Tag Archives: Marcella

Braving the storm

February 12, 2018IN FOCUSAnna Friel, Buccaneer Media, Charles Martin, Hans Rosenfeldt, ITV, Marcella, Nicola LarderJane Marlow

Marcella returns for a second season with the creative team behind the ITV drama promising darker and more challenging times ahead for the eponymous detective. DQ finds out more.

The first season of high-concept thriller Marcella, created by Hans Rosenfeldt and Nicola Larder and starring Anna Friel as the titular character, scattered some Scandi magic over UK broadcaster ITV’s schedule and globally via Netflix. Attracting an average 25% audience share and 6.8 million viewers, the show did the business for its network and its producer, Buccaneer Media, and is now returning for season two on February 19.

Rosenfeldt says that when he first started to work on the original show, he didn’t think beyond season one; the story had to be wrapped up and satisfying just in case the drama didn’t have a life beyond that first season. An obvious challenge when approaching the second season, therefore, was to deliver the ingredients that struck a chord with the audience the first time round, but to present them in a way that feels fresh.

The second season of Marcella sees Anna Friel return as the London detective

“We liked a lot from season one,” says Rosenfeldt, best known as the creator of Nordic noir smash hit The Bridge. “We are keeping the multi-plot and are dipping into London in different places with different characters and keeping the idea that, at first, you don’t really know how they’re connected to our case or our protagonist.”

Larder executive produces the series alongside Rosenfeldt and Buccaneer Media founder Tony Wood, with Cineflix Rights distributing the drama. She says defining the show’s USP was a key conversation when they embarked on season two, adding: “What we realised is that Marcella will have to go through an absolute storm emotionally and psychologically as she did in season one, and that she will also be investigating a serial killer. That is part of our brand.”

Larder says the case under investigation will be linked to Marcella because that is also part of the show’s DNA. “In some people’s eyes, that’s coincidence but for us it’s part of our brand,” she adds. “As long as we have good, exciting material which makes Marcella fight harder to get justice, I don’t think our audience will care that there was a personal connection to the crime last time too.”

As is typically the case for sequels, season two will be darker, more challenging and editorially bolder, as the story bar had already been set high in season one. The headline from ITV when talking about bringing the show back was that they were interested in Marcella’s character-defining blackouts or ‘fugue attacks.’ Rosenfeldt says: “We needed to do something with them. We couldn’t just have them appearing again and causing her trouble. What we’re doing this time is we’re digging further into the reasons why she’s having them.”

Writer Hans Rosenfeldt attends a readthrough

With his responsibilities on The Bridge now wrapped up following a fourth and final season that debuted in Denmark and Sweden last month, Rosenfeldt has written seven out of eight episodes while The Bridge co-writer Camilla Ahlgren takes one. He has also moved to London, is writing later drafts in English and has factored in a longer lead time for scripts.

“I’ve written shorter scripts this time around,” says Rosenfeldt. “Last time they were a bit long and we had to make choices in the edit to lose things. They were perfectly good and would’ve been great, but time didn’t allow it. This time we get more of what’s actually there on the screen, which is really good.”

Having set up the show in season one, director Charles Martin has come back to work on this new run, which has helped with the continuity of tone and style. However, a delay in getting season two greenlit meant many of Martin’s previous creative team weren’t available, so he had to assemble a new one.

“The important thing was not to try to reinvent the wheel but to make something that inhabits the same universe,” the director says. “We used a different camera but we used the same lenses.”

Nigel Planer (left) and Keith Allen also appear in the drama

Martin already had a template for the show. “The story here is reasonably heightened and, therefore, I didn’t want to do anything too arty. I wanted to do something that had its own look but didn’t feel artificial or forced. I wanted to do something quite straight because what’s not straight here is the story.”

One of Martin’s biggest challenges was that while season one was shot in the autumn, this time they were shooting in the height of summer. “We wanted to make sure the series remained saturated with colour, so there was a richness to it,” adds Larder. “We also pulled many antisocial hours on the unit to get as much night as we could. There’s an element of voyeurism to the shooting style, so even if you’re in a bright London square, there’s a danger to it because of how it’s filmed. Reviewing it in the edit, you don’t notice it’s seasonally different.”

Every noir needs an iconic coat or jumper, and the change in seasons impacted Marcella’s choice of attire, with the detective usually clad in her distinctive parka. “We chose the coat in season one because we wanted Marcella to have a really immediately identifiable silhouette in any dark shady place because we were going to be picking her out at night,” says Larder. “In a practical sense, we needed our actress to be warm. Then, in turn, it became something she worked with, performed with.” This season Marcella’s coat is different but, apparently, just as good.

While initially Rosenfeldt wasn’t looking much further than making season one a hit, he says this time he’s already thinking about season three. “We are setting up for season three at the end of two,” he says. “Season two will still be a very good standalone but, if season three happens, we know exactly what we want to do with it.”

The term ‘difficult second album’ is well known in the music industry and similarly in TV there’s always going to be pressure to live up to the success of the first season. “Our ambition wasn’t to just do what we did before, but to better it,” says Larder. “We wanted to embrace the bravery we had in season one when there weren’t half as many expectations. What I think I’m most proud of is that the storytelling is even stronger and what Marcella goes through is even more surprising. So we’ve not lost our boldness. Boldness is our brand.”

tagged in: Anna Friel, Buccaneer Media, Charles Martin, Hans Rosenfeldt, ITV, Marcella, Nicola Larder

A busy August in Edinburgh

August 30, 2016GreenlightAcorn TV, Agatha Christie Limited, Agatha Christie Productions, Amazon, BBC, Bodyguard, Charlotte Moore, Edinburgh International Television Festival, El Accidente, Eleanor Catton, Hans Rosenfeldt, Hilary Strong, ITV, Jed Mercurio, Malorie Blackman, Marcella, MotherFatherSon, Ordeal by Innocence, Patrick Holland, Rush: Inspired by Battlefield, Sarah Phelps, Starz, Studio71, Survivor's Removrse, Telecinco Spain, The End, The Kettering Incident, The Luminaries, The Split, The Witness for the Prosecution, Trust MeAndy Fry

Aidan Turner of Poldark fame was among And Then There Were None's star-studded cast — Aidan Turner of Poldark fame was among And Then There Were None’s star-studded cast

It’s been a busy end to August in terms of commissions and acquisitions. In the UK, the BBC has been especially active, taking advantage of the Edinburgh International Television Festival (EITF) as a platform for announcing or discussing new developments.

One of its most high-profile announcements is a deal with Agatha Christie Productions that will see seven Agatha Christie novels adapted for TV over the next four years. This follows an earlier announcement that it would be making The Witness for the Prosecution, with a cast led by Toby Jones, Andrea Riseborough, Kim Cattrall, David Haig, Billy Howle and Monica Dolan.

The first of the novels to be adapted under the seven-book deal will be Ordeal by Innocence. Other titles so far confirmed include Death Comes as the End and The ABC Murders, which focuses a race against time to stop a serial killer who is on the loose in 1930s Britain.

Commenting on the deal, Charlotte Moore, director of BBC Content, said: “These new commissions continue BBC1’s special relationship as the home of Agatha Christie in the UK. Our combined creative ambition to reinvent Christie’s novels for a modern audience promises to bring event television of the highest quality to a new generation enjoyed by fans old and new.”

The decision to plan so far ahead came after the success of And Then There Were None for BBC1 in 2015. That adaptation was written by Sarah Phelps, who is also working on the next two Christie projects. Further writers will be announced in due course.

Hilary Strong, CEO of Agatha Christie Ltd, said: “And Then There Were None was a highlight of the 2015 BBC1 Christmas schedule, and we are truly delighted to be building on the success of that show, first with The Witness for the Prosecution, and then with adaptations of seven more iconic Agatha Christie titles. What Sarah Phelps brought to And Then There Were None was a new way of interpreting Christie for a modern audience, and Agatha Christie Ltd is thrilled to be bringing this psychologically rich, visceral and contemporary sensibility to more classic Christie titles for a new generation of fans.”

The Witness for the Prosecution is a Mammoth Screen and Agatha Christie Productions’ drama for BBC1, in association with A+E Networks and RLJ Entertainment’s development arm, Acorn Media Enterprises. RLJE’s streaming service, Acorn TV, is the US coproduction partner and will premiere the adaptation in the US. A+E Networks holds rest-of-world distribution rights to The Witness for the Prosecution, and will launch it at the Mipcom market in October.

Alongside the Christie announcement, the BBC’s Moore used the EITF to unveil a range of other dramas. These include an adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s acclaimed young-adult novel Noughts and Crosses and a new six-part drama from Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty) entitled Bodyguard.

There is also an Edinburgh-set drama called Trust Me, written by Dan Sefton, and a new series from Abi Morgan called The Split. This one examines the fast-paced circuit of high-powered female divorce lawyers, through the lens of three sisters – Hannah, Nina and the youngest, Rose.

The Luminaries is being adapted for BBC2

Moore’s announcements for BBC1 were built upon by BBC2 controller Patrick Holland, who also announced plans for new scripted series at the festival. “I want BBC2 to be the place where the best creative talents can make their most original and exciting work, where authorship flourishes,” he commented.

Holland’s headline drama announcement was MotherFatherSon, from author and screenwriter Tom Rob Smith (Child 44). This is an eight-part thriller that “sits at the intersections of police, politics and the press,” according to the BBC. “It is as much a family saga as it is a savage, unflinching study of power and how even the mightiest of empires can be in peril when a family turns on each other.”

