generally look good.

If you look at TV shows from the 90s or 80s, they were usually shot on 16mm film and they looked bad. There’s a very big distinction between films and TV series. Right now, we are shooting on exactly the same equipment, the same cameras and the same lenses, with the same amount of light. Of course, there is a certain trap, because all productions look the same right now. So there is some necessity, for me personally, to distinguish my work from other projects. That’s why we’re looking for crazy lenses. For this project, we shot on Japanese anamorphic lenses from the 70s, which gave it a very distinctive and retro look. That’s how you try to find your personality in a very uniform world.

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Back in the room

As the dust settles on the US writers strike, Jeff Melvoin, Anna Winger and Suzie Miller debate the challenges and opportunities for writers and writers room models and discuss why they should be trusted to make creative decisions.

As the US television industry gets back to work following actors and writers strikes that took place last year, a trio of leading writers sat down to discuss the implications of the deal won by the Writers Guild of America (WGA).

Writers went out on strike in May after clashing with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) over issues including pay and residuals, and the use of emerging artificial intelligence with the potential to write scripts.

They also looked to secure minimum staffing agreements, with a designated number of writers on every series, and an end to ‘mini rooms’ that would see fewer writers than usual tasked with creating a show and a number of episodes before production had been greenlit – separating the role of writers and producers and removing the chance of writers progressing to higher positions such as that of showrunner.

When the strike ended in September, writers won concessions on pay, greater transparency around viewing figures on streaming platforms, guidelines for the use of AI and a minimum number of writers for both pre-development and in-production writers rooms.

At Content London, showrunner Jeff Melvoin (Northern Exposure, Alias, Designated Survivor, Killing Eve), writer and producer Anna Winger (Deutschland 83, Unorthodox) and playwright Suzie Miller (Prima Facie) discussed the fallout of the strike, what it means for writers and writers rooms and why producers need to place more trust in the writers they work with.

The US writers room system dates back to radio shows that would run for 39 weeks a year, while television adopted a model of 22 episodes a year – more than one writer could script alone.

Jeff Melvoin

Melvoin: It wasn’t really until Game of Thrones happened in 2013 – it’s only been 10 years, but it rocked everybody’s world and things began to change with shows that were shorter, intensely serialised and that could be binged.

But what’s happened in the meantime is the structure and the customs that grew up with the 22-episode system, in which the showrunner emerged as the leader of most broadcast shows, was threatened. When you start to get down to eight or six episodes, you don’t need the same type of multitasking skills that a showrunner had. You could begin to run it more like the old Hollywood model, where the studio and the director would have more influence.

That model is akin to how television series run in Europe and around the world, marking out the different views on how writers are seen in the overall production process.

Melvoin: The principal difference between how we do things in America and everywhere else is that in America, the writer is perceived as labour and management; and everywhere else in the world, virtually, the writers are perceived as labour only and do not have a place at the production table.

The way the streamers operated, they suddenly realised if you’re going to be demanding all the scripts in advance and you’re going to cross-board them, it’s not the same model as writing continuously through 22 episodes. They thought, ‘We’ll get the scripts in advance. We’ll do a mini room and get the writing done first, we’ll dismiss the writers and then we’ll just carry the lead writer, the showrunner, through [production],’ because the assumption is the scripts are done.

That entire way of doing business was being threatened and undermined by the way the streamers were doing it. And whether it was by intent or just inadvertent, it was real and it was destabilising everything we had been doing for the last 40 years and what our union had really fought for.

Melvoin was showrunner on Kiefer Sutherland drama Designated Survivor

Therefore, the strike was needed to establish some “ground rules” for a minimum number of writers on a show.

Melvoin: What we emerged with – and it was a huge victory for the guild – is minimum staffing requirements that are on a sliding scale, depending on how many episodes are being written. And the writers have to be carried through to a certain point in production. There had never been a need in a contract to mention a show needed writers. It was just assumed. But we felt this time around we had to mention that a show needs writers and these are the number of writers you need for this many episodes.

Based in Berlin, American writer Anna Winger has produced all of her shows out of the German capital. Her company Studio Airlift aims to put writers at the centre of productions, allowing them to learn how to be producers and showrunners.

Anna Winger

Winger: It’s essential that the writer be the producer on the show because if you change something in episode six, it kicks back in every direction, and if you don’t have somebody involved in the whole thing, who understands the intention of every scene, I actually don’t understand how that works. Even though I respect that great TV is made without that, I feel like the writer is an essential part of the process all across the production.

