All posts by Nick Edwards

Playing detective

The creative team behind Norwegian comedy Hva skedde med Solveig? (Whatever Happened to Solveig?) reveal how they balanced drama with laughs to send up the ever-popular true crime genre.

An hilarious send up of the hugely popular true crime genre, Norwegian comedy Hva skedde med Solveig? (Whatever Happened to Solveig?) follows an investigation into the tragic death in 2013 of social media star Solveig Lyngåsen. During what should have been an ‘insta-perfect’ moment she falls from a precarious cliff edge while live streaming vacuous self-help advice to her thousands of followers.

A decade later, the murder remains unsolved and two journalists re-open the case. They quickly discover that local petty criminal Ole-Glenn Averøy is still suspected by local residents. However, as they delve deeper they uncover a growing list of other residents who all had strong reasons to get rid of Solveig.

“We’ve seen all the best American true crime shows, like HBO’s The Jinx and Netflix’s Making A Murderer,” says Kevin Vågenes, who plays Solveig in the eight-episode series, “and there are some really good Norwegian ones too.”

Kevin Vågenes plays multiple characters in Hva skedde med Solveig?

However, rather than simply send up the genre, writer Martin Zimmer also incorporated the components that give the genre such a compelling narrative drive. Viewers are not only laughing out loud but are keen to binge the next episode.

“Red-herrings, plot-twists, reveals, and we always leave a cliffhanger at the end so you want to see what comes next,” he says of the NRK series, which was screened at France’s Festival de la Fiction de la Rochelle. This meant the biggest challenge was in the editing process.

“Because the story is based on things happening in the past with flashbacks and reconstructions of the timeline of the crime, there was unlimited possibilities in the editing room. We ended up swopping several storylines between episodes. So episode three was originally our episode five in the script. There are a lot of other storylines that were moved around,” adds producer Aleksander Herresthal.

The battle between crime and comedy was also something that had to be tonally right. “We wanted the series to not be too dark and keep the comedy feel, but at the same time be as realistic and true to the genre as possible. So, it was also a long process to find the right music and tone for the series,” says Herresthal.

Vågenes not only plays Solveig but multiple other characters who make up the small community in the village of Nesvågen. These include Solveig’s hairdresser, the main suspect Ole (who is hated by the village’s inhabitants), the more inept of the two intrepid journalists, and a cop who is convinced of the main suspect’s guilt way before any evidence has been presented.

Whatever Happened to Solveig? is a quirky take on the true crime genre

All of them share a deluded sense of self-importance that proves fertile territory for Vågenes to ridicule. He plays every comedic character while other actors play the supporting straight roles. The tone is reminiscent of Australian comic Chris Lilley’s work (such as the classic HBO Summer Heights High), and shares a similar tone lampooning contemporary life.

“We’re influenced by what’s going on in the world – social events and movements, stuff going on in society, politics, trends, and so on,” continues the actor, “but humour always comes first.”

Solveig is the main brunt of their farce. “You are good enough as you are” is her trademark mantra. She is intended to represent the kind of influencers “who perhaps are not best qualified to give out life advice,” says Zimmer. “We’ve been watching a lot of influencers for inspiration and getting very annoyed by them.”

The show is a battle between crime and comedy

Their style has evolved ever since Zimmer was sent a video reel of Vågenes playing multiple characters as part of early efforts to get his name out into the world and to find collaborators.

“We were blown away by his talent,” says Zimmer, “and we knew he was someone we wanted to work with.” That was 10 years ago. Since then, alongside Herresthal, they have made various shows including Couples Therapy that become one of Norway’s most watched TV series (and was nominated for Best Comedy at the Rose D’Or awards).

It led to a spin-off live event attended by more than 100,000 fans. Christmas in Blood Mountain (nominated for Best Short Form series at French festival Canneseries) was another. Like What Happened to Solveig?, they were made by independent production company Seefood TV,  which is co-owned by Herresthal and based in Oslo. The trio have worked together since the company was founded in 2001 and sometimes their traditional roles blur. “He knows my strengths and my weaknesses,” says Vågenes. “From his writing I can immediately tell what his thought process are, and what he thinks is funny about a particular role, so we’ve developed a trust.”

The show revolves around the murder of social media start Solveig Lyngåsen

A remake of Couples Therapy was produced in Denmark by the public service broadcaster DR but didn’t work as well and was soon cancelled. A Swedish remake met a similar fate. “Some of the uniquely Norwegian elements were directly reproduced, which didn’t work,” says Zimmer, “as comedy is so local.”

Is this because Vågenes is so integral to the original show? “He has evolved his own art form,” says Zimmer. “Playing multiple characters has become his trademark.”

Vågenes is now a huge star in Norway, and has worked in in America (taking a role in Viaplay series Swedish Dicks, which also starred Keanu Reeves).

What Happened to Solveig? debuted in August on NRK so if figures are good, hopefully a second season will be commissioned. In the meantime it was chosen from many Nordic entries to appear at the La Rochelle TV Festival that celebrated its 25th anniversary this year.

“We had a lot of crime shows from the Nordic region and we know that is an area they excel in,” says Hector Lavigne, head of acquisitions and productions at NBC Universal France and a member of the European Selection committee, “but the purpose of the selection was to demonstrate the range of experimentation and creativity across Europe. We felt this show was so original, and of course, so funny,” he says.

“Comedy doesn’t travel as easily as drama,” explains Zimmer, contrasting how Nordic Noir has become so famous while comedy from that part of the world is less well known. However, as with other rare exceptions to crime, such as the Danish political thriller Borgen, their idiosyncratic mash-up of Norwegian life and true crime means the show could be set to resonate way beyond the Nordics.

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Hack race

Surveillance drama Concordia is set in a place ruled by AI – until a series of crimes put the titular town of the future on the verge of breakdown. Showrunner Frank Doelger and star Ruth Bradley give DQ a guided tour.

From a fantasy world ruled by dragons, former Game of Thrones executive producer Frank Doelger has moved to a utopian town of the near future – one ruled by AI – with his new sci-fi thriller Concordia.

“I’ve always been fascinated by utopian communities, as well as the kind of people who make them,” says Doelger, referring to those who were considered the pioneering entrepreneurs of their day and have inspired the series.

In 1909, Milton Hershey founded a vocational school and a surrounding town that he believed created an “educated, healthy and happy workforce.” Fellow chocolatier John Cadbury built Bourneville in the UK in 1906 in the hope of “proving that good-quality housing in a natural, green environment was a necessity for the greater good of society.”

In Germany a few years later, Carl Friedrich von Siemens built Siemensstadt to “combine workspace, living space and nature harmoniously.” These were all created at the beginning of the 20th century – a period that, like today, was marked by profound cultural and financial disruption. Now we hear stories of billionaire entrepreneurs who have bought their own islands, run their own hospitals and have even hired private armies.

Frank Doelger poses with Concordia stars Cristiane Paul (left) and Ruth Bradley

“Given the upheavals of the last few years, I’ve always wondered what a 21st century utopian society would look like,” explains Doelger, who also worked on HBO classics such as John Adams and Rome, as well as The Swarm, which like Concordia comes from his production company Intaglio Films, a joint venture between Germany’s Beta Film and ZDF Studios.

The series centres on Concordia’s founder and CEO, Juliane Ericksen, played by the celebrated German actor Christiane Paul. Juliane left East Germany for Sweden after the Berlin Wall came down, and it was there that she met her husband, who shared her belief that technology was the key to a better world.

They moved to his dilapidated hometown with the hope of turning it into an AI-powered community. Following a horrific shooting, he never lived to see that vision come true. But Juliane convinced the residents that AI and cameras could prevent such a tragedy ever happening again.

In Concordia, rather than being seen as insidious or sinister, surveillance and personal data collection are considered forces for good and appear to have solved the problems of our digital age. There’s racial harmony and a sense of community and personal identity among citizens; and there is little crime but high levels of happiness and mental and physical wellbeing.

