Tag Archives: About Premium Content

Music to die for

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Canadian police procedural The Murders puts music front and centre as a detective tries to make amends for the mistake that led to a colleague’s death. DQ speaks to showrunner Damon Vignale.

Since it was first released by Lefty Frizzell in 1959, country ballad Long Black Veil has been covered by performers including Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, Bruce Springsteen and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.

Sixty years later, it is now set for another outing in Canadian crime drama The Murders. But the song doesn’t simply provide the soundtrack to the opening episode – it plays a pivotal role in the plot.

In fact, Long Black Veil was the origin point for the whole series, owing to the fact it is described as a ‘murder ballad,’ a song that describes a killing. In this case, the lyrics tell a story from the point of view of an executed man falsely accused of murder. He refuses to give an alibi due to the fact that, on the night of the killing, he was sleeping with his best friend’s wife and would rather die than admit the truth.

Damon Vignale

“Something about it just led to me thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if there was a serial killer who was marrying music to his crimes?’” says showrunner, creator and executive producer Damon Vignale. “So the first episode essentially opens with that exact storyline. We have a character who’s accused of murder, he’s brought into the police station and his alibi proves false. As they investigate, they realise he was with his best friend’s wife. So he’s cleared but he ends up dead and they find a song on his cellphone that was texted to him, and it’s Long Black Veil.”

That became the launchpad for music to play a key role in each episode, with a different song used each time to tie into the theme of that particular story. And it certainly makes for a different type of crime drama.

Solving the crimes is rookie homicide detective Kate Jameson, played by Jessica Lucas. Set in Vancouver, the episodic case-of-the-week drama follows Jameson as she searches for redemption in her investigative work after her negligence causes a tragedy. In the pilot episode, Jameson partners with Detective Mike Huntley (Lochlyn Munro) as they navigate the case of a mysterious serial killer who uses music for destructive ends. The first episode also introduces a serialised story that will run across the eight-part season.

The series is produced by Muse Entertainment for Canada’s Citytv and distributed by About Premium Content. NBCUniversal International Networks has already pre-bought the series for its channels across Europe and Africa.

The Murders opens with Kate, the daughter of a homicide detective and an ex-lawyer who is now running for mayor. Justice runs in her blood. So when she leaves a gun in her car and it ends up being used in the murder of her partner, events spiral out of control.

“I just thought it would be really interesting to have a character who is all about being the best cop she can be and right out of the gate there’s this big stumbling block that could ruin her career,” Vignale says. “How does she navigate that and what guilt does she carry with that throughout the series? She does carry this feeling of responsibility, this failure that she’s responsible for her partner’s death, and is constantly trying to find retribution in her cases.”

The Murders stars Lochlyn Munro and Jessica Lucas

The show also explores Kate’s familial background. Vignale says she was written as a biracial character – her mother is caucasian, her father is black – because that’s the showrunner’s own background. “There’s often a dialogue about black and white but I rarely hear stuff talked about in the grey area, where you’re not white, you’re not black, you’re just living your life. I thought it would be interesting to explore that in this character,” he continues. “We don’t go heavily into it but we certainly don’t shy away from it.”

In casting Kate, the production team sought out Lucas, who Vignale says was ready to step into a lead role after stints on Gotham and Gracepoint. “There’s a list of actors who are at that place in their career where they’re ready to take the lead of a show and we felt pretty strongly that Jessica was at that place where she can carry a show. You don’t know until you get in there and start working and looking at the edits, and she is strong. I’m really pleased. She really is the face of the show and carries it. I’m really excited for people to see it.”

The Murders marks the first time Vignale has taken up the showrunner role, having watched and learned from others including Simon Barry (Ghost Wars, Continuum), Dennis Heaton (Motive) and Bruce Smith (19-2). While juggling duties in the writers room, on set and in the edit, he sees the biggest part of the job as setting the tone in terms of both the story and in production.

In the writers room, “we really start on plot,” Vignale says. “Once we have that, we start to look at what themes we can use that relate to our characters. So that our characters and this plot are now working together. Those things are at the forefront for me. Then of course, you want really great twists and misdirects, you want to surprise people, and we do try to put our investigators in a bit of danger. Then the crime drama gets across into that thriller aspect, which I think is exciting and I try to push into a show as much as I can.

The series launches on Canada’s Citytv today

“A lot of the time it’s just about inspiring the best in the work and in people, which can be a challenging endeavour,” he continues. “Simon told me there’s going to be a lot of noise, and what you have to decide is what you’re going to listen to and what you’re not. What he suggested is you focus on your writers, directors, actors, editors and the music. You focus on those things because when you watch the show, they all have to do with what you see and hear. So put all your attention there and just hire great people and let them to do what they do.”

That being said, as a showrunner, “you really are thrown into the middle of a circus,” Vignale admits. “There are jugglers and people on the high wire. It really does feel like that, and you’re trying to make it all work and flow so the audience has a good time.

“There’s always a challenge around budget. A cop show costs money and, to make it real, you need cars, police, a corner van. You need all the stuff that goes with that. It’s a balance so when you watch the show it feels big but, at the same time, you’re driving the story through it so it’s achievable in production.”

Ahead of The Murders’ launch on Citytv today, Vignale is already developing scripts for a potential second season. Should he get the green light, he already has a plan in place for a five-season run, with each season exploring themes around one of the five senses. If season one is about sound, season two would look at touch and so on.

In a television landscape where crime dramas still dominate and hunger for episodic procedurals has been overshadowed by trends for binge-watching and serialised storylines, The Murders and its musically themed plots will likely have viewers singing for more.

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Good Faith

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Matthew Hall, writer of Un Bore Mercher (Keeping Faith), tells DQ about his journey to bring the series to air and the importance of intimacy and location in television drama.

If ever proof were needed that water-cooler TV still exists in today’s streamer-dominated television landscape, Un Bore Mercher (Keeping Faith) is it.

The eight-part Welsh-language series debuted on S4C in November last year, before a version combining Welsh and English launched on co-commissioner BBC Wales in February this year.

Matthew Hall

The series drew 300,000 viewers to its weekly episodes on BBC1 Wales, the highest audience for a non-network drama shown in Wales for more than 20 years. It then went on to become a record-breaker on BBC on-demand service iPlayer, with 9.5 million requests to view the series so far – the highest ever recorded for any non-network show on the BBC – leading the broadcaster to extend the availability of the show online.

Such was the demand that the series was then promoted to BBC1, launching last month to 2.9 million – beating this summer’s other must-watch series, Love Island.

Un Bore Mercher, an eight-part drama set in Carmarthenshire, stars Eve Myles (Torchwood) as lawyer, wife and mother Faith, who fights to find the truth behind the sudden disappearance of her husband. She comes to discover that her idyllic hometown harbours many dark secrets that threaten the lives of her and her family, while her ordeal transforms Faith rom a stay-at-home, fun-loving and carefree mother to detective, action hero and lover.

The show’s shift to BBC1 and its iPlayer statistics are very much a bonus for writer Matthew Hall, who spent more than four years developing Un Bore Mercher for S4C, with producer Vox Productions securing additional financing from BBC Wales, Nevision and distributor About Premium Content (APC).

But throughout the writing and production process, Hall was adamant the show would retain two things: its intimacy and its geographic specificity.

“The US shows I’ve admired the most are all incredibly intimate, in that you’re up close with the protagonist most of the time,” the writer says, highlighting series such as Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, two seminal shows that he describes as being both gangster drama and intimate study of family.

Un Bore Mercher stars Eve Myles, who has appeared in such shows as Broadchurch and Torchwood

“In Britain our tradition is theatrical, so television is ultimately a descendant of the theatre, and everything is more arms-length and dialogue-driven [than in the US]. I just wanted to get away from that and because I worked with Pip Broughton, the director and producer, from the very beginning, we understood each other exactly. We had a completely joint vision by the time it came to filming.”

Meanwhile, the South Wales location “is very much my part of the world,” Hall says, explaining that setting a drama in a specific place adds credibility and a universality to the storytelling. “So much of television takes place in a generic location, particularly in Britain, and we’ve seen London and Manchester so much. I was just determined it would be in a small town. Some of the drama I’ve admired has that small-town setting, so Fargo was very much on my mind during the writing. And the moment you do that, you’ve got idiosyncratic speech patterns, which adds another layer of authenticity and belief in where you are.”

The series and the character of Faith herself emerged from Hall’s desire to dramatise the conflict many women face when trying to balance their home life and their career. “I’d wanted a character in Faith who had done some of that, who was a professional and capable of achieving a huge amount in the world but was also incredibly maternal,” he explains. “I just felt that was not a dilemma I’d seen much of.