Holland also greenlit The Luminaries, a six-part drama from Working Title Television based on the novel by Eleanor Catton. A 19th-century tale of adventure, set on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island in the boom years of the 1860s gold rush, The Luminaries is a story of love, murder and revenge, as men and women travelled the world to make their fortunes.

Catton, who will adapt her own novel for television, won the 2013 Man Booker Prize for The Luminaries. She said: “Learning to write for television has been a bit like learning a new musical instrument: the melody is more or less the same, but absolutely everything else is different. I’m having enormous fun, learning every day, and I’m just so excited to see the world of the novel created in the flesh.”

Filming on the six-parter will begin in 2017, taking place in and around New Zealand.

While the BBC dominated the drama announcements at the EITF, ITV also used the event to reveal that there will be a second season of crime drama Marcella, written by The Bridge creator Hans Rosenfeldt and starring Anna Friel. Produced by Buccaneer Media, the first season of the show was a top-rated drama on ITV, achieving an average of 6.8 million viewers across its run.

Commenting on the recommission, Rosenfeldt said: “I was delighted at the reaction to the first season and am thrilled to be revisiting Marcella for ITV. In the second season, the audience will get the opportunity to spend more time in her world, exploring some of the characters and getting to know them better.”

Other interesting stories as the industry gears up for autumn include the news that Amazon has acquired Australian drama The Kettering Incident from BBC Worldwide for its Prime Video service. The show was co-created by writer Victoria Madden and producer Vincent Sheehan was shot entirely in Tasmania. The eight-episode series tells the story of a doctor who returns to her hometown years after the disappearance of one of her friends.

The Kettering Incident has been picked up by Amazon

In mainland Europe, Telecinco Spain has ordered a local version of hit Turkish series The End. Produced originally by Ay Yapim, the new version will be called El Accidente and will be the third local version of the show in Europe after remakes in Russia and the Netherlands.

The show, which was also piloted in the US, tells the story of a woman investigating her husband’s death in a plane crash, only to discover that he wasn’t on the flight. It is distributed by Eccho Rights, which has also sold the original to 50 countries.

In the US, premium pay TV channel Starz has renewed Survivor’s Remorse for a fourth season. The show has had a particularly strong third season having been paired in the schedule with Starz hit series Power. Across all platforms, it now draws around 2.9 million viewers per episode.

“We are thrilled to renew Survivor’s Remorse for a fourth season,” said Starz MD Carmi Zlotnik. “Critics have consistently called it one of the smartest and funniest comedies on TV, and we are delighted to see audiences embracing the characters and the storyline with that same enthusiasm. Mike O’Malley and his tremendously talented team of writers and actors boldly tackle today’s most pressing issues, from race, class, sex and politics to love and loss, but with such a deft touch that nothing ever feels heavy-handed.”

In other news, ProSiebenSat.1-owned Studio71 is producing a live-action series inspired by the Battlefield video game franchise that will launch on Verizon’s Go90 platform. Rush: Inspired by Battlefield will stream on the mobile service from September 20.

The Battlefield franchise, developed by EA Dice and published by Electronic Arts, has amassed more than 60 million players since launching in 2002. “Gaming is one of the most popular forms of entertainment today and there is a huge appetite for content inspired by video games,” said Studio 71 president Dan Weinstein.

tagged in: Acorn TV, Agatha Christie Limited, Agatha Christie Productions, Amazon, BBC, Bodyguard, Charlotte Moore, Edinburgh International Television Festival, El Accidente, Eleanor Catton, Hans Rosenfeldt, Hilary Strong, ITV, Jed Mercurio, Malorie Blackman, Marcella, MotherFatherSon, Ordeal by Innocence, Patrick Holland, Rush: Inspired by Battlefield, Sarah Phelps, Starz, Studio71, Survivor’s Removrse, Telecinco Spain, The End, The Kettering Incident, The Luminaries, The Split, The Witness for the Prosecution, Trust Me

Women re-energise crime drama

May 20, 2016Hit & MissBroadchurch, Cagney & Lacey, Channel 4, Crime drama, Donna Detective, DR, France Télévisions, Gillian Anderson, Hans Rosenfeldt, Happy Valley, Jennifer Lopez, Law & Order: SVU, Les Temoins, Line of Duty, Marcella, No Offence, Prime Suspect, Rizzoli & Isles, Rogue, Scott & Bailey, Shades of Blue, Tartort, The Bridge, The Fall, The Killing, The Tunnel, WitnessesAndy Fry

In honour of ITV’s Brit noir series Marcella, DQ looks at some of the women detectives who have helped reinvigorate a genre that used to be the preserve of cantankerous middle-aged men.

When ITV launched the excellent Prime Suspect in 1991, female coppers were still a novelty on UK television. But these days it seems as though the entire police system is in the hands of no-nonsense women taking on a world of desensitised or deranged male bastards.

When they aren’t dealing with criminals, they generally have to contend with the fact that their husbands and colleagues are also a) psychotic, b) philanderers or c) perversely obstructive.

Sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) in Happy Valley

For the most part, the female cop formula seems to be working, with little indication as yet that the UK audience is getting bored by it.

Despite its various structural flaws, ITV’s Marcella, starring Anna Friel, has just finished its eight-part run with a solid audience of around five million and looks like a decent bet for a season two renewal.

Other female cops who have secured a strong fanbase include DS Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) in Broadchurch, Sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) in Happy Valley, DI Lindsay Denton (Keeley Hawes) in Line of Duty and Superintendent Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) in The Fall, which returns for a third season this year.

And it doesn’t end there. Other female crimefighters include the cast of Channel 4’s No Offence and Detectives Janet Scott and Rachel Bailey in ITV’s Scott & Bailey. The latter, which starred Lesley Sharp and Suranne Jones, finished this April.

Saga Noren (Sofia Helin) in Danish/Swedish drama The Bridge

Without exception, all of these shows have achieved good to great ratings. Sometimes this is down to the writing, but more often than not it feels as though the real secret of their success is the quality of the female leads. All of the above shows have been graced with exceptional acting performances that make you stay loyal even if the wider production starts to lose its direction.

Based on IMDb scores, Marcella doesn’t actually fare that well, scoring 7.1. This is probably a reflection of the gaps in the plot, which caused a lot of angst on social media platforms like Twitter. Much stronger are shows like Happy Valley, Broadchurch, The Fall and Line of Duty, which achieved scores in the 8.3 to 8.5 range.

Sandra Winckler (Marie Dompnier) in Witnesses — Sandra Winckler (Marie Dompnier) in France Télévisions’ Witnesses

With the general success of female cops, it’s no surprise that ITV is going back to its Prime Suspect franchise with Tennison. This show, from Lynda La Plante, imagines the central character, Jane Tennison, as a young woman starting out on her career. Set in Hackney in the 1970s, it recreates a world where women police constables are treated with suspicion by their male colleagues.

The female cop theme is not, of course, restricted to the UK. It has played a big part in the emergence of Nordic noir as a global force. Writer Hans Rosenfeldt, who gaves us Marcella, previously introduced us to Saga Noren (Sofia Helin) in his acclaimed Danish/Swedish copro The Bridge. And this then gave rise to UK/France copro The Tunnel, where viewers have been beguiled by feisty French cop Elise Wassermann (Clemence Poesy).

Equally important has been Danish broadcaster DR’s The Killing, which saw Sofie Grabol playing DI Sarah Lund. This was adapted for the US, where Grabol’s role was played by Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden.

Charlotte Lindholm in ARD’s long-running crime franchise Tatort, set in Hanover

In France, meanwhile, audiences on public broadcaster France Télévisions have recently been introduced to Sandra Winckler (Marie Dompnier) in Witnesses (Les Temoins). More mainstream is Candice Renoir, about a French police commandant, played by Cecile Bois, who solves crimes in the South of France. The show has also secured a number of sales around Europe.

The US, of course, has never been afraid to place female cops on the frontline – think back to Cagney & Lacey or Angie Dickinson as Sergeant ‘Pepper’ Anderson in Police Woman. More recently the mantle of number one tough female cop has been taken up by Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) in NBC’s long-running procedural Law & Order: SVU. The character of Benson has appeared in 385 episodes of the show and risen to become commanding officer of the SVU division.

Jennifer Lopez in Shades of Blue — Jennifer Lopez plays an single-mother NYPD cop in Shades of Blue

Angie Harmon, as Jane Rizzoli in TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles, is another who deserves to be given a medal for services to the TV industry. Among the new female cops is Harlee Santos, a single-mother NYPD detective played by Jennifer Lopez in Shades of Blue.

Countries where female cops are not so prominent include Germany and Italy, where the chaps still get to solve most crimes. But even here there are a few exceptions.

One is Charlotte Lindholm, a detective in the Hanover-set production of ARD’s long-running crime franchise Tatort. She has been played by Maria Furtwangler since 2002, making her something of a German TV icon. Italy, meanwhile, gave us Donna Detective, in which Detective Lisa Milani (played by Lucrezia Lante Della Rovere) requests a desk job in a small town outside of Rome in order to spend more time with her family. As luck would have it, she gets called back to assist with a major case and is placed in charge of an entire investigative squad in the capital.

The Fall Stella-Gibson — Gillian Anderson returns for a third season of The Fall this year

The clear message from all of the above is that female cops have reinvigorated the detective genre, creating a new kind of character-based complexity around ideas like work-family balance, competing in what is perceived to be a man’s world, tackling problems from a female perspective and demonstrating skill sets that run counter to traditional assumptions.