When it comes to writers rooms, Winger’s chief concern was how to pay for a large staff from a budget for just six or eight episodes.

Winger: The writers room model is an incredible thing. It’s just that we’re working on much lower budgets, so when you’re dealing with way less money, the question is how do you do that, really? How do you employ so many people with much lower budgets? That’s the challenge of it.

The writers strike did secure provisions for single-series writers – the ‘Mike White rule,’ so called after The White Lotus creator who writes every episode of the series.

Melvoin: If you want to declare at the beginning of a show that you’re going to write all the episodes, that’s still allowable. You just have to put it out there so that there’s no misconception about that.

Australian playwright Suzie Miller works across Australia, the US and the UK, with a production company based in LA where some of her 40 plays are being developed for the screen.

Suzie Miller

Miller: I don’t want to write every episode of those because I’ve spent a lot of time with each one already. A lot of the work I do that’s original is in the UK or Australia, ideas that I’ve had that have turned into television. But with the American model now, I realise that actually the smart thing would be to keep them all at six episodes per series, because that keeps it quite containable – and it means that tonally I can supervise what all the episodes are.

Choosing the producers you work with is really important. The trust on the writer as storyteller, as the keeper of the story, is something I’m very attracted to. Writers do know story, and sometimes you can throw something into a story to change it because of maybe an insecurity of a producer or something they’ve heard that week or someone they’ve spoken to who said they’re doing something similar.

Sometimes you can ruin the story by throwing something in in the middle of it when it’s already intact. Writers already have a framing device in their head for a show – whether it’s visible or not is another thing. But writers just need to be trusted that little bit more, that they actually are the ones who really know the story.

As well as Deutschland 83 (pictured at the top of this page), Winger is also behind Unorthodox

When writers are also producers, they can also hold more power when it comes to other creative decisions.

Winger: Someone has to make decisions about how the money is spent. And if you’re the person who really understands the intention of what you’re writing, you can also make the decisions about how to cut it or how to reduce cost without compromising the story. Sometimes those decisions even make it better. Often things look more expensive on the page than they need to be, and the showrunning process is so much about figuring out how to make the show you want to make with the money you have to make it.

Melvoin: There are a lot of barriers to the showrunner model outside the US, and they’re being broken down. But we shouldn’t underestimate the challenges, because it’s not just a question of infrastructure and economic model. There’s a whole cultural and psychological dimension to it, too.

There are things from productions around the world that Americans need to look to learn from, and there’s a lot that people can learn from America. We’re all going to have to be more collaborative and recognise that the showrunner is the one who can make your most efficient show. Just give us the opportunity to weigh in and participate in those discussions.

Winger: One of the challenges, at least in Europe, is you’d only learn how to do this by doing it, so somebody has to let you do it with them. It’s really important that there be showrunners who have writers who work as producers with them. Otherwise, how are they supposed to learn how to showrun? The only way you really learn how to do it is by actually doing it.

Coming from theatre, Miller was used to being in charge of her own work.

Miller: I arrived into television with that expectation, which I realised other TV writers didn’t have, and I thought, ‘Oh, OK’, but I still live like I do have those rights. I do really strongly believe in the writer as the person who really takes care of the story, and I’ve been really lucky in the producers I’ve worked with who said, ‘Yes, you are in charge of the story,’ and they’re very supportive of that.

Melvoin’s other credits include hit BBC show Killing Eve

Looking to the future, Melvoin said everyone in television has to be more resourceful, flexble and collaborative.

Melvoin: Anybody who works in the collaborative medium knows there are a lot of people responsible for the success of a project. There are always those individuals who deserve that title [of showrunner]; they are so distinctive that at least you can say, ‘OK, we can allow for that.’ But in most cases, those of us who are less than superhuman, yes, you can be in charge of the production but you need to surround yourself with great people and you want to share that credit with those people.

One of the things I sense from talking to a number of European writer-producers is there’s great resistance and fear of the showrunner title, as if we’re both fighting for command of the controls at an aeroplane, and while we’re fighting, the plane is going to crash.

Winger: They think the writer doesn’t care about the money. That’s a huge thing. They think they’re going to be bankrupted. But that’s only because they’re not teaching the writers about how the money is done.

Melvoin: The threat to existing producers of surrendering power to a writer is real. That’s a tough challenge for a number of people I’ve talked to – how do we convince the powers that be that, actually, you need to share a little bit of the authority with me? I just want a place at the table. I don’t need to take over the table.

But will another talking point during the writers strikes, artificial intelligence, change the conversation once again about writers and their role in the television industry?