The level of educational equality Concordia has achieved is also reflected in a scene when a cleaner corrects a resident on how she pronounces ancient Greek. People are walking and cycling and there’s a notable absence of cars, showing that Concordia is an environmentally sustainable environment too.

Bradley plays crisis-containment specialist Thea

“In Concordia you have the same rights if you come in to clean the offices or if you’re the CEO. You get the same education for your children and the same healthcare,” says Doelger, who is the showrunner and executive producer.

The six-part series starts 20 years after Concordia was first built, when a new Concordia is on the verge of being constructed in Germany. However, two crimes take place that shake the community to its core: the supposedly impenetrable firewall is hacked and one of the inhabitants is murdered.

Thea Ryan, a crisis-containment specialist from London (played by British/Irish actor Ruth Bradley), is brought in to help deal with the fallout. “Thea plays the role of the audience,” says Bradley. “She sees Concordia with fresh eyes.”

Her co-investigator is Isabelle Larsson, a committed citizen of Concordia played by Swedish-Ghanaian actor Nanna Blondell (House of the Dragon). Isabelle is a former community officer who gave up her career in law enforcement to work in the town, hoping AI surveillance could prevent crime altogether.

Despite Thea’s job title, her private life is in chaos. She is trying to sustain relationships with her husband, son and mother (who has dementia) back in London via video calls. “Nothing fazes her in her professional life, but she’s not really on top of it at home,” says Bradley, who was most recently seen starring in Slow Horses on Apple TV+.

Thea’s co-investigator is Isabelle, played by Nanna Blondell

Other characters reflect the multiple nationalities of the cast and the contemporary issues in which Doelger, and co-creators Nicholas Racz and Mike Walden, are interested. Thea’s husband is French and he used to feel welcome in England. But after Brexit, he’s thinking “maybe they don’t want us here,” says Doelger.

“What makes the story of Concordia so exciting for me is the characters within it,” says director Barbara Eder. “They are not one-sided, not divisible into simply good and evil. As the plot progresses, the question arises as to whom one can trust. More and more, our protagonists get caught in a web of concealment, mistrust and suspicion.”

Notably, the series is set in 2024, and all the technological infrastructure behind Concordia exists today. “We wanted to shoot as much on camera as possible; there’s very little VFX,” says Doelger. “This is not a dystopian vision. It’s not grey and moody, it’s not a town that’s dying or dead. It’s a place of transparency. It’s completely light-filled – we shot against windows a lot,” he says of how Eder (who also directed four episodes of The Swarm) approached her job.

“The camera is not looking at the city, but rather gliding through it and experiencing it with the protagonists, removing any distance in order to not create a futuristic utopia, but a world that could actually exist in the present,” adds Eder.

Like Intaglio Films’s previous production for ZDF, eco-thriller The Swarm, Concordia is also a coproduction. MBC, France Télévisions and Hulu Japan are partners on the series, which is distributed by Beta Film and ZDF Studios. In a challenging economic climate, this model can not only provide premium budgets but also enable creator-driven shows.

Paul is Juliane, the founder and CEO of titular ‘utopia’ Concordia

“Because we have all of these partners, they’re smart enough to know they can trust the production team to make the right decisions. You get notes from very intelligent people but ultimately they’re leaving it to us. We have final cut, which is really nice,” says Doelger, speaking at Cannes TV market Mipcom, where Concordia had its world premiere last month.

The series was three-and-a-half years in development. “There were a lot of drafts. A lot of writing was done in pre-production, but I think some of the most interesting things happen once you find the right actors – they can change completely change the characters,” the showrunner notes.

Bradley found collaborating with actors from all over the world a great experience. “The different styles of acting, the different ways of working. We were all so open to how each other works. Everyone was very open to listening and learning from each other,” she says.

Having started acting at 11 years old, Bradley got an agent when she was 16 and moved to London from Dublin when she was 18. She has worked on everything from art house films (she has just finished working on an independent film) to big American network series. But before Concordia, “I’d never had that level of collaboration with a showrunner,” she says.

Over the course of the series, Thea and Isabelle’s perspectives switch. While Isabelle becomes more and more disillusioned with Concordia, Thea starts to think maybe Concordia could be the solution to the chaos in her personal life.

But rather than being didactic, Doelger wanted to explore the issues Concordia raises in a measured fashion. “Ultimately the show doesn’t take a POV on AI,” he says. “People often approach these issues with fixed preconceptions, but why does it have to be that AI is bad? Why is embracing this technology necessarily a bad thing?”

The desire to remake society has been with us since Plato first proposed it in The Republic, 2,500 years ago. Judging by Concordia, the subject may well inspire great TV shows for many years to come.

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Levelling up

Flemish producer Philippe De Schepper reveals how he blended reality and fiction for science-fiction series Arcadia, which imagines a world where people’s quality of life is based on a ‘citizen score’ and explores what happens when one person tries to bend the rules for his family.

In the near future, following a catastrophic event, Arcadia is a society existing on limited resources. To provide social cohesion, its citizens are awarded a ‘score’ based on what they contribute, in order to establish the quality of life they deserve.

Philippe De Schepper

But when a father from the highest end of the social spectrum is found to have tampered with the government’s algorithm that determines these scores (to raise those of his own children), his family’s world is thrown into turmoil.

This is the premise of Arcadia, a Flemish-Dutch sci-fi series co-created by Philippe De Schepper and Bas Adriaensen. It stars Lynn Van Royen of Beau Sejour and Tablula Rasa fame, and Maarten Heijmans, who won an Emmy for Ramses.

Sci-fi famously uses a vision of the future to comment on the present and Arcadia is no exception. “In China, they used to have a social contract where people would monitor each other, but this became harder when their cities became so big,” says showrunner De Schepper, speaking recently at the La Rochelle TV festival in France, where Arcadia was an entered into the international competition.

“So the next best thing is the social credit system. For example, if you are an investigative journalist, your score is lowered and you may only be able to travel in restricted areas.” He points out that this phenomenon is not alien to Europe either. “In East Germany, by the time the Berlin wall fell, one in three people worked for the Stasi [secret police], spying on their friends and family,” he explains.

A coproduction between VRT’s Een in Belgium and Dutch broadcaster KRO-NCRV’s NPO, the eight-part series debuted locally earlier this year. Notably, its budget was boosted by the involvement of Germany’s WDR/SWR, which helped raise the money that was required to deliver the costly production values and special effects needed to create the show’s visual spectacle.

Arcadia shows a vision of the future where citizens are strictly controlled

But despite being considered a risky genre to tackle, in this case, sci-fi presented opportunities. Because Arcadia is set in the future, in a world that is not supposed to be real, this removes some of the constraints normally associated with coproductions, such as having to shoot in specific locations or using actors from specific countries.

“Viewers don’t ask why all these actors from Flanders and the Netherlands are all together in the same place because it’s not real anyway,” says De Schepper, who is currently working on the last re-writes of season two.

For VRT, a family-driven channel, the family drama element of the series appealed. “They didn’t want it to be too sci-fi,” says De Schepper, while the “near future, thriller elements” were what NPO wanted for its viewers.

Sci-fi is a rare phenomenon in the European TV drama market, but Arcadia’s premise resonated with the public broadcasters because it carries themes of solidarity.

Lynn Van Royen starred in Beau Sejour and Tablula Rasa

“A lot of people today, whether right or left wing, are not happy at all. They all say they want a fair society and that citizens should get what they deserve in relation to what the contribute. However, as soon as you try to regulate this it becomes unfair in one group’s eyes. It’s very hard for people to accept they can live in a world that is not just.”

Despite De Schepper himself not being a regular user of social media, Arcadia seems to reflect on the culture of ‘likes’ and social acceptance. For example, in order to protect Luz, his daughter who doesn’t always conform to accepted norms of social behaviour, Pieter has tinkered with the algorithm so her score does not fall below the threshold required to stay within Arcadia’s walls. When he is caught, he is banished to the wild and mysterious wasteland of the Outer World.