What’s missing, perhaps, is a black or Asian female lead. There have been fleeting sightings (in US shows like Southland, The Wire, Rogue and Deception). But as yet there is nothing comparable to the breakthrough made by Idris Elba in BBC hit series Luther.

Given the recent strength of British broadcasters in the female cop genre, this is an area where they should really bite the bullet.

tagged in: Broadchurch, Cagney & Lacey, Channel 4, Crime drama, Donna Detective, DR, France Télévisions, Gillian Anderson, Hans Rosenfeldt, Happy Valley, Jennifer Lopez, Law & Order: SVU, Les Temoins, Line of Duty, Marcella, No Offence, Prime Suspect, Rizzoli & Isles, Rogue, Scott & Bailey, Shades of Blue, Tartort, The Bridge, The Fall, The Killing, The Tunnel, Witnesses

London calling: Bringing Scandi noir to the capital

April 26, 2016ON LOCATIONAnna Friel, Buccaneer Media, Cinefli, Hans Rosenfeldt, ITV, Marcella, Max Gottlieb, Netflix, Nicola Larder, Rights, The BridgeMichael Pickard

The Bridge creator Hans Rosenfeldt brings Scandi style to the streets of London in crime drama Marcella. DQ meets the cast and crew.

On a bright and sunny day in central London, light pours into the Serious Crime Unit office.

Ten floors above a bustling Tube station, the room is filled with banks of desks, each one covered with its own computer and piles of paper. Police officers who glance up from their monitors can enjoy unimpeded views of the capital through the panoramic windows.

But there’s work to do. On one side of the room, two whiteboards are covered with photographs and information relating to a group of murder victims. Images taken from the blood-stained crime scenes leave little to the imagination.

Hans Rosenfeldt Photo: Albin Olsson — Hans Rosenfeldt (photo by Albin Olsson)

Welcome to the world of Marcella, an eight-part drama currently airing on ITV that marks The Bridge creator Hans Rosenfeldt’s first foray into English-language series.

Anna Friel stars as the eponymous detective who returns to the Metropolitan Police’s Murder Squad when her husband (played by Nicholas Pinnock) suddenly leaves her.

Eleven years after she gave up her fast-tracked police career to marry and start a family, she throws herself back into her work and, after a spate of murders, finds herself on the case of a serial killer that first struck in 2005.

The cast also includes Downton Abbey’s Laura Carmichael, plus Ian Puleston-Davies, Nina Susanna, Ray Panthaki, Jamie Bamber, Sinead Cusack, Patrick Baladi and Harry Lloyd.

Produced by Buccaneer Media, Marcella is executive produced by co-creators Rosenfeldt and Nicola Larder alongside Tony Wood. Cineflix Rights is distributing the series internationally and has secured a deal with Netflix that will see the series air worldwide on the SVoD platform.

As a big fan of The Bridge (aka Bron/Broen), Friel says she was excited to join a “unique” production that isn’t simply a remake of an existing Scandinavian drama. “It was changing the mould and the shape by taking a Scandi writer, putting him in England and letting him give his take on London,” she tells DQ during a break from filming at the fictional police station.

Carrying the series as the title character, who Friel admits is in almost every scene, might have led to the actor feeling under pressure – but she says she hasn’t had time to stop and take stock during the intense shoot.

“For 13 hours a day I’m thinking like Marcella, so it’s made me a bit depressed at certain times because there’s quite a lot on her shoulders,” she explains, “but it’s only a certain time in your life, and my daughter Gracie always pulls me out of that because I go home and I’m mummy and that’s real life.”

Discussing her character, Friel continues: “I love watching strong female leads but I also like the human side, that we’re all delicate and fractured. Most cops are mavericks in what they do but they’re also human. Marcella’s incredibly fractured. We all use a bit of our own life to make it true and believable, but I’m really sane compared with Marcella.”

From left: Anna Friel and Charles Pinnock receive direction from Charles Martin — From left: Anna Friel and Nicholas Pinnock receive direction from Charles Martin

Friel was well placed to star in a drama from a Swedish writer, having previously worked in Scandinavia on Norwegian historical drama The Heavy Water War (aka Kampen om tungtvannet or The Saboteurs).

“That was one of the biggest things that drew me to this – they had a work ethic I’d never seen before,” she recalls. “It was very tight and really well thought out; very concentrated and focused. I liked that a lot.”

American Odyssey and Pushing Daisies star Friel was the “first and only choice” to play Marcella, according to executive producer Larder, who created the character before seeking out Rosenfeldt to bring her story to life.

“I’d worked with her before and I knew she gives a lot of herself to her roles,” Larder says. “She’s a method actor and I knew I wanted someone to lay themselves bare in the process. Marcella is very raw and very visceral and I wanted someone brave like Anna to go there. She does that pretty much every day.”

Larder – who was a development executive on the first season of The Tunnel, the Anglo-French adaptation of The Bridge – describes Marcella as “amazingly complicated,” a detective who failed to detect the collapse of her marriage and is now headlong in an emotional spin while trying to catch a serial killer.

“I like the idea of a mistrustful central female protagonist whose actions the audience should always understand, if not like,” she adds. “That’s real life – it’s not always black and white. We can be great people who sometimes act irrationally, unsympathetically or selfishly. Marcella has a reality to her. She’s not defined by being a detective or a mother, she’s defined by both – she’s just not been able to do both simultaneously.

“There are big question marks over Marcella’s character and what she’s capable of from the beginning. We run with that and we enjoy it.”

From the slow-boiled character studies of Broadchurch to the harsh Icelandic setting of Fortitude, every new crime drama in the UK in recent years seemingly can’t escape being described as a British take on the immensely popular Nordic noir genre.

But Marcella goes one further, taking Rosenfeldt and placing him in a London-set show designed for a British audience. “We are not imitating Scandinavian noir, we are taking a Scandinavian writer out of his comfort zone and setting him free,” Larder insists. “But we’re aware of our audience. We need to deliver for a British audience that loves character.

“At its heart, Marcella is an emotionally guided thriller and all Tony and I do is support Hans’s vision. When you’ve got a whole load of brilliant, clever and emotional British actors on top of his Swedish words, you get this beautiful creative fusion.”

Friel during a cast reading for the show

Having written three seasons of The Bridge – a fourth (and possibly final) is under discussion – Rosenfeldt says he was keen to put Swedish detective Saga Norén (played by Sofia Helin) to one side and work with a new central character. “I’ve been writing Saga for so long so it was fun for me to do something else. I know Saga so well – it’s nice to meet someone new,” he explains.

For his first English-language series, Rosenfeldt wrote the first three episodes in Swedish before they were translated into English. For episodes four, five and six, he gave notes in English, before writing the last two in English with the help of a script editor.

But, as Friel found out when she read the finished articles, the writer enjoys giving actors room to contribute to their own character’s development beyond what’s on the page. “It’s quite intimidating following Saga because she’s such a great character,” she says. “I wanted to know how much of Saga was written on the page and how much it was (Helin) who brought it to the script. (Rosenfeldt) said it was a blend of both and there are gaps for me to inhabit her. That was a bit scary.”

Rosenfeldt explains: “When you read my scripts, it might seem like there’s not much in them, but that’s how I write. I don’t like writing stage directions, I don’t write emotions and I try to keep away from exposition, in terms of both plot and emotion. So it’s quite a strict script, which gives the actors a lot of room. When they’re really good, like Sofia and Anna, they do miracles with it.”

Reuniting with Rosenfeldt is Henrik Georgsson, one of three directors alongside Charles Martin and Andrew Woodhead. Georgsson, who steers episodes seven and eight of Marcella, has previously overseen 16 hours of The Bridge as well as episodes of Wallander.

“It’s also the first time for me working in English and sometimes it’s hard when you’re talking about dialogue and discussing things with actors,” Georgsson says of his experience on Marcella. “The crews are a little bit bigger but it’s great to be filming in London.”

The series has been filmed in three blocks, with each director given the freedom to bring their own style to their episodes. “Mine is a focused style,” Georgsson says. “I’m trying to find what’s essential in the scene. The second block had more of a moving camera. I like pictures with a lot of depth. Actors sometimes stand by a wall but we don’t like that because you can’t get depth, and lighting is harder to do well, so we prefer to have people in the middle of the room.”

The production team made a point of keeping the cast clueless about Marcella’s final act and the killer’s real identity. “We wanted all our characters to act in the moment,” Larder says of the “big, bold puzzle” drama. “That’s the spirit of the piece – they’re not necessarily thinking ahead. They only learnt about some of the key reveals of the series in the final weeks of shooting. It means they’re focusing on the scene and what the character actually knows, rather than pre-empting what they know in the future. It gives a real freshness and immediacy and it keeps people on their toes.”

There were also challenges for the production team, most notably in filming across London and finding the right location for the main police station.

“We’re lucky enough to be on the 10th floor of a tower block, which means incidentally we’re exploring the city through our shots,” Larder says. “Once we found that location, it felt like we could radiate out from that. But we’re competing in a very fruitful time for drama in TV and film in a city that is overrun with film units. It’s been a big challenge.”

Production designer Max Gottlieb continues: “One of the key things was the police station and what it means to the story, but you also have to take into account every other police show and every other police station. The key thing was actually showing London, so that’s why we chose this location. Being so high up, you’re always seeing London in the background and you’ve got great shots of Marcella looking down at life.

“Real police stations are usually some form of blue, but we wanted to do something warm to make it more to do with Marcella. We used a lot of wood and it’s quite a creamy colour to give it that warmth.”