Melvoin: Without doubt, if a studio could replace us with machines, they would. But I don’t really see that as a serious threat at this point. We can’t be Luddites and say, ‘Let’s put the genie back in the bottle.’ The genie is not going back in the bottle, so how do we use it?

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Series to Watch: February 2024

DQ checks out the upcoming schedules to pick 10 new series to watch this February, from the latest entry in the Genius anthology and a Mr & Mrs Smith reboot to a Spanish suspense thriller and an epic Japanese historical drama.

Genius: MLK/X
From: US
Original broadcaster: National Geographic
Producer: Imagine Television, Undisputed Cinema, 20th Television
Starring: Kelvin Harrison Jr, Aaron Pierre, Weruche Opia, Jayme Lawson and Ron Cephas Jones
Launch date: February 1 (US), February 3 (UK)
This fourth instalment of the Genius franchise is the first to focus on two subjects – Dr Martin Luther King (Harrison Jr) and Malcolm X (Pierre) – rather than just one, simultaneously exploring their formative years, pioneering accomplishments, duelling philosophies and key personal relationships. While King advanced racial equality through non-violent activism, X advocated for black empowerment, identity and self-determination. Though they only met once and often challenged each other’s views, they ultimately rose to pioneer a movement that lives on today.
Watch trailer 

Mr & Mrs Smith
From: US
Original broadcaster: Prime Video
Producers: Amazon Studios, New Regency and Wells Street Films
Starring: Donald Glover and Maya Erskine
Launch date: February 2
In a reworking of the 2005 film of the same name, two lonely strangers land a job working for a mysterious spy agency that offers them a glorious life of espionage, wealth, travel and a dream home in Manhattan. The catch is they have new identities and an arranged marriage as Mr & Mrs John and Jane Smith. But while they navigate high-risk missions every week, their complex cover story becomes more complicated when they catch real feelings for each other.
Watch trailer

One Day
From: UK
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Producer: Drama Republic
Starring: Ambika Mod, Leo Woodall, Essie Davis, Tim McInnerny, Amber Grappy
Launch date: February 8
Previously adapted as a 2011 feature film, David Nicholls’ novel now gets the small-screen treatment. Emma Morley (Mod) and Dexter Mayhew (Woodall) speak for the first time at their graduation on July 15, 1988, and go their separate ways the next morning. Each episode then finds them one year on, on the same date, as they grow and change, move together and apart, and experience joy and heartbreak.
Watch trailer 

Constellation
From: US
Original broadcaster: Apple TV+
Producers: Turbine Studios, Haut et Court TV
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Jonathan Banks, James D’Arcy, Julian Looman, William Catlett, Barbara Sukowa and Rosie & Davina Coleman
Launch date: February 21
This conspiracy-based space adventure stars Rapace as Jo, an astronaut who returns to Earth after a disaster in space, only to discover that key pieces of her life seem to be missing, leading her to embark on a desperate quest to expose the truth about the hidden history of space travel and recover all she has lost.

Avatar: The Last Airbender
From: US
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Producer: Rideback
Starring: Gordon Cormier, Ian Ousley, Kiawentiio, Daniel Dae Kim and Dallas Liu
Launch date: February 22
A live-action reimagining of the popular animated series, this show follows Aang (Cormier), the young Avatar, as he learns to master the four elements (water, earth, air and fire) to restore balance to a world threatened by the terrifying Fire Nation.
Watch trailer 

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live
From: US
Original broadcasters: AMC, AMC+
Producer: AMC Studios
Starring: Andrew Lincoln, Danai Gurira, Lesley-Ann Brandt, Matt Jeffries, Pollyanna McIntosh and Terry O’Quinn
Launch date: February 25
The latest entry in the long-running Walking Dead franchise, The Ones Who Live notably sees the return of two beloved characters – Rick Grimes (Lincoln) and Michonne (Gurira) – in what is described as an epic love story of two people changed by a changed world. Can Rick and Michonne find themselves and each other in a place and situation unlike they’ve ever known before?
Watch trailer 