The theme of what it means to ‘fit in’ resonated with the mother of an actor who plays Nobel, a boy with Down’s syndrome. When she read the scripts, she said: “’This is exactly the world I’m living in,’” recalls De Schepper.

The judges of the show at La Rochelle felt Arcadia was “a refreshing proposal” and particularly liked it’s “Black Mirror elements,” says Hector Lavigne, head of acquisitions and productions at NBCUniversal France and a member of the European selection committee.

The family drama element of the series appealed to VRT

The show, the Flemish industry and De Schepper himself are all unique. “Officially I am a director but I never directed,” he says. “At the time, you could not study screenwriting in Flanders so I went to film school.” He taught himself how to write and landed a job at the production company Eyeworks, where he helped establish a drama department.

“I wanted to do it the American way,” he says. “So I started putting writers together and running rooms, something that no one else was doing at that time.” His breakthrough came in 2006 working as showrunner on Missing Persons Unit ,which was sold to M6 in France.

He also created the country’s most watched TV show of all time, Home Grown, which is about potato farmers who switch to growing marijuana. Then, with producing partner Helen Perquy at Jonnydepony, they focused on shows that would have appeal outside of Belgium just as the streamers were coming to Europe. Blackout and Transport were other successes.

Arcadia also carries the theme of what it means to ‘fit in’

The Flemish industry is hotbed of creativity for unorthodox reasons. “Whereas French and Italian screenwriters are rooted in the traditions of TV storytelling, we don’t have a long history of making series,” De Schepper notes. “Nor do we have the educational system for screenwriters. Similarly, the commissioners don’t have this knowledge.

“In a lot of countries, if you pitch an idea, they might say, ‘Sorry, we could never do that show because we tried it once and it didn’t work.’ or ‘We had that problem with another show’ and so on. Because we don’t have that history, everything is possible. Commissioners are not afraid to say, ‘That’s a nice idea for a show, let’s make it.’ That’s why we make a lot of strange shows.”

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Escaping nightmares

Nights in Téfia director Miguel del Arco tells DQ how he sought to dramatise the experiences of prisoners in a real Spanish concentration camp with a story that follows its characters between their harsh reality and a dreamlike fantasy world.

Spanish drama Nights in Téfia is based on a real-life concentration camp in Spain that existed under the Franco regime. Originally for vagrants and thugs, from 1954 onwards it also included LGBTIQA+ people.

At the recent Festival de la Fiction in La Rochelle, France, where this six-episode series was shortlisted in the international category, judges and festivalgoers may have been taken aback to find out such camps were in existence until the mid-1960s. Perhaps more surprising is that many Spaniards are equally unaware of this period of their recent history.

“Speaking about Franco and the concentration camps is still a problem in Spain,” says Miguel del Arco, the creator and co-writer and director of the show. “My generation talked about the fall of the Berlin Wall all the time, but we never talked about this. My young niece knows much more about the Second World War than she does about Franco’s regime. We’re still fighting about historic memory in Spain. I want to connect the past to the present.”

For this reason, the story is told in three distinct narrative spheres that all drastically differ in tone.

Director Miguel del Arco (right) on set for Nights in Téfia

The first is Téfia during the sixties. Here we meet the shows’s protagonist, Airam Betancor (played by Marcos Ruiz), a young man who has been arrested for being homosexual. His fellow inmates, through their own unique experiences, also shed light on the horrors of living in the camp. Manuel ‘La Vespa’ Flores, played by Patrick Criado, is the love of Airam’s life. He is a force of nature and unashamedly queer, but even his spirit is subdued by this brutal environment. Jose, despite his imposing stature, has been so traumatised by violence that he is consumed by mental illness. ‘La Sissi,’ a woman trapped in a man’s body, is scorned every day.

We also come face to face with an array of sadist and Franco sympathetic guards, as well as one who’s conscience is torn about the regime he enforces.

The second world is Tindaya, a dreamlike fantasy realm that often takes the form of an extravagant cabaret. Here the characters can mentally escape their confines. A former theatre director (locked up for repeated drunkenness) tells stories at night to alleviate the suffering of the day, and takes the role of master of ceremonies in Tindaya. “They are living such a nightmare, so at night they dream,” says del Arco.

Creating reality through your imagination is a powerful theme. “There’s a phrase in the show, ‘All you can imagine, you can do,’” says the director. “The prisoners dream of escaping, and many Spanish dreamt of Franco’s death, at the time, so they would be free.”

Nights in Tefia unfolds in both the harsh, brutal reality of a concentration camp…

Watching such recent history, one cannot help but reflect that while the reality for many LGBTIQ+ people today has improved greatly, for others it is still but a dream.

The third part of the narrative takes place in 2004, when we meet Airam again, this time as he is approached by a documentary filmmaker to talk about his time in Téfia. “In the early 2000s, it was still possible to cross the street and the person who’d been torturing you would be walking the other way, or they may be working at your local supermarket,” del Arco explains. This happens to Airam when his jailer moves into his neighbourhood to live with his daughter’s family.

Ever since La Casa de Papel (Money Heist), the creativity in Spain’s TV industry has gained the world’s attention, though it is still a surprise to witness the high level of cinematic ambition of Las Noches de Téfia (as it is known in Spain). Del Arco, who is also a distinguished playwright and theatre director, had not been seeking to move into TV, but when execs approached him, he was intrigued to tackle this subject on the small screen. “Five years ago, this would not have been possible,” he says, “but TV is very good nowadays.”

Executing his vision on a TV budget required a great deal of ingenuity. Expensive filming days were kept to a minimum and the whole series was shot in 16 weeks. “The actors were happy to come and prepare a month in advance,” he says, “which meant we were ready go as soon as the cameras rolled.”

…and the fantasy, dreamlike world into which its inmates escape at night

The prison scenes of Téfia, with its mountainous backdrop, were shot on location in the Canary Islands. The black and white, stark minimal style contrasts with the dazzling colour of Tindaya’s magical cabaret sequences. This dreamlike realm was shot using only a single set, a small theatre near Madrid. All the budget could then be thrown at the choreography, costume, make-up, lighting and set design to create the mind-blowing visual feast. Luckily, the more humdrum reality of 2004 is compatible with budget-friendly shooting methods, such as handheld cameras.

“You never have enough budget,” says del Arco, “but [broadcaster and distributor] Atresmedia TV and [producer] Buendía Estudios were very supportive and the passion and dedication of the actors, crew, even the extras, made it all possible.”

There’s a scene in 2004 in which the documentary maker asks about the ‘facts’ of Airam’s experience in Téfia, but he tries to explain he doesn’t really know what was more important to him during his imprisonment – fiction or reality. Nights in Téfia plays an important role in the battle for a historical narrative of this era in Spain.

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Breaking the rules

Producer Ayumi Sano and actor Tōko Miura discuss the social issues at the heart of Japanese drama Elpis and reveal how the series is breaking television conventions.

In Elpis, the plight of a female Japanese journalist who has fallen on hard times becomes intertwined with the case of a serial killer.

Kansai TV’s 10-part series, which enjoyed its world premiere at Mipcom in Cannes last month, does away with all the conventions of Japanese TV drama – and the international market took notice.

Issues close to the heart of multi-award-winning producer Ayumi Sano drive the pacy and intelligent show, including the injustices Japanese women experience on an everyday basis. In the series, journalist Ena Asakawa, played by Masami Nagasawa, has kissed her co-worker boyfriend in public, leading to a public scandal (relationships with colleagues are often frowned upon by many Japanese companies). She is consequently demoted to the position of announcer on a ‘wide’ show, a uniquely Japanese format that covers everything from celebrity gossip to consumer, sensationalist and human interest stories. To add insult to injury, her now ex-boyfriend is mingling with Japan’s media elite working for the prime minister.

In her new position on the show, called Friday BonBon, Ena is dismissed as ‘past it,’ and has to endure a rude and sexist boss who constantly flirts with the much younger BonBon girls who fill up the studio.