While she’s hopeful Marcella will get a second season in 2017, Larder is now keen to bring more European writers to the UK.

“I feel like the idea is boss right now,” she says. “I found an incredible talent in Hans who wanted to put his fresh authorship into the most favoured genre, crime. I want to continue to build relationships with writers with European and international prowess and keep challenging the market to keep giving those authors a voice outside of their home territories. That’s what I want to be doing.”

tagged in: Anna Friel, Buccaneer Media, Cinefli, Hans Rosenfeldt, ITV, Marcella, Max Gottlieb, Netflix, Nicola Larder, Rights, The Bridge

Outlander outdoes itself on Starz

April 15, 2016Hit & MissAMC, BBC, Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, Bravo, Fear The Walking Dead, Frances Berwick, Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce, Humans, ITV, Marcella, Outlander, Polly Hill, Sky Atlantic, Starz, The Girlfriend Experience, The Night Manager, The TunnelAndy Fry

It’s not quite Games of Thrones, but adventure/romance/time-travel series Outlander is proving to be an ace in the pack for US pay TV channel Starz. The first episode of season two aired last Saturday and attracted an audience of 1.46 million (Nielsen’s live plus same-day ratings).

Not only is this a record for the show, it translates into a 50% increase on its season one finale. This suggests that a lot of people played catch-up on the series and have now been converted into hardcore same-day fans.

The show also set a Starz record for a season premiere, beating Power’s second-season opener by a fraction. All of these metrics bode well for Outlander, and suggest Starz may have managed to get its claws into a female audience, with a lot of its shows to date – the likes of Black Sails and Spartacus – having felt quite male-skewing.

Starz also launched its new Steven Soderbergh series, The Girlfriend Experience, on Sunday. Because it’s Hollywood director Soderbergh, the critics have taken this show very seriously, mostly coming out in favour (though The New Yorker reviewer Richard Bordy wasn’t a fan). Less clear-cut is the feedback from IMDb, where the show has scored a 7.4 rating, which suggests the audience is either ambivalent or polarised.

Riley Keough stars in The Girlfriend Experience

In terms of TV ratings, The Girlfriend Experience launched with back-to-back episodes – averaging around 350,000 viewers across the two. The numbers look stronger if you add up the various staggered showings of the new episodes, but it’s not an outright success – especially when you consider there’s a lot of raunchy content to lure viewers in. So we’ll need a few more weeks to see if the show can build.

Season two of AMC’s Fear The Walking Dead (FTWD) also launched last weekend. With an overall audience of 6.67 million, this is in a similar ballpark to the ratings it was achieving at the end of season one. True, FTWD saw a slide in the number of 18-49s watching the show, but it is so far ahead of AMC’s other series (with the exception of The Walking Dead) that it seems nitpicky to point that out.

It’s also in a league of its own compared with the rest of the US cable universe. Keep in mind that FTWD also has a Talking Dead chatshow brand extension, which brings in a further 2.36 million viewers just after it finishes. On the whole, AMC must be ecstatic about the show’s numbers.

The network has delivered some superb US-produced shows over the years (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Mad Men, The Walking Dead and Into the Badlands to name but a few). But it was notable that it didn’t do quite so well in ratings terms with the UK version of Humans (although this is also a good show). Against that backdrop, it will be interesting to see how the channel does when it airs the six-part adaptation of John Le Carre’s The Night Manager.

The Night Manager recently aired in the UK, where it was a resounding success for the BBC – achieving an audience of eight to nine million for every episode (Live+7 days: BARB). In terms of its AMC showing (which begins on April 19 at 22.00), one thing it has in its favour (compared to Humans, for example) is an internationally recognisable cast headed by Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston.

If the show were on PBS (or maybe even A&E) it would be a dead cert to succeed. But whether the AMC audience will be as enthusiastic is an open question. Hopefully for British-based producers, it will be a big hit.

The Night Manager was a resounding success on BBC1, but how will it fare on AMC?

Meanwhile, US cable channel Bravo’s first foray into scripted TV was Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, which recently completed its second season with an average of 660,000 viewers per episode – reasonable, but not amazing. Nevertheless, it’s clearly doing a good enough job for Bravo because the network has just announced that it wants three more seasons (a commitment that echoes Netflix’s recent backing for Orange is the New Black).

“With our first foray into scripted, Bravo’s viewers fell in love with Abby (the lead character) and her close-knit group of friends experiencing the joys and disappointments of juggling dating, careers, family and relationships,” said Frances Berwick, president of Lifestyle Networks at NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. “We are all excited to see what’s next for Abby and her friends.”

One show that is, perhaps surprisingly, under pressure is ABC’s The Catch, which started airing on March 24. The latest series from the Shonda Rhimes stable (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder), it was expected to fly out of the blocks. Instead, it debuted to a lacklustre 5.85 million viewers.

The Catch isn't doing as well as expected — The Catch isn’t doing as well as expected

Now three episodes in, it is hovering just under the five million mark. It would be a major surprise if ABC bailed on a Shonda Rhimes show after just one season, but The Catch does need to start turning things round quite soon to keep the channel’s suits on board.

On the other side of the Atlantic, ITV has decided to ditch its fantasy adventure series Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, thus rounding off a painful winter that also saw an unsuccessful outing for Jekyll & Hyde. The good news, however, is that spring has started off much more promisingly with strong ratings for ITV’s attempt at Nordic noir, Hans Rosenfeldt’s Marcella, and Sunday night treat The Durrells, which launched in the week ending April 3 with around 6.68 million viewers.

This will be welcome news for Polly Hill, who has just quit as BBC controller of drama to become ITV’s new head of drama. Explaining her decision to jump ship at a time when the BBC has just racked up successes with Doctor Foster, Poldark, War & Peace and The Night Manager, Hill said: “After 11 years at the BBC I am proud to be leaving it at the top of its game. ITV has always played a vital part in the landscape of British drama and shows such as Cracker, Prime Suspect and Band of Gold had a huge influence on me and the drama I wanted to make.

Stephen Dillane and Clemence Poesy in The Tunnel — Stephen Dillane and Clémence Poésy in The Tunnel

“I am proud to be joining ITV and will lead the drama department into its next exciting chapter, making the very best popular drama, which will feel original, distinctive and authored. I can’t wait to start.”

Finally, one show to keep an eye on is the second season of The Tunnel (adapted from The Bridge), on Sky Atlantic, which debuted on April 12. The first season, which aired in 2013, settled down at around 500,000 to 600,000 viewers.

A three-year absence means the franchise will probably have lost some momentum, but early reports suggest The Tunnel is the channel’s biggest series launch of the year to date. We’ll check back in after a couple more episodes to see how the ratings performance of season two stacks up against the first outing.

tagged in: AMC, BBC, Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, Bravo, Fear The Walking Dead, Frances Berwick, Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, Humans, ITV, Marcella, Outlander, Polly Hill, Sky Atlantic, Starz, The Girlfriend Experience, The Night Manager, The Tunnel

November reign: How did the now ex-ITV drama boss do?

April 12, 2016THE BUSINESSBBC, Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, Doctor Thorne, Houdini & Doyle, ITV, ITV Encore, Jekyll & Hyde, Kevin Lygo, Marcella, Polly Hill, Steve NovemberStephen Arnell

Following Steve November’s exit from ITV, Stephen Arnell assesses his tenure as the commercial broadcaster’s head of drama.

The news of ITV drama director Steve November’s departure brought to a close the first stage of new ITV director of television Kevin Lygo’s shake-up of senior commissioning roles at the network.

For the commercial broadcaster, drama is the most important genre in terms of cost, peaktime value and ratings.

Although Lygo’s background is chiefly in entertainment (his skills will be crucial in reinvigorating that critical part of the schedule), one shouldn’t forget that he was, under pseudonym Ruby Solomon, the writer of the one-off comedy-drama Walter, commissioned and broadcast by BBC1 in 2014.

And when Lygo was Channel 4’s director of television and content, drama successes under his regime included Shameless, The Devil’s Whore, Skins, Elizabeth I, Dead Set and Any Human Heart.

With characteristic speed, Lygo poached BBC drama chief Polly Hill to replace November – no doubt fulfilling a dual purpose in both attracting proven talent and inconveniencing the BBC during a period when drama is its strongest genre.

So how should we assess November’s tenure at the helm of ITV drama?

November oversaw some expensive flops, including Jekyll & Hyde - but the show has been picked up abroad — November oversaw some expensive flops, including Jekyll & Hyde – but the show has been picked up overseas

He was very fortunate in inheriting a department in rude health thanks to the previous team of Laura Mackie (director) and Sally Haynes (controller), who were responsible for a slate of hits including Downton Abbey, Broadchurch, Whitechapel, Appropriate Adult, Mr Selfridge, Scott & Bailey and Vera – all contributing to ITV’s Channel of the Year win at the Edinburgh Television Festival in 2013.

The pair rescued ITV’s reputation for quality drama, which had taken a major hit under then ITV director of television Simon Shaps, when new series such as Rock Rivals, Harley Street, Demons, Brittania High, Moving Wallpaper, Echo Beach, The Royal Today and The Palace proved major disappointments for both viewers and critics.

At the same time, Shaps axed ratings bankers Foyle’s War and Rosemary & Thyme in an attempt to change perceptions of the then-beleaguered network.

Once Shaps left ITV in 2008, his successor Peter Fincham swiftly recommissioned Foyle’s War, which continued to enjoy healthy ratings until the series eventually ended last year.

November’s tenure hasn’t had the same level of critical or ratings success as the Mackie/Haynes era, but neither has it plumbed the depths of the Shaps years; so it’s more of a qualified success.