The actor had to learn Welsh for her role as Faith

“Mythological stories often end with women living happily ever after – but what if she already is living happily ever after and we take that all away from her? It’s kind of like, what does a woman want from life? That’s one of the questions the series is asking. What does she want from life and what is she capable of? I’m not making a political point, I’m just making a character who’s in the middle of a dilemma.”

Development was a year along when the ambition surfaced to follow Welsh noir drama Hinterland’s two-track production process, producing the series both in Welsh and bilingual Welsh-English versions. But it was a further two years, Hall recalls, before the BBC and APC were secured and the budget was raised to a level to support both ‘home’ and international versions.

The jewel in the crown, however, was Myles herself. The actor – whose other credits include Broadchurch, Victoria and recent miniseries A Very English Scandal – was “an absolutely critical part” of getting the production off the ground. “We have this issue where there’s only a very small pool of Welsh-speaking actors and the commercial reality is you have to have some headline name in the show to sell it abroad,” Hall admits. “Eve was absolutely critical and she completely embodied the spirit of the character. The major obstacle was she didn’t speak Welsh at that point, so she had to learn it.”

Similarly, Hall is not a Welsh speaker, though he is learning too. Anwen Huws oversaw the Welsh translation of the scripts, which Hall had had the luxury of writing all at once, rather than in two or three batches.

A second season of the show is now in development

“That’s virtually unheard of in television. Normally something gets commissioned on the back of a couple of scripts and the rest get written in a rush,” Hall admits. “But I was able to write eight fairly carefully and plot them through. It was actually quite a rigorous development process. By the time Pip and I had been through that – you’re talking 500 pages of scripts – we had a very close understanding of the tone of the thing. The scripts resemble movie scripts more than traditional TV scripts – there’s fewer words in them but that’s because the surer you are of tone, the fewer words it takes to express it. It should be absolutely effortless to read a screenplay, and that was my objective.”

Such was the popularity of Un Bore Mercher on iPlayer that BBC Wales announced in April that scripts for a second season were in development, with Hall once again overseeing the story. But it’s not the story for a follow-up that he has had in mind since before the first season aired. Rather, it is the characters’ emotional arcs that he has already worked out and will now flesh out before filming restarts this autumn.

“I’ve had emotional arcs for season two and season three, which are more important than story arcs,” the writer adds. “Story is something that facilitates your emotional journey. If you know emotionally what you want your character to go through, where they begin and where they end, then you can strap a story to it to deliver that. There are a few things in my mind where I can see where Faith could go.”

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Other side of the law

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Swedish actor Dragomir Mrsic and producer Nicklas Wikström Nicastro tell DQ about crime drama Alex, which turns the ‘good cop’ image on its head with a story about a corrupt officer in the pocket of the mafia.

When it comes to discussing his personal life, Swedish actor Dragomir Mrsic is as candid as they come. “Twenty years ago, I was on the other side of the law,” he admits. “I committed some robberies and was in jail, I escaped from court – I had a really bad life.”

It was through his life of crime, however, that he says he came to meet different kinds of police officers, the sort of cops that weren’t always portrayed on screen.

“I’ve been interested in movies since I was a kid – Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Dirty Harry, all kinds of cop movies,” says Mrsic, who co-created the series. “In Sweden, we have something similar to these cops, they are a little a bit older and always the good guy, but I wanted to show something [on television] that is more realistic to how we have it in Sweden because I’ve met them close up and they’re not always like this. So the idea came from there.”

Alex’s creators claim the show uses a very different visual style to other Scandi noir

Mrsic is talking about Alex, a six-part crime drama produced by SF Studios and Nevision for Nordic streaming platform Viaplay and distributed by About Premium Content. It debuted in November last year but had been in the works for eight years by the time it finally aired.

The actor had initially shot a short teaser to pitch to potential producers before he teamed up with Nicklas Wikström Nicastro and they began evolving the series, which Mrsic says has always been rooted in real life.

“It’s interesting because it’s based on reality,” he says. “Nothing has been made like this. I hope people enjoy it.”

The drama centres on Alex Leko (Mrsic), a police officer who earns extra cash by carrying out small jobs for the local mafia. When his detective partner gets killed in shady circumstances, Alex tries to cut his ties with the mob, they kidnap his son in return for one last job – to unmask a police snitch in their ranks.

The series is written by Niklas Rockström and Michael Hjorth, based on an idea by Mrsic and Mikael Cross.

Alex centres on a cop whose dealings with the local mafia lead him into trouble

“We were blown away by it. We loved the idea instantly and then we had to crack the story,” says producer Nicklas Wikström Nicastro. “It took a long time to develop but it is the reality of Scandinavian society. There is corruptness. It’s not as black and white as in traditional Scandinavian noir, where the cops are always good and you always see the good guys against the bad guys. We see that on the public broadcasters, everyone likes it. But movies could show police officers who were heroes, but they’re still doing coke; they have a bad side.

“HBO, Netflix and other streaming platforms and cable channels have much more value in the market now and when we pitched it to Viaplay, I have never closed a pitch so fast. They loved it. So the timing wasn’t right eight or six years ago. The timing was right now.”

What sort of partner has Viaplay been? “From my perspective, they are involved but they’re so respectful,” Nicastro says. “They want to know what’s the genre, what’s the big picture. We’re really doing a show with them, not for them. It’s a pleasure to work with them.”

Looking to push Alex further from the norms of Scandinavian crime series, the visual style also offers something different from anything else on television.

“It’s dirtier, but at the same time it’s more cinematic,” explains Nicastro. “You have really dramatic action.” One scene he describes sees Alex pinned down in a fire fight as he trades bullets with an enemy. “It’s a one-take steadicam shot. So it’s not Scandinavian noir television. We really wanted to push the visuals so it’s something within the Scandinavian noir spectrum but one step further.”

Actor Dragomir Mrsic drew on his own experiences of the criminal world

Mrsic, who says he didn’t go home for the 14-week shoot to ensure he could stay in character, continues: “The car chases look amazing, you don’t see them so often [in Swedish television]. Usually in Sweden, when you have a car chase, you see the start and the stop, you don’t see them in action.”

With season two already in development, Nicastro says the biggest challenge of making any series today is staying ahead of the audience.

“The audience is getting so much smarter all the time,” he says. “Just look at the biggest shows we have, Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. You sympathise with characters who have so many dark sides, and that’s the same with Alex.”

But he warns that as with every trend or popular cycle, international interest in Nordic dramas could one day fall out of fashion.

“That is why we have to find ways to renew it,” he adds. “Ten or 15 years ago we had Wallander – old guys in trench coats solving crimes. Then we had the Millennium films. We made a trilogy called Easy Money, it made a few waves and was groundbreaking.

“Today, we’re still doing great things. The whole genre of Scandinavian noir is very broad and lots of things fit into it. But we have to find ways to renew and push ourselves, and because if we were still making shows about men in trench coats solving crimes, no-one would care. We have to push ourselves. The bar is being raised all the time, the audience is getting smarter all the time. There are no easy ways [to succeed], basically.”

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¡Viva España!

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Without much noise or fanfare, Spain has been steadily building a reputation as one of the hottest producers of scripted drama, with homegrown series finding fans around the world. DQ takes an in-depth look at the wave of new series coming out of the country.

Spanish drama may not attract as much attention as Nordic noir or the ‘Korean wave,’ but there’s no question the country’s scripted series are now enjoying decent levels of profile around the world. And with significant increases in content investment from free-to-air (FTA) channels, pay TV and SVoD platforms, Spain’s storytellers are poised to deliver a new wave of diverse and ambitious shows to the international market.

One of the first firms to identify the potential of Spanish drama was German distributor Beta Film, which was responsible for the international roll-outs of Gran Hotel and Velvet, two exquisite period pieces produced by Bambú Producciones for FTA network Antena 3.

According to Beta Film executive VP for acquisitions and sales Christian Gockel, the success of the Bambú/Antena 3 partnership convinced his company to board two new productions from the same stable: Morocco – Love in Times of War and Farinia – Snow on the Atlantic. “They have raised the bar yet again by taking the unique blend of romance and drama we know so well from Velvet,” he says.

Morocco, says Gockel, is set in war-torn Spanish Morocco in the 1920s, where a group of nurses look after troops. Farinia, meanwhile, “centres on a fisherman who becomes a wealthy smuggler by providing South American cartels a gateway to Europe.”

Farinia is a good indicator of how Antena 3 – the dominant force in FTA drama – has diversified its slate in recent times. The channel also launched Vis a Vis (pictured above), a female-prison drama produced by Mediapro drama label Globomedia. Distributed by Mediapro sales arm Imagina under the title Locked Up, that show broke into the English-speaking market, airing on Channel 4 in the UK and on foreign-language SVoD service Walter Presents.