Tōko Miura (left) and Ayumi Sano at Mipcom in Cannes

“I and my friends have had similar experiences,” says Sano, who has worked in TV for more than 15 years, including making Kansai TV’s My Dear Exes, which streams on Netflix, and this year’s The Teenage Empire for NHK.

This culture that pervades many Japanese workplaces leads to Ena not only feeling unmotivated but also unable to sleep, and suffering from a bulimia-like condition. Against this backdrop, Ena and rookie TV director Takuro Kishimoto (Gordon Maeda) undertake their own investigation into a serial killer case and discover that the media’s overzealous coverage may have led to a false conviction. Their battle for the truth empowers Ena to do what she can to take control of her destiny again and perhaps rebuild her career as a respected journalist.

Despite the rest of the world’s insatiable appetite for true crime, Japanese TV normally steers clear of real-life criminality, whether in documentary or scripted from, and particularly when it comes to state cover-ups – as happened with the real case that Elpis fictionalises.

A former law student, Sano’s other aim with the show was to shed light on areas of the Japanese legal system she feels are wanting. “When you question a suspect, a lawyer is not allowed to be with their client,” she says. “That’s what happened in this trial. He was forced by the police to say he did it. Because of this system, there are many false accusations in Japan.”

Elpis stars Masami Nagasawa as journalist Ena Asakawa

Tōko Miura, who plays make-up artist Cherry, another character who joins Ena’s investigation, believes an often-celebrated trait of Japanese culture can sometimes be part of the problem.

“We have a tradition of being respectful and thinking of others when we express an opinion,” she says. “The problem is that we don’t always say our own opinion.” In some contexts this can develop into something insidious. “Sometimes journalists say what the government or politicians want them to hear,” adds the star of Drive My Car (based on the short story by Haruki Murakami), which won the Best International Feature Oscar in 2022.

The majority of Japanese primetime dramas feature male leads, while female actors tend to play the wife or girlfriend of the star. For Elpis, however, Sano assembled a strong female cast and also made sure the production process was largely female-led, including scriptwriter Aya Watanabe.

Elpis stands out for its contemporary serialised structure, too, with Japanese productions usually running for years and years and neatly wrapping up plot lines at the end of each episode.

Miura plays make-up artist Cherry

Meanwhile, producers in the country are also up against economic adversity. The average Japanese TV series costs about “one-10th of a South Korean show and about one-100th of a US one,” says Sano. Because Japan’s economy is struggling, advertising revenues are down, which is hitting production budgets hard.

“Japanese dramas and formats should be appreciated more in the world than they are now,” believes Miho Okada, executive MD at Kansai TV. But this is starting to change. The combination of “social issues with entertainment” means Elpis is generating appeal in the global market, Okada notes.

This follows a wave of deals Kansai TV has concluded in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the US for remakes of shows such as My Dangerous Wife and He Who Can’t Marry. “Working with global platforms is now a normal activity,” Okada adds.

Clearly there is new-found excitement around the Japanese TV drama industry. But what is the future for the social issues Elpis addresses? “Society hasn’t really changed,” says Miura. “But what’s different is that a lot of people think we need to change, and we are starting to talk about it.”

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Hearts and minds

The team behind Netflix sensation Heartstopper reveal how the small-screen adaptation of Alice Oseman’s graphic novel earned the seal of approval from the source material’s legion of devotees.

Focusing on LGBTQ+ teenagers, Netflix series Heartstopper was a runaway hit long before the scene featuring the first kiss between protagonists Charlie and Nick won the public vote for TV Moment of the Year at the Edinburgh TV Festival last week.

What started life as a free web comic by Alice Oseman subsequently became published as a graphic novel (after a Kickstarter campaign) and is now a part of many young people’s lives in a way that carries more significance than awards, critical acclaim or, indeed, any traditionally recognised badge of success ever could.

Of course, adapting something with huge fandom already attached carries with it the weight of securing the approval of hardcore devotees. So it was a good job that Patrick Walters, the show’s executive producer, was one such enthusiast. Featuring on a panel alongside Oseman and actors Corinna Brown and Kizzy Edgell to discuss the show in Edinburgh, Walker said: “I had an overwhelming passion for it as a fan.”

From the outset, Walters wanted Oseman to be “across every bit of the show,” which debuted worldwide on Netflix in April. The series introduces Charlie Spring, a gay schoolboy who falls for his classmate Nick Nelson, and follows their developing relationship over eight episodes. It also explores the lives of fellow school friends Tao, Elle, Tara and Darcy.

Alice Oseman (centre) with the cast of Heartstopper

Oseman worked intricately with Walters, as well as director Euros Lyn (Doctor Who, Black Mirror), and found that her skills in the visual form of web comics were relatively easy to transfer to screenwriting. “So many shots are the same as [in the graphic novel], so many scenes are frame by frame,” she said.

When shooting, Lyn worked with a copy of the graphic novel alongside the script for reference. The most significant change from the source material was the pacing, which had to be adjusted to suit the medium of TV. An obvious example of this is the journey of rugby hero Nick, played by Kit Connor (Get Santa, Rocketman), to realise his sexuality. “In the show, it takes him longer to figure out who he is and to feel comfortable with who he is, while in the comics he figures it out quite quickly,” said Oseman.

Another pressure of adapting well-known IP is that each individual fan has a strong idea of who each character is. “So many adaptions crash and burn because of the wrong casting,” said Walters. Thus the cast were picked because they were right for the roles, not because of their previous work.

Joe Locke was chosen out of 10,000 others (via an open casting call) to play Charlie, while many of the actors could not tell friends and peers they had won their roles, with teachers and mums being sworn to secrecy. Kizzy Edgell, who plays Darcy Olsson, was particularly grateful for Alice’s presence on set. “Alice knows everything about the characters, every little detail,” she said.

The creative team saw the casting of Olivia Colman as a major coup

One notable exception among the cast of largely unknowns is Olivia Colman, who plays Nick’s mum Sarah. When the creative team made their wish list of British actors to play the role, the Oscar-winning star was at the top. “It was the stupidest idea I’d ever heard,” Oseman said of the notion Colman would be attracted to the project. But on reading the script and seeing that Lyn was on board, the star of The Crown and The Favourite signed up – much to everyone’s amazement.

To draw the cast and crew’s attention to special moments in Heartstopper, Oseman (who is also an author – her 2014 novel Solitaire features some of the characters in Heartstopper in smaller roles) drew doodles in the script. Visual techniques, such as flooding the colour palette with the hues of the pride flag and adding cartoon elements on screen, were also used to heighten the intensity of certain moments. Others scenes were shot in time with live music (rather than being cut to the action in the editing suite afterwards) to build energy on set.

TV shows about the LGBTQ+ community are not as rare as they once were, but stories from a younger demographic’s perspective remain uncommon. Oseman, Walters and director Lyn are all from the LGBTQ+ community so, in a very rare scenario, the “queer gaze” was not the minority on set.

The characters in the show “have a feeling of family and inclusivity that I didn’t have,” said Walters, touching on the fact that many viewers (particularly older ones) enjoying Heartstopper also felt a tinge of melancholy over their school days. “The older generation realised what they didn’t have,” he said.

Kit Connor as Nick, whose relationship with Charlie is the main focus of the series

Oseman was careful not to fall into “tropes of trauma” of which some LGBTQ+ narratives have been accused, yet equally she didn’t want to gloss over serious issues and challenges young people still face. “It was a challenge not to go too far one way or the other,” she said.

The show was always planned for a teen demographic, and Netflix was always the intended home. But rather than talking directly to the platform’s adult drama team, Walters went straight to the kids and family execs, who were equally passionate about the project.

“We expected a little bump in interest because of the comics, but not what came,” said Walters. Lesser-known cast members have also had to adjust to life in the limelight and intense scrutiny on social media. Netflix made press and social media training available as well as offering therapy to the cast, but Brown, who plays Tara Jones, found her own pragmatic solution: “I learned to turn my notifications off,” she said.