November (pictured top at last year’s C21 International Drama Summit) was dealt a good hand in inheriting shows that still had a lot of mileage left in them; the reception given to his commissions, however, was mixed.

November's tenure ended on a strong note with the launch of Marcella — November’s tenure ended on a strong note with the launch of Marcella

He enjoyed critical success with the likes of Peter Morgan’s The Lost Honour of Christopher Jeffries and Jeff Pope’s Lucan, while new commissions including the single film Cilla and the series Grantchester, Home Fires, Safe House, Prey, Unforgotten and Black Work all attracted strong ratings and broadly favourable notices.

All these achieved audiences high enough to warrant sophomore seasons.

The strong 6.4 million (29% share) debut enjoyed by The Durrells on Sunday, April 3 will give ITV hope for a long-running pre-watershed hit in the vein of the Darling Buds of May and Wild At Heart.

With a very healthy 6.1 million viewers (27.6% share) for it’s opening episode, Nordic Noir-style crime drama Marcella also gave November a high note on which to bid farewell to the network.

But balanced against these achievements were a run of high-profile misfires. The strategy of commissioning early-evening drama for a move into territory previously solely occupied by the BBC (Doctor Who, Atlantis, Merlin and Robin Hood) proved a costly misjudgement.

Both Jekyll & Hyde and Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands returned low ratings accompanied by poor reviews, with many feeling the dramas fell between the two stalls of early-evening and post-watershed drama; too adult in tone for younger viewers and too juvenile for more mature audiences.

One wonders if doubts were expressed during development over whether commissioning apparently family-friendly ‘light’ takes on Penny Dreadful (Jekyll & Hyde) and Game of Thrones (Beowulf) would work for the Sunday early-evening ITV audience, but other considerations no doubt came into play.

With US cable-style orders of 10 and 12 episodes respectively, the underperformance of Jekyll & Hyde and Beowulf left sizeable holes in ITV’s peaktime share.

Both shows found a home in North America, with Jekyll & Hyde on Canada’s CBC and Beowulf on The Esquire Network – both transmitted post-21.00.

Doctor Thorne was well received but struggled to compete against the BBC in the schedules — Doctor Thorne was well received but struggled to compete against the BBC in its slot

It appears unlikely that ITV will venture this far from its comfort zone in the near future, as the last attempt to crack the pre-watershed weekend drama market was also a bust – the aforementioned Britannia High (2008) and Demons (2009).

Some of November’s dramas also failed to connect with audiences over the most recent Christmas holidays, avalanched by the traditional dominance of BBC1 over the period, which appeared to be the case with both Harry Price: Ghost Hunter and Peter & Wendy, which were otherwise critically well received.

Period miniseries The Great Fire, which aired in 2014, was seen as an attempt by ITV to explore an area not usually associated with the channel, but unfortunately for the network, reviews and audiences were largely indifferent.

Scheduling has been a problem for ITV when launching new dramas, with BBC1 able to overwhelm the opposition with an unusually strong slate of shows. Midwinter of the Spirit was crushed by Doctor Foster, Jericho was taken out by established hit Death in Paradise and Doctor Thorne was similarly dealt with by the huge success of The Night Manager.

In some cases, such as Doctor Thorne, ITV introduced shows after BBC1 had already established its new dramas in the slot with a number of episodes, making the task of winning viewers more difficult than if they had simply clashed head-to-head on their debuts.

With pay channel ITV Encore, it’s difficult to quantify what counts as a success in the limited universe of Sky subscribers – 2015’s Sean Bean starrer The Frankenstein Chronicles returned respectable consolidated figures and was picked up by A+E in the US.

Reviews were generally favourable but there’s no word yet on season two.

In recent weeks, Encore’s Edwardian detective mash-up Houdini & Doyle’s opening episode was given a preview on ITV to kickstart the show. It’s probably too early to see if this has paid off in terms of the ratings for the series on Sky, but reviews have been fairly poor, although production values were praised.

The casting of comedian Stephen Mangan as Arthur Conan Doyle in particular came in for criticism; it was also noted that this was the second ITV drama in to feature Doyle as a character in a year (Arthur & George being the first).

Now with Hill in the top drama job at ITV, Lygo will be hoping she can continue her run of hits, which include The Night Manager, Poldark and Doctor Foster.

tagged in: BBC, Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, Doctor Thorne, Houdini & Doyle, ITV, ITV Encore, Jekyll & Hyde, Kevin Lygo, Marcella, Polly Hill, Steve November

MipTV scorecard: Which dramas stood out?

April 8, 2016Hit & MissAMC, Close Murders, Dominique Delport, Feed the Beast, Frank Spotnitz, Guan Yue International, ITV, Lionsgate, Marcella, Medici: Masters of Florence, MipTV, Netflix, Onza Entertainment, Ovation, Public Enemy, Rai, Studio+, The Department of Time, Versailles, Victoria, Zodiak RightsAndy Fry

There were 11,000 delegates at MipTV this week, 3,900 of whom were content buyers. And top of their shopping list was drama, with a wide array of titles being picked up by free-to-air, pay TV and SVoD channels and platforms.

MipTV doesn’t see much activity from the major US studios, which prefer to focus on the LA Screenings next month. So this meant the attention was more on European and Asian drama, with a few US cable titles also attracting attention.

A big winner at the market, for example, was ITV Studios Global Entertainment, which sold its period drama Victoria into the Nordic region, the Netherlands and Canada. There was also interest in BBC Worldwide’s Anglo-French fashion drama The Collection, which sold to SVT Sweden and DR Denmark.

As the above titles indicate, British dramas tend to secure an initial wave of sales in Scandinavia and other English-speaking markets before picking up deals in other territories. This point was underlined by deals done on Capital. Distributed by FremantleMedia International, the adaptation of John Lanchester’s novel has been sold into the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

If there was a clear trend in terms of sales, it was the continued importance of SVoD platforms, which seem to be doing almost as many drama deals as traditional networks.

Hulu picked up eOne’s The Book of Negroes, while All3Media International sold Irish drama Red Rock to Amazon Prime Video in the US. Channel 4’s international drama strand Walter Presents, meanwhile, acquired two series from Keshet International – Baker & The Beauty and Milk & Honey – plus Spanish drama Locked Up.

Perhaps the most high-profile SVoD deal of them all saw Netflix acquire Marcella from Cineflix Rights. Created by The Bridge writer Hans Rosenfeldt and produced by Buccaneer Media for ITV in the UK, Marcella delves into the psychology of a troubled female detective investigating a serial killer. Larry Tanz, VP of global television at Netflix, said: “We got involved with the series early on in the process to gain the opportunity to bring Hans’s great storytelling to our members around the world.”

Other dramas that secured good deals at the market include the Content Television-distributed Line of Duty, which sold to DirecTV Latin America, BBC Worldwide Benelux and Hulu in the US, which picked up VoD rights.

There was also an interesting deal that saw Zodiak Rights’ Versailles picked up by US pay TV channel Ovation. Ovation isn’t really known as a drama buyer, so it’s another good indication of the demand for event dramas.

One company that has got more interesting to the international market in recent years is Italian public broadcaster Rai, which until recently was only really interested in commissioning mainstream scripted shows for primetime slots on flagship channel Rai 1. But there has a been a definite shift as a result of the wider changes taking place in the international drama market.

On the one hand, the company is now producing edgier, younger-targeted drama for Rai 3, with the result that it is attracting more attention from international buyers. An example at the market was Close Murders, which was on the verge of being picked up by Franco-German network Arte at Mip.

On the other, Rai has started getting interested in supporting English-language event dramas. At the market, for example, it was one of the backers of Wild Bunch TV’s epic new period drama Medici: Masters of Florence, which has now been greenlit for a second season.

One new development at the market was the launch of the Mip Drama Screenings, a showcase for 12 new drama titles that was held on April 3 in the JW Marriott Hotel. The event, heavily skewed towards European content (but with a Chilean and an Israeli-originated show involved) was well received by buyers and put the spotlight on some interesting series.

Writer/producer Frank Spotnitz, whose Medici was among the shows screened, called the screenings “an excellent platform. We had the undivided attention of 400 buyers who were able to watch extended excerpts and trailers in a nice theatre, with proper sound and picture quality. When you are running around at a hectic TV market like MipTV, a focused and quiet environment is valuable for both the filmmakers and the broadcasters. I hope the screenings expand in the future.”

At the end of the screenings, one show is given an award called the Coup De Coeur for being the best of the bunch according to the buyers. This year it was Belgium’s Public Enemy, which is distributed by Zodiak Rights.

It’s too early to know how Public Enemy’s success at the screenings will impact on its sales – but it certainly should help. Sarah Wright, director of acquisitions at Sky and one of the executives on the advisory board that selected the show, said: “We chose Public Enemy because we felt it was brave, it was strong, it was fresh, it had twists and turns. It feels like something that will travel.”

Last week, we name-checked a few scripted format deals. By the end of MipTV a couple more had bubbled to the surface. Onza Entertainment sold the format for Spanish drama The Department of Time to China’s Guan Yue International, while Russia’s NTV commissioned a local version of Nordic Noir hit The Bridge.

In a related development, Lionsgate licensed its new show Feed the Beast (starring David Schwimmer and Jim Sturgess) to AMC’s UK pay TV channel. This show, about two friends who launch a restaurant, is based on a Danish scripted format.