Gran Hotel was produced by Bambú Producciones for Antena 3

Walter Presents also picked up fellow Antena 3/Globomedia drama Pulsaciones (Lifeline). The psychological thriller is about a surgeon who unravels a medical scandal after suffering a heart attack and having strange nightmares when he receives a donor heart. “Last year, Locked Up exploded onto the international scene, heralding a renaissance in Spanish scripted excellence,” says Walter Presents curator Walter Iuzzolino. “This year they’ve done it again. Lifeline is a thriller with shock narrative twists and epic cliffhanger endings.”

The growing appeal of Antena 3-commissioned drama to the global market is further underlined by a deal that will see Netflix air miniseries The Cathedral of the Sea around the world. Based on Ildefonso Falcones’ bestselling novel and produced by leading Spanish prodco Diagonal, the story takes place in 14th century Barcelona during the Inquisition.

Explaining his remit, Antena 3 senior VP for drama Nacho Manubens says: “Although we produce sporadically for our other channels [laSexta, Neox], we mainly focus on Antena 3. We commission more than 600 hours of TV per year, with 120 primetime hours and 500 daytime hours. We have a range of genres, since our audiences demand variety and innovation. In thrillers we have had hits with Bajo Sospecha, Mar De Plastico and Vis a Vis. In period dramas we have had El Tiempo Entre Costuras and Velvet. These are both lines we will continue exploring.”

Antena 3 has developed a reputation for edgy shows – something Manubens wants to maintain. “We cannot take risks in every show we produce, but we try to keep making shows that push the envelope like we did with Casa De Papel [aka The Money Heist, the latest show from Via a Vis creator Alex Pina].”

Sé Quién Eres (I Know Who You Are) was a hit for Mediaset España

Public broadcaster RTVE and Mediaset Espana, owner of commercial networks TeleCinco and Cuatro, have also upped their scripted game. For RTVE, key titles have been El Ministerio del Tiempo (The Ministry of Time) and Isabel, produced by Onza Partners/Cliffhanger and Diagonal respectively. Isabel, one of several royal-themed shows on the market, ran for three seasons and travelled well internationally. Buoyed by its success, RTVE also made a foray into English-language drama with Reinas (Queens), about the rivalry between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I.

Mediaset España, meanwhile, had a hit with Sé Quién Eres (I Know Who You Are), a Filmax production about a charismatic university lecturer’s possible involvement in his niece’s murder. The show was bought by several networks, including the influential BBC4 – its first Spanish acquisition – with head of BBC programme acquisitions Sue Deeks calling it “the dramatic equivalent of a page-turning thriller.” Mediaset España’s increased investment in event series has also seen it back Forgive Me God, an eight-part miniseries about a nun battling delinquency and the drug trade.

Alongside the increased ambition among FTA channels, there are also new opportunities in the pay TV and SVoD arenas, according to Pilar Blasco, MD of Endemol Shine Iberia, a division that includes Diagonal. “Spain has always been a strong market for local original scripted programming and this has enabled us to build an industry of creative writers, showrunners and directors,” she says. “The big game-changer, however, has been increased commissioning of Spanish productions from the likes of Movistar+, Netflix, HBO and Amazon. As a result, the Spanish drama industry is flourishing with higher budgets that tell more daring stories from a broader range of genres.”

The most high-profile example of Blasco’s point is Telefónica’s decision to invest €70m (US$84m) a year in scripted series for its pay TV platform Movistar+. According to Domingo Corral, head of original programming at Movistar+, the plan is to launch 11 original series a year, initially for SVoD customers. The emphasis will be on “Spanish-language series dealing with Spanish stories created by Spanish talent,” he says.

Movistar+ drama La Zona is set four years after a nuclear accident

Titles include La Zona, a story set in northern Spain four years after a nuclear accident. Also coming soon is La Peste, set in 16th century Sevilla against the backdrop of a plague. Movistar+ has also done a deal with Bambú for a spin-off from Madrid fashion-store series Velvet, which ended on Antena 3 after four seasons. The new series, Velvet Collection, will take the story forward to the 1960s and relocate to Barcelona.

At first sight, Corral’s insistence on super-charged Spanish series seems like it will limit their international appeal. But he takes the view that “great storytelling and characters have universal appeal.” Besides, he adds, Movistar+ series will have 50-minute episodes, rather than the 70 minutes typical to Spain. This will make them a better fit for the global market. Also, Movistar+ has spared no expense on talent, pulling in writers and directors from the country’s admired cinema scene.

Beta Film is continuing its relationship with the Velvet franchise and is also distributing La Zona, says Gockel. “We believe La Zona is one of the most exciting shows coming from Spain this year. It’s an innovative eco-crime thriller with a high budget that will catch viewers around the globe.”

About Premium Content has picked up rights to eight-part mob thriller Gigantes, while Sky Vision has secured global rights to La Peste, which is budgeted at €10m for six episodes. Sky Vision MD Jane Millichip gives an upbeat assessment of Movistar+’s shows: “With La Peste, they have assembled an incredible team with a proven track record. The partnership of Alberto Rodriguez and Rafael Cobos has delivered a deeply engaging story that delivers a thriller of scale, a pungent sense of the past and a modernity that will satisfy audiences.”

Big-budget series La Peste is being distributed by Sky Vision

Movistar+’s investment in drama is especially timely given the growing competition. In April, Netflix launched Las Chicas del Cable, another sumptuous period piece from the Bambú stable that tells the story of four young women working for Spain’s national telephone company in the 1920s.

Also muscling in on the Spanish market is Fox Networks Group (FNG), which has just done a deal with Mediapro’s Globomedia that will see future series of Via a Vis air on its pay TV networks, rather than on broadcaster Antena 3. This is Fox’s first foray into original scripted series, with Vera Pereira, exec VP of FNG Iberia, saying it “will give us greater visibility and relevance in the market.”

Success in scripted formats is also contributing to Spain’s creative revival, with Star-Crossed (The CW), Red Band Society (Fox) and The Mysteries of Laura (NBC) all reimagined for the US market. Televisa USA is also teaming with Lantica Media to produce an English-language Gran Hotel, while Lionsgate has been linked to a US adaptation of Bambú’s Velvet.

The final dimension to the Spanish market’s new dynamism relates to the ambition of the producers. Bambú is part of StudioCanal and has coproduced time-travel drama Refugiados (Refugees) with BBC Worldwide. Diagonal, meanwhile, sees projects like The Cathedral of the Sea as a new phase. “It is a huge leap for the company as it moves into international coproductions,” observes Blasco. “It’s an ambitious project that would never have been commissioned without the support of Netflix.”

Velvet Collection follows on from Velvet

Another leading Spanish producer, DLO, recently became part of the Banijay network and has also picked up a commission from Movistar+ — a series based on Julia Navarro’s best-selling historical novel Dime Quien Soy. In a similar vein, Lagardère Active-owned producer Boomerang is well-known for El Tiempo Entre Costuras (The Time in Between), a 2013 hit for Antena 3 that went on to sell into 75 territories. Now the company has identified Latin America as a key expansion opportunity and is working on a brace of series for broadcasters in Chile. Bambú is also building its profile in Latin America, via a development deal with Televisa in Mexico.

Mediapro is also involved in an eclectic mix of domestic and international series. It coproduced English-language drama The Young Pope and is working on Paradise, a Finnish-Spanish copro that takes place in a Spanish village on the Costa del Sol with a large Finnish community. Other projects include The Head, a copro with Sweden’s Dramacorp in which 10 scientists, trapped in a laboratory at the South Pole, realise one is a killer. “We are also working with DirecTV Latin America on El Fútbol no es Así, a crime series set in the world of Spanish football,” says Mediapro head of content Javier Mendez.

While Mendez welcomes the influx of pay TV drama funding, he says a key opportunity for Mediapro is the international market – especially in light of the fact it has a distribution arm, Imagina. “Series like Narcos show it is possible to find great stories that have the ability to travel all over the world,” he explains. “Increasingly, our strategy is to back good stories regardless of where they come from, because there is a huge appetite for drama around the world.”

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Under doctor’s orders

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Valkyrien tells the story of a respected physician who is desperately seeking a cure for his dying wife. When the hospital stops her treatment, he continues to work in secret, aided by a former patient at their illegal clinic deep beneath the streets of Oslo.

Here, actor Pål Sverre Hagen and head writer and director Erick Richter Strand  talk about the origins of the show and why they were attracted to it.

Strand also reveals the writing process behind the drama and how he juggled his writing and directing duties.

Valkyrien is is produced by Tordenfilm for NRK, and is distributed by About Premium Content. Streaming service Walter Presents has acquired the show for the US and UK.