Overall, the response to Heartstopper has been incredible, with the uplifting, charming and sweet show sparking a national conversation about the importance of storytelling aimed at younger LGBTQ+ viewers. With two more seasons now commissioned, it’s safe to say the series more than met the expectations of lifelong fans of the original web comics, as well as creating thousands of new ones regardless of their age or sexuality.

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Dream team

The Sandman creative duo Neil Gaiman and Allan Heinberg discuss their attempts to keep the Netflix fantasy series grounded in the real world, while cast members including Tom Sturridge and Vanesu Samunyai reveal how they got into character.

In an era of studio consolidation and a raging battle for subscriptions, global streamers are putting a lot of faith in their fantasy juggernauts. HBO’s Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon will do battle with Prime Video’s The Lord of The Rings when the two shows launch over the next few weeks, but both are following in the wake of Netflix’s The Sandman.

These shows’ much-loved characters, expansive universes and rich narratives can mean survival for platforms that want to keep existing subscribers and find new ones – potentially for many seasons to come. While they all boast eye-watering budgets, the challenge will be standing out. For The Sandman, which debuted earlier this month, the key is grounding epic fantasy in the real world.

Set in a world called the Dreaming, the story begins when the Sandman, Master of Dreams (aka Dream and Morpheus), is captured and held prisoner for a century. His absence sets off a series of events that will change both the dreaming and waking worlds forever. To restore order, Dream must journey across different worlds and timelines to mend his mistakes, revisiting old friends and foes and meeting new entities – both cosmic and human – along the way.

When developing The Sandman for television, Neil Gaiman – the celebrated fantasy author who created the DC comics on which the show is based – and his creative team decided not to rely heavily on the state-of-the-art VFX and technology that is now available to them.

That team includes showrunner Allan Heinberg, known for writing movies like 2017’s Wonder Woman as well as writing and producing TV series such as Sex & the City and Scandal. “We made the decision to move away from technology from the very beginning,” Heinberg notes. “It looks very much like a fantasy epic, but so much of it takes place in our world. We were all very committed to doing the most grounded version of The Sandman possible.

Vivienne Acheampong as Lucien, the librarian of dreams

“Our directors did everything in camera whenever they could so that we would use CGI and effects to augment what we shot in camera. The actors really gave performances that they would not have if they were up against a green screen.”

Artists from all over the world were involved in bringing The Sandman to screen. “Every script, every prop, every costume, all the sets – everything gets Neil’s eyes and his feedback. We’re working with a lot of the original art, and all the props are almost to the letter as they are in the comics. It does feel like you’re living inside the comic book when you walk around the sets,” adds Heinberg. These sets, such as ‘Destiny’s Threshold’ (a world within a character’s body) and ‘Lucifer’s Throne Room,’ took months to build.

The actors couldn’t help but notice the attention to detail. Playing Lucien, the librarian of dreams, Vivienne Acheampong says she became the character the moment she put on her costume. “The costume is so tailored and incredible, you can’t not be upright and hold yourself in a certain way. When I stepped into those suits and jackets, it just transformed my body,” she says.

Casting actors talented enough to do justice to the source material while winning over newcomers and lifelong devotees alike was a huge undertaking. About 200 actors were auditioned before Tony winner Tom Sturridge landed the role of immortal being Dream, who curates and rules dreams.

The Sandman’s cast is led by Tom Sturridge, who plays Dream

“It was me on a Zoom call with 12 different people all asking questions that one is never asked in an audition process as an actor – quite a deep, philosophical interrogation into my position on the character and the story and the ambition for the series,” Sturridge says.

Meanwhile, some other cast members were not familiar with the original texts, with Vanesu Samunyai (who plays Rose Walker) among those who “read all of the comics and beyond” to prepare for their roles.

Despite playing the shockingly dark character of The Corinthian – who eats dreams and thus has rows of teeth where his eyes should be – Boyd Holbrook approached the role pragmatically. “I find the voice and then I break down their climatic arc throughout the series,” says the Narcos and Logan star.

Before becoming an actor, Holbrook was plucked from obscurity, going from working as a carpenter to fronting global brands as a model. It is perhaps these experiences that meant he found common ground with The Corinthian, which served as a route into his performance. “He has an outsider quality and I’ve always felt like an outsider, a feeling of not belonging,” he says.

Boyd Holbrook’s character, The Corinthian, has rows of teeth where his eyes should be

Covid, ironically, helped Sturridge to portray Dream. “I had more time to become more and more familiar with the literature, and I don’t think I would have the understanding I have of Dream now had I not been allowed to spend so much time with him before we began filming,” he says.

A major challenge for the star, whose screen credits include playing Allen Ginsberg in the film version of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, was getting a human handle on a character who has such an abstract, ethereal quality. “He’s the arbiter of our fears and fantasies. In doing so, he must understand how all of us feel, because if you know how everyone dreams, you know how everyone is, and that allowed me to consider him as an extraordinarily empathetic character. You have to have a rigour and a discipline to hold it all together, so therefore he’s someone who suppresses his feelings because, if he didn’t, it would have catastrophic consequences,” says Sturridge.

Past attempts to bring The Sandman to the big screen have failed. Gaiman points out the perennial obstacle: “You have 3,000 pages of story and you have two hours of film. It’s the same problem you would have if you tried to make Game of Thrones into a two-hour movie.”

But the birth of the long-format, novelistic style of storytelling on TV means that barrier no longer exists. Thirty years after Gaiman first wrote the comics, the streaming era, coupled with some of the best actors and crew in the business, means he can finally “do Sandman, as Sandman, at the speed of Sandman.” Perhaps this will be the key to its success.

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Beyond borders

Israeli television rose to global prominence on the back of scripted series such as Hatufim (Prisoners of War) and Be Tipul (In Treatment). DQ explores what comes next from a country where big budgets are rare but no expense is spared on storytelling.

Locally made Israeli drama might only date back a couple of decades, but the country is recognised as one of the most respected producers of high-end TV series in the world.

The industry came to the world’s attention in 2011 when Showtime struck an instant hit with Homeland, which was in fact a remake of Israeli series Hatufim (albeit a heavily reworked one). But even before Homeland, another Israeli series, Be Tipul (2008), had been turned into HBO’s glossy therapy drama In Treatment, starring Gabriel Byrne. As a testament to Be Tipul’s quality, it was eventually remade into more than a dozen other versions.

Today, now that watching subtitled drama is as normal to many viewers as watching in their native tongue, Israeli productions are experiencing a second wave of interest – but this time in their original form. Hostages, False Flag (pictured above) and Fauda mean the ‘Israeli thriller’ is on par with Nordic noir.

But despite the industry’s success, it is facing challenging market conditions. Like everywhere else in the world, series in Israel are made for one of two reasons: first, by commercial or advertising-led channels that create ‘event TV’ to bring viewers to their brand; or, second, by subscription channels that want to add depth to their schedule alongside their usual roster of programming, such as sports, reality, children’s, factual and movies.

Fauda is available on Netflix around the world

In a country with a population of only around nine million, there are limited subscribers to fight over and advertising on TV is being hit hard as content gravitates online. Meanwhile, one of Israel’s main networks, Channel 2 was recently split into two (Keshet 12 and Reshet 13), so now each channel has less money from advertisers to fund these so-called ‘high-end’ productions.

Illegal downloads are also a particular problem in Israel, a result of loose intellectual property law and an entrenched cultural attitude that simply means the public do not take the matter too seriously. These challenges all manifest in the budgets allocated to Israeli series being startlingly low, particularly in contrast to their international peers; the pilot of Homeland cost the equivalent of two seasons of Hatufim. Similarly, the first episode of BBC1’s The A-word, a series about a young boy with autism (starring Christopher Eccleston), cost three-quarters of the price of the first season of the original Israeli series on which it was based, Yellow Peppers. Hatufim, Yellow Peppers and The A Word all come from Keshet International.