This market was very much billed as being about Germany – this year’s Country of Honour. But it was noticeable that France was actually among the most high profile in terms of deal-making. StudioCanal, for example, used the market to announce that it was acquiring stakes in a number of international production companies, including Spanish powerhouse Bambu, producer of hit shows like Velvet, Gran Hotel and the first Spanish-language series ordered by Netflix. The firm’s sister company Canal+, meanwhile, launched Studio+, which is billed as the first global premium series offer for mobile devices.

The new company will produce exclusive premium drama series for smartphones, tablets and a dedicated app. Each series will consist of 10 10-minute episodes, with an average budget of €1m (US$1.14m). Studio+ president Manuel Alduy said the service will launch in September in France with 25 complete original series, before opening in Europe, Russia and Latin America in partnership with major local telecoms. Early series include drama Amnesia starring Caroline Proust, action series Brutal and Urban Jungle and thrillers Kill Skills and Madame Hollywood. Sixty more shows are currently in development.

Explaining the thinking behind the series, Dominique Delport, president of Vivendi Content (Canal+’s parent company), said 60% of smartphone users watch shortform video. He said the directing talent for the new series comes from advertising and music, sectors that have experience of reaching Studio+’s target audience of 15- to 35-year-olds.

tagged in: AMC, Close Murders, Dominique Delport, Feed the Beast, Frank Spotnitz, Guan Yue International, ITV, Lionsgate, Marcella, Medici: Masters of Florence, MipTV, Netflix, Onza Entertainment, Ovation, Public Enemy, Rai, Studio+, The Department of Time, Versailles, Victoria, Zodiak Rights

Recap: What MipTV execs said about taking on Netflix

April 7, 2016IN FOCUSAbout Premium Content, Carmilla, Cliffhanger, Comarex, Eccho Rights, Emmanuelle Guilbart, Far Moor Media, Game of Silence, Guan Yue International, Justin Thomson-Glover, KindaTV, Marcella, MipTV, NBC, Netflix, New Media Vision, Onza Entertainment, The Department of Time, YouTubeMichael Pickard

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

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

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.

tagged in: About Premium Content, Carmilla, Cliffhanger, Comarex, Eccho Rights, Emmanuelle Guilbart, Far Moor Media, Game of Silence, Guan Yue International, Justin Thomson-Glover, KindaTV, Marcella, MipTV, NBC, Netflix, New Media Vision, Onza Entertainment, The Department of Time, YouTube

Mip’s miniseries and serials

March 29, 2016GreenlightAmerican Gods, Bordertown, Intersection, Ku’damm 56 – Rebel With A Cause, Marcella, Medici: Masters of Florence, MipTV, Roots, Section Zéro, The Secret, Victoria, Wolf CreekAndy Fry

With MipTV imminent, miniseries and serials continue to be a major focal point for many international buyers. This week we preview a dozen of the limited-run dramas that will attract attention at the Cannes market.

American Gods is an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s iconic fantasy adventure novel by FremantleMedia North America (FMNA) for US pay TV channel Starz. It is distributed by FremantleMedia International. On the eve of Mip, FMNA began to provide details on the key cast, something that will be of interest to buyers in Cannes. They key addition is Emily Browning (Legend), who has been cast as Laura Moon. Other announced cast members include Ian McShane, Ricky Whittle, Sean Harris, Yetide Badaki and Bruce Langley. The series begins shooting next month.

Bordertown is a coproduction between Federation Entertainment and Fisher King Productions for Finnish public broadcaster YLE. The 11-part show follows a police investigator who moves to a Finland-Russia border town with his family for a quiet life but instead gets caught up in a serial killer case. The show is one of 12 titles to feature in the new MipDrama Screenings.

Intersection is a 13-part drama distributed by Endemol Shine International that aired on free-to-air channel Fox in Turkey and has just been renewed for a second season. Set in Istanbul, the thriller follows a love triangle involving a playboy businessman, a car designer and a beautiful woman. The three main stars – Ibrahim Çelikkol, Belçim Bilgin and Alican Yücesoy – will be in Cannes.

Ku’damm 56 – Rebel With A Cause is a three-part family drama produced by UFA Fiction for ZDF/ZDF Enterprises and written by Dorothee Schon. Set in the 1950s, it tells the story of young women of the era and their struggle for equality. (Read more about Ku’damm 56 here.)

Marcella is a new drama from Cineflix Rights. Produced by Buccaneer Media for ITV and written by Hans Rosenfeldt (The Bridge), it stars Anna Friel (Limitless) as a UK detective investigating a serial murder case where the modus operandi of the killer bears a striking resemblance to an unsolved spate of killings from a decade before. The series also stars Laura Carmichael (Downton Abbey), Sinead Cusack (Jekyll & Hyde) and Harry Lloyd (Game of Thrones), among others.

Medici: Masters of Florence is an eight-part English-language Italian series about the rise of the Medici family and the Italian Renaissance, with a €24m (US$26.91m) budget. Produced by Lux Vide SPA and Big Light Productions, it features Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man) and Richard Madden (Game of Thrones) and is directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan. The show will be broadcast in Italy by Rai and distributed internationally by Wild Bunch TV

Public Enemy is a 10-hour drama from Belgium, aired domestically by RTBF and distributed by Zodiak Rights. It centres on Guy Béranger, a dangerous child murderer whose eventual release leads to an outcry from the nearby small village and the rest of the country. When a young girl subsequently disappears, the entire village is in uproar. Chloé Muller, a young inspector based in Brussels, is assigned to the investigation to protect the despised Béranger, bringing her face-to-face with the fears and secrets of the seemingly peaceful community.

Roots is a reboot of the classic 1970s series and is again based on the acclaimed book by Alex Haley. Distributed by A+E International, it’s a detailed portrait of American slavery, recounting the journey of one family and their will to survive and ultimately carry on their legacy despite great hardship. Roots boasts a stellar cast and will debut on May 30 across History, A&E and Lifetime channels in the US. The series starts with the capture of Kunta Kinte in his homeland of The Gambia and follows his transportation to America where he is enslaved.

Section Zéro is an eight-part French drama that was first introduced to the international market last year. Attending MipTV as part of the new MipDrama Screenings, it is produced by EuropaCorp Television, Bad Company and Umedia for Canal+ France with StudioCanal as distributor. The show is set in 2024 and sees an elite police squad battle it out with powerful corporations and their robots. StudioCanal has called the series a mix of Fargo, The Returned and Mad Max.

The Secret is a four-hour crime drama from Hat Trick Productions in association with Northern Ireland Screen. Starring James Nesbitt (The Missing) and based on a book by Deric Henderson, it focuses on a real-life double murder. Nesbitt plays Colin Howell, a respectable dentist and pillar of the community, while Genevieve O’Reilly (The Honourable Woman) is Sunday school teacher Hazel Buchanan. Howell and Buchanan met at their local Church in Coleraine, Northern Ireland and embarked upon a passionate and destructive affair, which climaxed in an elaborate plot to kill both their partners. The show is being distributed by Hat Trick International.

Victoria is an eight-part historical drama from ITV Studios Global Entertainment. Produced by Mammoth Screen, it follows the early life of the celebrated UK monarch, who ascended the throne aged just 18. The series has already been picked up by PBS in the US and will be screened to an audience of 350 at the first-ever MipDrama Screenings on Sunday April 3.

Wolf Creek is a new psychological thriller based on the international feature film of the same name. Produced by Screentime for Stan in Australia, it focuses on a 19-year-old girl seeking revenge against the murdering psychopath who killed her parents and little brother. The six-hour series is being distributed by Zodiak Rights.

If you’re in Cannes for MipTV and want to read more about Marcella, Victoria and much, much more, pick up the spring 2016 issue of Drama Quarterly.

tagged in: American Gods, Bordertown, Intersection, Ku’damm 56 – Rebel With A Cause, Marcella, Medici: Masters of Florence, MipTV, Roots, Section Zéro, The Secret, Victoria, Wolf Creek

Bigger and better

February 23, 2016CHANNELSChurchill's Secret, Cold Feet, Downton Abbey, Hans Rosenfeldt, Jericho, Marcella, Steve November, VictoriaGün Akyuz

Steve November, drama director at ITV, promises a bigger drama slate over the next two years and wants to make the channel the ‘place of choice’ for established producers and fresh talent alike.

Now that juggernaut period drama Downton Abbey has come to an end – the final sixth season bowed out with just under nine million viewers, while a one-off Christmas Day special drew almost seven million – the Sunday 21.00 slot has opened up opportunities for ITV to cast its net wider for new dramas.

Steve November, director of drama, is not actively seeking to replace the Edwardian drama with more period pieces. Instead, he has identified a growing viewer appetite for contemporary stories. “We’ve approached it saying we’ve no idea what the new Downton is going to be,” he says. “It’s going to be a show that captures the public’s imagination… that viewers fall in love with over several series. But whether that’s a contemporary show or a period show, or even a Sunday night show, we don’t know.”

The commercial broadcaster, which turned 60 last September, has to make its broad, mainstream content mission appeal to rapidly shifting viewer patterns, yet “it’s always, always popular mainstream,” says November. “That’s unashamedly what we are and want to be, but of the highest quality. There’s absolutely no disconnect between popular and the highest quality, so it’s aiming to be as broad in our appeal as we can be, accessible to everybody, but delivering something unexpected, something fresh, and real truths so that when you come to ITV you get what you want but you also get something more.”

ITV also relies on big returning shows to collectively build its drama brand. These programmes represent the majority of its drama output, “but we can’t have a schedule that’s only familiar,” says November. “We need to be constantly offering new things that are moving the ITV experience forward, evolving it, developing it. So it is a constant mix.”