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France’s finest

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From a pair of mystery dramas and the introduction of the ‘female Columbo’ to the story of a film director forced to make a new version of King Kong for a power-mad dictator, French drama is set to enjoy a breakout year. DQ casts its eye over some of the new series coming to the small screen.

Baron Noir season two
The ‘French House of Cards’ returns. Produced by Kwai for Canal+ and distributed by StudioCanal.

Why was Baron Noir season one so successful around the world?
Producer Thomas Bourguignon: Politics is back – and even if Baron Noir is about French politicians, it deals with the same problems every politician has to face. That’s the reason the show reaches a global audience. The style of the series also had a great impact. Baron Noir is a thriller, a very tense drama with a cinematographic style, a dramaturgy you can’t escape, and editing that makes it as addictive as possible. The performance of the actors is also astonishing. It’s a universal story of revenge, which is one of the most powerful motivations in a drama.

How does season two move the story forward?
We shot season two during the French presidential and legislative elections. No one is capable of predicting what is going to happen, so we have decided to follow our own story. What’s important is that the preoccupations and the big picture of the politicians’ lives are accurate and realistic, whoever is running the country in real life. So in season two, Amélie Dorendeu (Anna Mouglalis) is elected president and Philippe Rickwaert (Kad Merad, pictured) is her special advisor. But democracy is threatened by two evil forces: jihadism and the far right. Our two lead characters become ever more divided and separate from each other and fight to save the republic.

What are the biggest challenges in producing the series?
We started shooting with four scripts out of eight, because of the availability of the cast. It was a challenging race to have the final scripts ready to shoot and keep the quality.

Zone Blanche (Black Spot)
A local sheriff seeks the truth about a mysterious town. Produced by Ego Productions and Be-Films for France 2 and distributed by AB International Distribution.

Where did the idea for Black Spot come from?
Series creator Mathieu Missoffe: Based on initial conversations with producer Vincent Mouluquet, I originally set out to build a strong mystery set in an isolated place that would feel familiar and strange at the same time. We knew this had to be a very visual show to stand out, so we moved away from traditional urban crime shows, instead focusing on a small, colourful community surrounded by hostile and untamed nature. This is how our fictitious town of Villefranche came to life, a place that has its own rules and atmosphere, with a blend of influences ranging from Twin Peaks to Nordic noir.

What is the style or tone of the series?
The show borrows from different genres to create its own unique identity. It doesn’t shy away from gritty crime scenes, but we twisted familiar crime show elements by adding a western movie look and occasionally flirting with fantasy as far as the surrounding nature is concerned. A slight touch of comedy is also part of the mix – a necessary addition to create the kind of entertainment we feel is relevant for today’s general audience.

How is French drama evolving?
The good news is that most of the old taboos that used to drag down French fiction have now collapsed. Politics and religion are back on the map, while darker and edgier stories are gaining traction. It’s definitely an exciting time, with our traditional realistic auteur shows now able to coexist with series that are trying to open new doors in entertainment with exotic locations, big-budget coproductions or new genres. At the same time, talents in front of and behind the camera are finally crossing over between film and television, resulting in even more opportunities.

Capitaine Marleau (Chief Inspector Marleau)
A ‘female Columbo’ tackles crime with her own offbeat methods. Produced by Passion Films for France 3 and distributed by France TV Distribution.

What are the origins of the show?
Producer Gaspard de Chavagnac: Our lead actor Corinne Masiero (far left) first portrayed Capitaine Marleau in French miniseries Entre Vents et Marées (Between Winds and Tides), directed by Josée Dayan. She played the part with such wit and originality that we immediately decided to pitch France 3 the character as the heroine of a new cop series. The network did not hesitate long before ordering a 90-minute pilot.

How was the series developed with France 3?
After the success of the pilot, written by Elsa Marpeau and again directed by Josée Dayan, France 3 agreed to develop two more episodes and then three others. We are currently producing the second season.

How did you cast the series?
As Masiero was not very well known, we sought famous guest stars for each episode. Gérard Depardieu agreed to appear in the first episode, followed by other actors familiar to French viewers – including Victoria Abril, Muriel Robin, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Sandrine Bonnaire and Pierre Arditi. The result was an average of 4.3 million viewers for our first four episodes.

La Forêt (The Forest)
A small town is gripped by fear when people begin to disappear in a mysterious forest. Produced by Carma Films for France 3 and distributed by About Premium Content (APC).

Tell us about the show.
APC founder and joint CEO Emmanuelle Guilbart: The Forest is a modern crime series with a gripping story set against a mysterious background. An audience-friendly thriller at heart, it does not, however, shy away from social themes, setting out to provide a realistic portrayal of issues surrounding today’s youth.

How would you describe the writing process?
Contrary to the current writers room trend, The Forest was written by a single screenwriter, Delinda Jacobs. She came to us with a very precise idea of what the show would look like and the commissioning channel, which wanted to modernise its line-up, was very supportive from the start.

What was the biggest challenge during production?
The biggest challenge for us was finding the right actors. We wanted the story to feel real, with life-like characters and true emotions, so we spent a lot of time looking for people who were able to convey this feeling to the audience. We think we found the right team with Alexia Barlier (pictured left, 13 Hours), Suzanne Clément (Mommy, Laurence Anyways) and Samuel Labarthe (The Little Murders of Agatha Christie) for the main roles.

What new stories are being told in French drama?
French drama has always had a social focus and a taste for realistic and intimate stories. What’s changing is that there is now a new appeal for modern narrative forms, new genres and writing techniques. The Forest is definitely part of that movement, keeping in line with parts of the French cinematic tradition but opening up to new and highly effective ways of telling stories.

Les Témoins (Witnesses) season two
The return of the atmospheric crime thriller. Produced by Cinétévé for France 2 and distributed by Newen Distribution.

Why was Witnesses season one so successful around the world?
Director Hervé Hadmar: The plot, the atmosphere and detective Sandra Winckler (Marie Dompnier, below right). The audience just wants to know who this woman is.

How does season two move the story forward?Witnesses is, of course, the story of Sandra. In season one, she has learned that the ‘ideal family’ does not exist. Her husband is not Prince Charming – and Sandra herself is not so perfect. At the beginning of season two, she’s living alone with her two daughters. She still believes in love, of course, but has to ask herself, ‘Is love the greatest danger?’ As for the main plot, it centres on unravelling what happened to 15 men who are found dead, totally frozen, on a bus. It emerges that they all loved the same woman, Catherine Keemer (Audrey Fleurot, below left). Who is Catherine Keemer? Is she responsible for their deaths? Season two explores the relationship between Sandra and Catherine.

How would you describe your directing process?
I do not fight against the ‘principe de réalité’ – pressures of time or accidental events. I’m trying to use those little incidents, bad weather, for example, to create something new. I have learned to be excited by asking myself, ‘What the hell is going to happen today?’

What is the style or tone of the show?
A Nordic noir with a delicate, strange and almost hypnotic atmosphere.

How is French drama evolving?
With more mature themes and artistic values. Challenging ourselves and challenging the audience is very important. We have learned to take risks but there is still a lot of progress to make. For that, let’s hope success will continue to knock on our doors.

Transferts (Transfer)
Five years after a man drowns, his mind is transferred into someone else’s body. But at a time when ‘transfers’ are outlawed, he must live undercover to avoid detection. Produced by Filmagine, Be-Films and Panama Productions for Arte, and distributed by Lagardère Studios Distribution.

What are the origins of the show?
Producer/co-writer Patrick Benedek: The series grew out of my friendship with Claude Scasso. For a while we’d been wanting to make a thrilling sci-fi series, aware that in France, at the time, no network wanted to go down that road. It was very liberating for me – I could give free rein to all my beginner’s mistakes! I didn’t imagine for a minute that the project would see the light of day.

How would you describe the writing process?
Claude and I worked on the conception and construction of episodes together, in meetings and with notes. We spent entire days projecting ourselves into our characters and our universe – with a creative purpose but also with a keen critical eye on each other’s proposals – until we got that exhilarating feeling that we had something. That’s the advantage of knowing each other well, of not having an oversized ego and of being a team. After that, Claude would write a first draft of the treatments, which I would then rework. Finally, he would go over what I wrote, and I would go over what he did, until we were both satisfied.

What were the biggest challenges during production?
In France, it’s always the same problem – do as much as possible as well as possible with the little financial resources we have. This means always knowing how to get the most out of your resources; knowing how to distribute them while maintaining your artistic vision.

Kim Kong
While filming in Asia, a director is kidnapped by a neighbouring dictatorship and ordered to make a new version of King Kong. Produced by Kwai and Armance for Arte and distributed by FremantleMedia International.