So how does Israel manage to make TV drama that is so good in this environment? Producers have very little money so they force production values where they can – and the cheapest place to do this is in the writing.

“With money you can make your show appear magical, you can hide your faults. But when you’re naked, you can’t. So it makes you work much harder, you can’t leave little holes,” says Keren Margalit, who created and directed Yellow Peppers (which has also been adapted for the Greek market, with talk of a German version too). Margalit also wrote season two of Be Tipul, a show that consists literally of two people talking in a room and embodies the Israeli spirit of good writing over lavish production values.

“We know what we don’t do,” says Danna Stern, MD of Yes Studios, the distribution and sales arm of Yes TV, which is the producer and broadcaster of Fauda. “We don’t have lots of money for special effects, nothing’s set in space and we don’t make lavish period pieces.”

Sleeping Bears launched on Keshet earlier this year

Budget restraints contribute directly to the aesthetic of realism in Fauda, which was shot very quickly, on location. “It’s an advantage in a way because it forces you to reinvent the profession, not only for me personally but for everyone on the team,” says Rotem Shamir, who directed season two of the series. “If everything was given the right amount of budget, I’m sure everyone would doze off, we would lose that kind of energy.”

Shamir also co-created Hostages, a series about a home invasion set in a single house. Speaking at the Fipa festival in Biarritz, which this year had a focus on the Israeli industry, he said of the show: “We achieved our dream of creating a thriller that could work on a tight Israeli budget.”

The US remake was cancelled after one season, perhaps because in that version the characters leave the house early on in the series – doing away with an essential element of the original.

Budgets aside, the other issue that cannot be ignored is that Israel is a country at war. Such a situation lends itself to highly compelling and globally significant stories – and it’s not just the conflict with Palestine that affects the country. There are also conflicts within Israel, between the Arabs and Jews who live there, between the religious and non-religious groups and so on. There is also a large immigrant community with stories to tell. The creative people living in Israel need to express themselves, and many do so by writing scripts.

A series like Fauda – a political thriller that airs on Netflix around the world – gives viewers a fascinating glimpse into one of the defining conflicts of our times and one which may have ramifications where those viewers live. The show has made a particular impact as the creators went to great lengths to portray characters from both sides of the divide.

Mama’s Angel was picked up by Walter Presents last September

“You can connect with the characters and see yourself in them, bad or good,” says Laëtitia Eïdo, one of the stars of Fauda, who was also speaking in Biarritz. “Of course, for some people it won’t be balanced enough. But you can discover the life and culture of both sides, which invades the other side’s subconscious.” At Fipa, which hosted the European premiere of Fauda season two, star and creator Lior Raz introduced the show as “a conversation about peace.”

However, Stern believes that while the ‘Israeli thriller’ may seem to epitomise the country’s drama output to the outside world, this is simply an accident of setting. “There’s just so much conflict in the news that people don’t want it for entertainment,” she says. “It’s not that we want to keep on talking about it – we really don’t.”

One merely has to scratch the surface of Israeli drama to see the rich tapestry of themes, ideas and issues that are being explored beyond thrillers. Sleeping Bears, the new series from Margalit, launched on Keshet earlier this year and was also among the official screenings at Berlinale in February. The show follows the fallout when a teacher finds an anonymous letter that contains summaries of her therapy sessions. The show explores the theme of trust and the myths surrounding what we think privately and what society allows us to say publicly.

Likewise, Endemol Shine comedy Nevsu, “the story of an Ethiopian and Israeli intermix family that deals with daily cultural clashes,” as described by Gal Zaid, head of scripted drama at Endemol Shine, “could be relevant anywhere.” It’s a point reinforced by the fact that a pilot for an adaptation was recently commissioned by Fox in the US.

Mama’s Angel, produced by Black Sheep Film Productions for YES TV and distributed by Wild Bunch TV, will be added to the UK edition of foreign-language drama streamer Walter Presents this summer. Set in a wealthy Tel Aviv neighbourhood, it explores the nature of prejudice when a community turns its anger towards a black graffiti artist who is the main suspect in a serious crime.

Israeli dramas and their overseas remakes (inset). From left are Hatufim and Homeland (US), the original Hostages and the US version, and Yellow Peppers and The A Word (UK)

Walter Iuzzolino underlines the attraction of Israeli content to the service he co-founded and curates: “Its culture is ingrained in a sense of family, values and religion, which is a powerful cocktail. The moment you talk about a conflict within a family, you have the most universal theme of them all. Your parents shout at you, repress you and make you slightly neurotic but then you rebel, fall in love, shout back and the cycle continues. The Israelis have a visceral way of exploring these issues – they’re very courageous.”

The list of unconventional shows Israel is making at the moment is so long it’s easier to say which genres aren’t on it, which tend to be traditional formats such as medical, cop or lawyer series. “And God bless them for it,” says Iuzzolino. The fact that all the major international distribution companies such as FremantleMedia, Red Arrow and Endemol Shine have set up offices in Tel Aviv underlines the value they attach to Israeli content.

Because of the average timescale of five years, it takes to get an Israeli series to screen and the relatively low pay local scriptwriters receive, they must have a strong sense of vocation. This desire to tell their story often manifests as a “burning look in their eyes,” says Stern, frequently coming from a real-life trauma or experience. Fauda creator Raz, for example, was part of the same special operations unit as the one the show depicts.

Producers in Israel also have a strong desire to make more drama despite the financial constraints on their industry, and they are looking to find foreign partners to help them do so. “There are more opportunities for international coproductions,” says Amir Ganor, CEO of Endemol Shine Israel. “Israel is a region that holds many burning issues that could be relevant worldwide. Most projects up until today were local; the future is focused on breaking these borders.”

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A new crossing

Der Pass (Pagan Peak) is latest drama to take inspiration from Scandinavian hit The Bridge, putting a German/Austrian spin on the cross-border crime format. But, as the producers tell DQ on set at its mountainside filming location, this is a completely new story.

Despite becoming a global hit in its original form, Scandinavian crime drama Bron/Broen (The Bridge) has spawned several local adaptations. First there was The Bridge, set on the border between the US and Mexico; then The Tunnel, pairing the UK and France. There is also another version set between Russia and Estonia. So a new German/Austrian adaptation may not seem the most original contribution to the golden age of TV drama we are currently enjoying.

But when you find out the producers of Der Pass (or Pagan Peak, as it will be known in English) are Max Wiedemann and Quirin Berg, responsible for Netflix’s cult genre-bending hit Dark, as well as the hugely respected Oscar-winning film The Lives of Others, it’s hard to be so flippant.

“We didn’t want to just remake a series that’s already been remade twice,” says Philipp Stennert, one half of the directing/writing team, the other being his long-term collaborator Cyrill Boss. Together, they recently made Rivals Forever – The Sneaker Battle for ARD, a miniseries about the two brothers who separately created the Adidas and Puma brands during Nazi-era Germany.

Der Pass stars Nicholas Ofczarek and Julia Jentsch

“Apart from the premise of two countries working together and finding a body on the border, everything else is pretty much a completely new story,” he says of Sky Germany’s new eight-part series, which is distributed globally by Beta Film.

In keeping with the original format, the story centres on the discovery of a murder victim on a snowy mountain pass between Austria and Germany. But the most striking difference from the original is the role of the serial killer in Der Pass. Broen was a ‘whodunnit,’ with the detectives from either side of the Swedish/Danish border spending season one trying to find out who is culpable for the atrocious and often spectacular deaths. But in Der Pass, we find out the killer’s identity early on, and thus he plays a far larger role in the series as a whole. “We’re so interested in this evil that we wanted to follow it – how do they work and what drives them?” says Stennert.

The creative team spent a lot of time researching serial killers (slightly disturbingly, hundreds of interviews with the most notorious of them, such as Charles Manson, are available online) and they worked closely with Germany’s top criminal profiler to develop the character. Franz Hartwig, the actor who plays Gregor Ansbach, Der Pass’s serial-killing IT expert, was profoundly affected by playing the character.