Shōgun
From: Japan, US
Original broadcasters: FX & Hulu (US), Star + (Latin America), Disney+ (worldwide)
Producer: FX Productions
Starring: Hiroyuki Sanada, Cosmo Jarvis, Anna Sawai, Tadanobu Asano, Hiroto Kanai, Takehiro Hira, Moeka Hoshi, Tokuma Nishioka, Shinnosuke Abe, Yuki Kura, Yuka Kouri and Fumi Nikaido
Launch date: February 27
Based on the novel by James Clavell, this epic series is set in 1600s Japan at the dawn of a civil war that will define a century. Sanada plays Lord Yoshii Toranaga, who is fighting for his life as his enemies on the Council of Regents unite against him. When a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village, its English pilot John Blackthorne (Jarvis) comes bearing secrets that could help Toranaga tip the scales of power and devastate the formidable influence of Blackthorne’s own enemies.
Watch trailer

Reina Roja (Red Queen)
From: Spain
Original broadcaster: Prime Video
Producers: Dopamine, Focus
Starring: Vicky Luengo and Hovik Keuchkerian
Launch date: February 29
A seven-episode TV adaptation of the first book in Juan Gómez-Jurado’s trilogy, Reina Roja follows Antonia Scott, who is officially declared the smartest person on Earth. Her intelligence made her the ‘Red Queen’ of a secret and experimental police project, but what seemed like a gift became a curse and she lost everything. When the son of a powerful tycoon is found murdered and the daughter of Spain’s wealthiest man is kidnapped, the Red Queen organisation is set in motion and hot-tempered Basque cop Jon Gutiérrez is sent to reactivate Antonia.
Watch trailer 

Elsbeth
From: US
Original broadcaster: CBS
Producers: CBS Studios in association with King Size Productions
Distributor: Paramount Global Content Distribution
Starring: Carrie Preston, Wendell Pierce and Carra Patterson
Launch date: February 29
Preston reprises her role as Elsbeth Tascioni in this spin-off from The Good Wife and The Good Fight. An astute but unconventional attorney, Elsbeth utilises her singular point of view to make unique observations and corner brilliant criminals alongside the NYPD. After leaving her successful legal career in Chicago to tackle a new investigative role in New York City, Elsbeth finds herself jockeying with the toast of the NYPD, Captain CW Wagner (Pierce), a charismatic and revered leader. Working alongside Elsbeth is Officer Kaya Blanke (Patterson), a stoic and ethical officer who quickly develops an appreciation for Elsbeth’s insightful and offbeat ways.
Watch trailer

Boarders
From: UK
Original broadcaster: BBC Three
Producer: Studio Lambert
Distributor: All3Media International
Starring: Josh Tedeku, Jodie Campbell, Myles Kamwendo, Sekou Diaby, Aruna Jalloh, Derek Riddell, Niky Wardley and Daniel Lawrence Taylor
Launch date: February TBC
This comedy-drama from Lawrence Taylor (Timewasters) follows five under-privileged black students from inner-city London as they gain scholarships at St Gilberts, an elite boarding school. They soon find themselves in a world they can only describe as something out of Harry Potter, surrounded by lush playing fields, cloistered grandeur and complex social rules they must quickly decipher in order to survive.

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Uncharted waters

Finland’s Miikko Oikkonnen offers DQ an insight into his career and his writing process before discussing his approach to dramatising a real-life ferry disaster in factual drama Estonia.

Finnish writer Miikko Oikkonnen has created series such as crime drama Bordertown and thriller Heksinki Syndrome. But there is no doubt that Estonia, which dramatises the real-life sinking of the titular ferry in 1994 and the subsequent investigation into the tragedy, is the most significant and challenging project of his career so far.

Filmed in Finland, Sweden and Estonia, with numerous scenes also shot on water stages in Brussels, the eight-part series shines a light what happened to the MS Estonia in September 1994 and the international inquiry that followed, all through the eyes of survivors, rescuers, family members, politicians, investigators and journalists.

It is produced by Finland’s Fisher King in coproduction with Sweden’s Kärnfilm, Panache Production Belgium and Estonia’s Amrion Oü for C More Finland, Sweden’s TV4, MTV Finland and Telia Estonia. Beta Film is the distributor.

Here, Oikkonnen discusses how he began writing for television, the challenges of making Estonia and the role drama can play in retelling real stories.

Miikko Oikkonnen

How did you start out as a television writer?
I studied directing at Aalto University, but alongside directing, I often found myself involved in writing and producing student productions. This eventually led me to a job at [Finnish broadcaster] YLE as an assistant producer, and through that, I was also commissioned for my first scripts. So instead of film, television drama became familiar to me.

Towards the end of the 2000s, television drama was quickly rising alongside films. At that time, my business partner Matti Halonen and I founded a new company, Fisher King, with a specific focus on television. I decided to explore more about writers rooms and the special function of showrunners, which became the company’s way of operating, and eventually I became Finland’s first showrunner.