What are the origins of the series?
Producer Thomas Bourguignon: The idea came from Simon Jablonka, the screenwriter. He told me the story of a South Korean director, Shin Sang-ok, who was kidnapped by North Korea in the late 1970s and told to direct movies, notably a remake of Godzilla, which was called Pulgasari. We wanted to make a show about this situation, with a guy who is kidnapped by a dictator who wants him to make a movie. The other inspiration was Misery, Stephen King’s novel with a similar theme, being about an author who’s kidnapped by an deranged fan and forced rewrite his last book because she’s not happy with it. But our story is not about a specific regime or specific country; it’s really about creativity and constraints.

How do you balance the drama with elements of comedy?The situation is very dramatic from the beginning to the end, but in a similar style to movies like Gold Rush, M.A.S.H. or The Ladykillers. The subject is very serious and dramatic but we build in several contradictions that create comedy. It’s a question of life and death but the director has to deal with an inept crew, equipment that dates from the Cold War and the crazy demands of the leader, so there are lots of elements where you can do nothing but laugh.

What was the biggest challenge?
Mostly the casting and the language (with the show being filmed in French and Chinese). But also working out where we were going to shoot. As our dictatorship doesn’t exist in real life, we looked for a location for months before deciding to film 90% of the series in a studio in Paris.

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Our friends in the frozen north

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Nordic drama has made its mark on the international stage over the last few years. But what’s coming next? A good source of information is the Nordisk Film & TV Fund, which provides regular updates on shows in development, production and distribution. So this week we look at some of the latest developments from the region.

next-summerNext Summer: Bob Film is remaking Norwegian comedy Next Summer for Kanal5/Discovery in Sweden. The original version aired on TVNorge/Discovery and was one of the country’s most popular local TV dramas. The Swedish remake, which will air in 2017, centres on a man who shares a summer house with his wife and in-laws in Stockholm’s archipelago. Bob Film also remade the Finnish drama Nurses for TV4 Sweden. That show, known locally as Syrror, launched on October 19, attracting an audience of one million. It’s part of wider trend of local Nordic adaptations that also includes Gåsmamman and Black Widows. Bob Film is also working with Sweetwater on a crime drama called Missing (Saknad) for CMore and TV4, which focuses on the investigation into the murder of a young girl in a Swedish Bible-belt town.

Bonusfamiljen (The Bonus Family): Nordisk Film & TV Fond has just allocated a total of NOK9.4m (US$1.14m) to a slate of new film and TV projects. One of them is season two of The Bonus Family, a comedy drama about a recomposed family and the complications that go with it. Season one is due to air on SVT in 2017, as well as on NRK, YLE, RUV and DR. Season two, granted NOK2.4m (US$290,000), started filming in September and will continue until February 2017.

downshifters_1Downshifters: This Finnish series has just secured a French sales rep (ACE Entertainment) while Sweden’s Anagram has optioned remake rights for its own market. The 10-part comedy from Yellow Film & TV has been generating a good buzz since it launched on OTT service Elisa in late 2015. More recently, it aired on YLE2 and established itself as the second most watched programme. The series tells the story of a couple who face financial problems and are forced to cut down on their extravagant lifestyle. A second series, Upshifters, will launch on Elisa in December 2016.

The Rain: News of this Danish show has been doing the rounds in the last couple of weeks. Produced by Miso Film (Dicte, 1864, Acquitted), The Rain is a dystopian drama commissioned by Netflix. The series is set in Copenhagen 10 years after a biological catastrophe that wipes out most of the population in Scandinavia and sees two young siblings embark on a search for safety. Guided only by their father’s notebook about the virus and the hazards of this new world, they start a dangerous journey through the country and join up with a group of other young survivors. Miso has had a busy few months, with the second season of Acquitted recently launching on TV2 in Norway.

midnight-sunMidnight Sun: This Swedish/French crime show recently debuted to 1.39 million viewers (38.1% share) on SVT1 in the Sunday 21.00 slot. According to the channel, this performance is comparable with The Bridge (Bron/Broen). Midnight Sun also trended at number two on Twitter – and online viewers, which are still to be added to the count, could pass 200,000. The show also secured strong reviews in the Swedish media, with five stars out of five in Aftonbladet. Elsewhere in Scandinavia, Midnight Sun will premiere on RUV on December 5. DR, NRK and MTV3 are likely to air the show, which is distributed internationally by StudioCanal, in early 2017.

nobelNobel: Trapped and Nobel were among 26 European fiction TV series selected for the Prix Europa Media awards last month. Trapped, an Icelandic crime show, won Best European TV Series while Nobel, a Norwegian political/war drama, won Best European TV Movie/Miniseries. Nobel was described as “a precisely crafted original script, perfectly executed and directed, that takes the viewer on a journey into a world of lies, betrayal, mistrust and political games.” Produced by Monster Scripted for NRK, Nobel secured 800,000 viewers for its first episode across NRK1 and NRK streaming service NRK.TV. Both Trapped and Nobel were supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond. Nobel was directed by Per Olav Sørensen, who also directed The Heavy Water War.

heartless-emilie-claraHeartless: In a recent interview with The Nordisk Film & TV Fond, SVoD service Walter Presents’ curator Walter Iuzzolino said 25-30% of the platform’s shows are from Scandinavia. In terms of titles doing well, he mentioned Heartless: “Our curated programme goes way beyond the tradition of Nordic Noir that has been established by the BBC. I would say that 30% of our audience is 16 to 34, the rest 35-plus. The sexy Danish vampire series Heartless, for example, was a huge hit among 16-24s. Normally I hate fantasy and sci-fi but it’s elegant, poetic, cleverly done and an interesting portrayal of a family –  a sort of vampire version of The Legacy. It was a huge success, pushed only by word of mouth.”

Watchdog: At last month’s Mipcom market in Cannes, ZDF Enterprises announced an exclusive first-look rights deal for all scripted content from the Finnish producer Fisher King. Matti Halonen, Fisher King MD and producer, said: “ZDF Enterprises is a well-established company that can give a lot of support to a smaller player like Fisher King.” The first joint project that ZDFE is working on is the upcoming political thriller series Watchdog. Set in present-day Helsinki, The Hague and London, it’s described as an adrenaline trip into the heart of European justice policy and security regulations concerning source protection and privacy insurance. Fisher King is also behind Bordertown, which is represented worldwide by Federation Entertainment and has been sold to Sky Deutschland and CanalPlay France, while English-language series Crypted is also in its pipeline.

Deadwind: Paris-based financing and distribution boutique About Premium Content (APC) recently picked up Finnish crime drama Deadwind. The 12-part series is about a detective in her 30s who is trying to get over her husband’s death when she discovers the body of a young woman on a construction site. At Mipcom, APC launched Norwegian drama thriller Valkyrien, which is produced by Tordenfilm for NRK. It also distributes another Norwegian show, the youth-oriented Young & Promising, which was recently sold to the UK, Germany and France and has a US deal is in negotiation.

Dan Sommerdahl: This autumn it was announced that Nikolaj Scherfig (The Bridge) would be co-creator/head-writer on Dan Sommerdahl, a new series based on Danish author Anna Grue’s bestselling book series. Distributor Dynamic Television (Trapped) is pre-selling the series on behalf of Germany’s NDF and Denmark’s Nordisk Film. TV2 Denmark is attached and a German broadcaster will soon be announced. Scherfig said the project is different from classic Scandi noir: “It is a tight, clean crime series reflecting on life outside cities understanding how modernity and social development affect life in the province.” Klaus Zimmermann, Dynamic co-MD, told nordicfilmandtvnews.com: “NDF originally acquired the rights to the books and wanted to make it in the tradition of a German crime series with German actors for an international market. But then we felt it made more sense to make it as an original Danish show with a Danish writer and Danish actors. It’s simply the right way to tell the story.”

Hassel-Ola-Rapace_small-1Hassel: Speaking to the Nordisk Film & TV Fond about Viaplay’s strategy for coproducing original content for the Nordic region, CEO Jonas Karlén said upcoming original Nordic scripted series on Viaplay include Swedish Dicks, Svartsjön/Black Lake, Hassel, Our Time Is Now and Occupied season two. Hassel is a Nordic noir starring Ola Rapace as the iconic detective created by author Olov Svedelid. The show is produced by Nice Drama in coproduction with Beta Film, which handles global sales, and is due to launch in late 2017.

springtideSpring Tide: Eight brand new Nordic TV dramas have been selected for The Lübeck Festival’s Nordic Film Days. “TV drama is the big new thing. It was time for us to open up our festival to TV series, as Germans are so fond of Nordic noir,” said the festival’s long-time artistic director Linde Fröhlich. Shows to be introduced include Splitting Up Together (DK), Living with my Ex (FI), Trapped (IS), Nobel (NO), and Modus, Hashtag and Spring Tide (SE). The latter crime drama, based on the novel by Rolf and Cilla Börjlind, is about two cops who come together to solve the murder of a pregnant woman. The show is distributed internationally by Endemol Shine International.