“It’s really weird. I came to a point that I actually understood him and liked him,” says Hartwig. “His ideas totally make sense but unfortunately he choses completely the wrong means of achieving them.”

The show is the latest adaptation of hit Scandi format Bron/Broen (The Bridge), pictured

Indeed, on the set of the series, DQ is confronted by the aftermath of one of Ansbach’s most devastating crimes. With sirens wailing and hundreds of extras playing members of the public, the police and ambulances services are all covered in a horrible grey dust as they flee an explosion in a fictionalised mall on the outskirts of Salzburg, Austria. Out of this apocalyptic scene, on a brief but apparently much needed espresso break, emerges Nicholas Ofczarek, who plays Austrian police officer Gedeon Winter.

“Gedeon’s given up, he’s cynical,” he says of his character. “He’s addicted to everything – alcohol, uppers and downers – and to pay for these addictions, he’s got involved in organised crime. He’s a good cop but he’s wasted.”

However, the case sparks something in Gedeon that gives him a desire to atone for his former failings, as does his relationship with his German counterpart, Ellie Stocker, played by Julia Jentsch. “She gives my character a perspective in his life and in his job, a faith in humanity,” says Ofczarek.

But unlike the heroine of Broen – Saga Noren, who is socially awkward to the point of showing traits of Asperger syndrome – Ellie is “very in touch with herself and the humans around her,” says Ofczarek. In Broen, the male detective Martin was the happy-go-lucky one. In Der Pass, everything is reversed. Ellie presented the biggest writing challenges. “It was very hard to write a character who is truly good but also interesting,” says Stennert. But over the course of the investigation, Ellie and Gedeon’s roles switch.

The show’s creators are keen to stress its differences from the format, including swapping the personalities of its key characters

Then there is the scenery. The Alpine border between Austria and Germany is, by any standards, one of the most beautiful locations in the world. But working 2,600 metres up the side of a mountain in up to half a metre of fresh snow every day was not without its difficulties. “The snow and the mountains are 40% of the show,” says Stennert. “Part of you thinks, ‘Oh no, we have to shoot in that again, it’s going to be really tough,’ but the other half is thinking, ‘This is going to look so good.’”

Following Deutschland 83/86, Ku’damm 56/59, Berlin Babylon and Dark, Germany is now enjoying a newly earned reputation as a contributor to the best TV drama coming out of Europe. In this new, exciting industry you have to take risks and be bold – and go against Germany’s stereotypically risk-averse nature. “Sky’s drama department felt that something, between the producers, the authors and the cast, came together,” says Carsten Schmidt, CEO of Sky Germany. Then it was time to “make sure high production values are available, put confidence in it and not question it.”

Producers Wiedemann and Berg have played no small part in raising the bar for the German industry, not only with Dark but also other highly respected recent productions such as TNT’s gangster drama 4 Blocks and neo-Nazi-focused miniseries Mitten in Deutschland: NSU (NSU: German History X). But interestingly the super-producing duo also make episodes of the show that most symbolises Germany’s traditional TV drama output: Tartot. To many, the hour-long crime series, which has been running for decades, and which features a new, neatly wrapped-up storyline each week, sums up everything the German industry should be trying to get away from.

“Tatort is like coming home; it gets the family together, it’s a great German icon. We’re very proud to be a part of Tatort,” says Berg. “Some shows attract a broad audience, some are niche. You shouldn’t compare disciplines that are very different. I love that, in TV today, there are so many different things going on.”

It seems that one of the keys to the success of Wiedemann and Berg lies in their questioning of accepted norms. Likewise for viewers sceptical about another remake of The Bridge, it may well turn out that Der Pass is the series they most eagerly binge-watch in 2018.

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Changing shades of noir

Ten years after Forbrydelsen (The Killing) first aired and with the final season of Bron/Broen (The Bridge) starting next month, Nordic crime drama has dominated the international landscape for a decade. But what does the future hold for the genre and where will those who make it go next?

The impact of Nordic noir has changed the landscape of television drama forever. It gave audiences around the world a taste for serialised TV beyond what comes out of the US, and spawned thousands of imitations, including high-profile Hollywood remakes such as AMC’s version of The Killing (based on Denmark’s Forbrydelsen) and FX’s version of The Bridge (originally Swedish/Danish drama Bron/Broen).

But in an industry that prides itself on ingenuity, the region does not want to be seen as resting on its laurels. In the small town of Lubeck, northern Germany, the film festival Nordic Film Days recently showcased the latest attempts to reboot the crime genre.

“We were nervous about the reviews,” says Bjorn Ekeberg, writer of Grenseland, TV2 Norway’s new series about an Oslo cop who goes to visit his home town only to find his family is implicated in a local murder. But much to Ekeberg’s delight, the reviews were very positive. One newspaper gave it a top rating, though the title of the review read: “Makes you forget you’re watching Nordic noir,” underlining the point not only that audiences at home are sometimes harder to please than foreign ones, but also that the backlash against genre is significant

Swedish/Danish drama The Bridge has proved hugely influential

Ekeberg, who had worked on Valkyrien, another hit from Norway, believes audiences and reviewers received Grenseland well because they were not merely watching a crime series. It’s a “family drama at its core,” he says. “The crime story is the ‘wrapping,’ so to speak.” This twist on the genre was noticed by Sky Deutschland and Netflix, which have bought the rights to air the eight-part series.

Innan vi dör (Before We Die) experiments with a different narrative style from what viewers are used to in Nordic crime. In the series from Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT, detective Hanna Svensson discovers a new threat from a restructuring of power in Stockholm’s underworld.

But the story does not start with a spectacular murder that is then investigated over 10 episodes, a structure familiar to many crime drama viewers. “This is different,” says director Simon Kaijser. “It’s not relying one on question – who did it? – It’s relying on constant tension.”

“The fast pace is different to much of Scandi noir,” adds the show’s writer, Niklas Rockström. “Every scene is moving the story forward. In Wallander [a show for which Rockström also wrote episodes], the audience is always told how you get the information that then leads to the next scene. In Before We Die, we’re trying to jump to the next plot point. The Americans are good at that; we’re trying to use their way.”

Óskar Thór Axelsson

Stella Blómkvist (pictured top) is the first original Icelandic show ordered by regional SVoD service Viaplay and was the most dramatic move away from the world of Nordic noir to be shown at Lubeck. “It’s noir,” says director Oskar Thor Axelsson, “but it’s not Scandi noir.”

The femme fatale character of Stella (who is based upon the heroine of a series of books by a mysterious and anonymous author rumoured to be part of Iceland’s political establishment), electronica soundtrack and neon visual style of the show give it an air of film noir on steroids rather than nordic noir’s naturalism. The world has its own rules that are not our reality. “You can get a crazy idea and throw it into the world and it will be fine, because that’s the world,” says Axelsson, a successful feature film director who also directed episodes of 2016 Icelandic hit Trapped.

Grenseland uses some of the familiar visual tropes of Nordic noir, such as beautiful shots of the forest on the border between Sweden and Norway, and thus eases the viewer into a world they are familiar with – but then gives them something different. Other shows, meanwhile, actively shun these tropes.

Before We Die does not make use of the famous aerial shots of lush Nordic landscapes or impressive settings (the classic example being the bridge between Malmo and Copenhagen in The Bridge) that have come to define Nordic noir.

“We did not want to do that. The story is told from the point of view of the mother and son, shot on the ground, from their point of view,” says Kaijser, who is also a feature film director. Kaijser made the acclaimed film Stockholm East with producer Maria Nordenberg, who collaborated with him again on Before We Die.

Hassel stars Ola Rapace as a hard-boiled cop

Hassel, a Swedish series (also from Viaplay), is based on as series of pulp-fiction novels about a cop investigating serious crime in Stockholm. The books were adapted for the small screen in the 1980s and the recently rebooted version is very much in the trend of moving away from the visual style of Nordic noir.