Which show served as your big break as a TV writer?
When we founded the production company, the strategy was to internationalise Finnish storytelling. At that time, all domestic drama was still funded with domestic money. The company’s goal was to produce series with an international approach. The fantasy series Nymphs was the first series I created, and it was sold to more than 60 territories. However, the real breakthrough came with the Nordic noir series Bordertown, to which I dedicated more than 10 years. It seemed to hit the crest of the genre’s wave, initially spreading to major channels in Europe and eventually reaching 180 territories worldwide via Netflix.

Where did the idea to dramatise the MS Estonia disaster first come from?
The sinking of the MS Estonia is one of the worst, largest and deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in 20th century Europe. Above all, the accident investigation itself has been termed a catastrophe due to its significant impact and implications, and the sinking remains a cold case. The accident and its investigation still make headlines in the Nordic countries, almost 30 years later.

This resurgence in public attention made it clear that the wounds from this incident still run deep within our society. When trying to find other projects about MS Estonia, I discovered a surprising absence of notable fictional dramas on the subject. Perhaps the topic has remained overly sensitive due to the memories still fresh in our minds. However, the involvement of networks such as MTV3 Finland and TV4 Sweden, which quickly embraced the idea for a series, signalled to me that the time might finally be right for such a production.

Estonia dramatises the sinking of the MS Estonia in 1994, which killed 852 people

What were your first thoughts about how you would tell this story?
Right from the beginning, it was important for the series to address all three countries involved in the disaster. The MS Estonia was a ship owned by Estonia and Sweden and named after the newly independent Estonia. The ferry sank in Finnish territorial waters and claimed 852 lives, the majority of whom were Swedish.

Everyone up here in the North can vividly recall where they were when the MS Estonia tragedy happened. It is a collective memory we share. However, very few are familiar with the extensive three-year-long inquiry that followed the devastating incident.

When I was presenting Finnish research material for the series to our Swedish colleagues, I was surprised to learn how little they knew about the events in Finland or Estonia during the investigation. Similarly, I had no knowledge of the developments in Sweden or Estonia, and the Estonians were unaware of the Swedish or Finnish perspectives. This created a starting point for the whole series: are we able to show these different points of view of the accident, paint a wider picture, and construct a comprehensive narrative of why the catastrophe occurred?

We wanted the series to feel credible and authentic to the audience, particularly within each of the three countries whose story we are telling, as well as internationally – whether in the scriptwriting process or realisation, in front of the camera and behind it.

What research did you do to ensure the project was authentic as possible?
When I started developing the series, I found more than 14,000 records in the Finnish National Archives related to the accident, and this is in Finland alone. There was probably an equal amount of material in Sweden and Estonia. We ended up hiring historians from all three countries to search for suitable material for the series. There was so much material that, in terms of content, we didn’t necessarily need to invent anything fictional for the series.

We knew when embarking on the task of recounting the MS Estonia story that we had a responsibility of depicting the actual event – we are telling a true story about real people. Although we wanted the series to adhere as closely to the facts as possible, of course, we were making a fictional series. This means we dramatised events, combined characters and events, and sometimes adjusted the timeline so that a drama series would emerge from real events.

The series also looks at the inquiry into the disaster

The writing team comprised people from different countries. How would you describe the writing process?
The process progressed rapidly once the concept was established. I first wrote the pilot episode before the writing team began their work. It was a concrete way to introduce the style and narrative approach of the series. Initially, I worked with a Finnish team: Sanna Reinumägi, Olli Suitiala and Tuomas Hakola. Writers from Sweden and Estonia brought the situations and characters from their own countries to life. In retrospect, this really contributed to the authenticity of the series and earned a lot of praise.

As showrunner, what were your biggest considerations when it came to production?
The production was substantial compared with anything I had done before. Estonia is claimed to be the largest Finnish drama production to date. But in practice, the work is somewhat the same as in any production. There was just more of it, and the production team included contributors from five different countries.

The shoots were also organised in five different countries with local production companies and local crews, so it was like a crazy puzzle – I feared visiting the scheduling room. Nevertheless, it was a special experience that made us overlook the differences and brought us closer in our commonalities. Also, the feedback from the networks involved and the international distributor, Beta Film, was very important to us.

How did you work with director Måns Månsson on the series?
Usually, a director joins the production closer to the filming stage, but the collaboration with Måns started during the early stages of the scripts. I had perhaps assembled the first versions of the first and second episodes when we began discussing the series and its content. We went through episode by episode and page by page, discussing how the characters, story and structure progress.