Below the Surface: This is a new drama based on an idea by Adam Price (Borgen) and Søren Sveistrup (The Killing) – now principals in Studiocanal-backed firm SAM. The thriller series centres on an operation to rescue 15 hostages from a Copenhagen subway train. Price and Sveistrup said: “There is something both eerie and fascinating about [taking hostages] as a criminal act. The close and complex relationship between the hostage and hostage-taker immediately opens up strong character-development possibilities and can also put a number of highly topical issues about our time to the forefront, such as fear of terrorism.“ The eight-part series has received DKK14m (US$2.08m) in production support from the DFI’s Public Service Fund and will air on Kanal5/Discovery Networks.

skamSkam: Cult Norwegian youth series Shame (Skam) launched on NRK and was recently acquired by DR3 for Denmark. Danish newspaper Politiken called it “a youth series about high-school life that makes Norway cool for the first time.” Steffen Raastrup, director of DR3, said: “The series’ premise is that when you’re young, you should not be ashamed of who you are but stand up for yourself and deal with the fear that many feel during their formative teen years.”  Skam – which is now up to three seasons in Norway and is a strong performer on social media – has also been acquired by SVT in Sweden and RUV in Iceland.

Interference: This is an eight-part English- and French-language sci-fi thriller in development by Stockholm-based Palladium Fiction. Palladium, which is minority-controlled by Sony Pictures Television (SPT), is producing the show alongside Atlantique Productions. SPT is distributing the show internationally. The Palladium team was also behind the critically acclaimed drama Jordskott, and is now working on a second season of the show. Palladium is also developing an English-language project with UK writer/producer Nicola Larder.

Established in 1990 and based in Oslo, the Nordisk Film & TV Fond’s primary purpose is to promote film and TV productions of high quality in the five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). It is funded by 17 partners: The Nordic Council of Ministers, five national film institutes/funds and 11 public service and private TV stations within the region. Its annual budget is approximately NOK100m.

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Israeli and Icelandic formats crack US

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Casey Bloys
HBO’s Casey Bloys

Israel’s Keshet International (KI) looks to have achieved another major breakthrough in the scripted formats sector. After In Treatment, Homeland and The A Word (all based on Keshet formats), it has now teamed up with HBO in the US on a drama about the true-life kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in 2014.

The 10-episode series is the first project to be produced for HBO by its former boss Michael Lombardo, who has a production deal with the network. The creative team behind the show, which will be filmed in Israel, is headed by Hagai Levi and Noah Stollman.

“HBO has always been a home to me. I’m so thrilled to work with them again, and regroup with my good friends from Keshet,” said Levi, who also created hit series The Affair for Showtime.

HBO president Casey Bloys added: “We’re excited to work with Keshet and this talented and creative group led by Hagai Levi. We look forward to sharing this important story with our subscribers.”

The series centres on the disappearance and subsequent search for the three teenagers amid escalating tension and conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. It will be distributed internationally by KI. Avi Nir, the head of KI’s parent company Keshet Media Group, said: “We are thrilled to partner with HBO, the ultimate quality TV powerhouse, and to bring together Israel’s finest in TV and film, led by Hagai Levi, Noah Stollman and Joseph Cedar [the director of the as-yet-unnamed series]. We are all ready for the challenging journey on which this extraordinary story will take us.”

Iceland's Réttur is being adapted for NBC
Iceland’s Réttur is being adapted for NBC

Another interesting story on the format front is NBC’s decision to pilot Infamous, a legal drama based on a 2009 Icelandic series called Réttur. The new version is being written/executive produced by Eli Attie (House) and executive produced by the team behind This Is Us (John Requa and Glenn Ficarra).

Infamous centres on a hotshot attorney who is jailed for a murder he doesn’t remember, and believes he didn’t commit. Six years later, he’s released on a technicality and tries to juggle his day job with finding out what actually happened to put him in jail. The original, created by Sigurjón Kjartansson, ran for three seasons.

Still in the US, ABC is piloting a new series called Protect & Serve. The series centres on a city struggling to cope with the unrest that is stirred up when the police shoot an unarmed man. The show was created by Barbie Kligman and Aaron Kaplan, with Kligman and her husband Billy Malone writing the script.

This seems to be a popular theme for US TV drama at the moment, reflecting the number of high-profile incidents in which controversial police shootings have inspired riots and retaliation. Fox, for example, is working on Shots Fired, a drama that explores the aftermath of racially charged shootings in a Tennessee town.

Dynamic Television has taken the rights to Hulu's East Los High
Dynamic Television has taken the rights to Hulu’s East Los High

Also within the ABC family, cable channel Freeform has commissioned a third season of drama series Stitchers. The show hasn’t been a huge hit for Freeform (season two averaged 387,000 per episode) but will provide some stability as Freeform’s top two shows Pretty Little Liars and Switched At Birth move inexorably towards extinction. For those unfamiliar with the show, it focuses on a female hacker who joins a government agency that investigates murders by hacking into the brains of the deceased.

Turning to Europe, UFA Fiction and ZDF began production this week on their new miniseries drama Heaven & Hell – Martin Luther (working title). Marking 500 years since the Reformation, the series tells the story of Martin Luther, the visionary reformer and one of the most important religious figures in history.

Filming commenced in Prague and the surrounding areas and will continue until early December. Executive producers Benjamin Benedict and Joachim Kosack of UFA Fiction said: “The radical perspective on those early days of the Reformation that Heaven & Hell – Martin Luther enables us to portray human inconsistencies, depths and conflicts. This is a story of a group of people alive 500 years ago whose internal convictions led them to forge a new path – one that ultimately changed the world.”

The show is the latest in a line of big-budget coproductions that have tackled pre-20th century European historical subjects. Others include Borgia, Versailles, 1864, Victoria, Maximilian and Marie de Bourgogne, Medici: Masters of Florence and the BBC’s literary adaptations such as Wolf Hall and War & Peace (and the in-development Les Miserables and A Place of Greater Safety) . The new Martin Luther project will be distributed by FremantleMedia International.

Black-ish will air on E4 in the UK
Black-ish will air on E4 in the UK

There has also been a lot of movement in drama acquisition and distribution business this week. Channel 4 in the UK, for example, has acquired the rights to ABC comedy Black-ish for its digital channel E4.

Dynamic Television, meanwhile, has acquired the global rights to Hulu original series East Los High, which tells the story of a group of inner-city high-school students in LA. Dynamic managing partner Daniel March said: “The series is a game-changer that has completely shattered the bar in the genre. This is a high-powered, emotional drama that speaks to the most sought-after youth audience by tackling everyday challenges.”

Also this week, German, UK and French on-demand services have picked up 12-part Norwegian drama Young & Promising from Nevision-owned distributor About Premium Content. The show, which follows a group of aspirational young urban women, will be streamed on ARD/ZDF-owned Funk in Germany, Channel 4’s Walter Presents in the UK and CanalPlay in France.

Laurent Boissel, joint CEO and co-founder at APC, said: “VoD platforms and broadcasters continue to look for quality drama targeted at millennials. With its strong female leads and a tone that resonates with our time, Young & Promising will appeal to this audience.”

Young & Promising has been acquired by German, UK and French on-demand services
Young & Promising has been acquired by German, UK and French on-demand services

Still in the world of streamers, US-based Acorn is partnering the BBC and All3Media International on Close to the Enemy, a Stephen Poliakoff drama set in a bomb-damaged London hotel in the aftermath of the Second World War. The drama, which Poliakoff discussed during last year’s C21 Drama Summit in London, follows an intelligence officer captain whose last task for the Army is to ensure that a captured German scientist starts working for the British RAF on developing the jet engine.

There’s also good news this week for Dori Media Group, which has licensed acclaimed series El Marginal to French pay TV channel Canal+. Nadav Palti, CEO of Dori Media, said: “Canal+ is a premium pay TV channel that provides its subscribers with access to the highest-quality content. The sale of El Marginal is, therefore, a ringing endorsement of the quality of the show.”

The series focuses on the story of Miguel Dimarco, an ex-cop who enters the San Onofre prison under a false identity as a convict. His mission is to infiltrate a gang of prisoners who have organised the kidnapping of a judge’s daughter. Miguel must discover the whereabouts of the girl and set her free. He meets the objective but someone betrays him, leaving him behind bars with no witnesses who know his true identity.

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Nordic drama in good company

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Ole Søndberg produced the BBC version of Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh
Ole Søndberg produced the BBC version of Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh

London-based producer and financer Nevision has teamed up with Danish production company Good Company Films (GoodCo) to co-develop a new TV drama for the global audience.

