Fully Loaded
Keshet UK’s head of drama Howard Burch reveals the story behind Channel 4 and AMC comedy-drama Loaded, about four friends who suddenly become millionaires. In the motoring industry, they call it ‘platform sharing.’ If you’re driving a Mercedes M-Class, you are essentially driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The two vehicles may look very different, but they share the same ‘platform,’ or chassis. Underneath its sleek skin, the Cherokee is really a highly modified M-Class, sharing the latter’s efficient structure and sophisticated suspension. Such sharing is common practice throughout the car industry and it’s becoming more and more successful in the scripted TV business too. Reformatting foreign series – taking the ‘chassis’ of a foreign hit and remodelling it for a domestic market – has exploded since the success of Homeland, which was based on the ground-breaking Keshet drama Prisoners of War. For the automotive business, it’s a way of saving money and sharing expertise, whereas in the TV industry it’s about tapping into and exploiting an engaging narrative that has already undergone a considerable development process – and, in most cases, a sizeable bit of audience research. Outside of novel adaptations or true stories, the overseas scripted series market is yet another stone to look under for homegrown hits. The US has a long history of taking foreign shows – even English-language programmes – and remaking them for a domestic audience, and now British and European broadcasters are doing the same. The Bridge begat Sky’s The Tunnel, Keshet’s Yellow Peppers led to … Continue reading Fully Loaded