“We have used a warmer colour palette, using reds instead of blues that form the colder world of Nordic noir,” says the show’s writer, Henrik Jansson-Schweizer. “Much of Hassel is shot on location, in particular around the bridges that connect the famous, beautiful old town of Stockholm to the less wealthy suburbs. Again, this is a statement that we are in a different world with different characters.”

“Hassel is not at home drinking scotch and listening to opera,” says director Amir Chamdin, a former musician and music video and feature film director. “He came from the streets, from the same neighbourhood as the bad guys. He’s not a desk cop, he’s a street cop. He’s going to be even badder than the bad guys to get the job done.” This also reflects Chamdin and Jansson-Schweizer’s influences, which include classic 70s films such as The French Connection and Mean Streets as well as the TV cop shows they fondly recall from their childhoods, such as Baretta and Kojak.

Chamdin’s musical background provides an exhilarating operatic rhythm to the show that is in obvious contrast to the moody, brooding and ethereal soundscapes of Nordic noir. Hassel’s hard-boiled titular character, played by Ola Rapace, is certainly taking cops in a new direction from the heroes and heroines of the genre. Symbolical of the changing of the guard, one of Rapace’s early career breaks was playing Wallander’s junior officers in the Swedish series, in which Krister Henriksson played the grouchy detective.

New NRK drama Monster is unmistakably Nordic noir

Ironically, however, the show is similar to traditional Nordic noir in that it reflects social issues in Sweden right now. “There’s a big debate going on that the police don’t get enough pay, so we tried to reflect that,” says Jansson-Schweizer. Chamdin adds: “They are not wealthy people. It’s not a fancy lifestyle, it’s a commitment. Cops are struggling, man.”

But not all crime shows screened at Lubeck were trying to escape the Nordic noir tradition. NRK’s Monster is instantly recognisable as pure Nordic noir – the atmospheric and beautiful Norwegian Tundra landscape, the missing girl, a lone female detective. Even the cinematography is done by Jørgen Johansson, who worked on the genre’s most iconic series, The Bridge and The Killing. But somehow the combined storytelling skills of writer Hans Christian Storroston and director Anne Sewitsky have created something completely new.

“We have to keep the strengths but also see where can we push the archetypes, push the conventions, push this art form into something new and figure out where we can go next,” says Storroston. International broadcasters were quick to snap up the rights to air Monster, with buyers including US cable channel Starz.

Crime drama from the Nordic region is certainly going through a transitional period. Some writers and directors are pushing at the familiar tropes of Nordic noir to come up with something new, whie others reject them completely. The level of creativity and experimentation on show at Lubeck makes it clear the Nordic industry is in rude health. It seems Scandi crime drama is on a thrilling journey that viewers from around the world will no doubt be keen to watch.

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Parental guidance

Swedish comedy-drama Bonusfamiljen (The Bonus Family) became an instant hit when it debuted on SVT this year. With a third season already commissioned, co-creators Clara and Felix Herngren reveal how the series was inspired by their own relationship and why they think it can repeat its success overseas.

In Sweden – surely one of the most politically correct countries in the world – it’s no longer appropriate to say ‘step dad’ or ‘step mum’ because the phrases are seen to have negative connotations. So the term ‘bonus dad’ or ‘bonus mum’ has become common parlance.

Bonusfamiljen collaborators (L to R) Clara, Felix and Moa Herngren

Bonusfamiljen (The Bonus Family) is a Swedish comedy-drama that follows four characters who have gone through separations as they start new relationships with new partners and all the challenges this entails, from moving in together, coping with exes, raising each other’s kids, having new kids and so on.

Clara Herngren had the idea for the show, which launched earlier this year, when she found herself in this situation with husband and co-creator Felix Herngren, a famous Swedish comedian, actor and director, whose company, FLX, also produced the series.

Finding the pressures of sharing two families immensely challenging, Clara went to see a therapist and this eventually inspired her to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition: to become a therapist herself.

Overwhelmed by the number of people in bonus families who came to see her with the same problems she had faced, she soon realised it was a subject that resonated. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have to do a TV series about this,” she recalls, speaking at the Berlin Prix Europa festival, where The Bonus Family was nominated in the best drama series category. “I’d spent so long looking for the perfect drama and here it was, right in front of me.”

With Felix directing and collaborating with Calle Marthin and Moa Herngren (his sister), who is also in a bonus family, they formed a writers’ room and set to work. The result is a beautifully executed bitter-sweet comedy that opens a window on modern family life.

At the centre are Lisa and Patrik (played by Vera Vitali and Erik Johansson), a couple who both have children from previous relationships and now live together to create their own family. Viewers also meet their exes, played by Petra Mede and Fredrik Hallgren, and Lisa and Patrick’s therapists, played by Johan Ulveson and Ann Petrén.

Bonusfamiljen looks at the complexities of modern family life post divorce

It has proved very popular on Sweden’s public broadcaster, SVT. Such shows usually get between 700,000 to 800,000 viewers but Bonusfamiljen drew around a million, closer to the expected ratings of crime shows that traditionally are more popular in Sweden. Netflix distributes the series, which returns for a second season in January, to more than 100 countries outside of Scandinavia.

Making Bonusfamiljen, which is filmed in Sundbyberg, just outside of Stockholm, created a new set of issues for the husband-and-wife team. “We tried to work together once and we fought immediately, so we promised each other not to work together again,” admits Felix, but this time the process was different and turned out to be therapeutic. “This had a healing effect, because we could talk about someone else’s relationship that was exactly like ours, but not ours,” he continues. “From being a bit horrifying at first, it went to being something we talked about every minute; when we were waking up, eating breakfast, until late at night.”

“We get into character, we scream, we cry,” says Clara. “Felix was almost crying sometimes when he directed as it was so close to our real lives. Talking about these characters and asking, ‘Why did you feel like that?’ or ‘Why did you do that?’ I think gave both of us a better understanding of each other.”

Bonusfamiljen is set to be adapted in the US by NBC

Like all great ideas in the TV industry, Bonusfamiljen will get the remake treatment. NBC, which aired Welcome to Sweden (another FLX production, from US comedian Greg Poehler, about his experiences of moving to his Swedish girlfriend’s homeland) is developing an English-language version. It will be written and executive produced by David Walpert, (who has worked on series such as New Girl and Will & Grace). In Europe, the remake rights have also been sold into Germany and France.

The success of Bonusfamiljen abroad will also be interesting in the context of the region’s most famous export, Scandi noir. Can Swedish comedy travel in the same way that crime shows such as Wallander, Beck and Arne Dahl have?

“Not pure Swedish comedy,” says Felix, “because it’s too local, but a mixture between the two, drama and comedy, could work abroad I think.” He certainly knows this area, as he is very well known in Sweden for Solsidan (The Sunny Side), a series he starred in and co-created that revolves around Alex (played by Felix) and his partner who are expecting their first child as they move to Alex’s childhood home.

He has also had success with the film The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window & Disappeared, which he directed, and its sequel. Both were coproduced by Netflix, which streams the films outside of Scandinavia and Germany.

His next directing project, Enkelstöten (The Simple Heist), about two middle-aged women who pull off a bank raid, is in the vein of Breaking Bad, where the most unlikely of heroes enters the crime world.

Swapping the male leads of the original 80s Swedish series and an earlier book on which it is based, The Simple Heist taps into how gender roles have changed over the years, in the same way Bonusfamiljen explores how family life is changing.

The show brought an impressive one million views to SVT

“Comedy that circles around how humans are, how families and relationships work, can travel quite well,” Felix believes.

Clara, meanwhile, is too busy with her real bonus family and the upcoming third season of the series, which will begin filming in April and air in 2019, to worry about success overseas. “I have no time and fall asleep by nine o’clock immediately,” she says. Besides, she was never a big fan of Scandi noir: “You don’t need murders and stuff like that; everyday life between people is so interesting.”

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