The project in development is 10-part drama Midnights, which the partners describe as “a political thriller set in a present world that is both familiar and strange, about Nordic immortals who discover that they are dying amid the emerging Cold War in the Arctic.”

Midnights was created by Anna Reeves and will be produced by Stinna Lassen and Vibeke Windeløv. The executive producers are Ole Søndberg and Anni Faurbye Fernandez, who formed GoodCo in autumn 2014 along with Lassen and Windeløv. Søndberg is best known for starting Yellow Bird Films and for producing the Swedish and English versions of Wallander, the US version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the Millennium Trilogy based on Stieg Larsson’s novels. Fernandez was previously CEO and executive producer of Yellow Bird.

ABC in Oz has brought back legal drama Janet King for a third season
ABC in Oz has brought back legal drama Janet King for a third season

Also involved in the project is Nevision-backed About Premium Content (APC). APC will help source pre-sales and will handle international distribution for the series outside Scandinavia. Laurent Boissel, APC’s CEO, said: “Nevision and APC together are able to offer a bespoke studio-like solution where the producer’s independence and creativity is fully preserved.”

Nevision executive chairman James Cabourne added: “GoodCo is a very exciting company with a team that has an amazing track record in producing quality drama that resonates with a global audience. The success of Wallander is testament to this and we are excited to be partnering with GoodCo on Midnights.”

Elsewhere in the world of drama, Australian pubcaster ABC has renewed legal drama Janet King for a third season. The new eight-part run from Screentime Australia will go into production this year for 2017. It focuses on the life of a female prosecutor who returns from maternity leave to find her workplace even more demanding than when she left. DCD Rights distributes the series.

Cleverman is BBC3's first drama acquisition since it became a web-only network
Cleverman is BBC3’s first drama acquisition since it became a web-only network

Sticking with the subject of drama distribution, there have been a few notable stories this week. BBC3 in the UK, for example, has acquired Cleverman, its first drama purchase since the channel moved from traditional broadcasting to online streaming.

A six-hour series from Australia’s Goalpost Pictures and New Zealand’s Pukeko Pictures, Cleverman follows a group of non-humans battling for survival in a world where humans feel increasingly inferior and want to silence, exploit and kill them.

Sue Deeks, head of programme acquisition at the BBC, described the series as “incredibly original and ambitious.” The show, which is distributed by Red Arrow International, will be available first in the US (SundanceTV, June 1) and Australia (ABC, June 2). The UK screening of the show will come later in the year. Henrik Pabst, MD at Red Arrow International, said the series “is one of the biggest and most ambitious shows to come out of Australia and speaks to a growing world audience unafraid of adventurous TV.”

DRTV's Follow The Money will air on CBC in Canada
DRTV’s financial crime drama Follow The Money will air on CBC in Canada

In Canada, meanwhile, public broadcaster CBC has just announced a summer schedule that includes UK political thriller Undercover (written by Peter Moffat) and Danish financial crime drama Follow The Money. The latter, which comes from the successful DRTV stable, is being aired at 21.00 on Saturdays. This seems like a bold move for a non-English-language drama, though it has already aired on BBC4 in the UK. Other non-Nordic markets to acquire the show include Belgium and the Netherlands.

Also significant is the news that Amazon Prime Video has acquired new AMC show Preacher for the UK, Austria, Germany and Japan. The show is distributed internationally by Sony Pictures Television (SPT), which has also sold it to Viaplay across the Nordics, OSN across the Middle East and D-Smart in Turkey. AMC has an international channel of its own that could have acquired Preacher, but presumably SPT was able to extract more international revenue by putting together a multi-partner plan.

US VoD service Acorn TV has added UK biopic drama Cilla
US VoD service Acorn TV has added UK biopic drama Cilla

The news that US on-demand service Acorn TV has added two UK dramas to its programming line-up underlines the increased demand for scripted shows in the VoD space. They are police procedural Suspects, totalling 17 episodes, and Cilla, a three-part biopic about popular UK entertainer Cilla Black.

As we have noted in recent columns, this is a busy time of year for US channels as they unveil their plans for the summer and autumn seasons. Today’s headliner is Turner Broadcasting’s cable channel TNT, which has ordered a series about the life of a young William Shakespeare. It has also greenlit a pilot called Civil. Both are part of a wide-ranging channel overhaul that has involved a significant increase in scripted investment.

The Shakespeare series, Will, is written by Craig Pierce and follows the life of the young playwright in London. This being US television, the 10-part production will be a contemporary version of Shakespeare’s life played against a modern soundtrack. The theatre scene in 16th century England will be treated as though it was the punk rock revolution of its time.

Amazon Prime Video has taken AMC's Preacher for the UK, Austria, Germany and Japan
Amazon Prime Video has taken AMC’s Preacher for the UK, Austria, Germany and Japan

“Will has an energy and style that is unlike anything else on television today,” said Sarah Aubrey, executive VP of original programming for TNT. “Shakespeare was a 16th century rock star, and Will captures what that must have felt like for the young writer and his fans. We are delighted to be working with such an extraordinary team of executive producers and cast in putting a fresh, bold spin on the story of Shakespeare.”

As for Civil, the backdrop is a fiercely fought presidential election that plunges the US into a modern-day Civil War. It is written by Oscar nominee Scott Smith (A Simple Plan) and directed by Emmy nominee Allen Coulter (Damages, Nurse Jackie). Other new dramas coming through at TNT include Animal Kingdom, Good Behaviour, The Alienist and Tales from the Crypt.

Omen spin-off Damien has ended after a single season
Omen spin-off Damien has ended after a single season on A&E

Also in the US this week, some cancellation news. First, A&E has shut down its Omen spin-off Damien after a single season of 10 episodes. The decision comes after poor ratings, with the show starting moderately and fading to around 400,000 by the end of its run.

Showrunner Glen Mazzara confirmed the cancellation on Twitter: “This hurts to say but #Damien will not be getting a second season. Thank you from all of us to our amazing fans.”

Bates Motel aside, A&E hasn’t been having much luck with original scripted content recently. The Returned was cancelled after one season while Unforgettable has also bitten the dust (though after a longer run). A&E cancelled Longmire after three seasons and then had to stand by and watch as Netflix picked up the show and commissioned a couple more seasons.

Don Cheadle in Showtime's now-axed comedy House of Lies
Don Cheadle in Showtime’s now-axed comedy House of Lies

Also, Showtime has announced that the current season of House of Lies will be the last. Commenting on the show, which stars Don Cheadle, Showtime president and CEO David Nevins said: “House of Lies is a comedy that has frequently been ahead of the curve. The core cast of Don Cheadle, Kristen Bell, Ben Schwartz and Josh Lawson is one of the best comedy teams on television. They have brought the series to an incredibly satisfying conclusion with the historic final episode shot in Cuba.”

In ratings terms, the show is averaging around 350,000 – significantly down on season four and very poor in comparison with most other Showtime titles. The decision to cancel will have been made easier by the encouraging start made by Showtime’s new financial drama Billions.

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Recap: What MipTV execs said about taking on Netflix

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Now that MipTV 2016 has come to an end, DQ editor Michael Pickard looks back on a week where drama continued to reign supreme – and Netflix was again among the major talking points.

With its place in the events calendar so close to other major markets, buyers and distributors have become used to absence of the US studio giants from MipTV each spring.

Yet this year, in what perhaps is representative of the international television industry at large and the growth of the global drama market in particular, it didn’t seem to matter.

The sheer amount of content on display in Cannes – from the traditional posters and billboards lining La Croisette to the inaugural Mip Drama Screenings that presented 12 series from around the world – showcased the current strength of international storytelling that is rivalling US drama.

Private Eyes' Jason Priestley and Cindy Sampson strut their stuff in Cannes
Private Eyes’ Jason Priestley and Cindy Sampson strut their stuff in Cannes

Distributors selected for the screenings certainly felt the benefit, with several reporting a surge in interest in their shows following their presentations in front of more than 350 acquisitions executives on Sunday – none more so than Zodiak Rights, which is selling Belgian drama Public Enemy, the show that scooped the event’s top prize.

But despite the largely absent US studios, those who hoped Netflix might also take the week off were sorely disappointed when the SVoD platform flexed its financial muscles once again.

On Monday, it announced a deal that saw it pick up global rights outside the UK and Ireland for ITV drama Marcella, the first English-language series from The Bridge creator Hans Rosenfeldt.

It’s clear the scale of Netflix’s ambitions and depth of its pockets no longer surprise any of the executives found taking back-to-back meetings inside the Palais. Now that the service has established itself as a major player and rolled out in more than 190 countries, said execs are likely to be heard discussing the next challenge facing the industry – how to fight back against Netflix’s dominance.