Måns was extremely involved in the entire content when the actual pre-production began. I also delegated a lot of responsibility to him. He further developed the chosen style with cinematographer JP Passi. He was heavily involved in the casting process and, as a Swedish director, essentially took charge of selecting Swedish actors. He also visited locations, leaving me time to continue working on the scripts.

The same deeper collaboration continued throughout shooting and in the editing process. Typically, directors do not participate in the editing of my productions, but this time, Måns was involved from start to finish. We diligently edited the series together with lead editor George Cregg. The time spent together editing was a great experience for me. It resembled more of a writers room. Discussions and joint experiments with the content undoubtedly led to a better end result.

Many scenes were shot on water stages in Brussels

How did the series balance practical with virtual and computer-generated effects?
This is a great question! We spoke with Måns and cinematographer JP Passi many times during pre-production, emphasising that we didn’t want the effects to overshadow the story. We wanted the viewer to feel in the midst of the events and be close to the characters, and the viewing experience to be both emotionally engaging and thoroughly gripping.

We recreated the vessel in different ways: We were shooting the tilting and sinking of the ship in the indoor water studios in Brussels. In Turkey, we rented an entire ship, and we were also shooting in existing locations in Estonia and Finland. By combining a real ship with VFX extensions, we aimed to convey the grand scale of the MS Estonia. With large, true-to-scale set pieces within the water studio, we show the rapid tilting and subsequent sinking of the ship. We accurately constructed a full-scale sundeck, corridors and cabins, all of which could be tilted and lowered into the water during filming.

A new aspect for the water stage crew was our wish to perform extended takes, incorporating practical effects such as rain, waves, water cannons and tanks. Our ambition was to follow our characters for several uninterrupted minutes, both within the ship and on the sundeck. This demanded extensive planning, tests, rehearsals and safety measures.
The ship modelling was done by the British company DNEG, and it was brought to life by Estonian visual effects company Frost Films. However, it was important to us that as much as possible of what is seen was captured with a camera and our actors, so most of the visual effects are digitally enhancing and extending real filmed material.

What challenges did you face and how were they overcome?
Perhaps the biggest challenges came from external factors that affected production. For example, in early 2022, we identified two vessels that could have been used as MS Estonia and MS Europa in the series. However, the port in Odessa, where these vessels were located, became inaccessible due to the ongoing war, making it impossible to proceed with production. Finding a new ship was not easy, and, understandably, no shipping line operating in the Gulf of Finland wanted to be involved in the project.

Another challenge was to build a large aluminium platform on which we could construct the sets, and which could be tilted and sunk in a controlled manner on the water stage. Sourcing materials for this platform also became difficult, and it affected the schedule. Moreover, rising interest rates and inflation over the years did not make production management any easier. As a showrunner, I had to grapple with various content decisions during both the filming and post-production due to these unexpected external pressures.

The eight-parter is a coproduction between Finland, Estonia and Sweden

What conclusions about the real-life tragedy did you come to after working on the series?
I read a considerable amount of research material, protocols, transcripts and articles about the accident. I don’t really doubt that the final report published in 1997 is mostly accurate. Interestingly, it’s worth asking why the report received such a contradictory reception and how it is possible that the accident investigation did not find anyone responsible for the accident. Hopefully, our series succeeds in showing the viewer the various reasons why the report was initially received with great scepticism.

Perhaps it also helps to understand the kind of chaos, pressure and conflicting interests under which the investigation was conducted. I argue that, in addition to the accident itself, the accident investigation was a failure marked by many overlapping errors. It is very interesting that the investigation into the MS Estonia accident has now been reopened, and new research results are promised to be published later this year.

What role does drama have in telling real stories in a way that documentaries or factual series do not?
You can read as many reports as you want, but they can never reveal the internal lives of people, particularly when it comes to describing the impact of unspoken things on them. Even interviews fail to capture the everyday interactions between people because there is an external observer in the moment. Only through fiction can you combine characters, themes and various times and places to create a tapestry that reveals aspects of a person that cannot be otherwise captured. This is why drama is an incredibly powerful tool.

What are you working on next?
After Estonia, I have continued with the second season of YLE’s heist thriller series Helsinki Syndrome, staring Peter Franzén. It is also loosely based on true events from the 90s, specifically in the banking and legal world. I hope the production will be completed this spring, and after that I dream of taking a development break. Estonia has been gigantic to me, so it feels like the next project must be especially meaningful and special. Developing something like that requires time and moments of freedom, right?

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