In fact, post-Downton, this year ITV will swing much more in favour of new dramas, says November. “It’s going to look like quite a new and fresh schedule and we hope a portion of those dramas will be returners, but there’s always room for the new.”

November says ITV’s drama strategy is built around a “collective vision” for the channel. Alongside his five-strong commissioning team, “viewers can dictate as much as we do where the market is going, what they’d like to see, and we’re trying to predict and supply that,” he says. “So it’s about responding to many things around us, to what viewers seem to be wanting, to what other channels are doing, to our brand and identity and how we can evolve that. This is 60 years of history to work with so it’s a very purposeful redefining and evolving of the brand that’s so well established.”

Jekyll and Hyde failed to meet expectations

But with global multiplatform players now providing increasingly credible alternatives outlets to producers and viewers, ITV needs to open up its range. “We’re in a very, very competitive market for ideas nowadays,” says November. “Obviously the opportunities for UK writers and producers to be taking their ideas abroad or to new competitors in the market, to be working with players like Amazon and Netflix, mean that in order to get those fresh new takes, we have to be very proactive and make sure that we are, as far as possible, the best place and the place of choice for writers and producers to work.”

The bigger challenge for all broadcasters, he notes, “is keeping people watching scheduled live TV, keeping our viewers, making drama and programming generally that demands attention from viewers.”

A development at ITV last autumn was the return of drama to early peak on Sundays with the launch of Jekyll and Hyde at 18.30 in late October. The 10-part period drama from in-house production arm ITV Studios caused a stir among some viewers for content deemed unsuitable for younger children. But November insists the show was right for the slot and that “most importantly” it was “doing something quite different to other shows at that time, particularly those on the BBC.”

The end of Downton Abbey has left ITV with a hole to fill in its 2016 drama line-up

It might have been different, but Jekyll and Hyde ultimately failed to achieve what ITV wanted, with creator Charlie Higson announcing on Twitter in early January that it would not be back for a second season. “It was a grand adventure while it lasted,” he wrote.

ITV plans to increase its drama output in each of the next two years, says November. The channel has already lined up a varied slate of new series, including Victoria (8×60’, pictured top) from Mammoth Screen (Poldark, Endeavour), focusing on the early life of the British monarch. It also marks the screenwriting debut of novelist and producer Daisy Goodwin.

November says his drama commissioning team is committed to fostering new writing talent. “We’re all feeling pressure in that you can’t wait for the traditionally successful names. But it’s exciting for us and it’s incumbent on the business to create opportunities for talent,” he says, citing Chris Lunt, whose first 21.00 drama commission was crime miniseries Prey, which returned for a second season before Christmas; and Daisy Coulam, who got her first authored show on ITV with Grantchester. “Good writing is good writing and we pride ourselves as a team on judging writing solely on its quality, not on who wrote it. We’d love to hear from new talent across the board, it’s exciting.”

However, ITV continues to mine its back-catalogue for returnables. After 12 years off air, Cold Feet is being revived as a new eight-part series, while Tennison is a prequel to Lynda La Plante’s iconic crime drama Prime Suspect, which starred Helen Mirren and ran to seven series. The six-part latter, written by La Plante and coproduced by Noho Film and Television and La Plante Global, is being lined up to coincide with this year’s 25th anniversary of the launch of Prime Suspect.

“Of course, we’ve got to balance that with the absolutely new and the fresh. We can’t load our schedule with old brands and old IP,” comments November. “It’ll be very selected shows that we think have got a real chance of a genuine new life.”

The original Cold Feet, the cast of which is reuniting for a revival this year

Dramas on this year’s slate appear to fulfil that mission. Adding to Cold Feet and Tennison are several from ITV Studios, including the 12-part warrior drama Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands and eight-part historical drama Jericho (both now on air) and four-parter Tutankhamun. The latter follows the discovery of the tomb of the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh and stars Max Irons and Sam Neill.

External commissions include crime drama Marcella from Buccaneer Media, written by Hans Rosenfeldt (The Bridge) and starring Anna Friel; three-part drama Doctor Thorne, Julian Fellowes’ next project for ITV after Downton, adapted from Anthony Trollope’s book series and made by Hat Trick Productions; and The Halcyon (8×60’) from Left Bank Pictures, a drama set in a five-star London hotel in wartime 1940.

Hillbilly Television will also produce six-parter The Level, about a police officer leading a double life, while CPL Productions is behind 80s-set Brief Encounters.

The slate also includes several new single dramas, like Churchill’s Secret, produced by Tinopolis-owned Daybreak Pictures and starring Michael Gambon as Sir Winston Churchill and Lindsay Duncan as Clementine Churchill.

While ITV’s peaktime drama commissions are not slot-driven, November says the common denominator is “21.00 primetime, post-watershed drama. Even if you’re talking about a two-hour piece drama like Endeavour that might start at 20.00, we still want it to have a 21.00 emotional and narrative sensibility. It’s got to fit that taste and tone.”

In particular, November highlights “a real desire and hunger for contemporary at the moment.” ITV has commissioned several new period pieces and the exec says he is looking for a “light, bright, exciting contemporary hit” to balance with these, pointing enviously at BBC1’s Doctor Foster. “I wish we had that show. Big, romantic thrillers and family relationship dramas are real priorities for us at the moment.”

ITV remains entirely focused on commissioning for British viewers. “The international aspect can bring funding, talent and all the other parts of the equation. But first and foremost I only want to look at shows that are going to work for our audience in the UK on their UK broadcast,” November adds.

The drama director says ITV’s licence fees are very competitive and realistic against the backdrop of rising budgets, typically ranging between £500,000 (US$745,700) and £800,000-plus per hour, depending on the show.

“Excitingly for me and hopefully for producers, our commitment to drama remains absolutely solid and is, in fact, growing,” November says. “We have more hours in 2016 than we had in 2015, and it will be the same again in 2017. In 2017 we’re looking at a schedule with plenty of opportunity and a real commitment to drama, knowing that’s what we need to drive our brand and viewers.”

tagged in: Churchill’s Secret, Cold Feet, Downton Abbey, Hans Rosenfeldt, Jericho, Marcella, Steve November, Victoria

The only way is unscripted: Tony Wood pushes the boundaries

July 30, 2015In productionDesi Rascals, Gurinder Chadha, Hans Rosenfeldt, Marcella, The Only Way Is Essex, Tony WoodMichael Pickard

The Only Way Is Essex co-creator Tony Wood tells Michael Pickard how he tries to push the boundaries of drama, with or without a script.

Tony Wood has always created TV programmes with stories. A former producer of long-running UK soaps Coronation Street and Hollyoaks, he’s well versed in combining multiple characters with interwoven plots to create maximum drama.

But now he’s doing it without the script.

Wood was integral to the development of ITV unscripted drama The Only Way is Essex (Towie, main image) – and his latest series, Desi Rascals, is currently airing its second season on Sky1.

Tony Wood: 'There are plenty of different ways of unlocking stories and it doesn’t mean one is any more valid than another' — Tony Wood: ‘There are plenty of different ways of unlocking stories and it doesn’t mean one is any more valid than another’

The show, which Wood created with Gurinder Chadha, follows the real-life drama of a group of multi-generational British Asians. The cast also interacts with fans in real time on social media, with each episode incorporating their online reactions to the events on screen.

Wood says his desire to create the TV equivalent of a social media network was the impulse behind both Towie and Desi Rascals.

“I was also becoming increasingly interested in how people react in an unmediated way when you confront them with circumstance,” he explains. “The more I thought about it, the more I thought Desi was a world we didn’t see on British TV. So Gurinder and I collided into the idea that we should just put a camera on this community and post-produce it in quite an intrusive way, and play it back to them and see how they react. That was the general notion.

“Beyond that was the sense of looking at the black and minority ethnic (BME) debate that exists. People weren’t really giving BME communities a chance to tell their own stories. So at the heart of Desi is the fact that we ask them what they want to do, we don’t tell them what to do, so you end up engaged in a different cultural debate.”

For the ongoing second season of Desi Rascals, filming for all eight episodes is taking place across just four weeks, with each episode being shot in just three days. As the show is aired weekly, the producers and editors have plenty of time to build stories from their footage.

Wood says: “It’s important it’s for real, because I might as well make a (scripted) drama if it isn’t for real. It would be better performed. But then in the edit suite you take a dramatist’s eye to it and you start to make properly subjective editorial decisions. You take a partisan view on who’s driving a scene or who’s the most interesting person.

“Unlike a scripted piece where you have a clear focus, frequently in these shows you might have 30 minutes’ worth of material that you’ll reduce to two or three minutes, so you have to get a sense of what happened and then of how people felt about what happened.”

Desi Rascals is currently airing on Sky1

Ex-Lime Pictures creative director Wood fell into unscripted programming when he was asked to create a UK version of hit US series Laguna Beach for MTV. He then partnered with All3Media’s Ruth Wrigley, who worked on the first three seasons of Big Brother, to create Towie.

Wood says that beyond the chance to work with non-actors – an opportunity he found “really exciting” – he was also becoming more interested in the changing form of television.

“For a lot of my career, I’ve felt we’ve been too straitjacketed by not being able to have a conversation about form, so it became an exciting proposition,” he says.

“Towie was interesting to do because we wanted something where you weren’t quite sure (what it was). All the pre-publicity said it was real but we very deliberately post-produced it in a way that made you feel it couldn’t possibly be real.