In particular, this involves producers deciding whether to work with Netflix and attempt to hold on some of the rights, alternative licensing windows and future earnings from the series. As British producer Justin Thomson-Glover, MD of Artists Studio and a founding director of boutique financing service Far Moor, said during a drama financing panel on Wednesday: “Platforms like Netflix write a cheque and you make it (the series). But there’s no back end.”

For distributors, the question is whether global rights deals with the SVoD giant and its online competitors are preferable to piecing together deals with broadcasters on a territory-by-territory basis.

The Roots team pictured at MipTV this week
The Roots team pictured at MipTV this week

We’re also now seeing the emergence of local SVoD platforms targeting original content in a bid to win subscriptions and eyeballs from Netflix. During the same drama finance panel, About Premium Content’s Emmanuelle Guilbart revealed the distributor is working on a new drama with Swedish broadcaster SVT, with finance from a domestic SVoD player. “They are becoming real commissioners with real money,” she said.

Netflix’s influence, and that of its competitors, in the distribution of content around the world also posed an interesting question during the scripted formats panel that I hosted on Tuesday: If original series (in most cases the best versions) are available worldwide, what is the future of scripted formats?

It was clear from the presentations given by Eccho Rights, New Media Vision and Comarex that local remakes of international hits are still immensely popular and profitable across Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, while New Media Vision’s ambitions to act as a “gateway to the US” is evidence that, despite the drop in adaptations ordered by the big networks this pilot season, the US is still keen on non-English-language formats. NBC, for example, is launching Game of Silence, based on Turkish series Suskunlar, on April 12.

One deal confirmed this week was for The Department of Time, which was announced as the first Spanish drama to be adapted in China.

The eponymous department is a secret government institution tasked with guarding the ‘gates of time’ and preventing intruders from travelling to the past to change the course of history for their own benefit.

Author Harlan Coben was in attendance to promote his forthcoming TV series The Five
Author Harlan Coben was in attendance to promote his forthcoming TV series The Five

The series was originally produced by Cliffhanger and Onza Entertainment for TVE in Spain and the format has been sold by Onza Distribution to China’s Guan Yue International.

Circling back to SVoD, one executive told DQ here in Cannes that Netflix, Amazon and the large number of increasingly confident local SVoD platforms could, in fact, turn to scripted formats in an effort to boost their original production slates.

Meanwhile, the digital revolution is also building in the form of shortform series that are throwing traditional broadcasting structures to the wind. That series with no set running time or episode order are being produced across publishing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo is nothing new – with the latter’s Sam Toles describing YouTube as WalMart compared with Vimeo’s Bloomingdales during a web series panel on Wednesday.

But the session, which also included executives from New Form Digital in the US and France’s Taronja Prod, posed a pertinent question – if a YouTube channel that has 30 million hits still isn’t in the mainstream, how do you measure success?

Canadian prodco Shaftesbury might have the answer. One of its original digital series, Carmilla, which is available on the KindaTV YouTube channel, will this month be shopped to US networks as a 13-hour drama on the back of its success online – three seasons and 41 million views. Showrunner Sandra Chwialkowska (Lost Girl) is attached to the series, which is based on J Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel about a young woman’s attraction to a female vampire.

With ready-made brands known to millions of fans, who participate in fan art, fiction, online debates and more, web series are primed to serve as ready-made pilots for traditional TV networks looking for their next big hit. Just don’t tell Netflix.

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A vision of the future: UK indie producer Nevision

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UK indie Nevision is shaking up the drama production model by investing in new writers and offering them a share of the business. Michael Pickard reports.

When independent producer Nevision announced a co-development deal with distributor Red Arrow International, it marked the latest stage in the growth of a company that puts writers at the heart of its business.

Linking with Red Arrow to bring high-end drama series to the worldwide market, it announced two projects already in the works with producer Sharon Bloom (Silent Witness).

The first, Post One, is described as a high-concept series written by Gregory Edmont, while Geneva is a spy thriller from writer Matt Thorne. Both will be produced by Nevision and distributed by Red Arrow.

The partnership marks Nevision’s continued push into the global drama industry as it aims to exploit coproduction opportunities while developing its own slate of dramas in partnership with the creatives behind them. But that wasn’t always the plan.

Neil Zeiger
Neil Zeiger: ‘We tell writers to come to us with something they really want to write. If they believe in a story, we’ll engage with them’

Nevision launched in early 2013 with ambitions to support the drama sector by providing new streams of funding. But, spurred on by consolidation in the industry and the relatively small number of independent producers left in the UK, it began to focus more on the creative process – finding greater value in seeking out new writers and developing their ideas for television.

“What’s interesting is over the last couple of years in the independent sector, producers suddenly became bigger, were bought by multinationals and given a value none of us could understand,” explains Nevision producer Neil Zeiger (Kingdom, Collision).

“A lot of writers found they didn’t have any control over their work that had created the success that generated all that money. The writers we talked to wanted to control their output, and the only way you can really do that is by not giving it away to somebody else.”

Traditionally, writers might be paid for writing a treatment and then a script, but in turn hand over rights to the production company involved. Nevision promotes a different kind of relationship, where writers become partners and retain some control over the IP while Nevision moves the project forward through production, ensuring the original creator remains involved in the decision-making.

Zeiger continues: “We tell writers to come to us with something they really want to write. If they believe in a story, we’ll engage with them. Then you’ve got as much chance as everybody else in this business because the other bits that you put to it – cast, director, money – that’s just how you make a broadcaster feel relaxed. The key thing is we’re developing stuff that we believe in, that the writers believe in, and that’s all you can ever do. Ultimately, the only way you break through is with quality content.

Nevision is also in a position to help finance projects. In particular, it can plug funding gaps to help kickstart production and ensure broadcasters can put a series into their schedule.

Sharon Bloom
Nevision has two projects in the works with producer Sharon Bloom

“All the broadcaster has to worry about is whether it’s commissioned the right piece of drama, not whether it will get funding in time or if it has to get some money out of the distributor,” Nevision executive chairman James Cabourne notes. “All of that goes away.”

Zeiger continues: “Our funding model is flexible. There will be some productions where a coproduction makes sense simply because of geography. Other projects don’t require that, so we can deficit-fund, we can pre-sell. But it’s all balanced against the value of the work at the end. Are people going to want to watch it and is it going to make its money back?”

Bringing new writers to the screen isn’t an easy job, however. With broadcasters on the hunt for big ratings, they are naturally more inclined to work with established top-tier writers.

But Cabourne argues they need to take more risks and put their faith in emerging voices: “There is a coterie of writers who broadcasters fall over themselves to get, but the average person in the street has got no idea who wrote what. But they do know really good drama when they see it, and that’s where broadcasters need to loosen up.”

Nevision announced in 2014 that it was working with former FremantleMedia CEO David Ellender’s Slingshot Global Media on Oil, a drama set in the Persian Gulf during the 1970s.

Created by Alan Whiting (Wire in the Blood), Matthew Faulk and Mark Skeet, who writes the series, it follows a young American woman and her oil executive husband who live within the tight-knit community of expats from the US and Europe.

More recently, however, it bought a majority stake in distributor About Premium Content (APC), which has offices in London and Paris and counts drama Contact (pictured top) – which piloted on France’s TF1 – among its titles. The deal extended Nevision’s reach into Europe, where it has access to new funding and coproduction opportunities – possibilities enhanced further by the subsequent link with Red Arrow International.

James Cabourne
James Cabourne: ‘There is a coterie of writers who broadcasters fall over themselves to get, but the average person in the street has got no idea who wrote what’

“Neil and I have spent a long time understanding drama output in Europe, which is why we’re so fascinated with APC’s business,” says fellow producer Tim Buxton. “There’s a very different set of rules operating in Europe, with very different budgets. It is extraordinary what some of the Scandinavian and Spanish producers are able to make on budgets that the British can’t get their heads round.

“Broadening horizons into Europe gave us the confidence to say we’ve got some things that could attract European interest, whether in France, Spain or Germany. We have to remind ourselves that an awful lot of programming gets made outside the UK and some of it is remarkably good. Spanish dramas are being made for €400,000 ($450,000) an hour – you wonder how they do it.”

Nevision now has around 15 projects in development and is starting to pitch projects to UK broadcasters. It hopes to have two series in production or on air this year.

“As we’ve got more involved in Europe through APC, we can see how things can be done in different ways,” Cabourne adds. “The current model has worked for so long that people know any other way. We’re looking at different ways of making things – maybe you don’t go down the commission route; you take a risk and make something on a pre-sale basis. There are different strategies but people tend to do the same thing. We’re not going to just do one thing. We’re open.”

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