“Running through the whole thing was a series of contradictions and paradoxes. That was partly to lock into the Twitter generation, where marketing had shifted. You were no longer telling the maximum number of people ‘this is great.’ Essentially, you’re starting a fight. You’re telling viewers one thing, making it look like another, and then you’re creating a debate that causes them all to gain a sense of ownership of their point of view, before getting them to look again more deeply. That was the intention. It was great that people didn’t quite know what to make of it, that was deliberate.”

But does unscripted drama sit alongside its scripted counterpart, or should this emerging genre be held at arm’s length? Wood says the two can exist side by side, and again suggests TV drama has been stuck in a rigid structure for too long.

“I think it sits quite comfortably with scripted drama. Whether that’s the case for the broadcasters yet remains to be seen,” he says. “It sits comfortably because it’s all about telling stories, and if there are tales to be told that might be psychologically interesting, even in their trashiness, I think that has value.

“There are plenty of different ways of unlocking stories and it doesn’t mean one is any more valid than another. It’s just that we’re locked into traditional structures of how we’ve told stories and we’re snobbish about it. Maybe we censor too much. They’re different types of programming but they’re all television.”

Wood also believes unscripted drama has been wrongly tarred by its most successful series’ reputations for being brash and tacky.

“I think there’s a real misconception of what this is as a genre because only Towie and Made in Chelsea have properly flourished,” he says. “All we’re really doing is confronting an individual with a set of circumstances, seeing how they react and using a drama style edit to augment emotion. It’s as simple as that. We’ve been painted into a corner by the success of a couple of brands.”

Returning to his notion of TV programmes as social networks, Wood predicts that unscripted drama will “expand massively” as online platforms such as Facebook and YouTube branch further into original programming.

“Any show that operates in the way ours have should sit somewhere with social networks so I wonder if they will flourish on the conventional, traditional broadcasters,” he says. “I guess it’s a commercial decision for them, but anything that converges those screens properly has got a massive future.”

Wood is working on Marcella with Hans Rosenfeldt, creator of The Bridge (pictured)

Wood hasn’t completely shed his scripted roots, however. In 2013, he partnered with Cineflix Media to launch Buccaneer Media, which aims to produce scripted programming for broadcasters worldwide.

Then in June this year, ITV and Buccaneer announced new crime drama Marcella, which is written by Hans Rosenfeldt (The Bridge).

Described as a Scandinavian noir set in London, Marcella follows the eponymous police detective returning to work after a 12-year career break during which she got married and raised a family. But with her marriage at an end and her daughter away at boarding school, she must overcome the challenges in her personal life to deal with a spate of killings that echo a number of unsolved murders committed a decade earlier.

Wood executive produces the eight-part series with Rosenfeldt and co-creator Nicola Larder.

“It’s going well,” Wood says of the show, which is still in the writing stage. “We’ve had five different writers room weeks with Hans and it’s been a real joy to create the plot and colour in the characters after that.

“As with all the Scandi shows, it’s an incredibly full plot. In the past 10 years we’ve undersold narrative in British TV drama a little bit, so to sit there with a master storyteller, and for us to try to work out the narrative in such intense detail, has just been brilliant and a real lesson. You realise The Bridge was not an accident.

“Hans is quite brilliant. With every draft that comes in, the level of detail – sometimes that you haven’t discussed with him – is just extraordinary. It’s interesting because he writes the plot and characters emerge through it.

“With someone like Saga in The Bridge, for example, you can see how she emerged in that process. Watching our characters emerge, I can see that Hans writes the story so he feels secure in what he’s telling. With every draft the characters become more intense and surprising. I can see how he got to a character as dynamic as Saga.”

When it comes to drama, it’s clear Wood is constantly looking to push the boundaries and structures of television, with or without a script.

tagged in: Desi Rascals, Gurinder Chadha, Hans Rosenfeldt, Marcella, The Only Way Is Essex, Tony Wood

Scripted staying power

June 22, 2015Greenlight11/22/63, American Gods, Crosshair, David Nevins, HBO, Marcella, My Family and Other Animals, Penny Dreadful, Prime Suspect, Showtime, Simon Nye, Sky Atlantic, Starz, Tennison, The Durrells, The WayAndy Fry

This is one of those weeks that makes you realise the current boom in scripted series is far from over. In Europe and the US, across pay TV and free TV, the latest greenlights must easily represent in excess of US$50m of new productions.

Not only that, they all look like projects that will actually make it to screen, rather than ending up in the dustbin of failed developments.

One of the most high-profile announcements came from US premium cable channel Starz, whose aggressive pursuit of its two main rivals HBO and Showtime has seen it back ambitious series such as Power, Outlander, Black Sails and Flesh and Bone. Now it has announced plans for a series based on Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods.

Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me, Hannibal) and Michael Green (Gotham, Heroes) will write the screen version and act as showrunners, with Gaiman on board as executive producer. The show is being produced by FremantleMedia North America (FMNA), with international sales handled by FremantleMedia International.

Commenting on the project, Gaiman said: “I am thrilled, ‎scared, delighted, nervous and a ball of glorious anticipation. The team that is going to bring the world of American Gods to the screen has been assembled like the master criminals in a caper movie: I’m relieved and confident that my baby is in good hands.”

The project is an important one for FMNA, which has just experienced the disappointment of a cancellation for supernatural series The Returned. FMNA co-CEO Craig Cegielski said: “Neil’s novel is a brilliant work of art and together with the talented Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, we are committed to delivering a series that is nothing short of extraordinary.”

Showtime has also been in the news this week, having renewed Penny Dreadful, its horror drama copro with Sky Atlantic, for a third season of nine episodes. The series, which has built up a lot of momentum since season two, will shoot in Dublin with TX due in 2016.

Showtime president David Nevins said: “(Creator) John Logan’s brilliant writing and the show’s amazingly talented ensemble continue to draw a passionate, global fanbase into the meticulously crafted world of Penny Dreadful.”

Sky Atlantic director Zai Bennett added: “Penny Dreadful is the perfect fit for Sky Atlantic; truly international in scale and ambition but with a raft of British talent at its core, and filmed in the Republic of Ireland. I’m thrilled to have the series returning to the channel, and to once again be partnering with John Logan and continuing to work with our good friends at Showtime.”

HBO has cropped up in the headlines this week too, following the revelation in the Hollywood Reporter that David Simon, creator of The Wire, is working on a series for the channel called The Deuce, about the rise of the porn industry in the 1970s. While there has been no official confirmation on this from HBO, Simon is currently working with the channel on a series called Show Me a Hero, so the prospect of a second greenlight seems close to the mark.

In Europe, one of the biggest announcements of the week came during the Monte Carlo TV Festival, where Christophe Riandee, vice-CEO of Gaumont, announced that Gaumont Television Europe plans to produce a new 13×60’ English language series entitled Crosshair. A Europe-based thriller that follows a former CIA assassin turned gunman for hire, Crosshair is written by Ken Sanzel, whose credits include CBS series Numb3rs.

Crosshair is the third project under the Gaumont Television Europe banner, after Spy City and 1001, an English-language thriller created by Real Humans’ Lars Lundström.

“We are seeing a huge trend into drama production making Europe a new frontier for TV,” said Riandee, “and a project like Crosshair is the perfect fit. It’s a new idea and a new world for a procedural series.”

Other activities that back Riandee’s upbeat assessment of the scene in Europe include the news that Israeli producer and distributor Keshet International wants to be more active in the European drama space, with plans to fund three or four productions a year. This would build on previously announced plans to work with France’s Atlantique Productions on an eight-part series called Crater Lake (written by Ron Lesham).

There was also a triple greenlight announcement from UK-based broadcaster ITV this week. The most interesting news is that it has commissioned Hans Rosenfeldt, creator of Scandinavian drama The Bridge, to make his first series in the UK. Called Marcella, the 8×60’ show (produced by Buccaneer Media) follows a female detective working on a murder case.

ITV also announced plans for a series called Tennison, a prequel to its long-running hit crime series Prime Suspect, which featured Helen Mirren as detective Jane Tennison. The new series, from Noho Film and Television and La Plante Global, is a six-parter. The decision to go down the prequel route follows ITV’s success with Endeavour, a prequel to fellow long-running crime series Morse.

The third part of ITV’s production news is the commission of six-part drama series The Durrells, based on author Gerald Durrell’s Corfu memoirs, including My Family and Other Animals. The series is being written by Simon Nye (Men Behaving Badly) and produced by Sally Woodward Gentle.

Durrell’s works are a perennial favourite for film and TV producers, with My Family and Other Animals adapted for the big screen in 2005. So it will be interesting to see how the TV series takes the franchise on. Woodward Gentle said: “Gerald Durrell’s novels are some of the warmest, wittiest, books of the last century. It is no wonder they are so well loved. It is a real treat to be working on them with the brilliant Simon Nye. I hope that his obvious love of the characters and the material will be hugely infectious.”

Finally, there was interesting news from Hulu regarding The Way, a 10-part series it ordered in March from Jason Katims (Parenthood). On Wednesday, Aaron Paul – aka Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman – was revealed as the male lead in the drama, which centres on a controversial faith movement.

Hulu’s origination programme hasn’t received as much attention as that of Netflix or Amazon, but it does have some standout projects. Aside from The Way, it has greenlit a series called 11/22/63 from Stephen King and JJ Abrams that will star James Franco.

tagged in: 11/22/63, American Gods, Crosshair, David Nevins, HBO, Marcella, My Family and Other Animals, Penny Dreadful, Prime Suspect, Showtime, Simon Nye, Sky Atlantic, Starz, Tennison, The Durrells, The Way