News round-up for day two

Quote // Unquote

Content London Daily pulls out some of the key quotes from yesterday’s sessions.

“People can sometimes assume we’re less commercial than we are. For every House of Cards, there’s also a Virgin River. You don’t want to watch the same thing on a Monday as you do on a Friday night.” Tom Lyons, manager of UK series at Netfl ix, on the streamer’s need for variety

“It's a mad scramble. There's a break in production and you fi nd you've lost your camera department to another production that's willing to pay them more. It's a combination of Brexit, the pandemic and increased competition primarily due to the streamers coming in.” Writer and director Frank Spotnitz on the crew crunch in the UK

“More than 80% think Peacock won’t be here in fi ve years’ time. Fifty percent think that of the major national and niche SVoD services, only BritBox and Viaplay will still be here in fi ve years’ time.” Mark Oliver, chairman of Oliver & Ohlbaum Associates, on the results of the Business Sentiment Report cocommissioned with C21

“Disney+ may be new but there’s a thread between what has worked on Disney channels in the past and what will work on Disney+ now. There’s a great opportunity for serialised storytelling. It’s not something we’ve been doing but it’s something we want to fi gure out.” Orion Ross, VP of animation at The Walt Disney Company EMEA “

Holland: impartiality ‘enriches’ BBC

Patrick Holland, the BBC’s director of factual, arts and classical music, has rubbished claims that the UK pubcaster’s impartiality policy risked making its content “vanilla.”

Tim Davie has made impartiality in programming a major priority at the BBC since he was appointed director general in 2020.

Holland defended the Strictly Come Dancing broadcaster’s nonbias stance and said it “enriches” commissioning. “I'm not sure if people completely understand what impartiality is, and it can often be seen as a way of making content more vanilla or taking away the opinion,” he said.

“But what my team would say, and producers who come to us would say, is impartiality is a way of bringing the audience a variety of challenge,

Patrick Holland

confl ict and counterpoints.”

Holland also said some factual programming on larger SVoD services risked being a “polemic’ because of a lack of balanced arguments. “There is some content on SVoDs where I don’t think the journalism is good enough, and that’s because nobody has said, ‘Where is the counterargument?’, ‘Am I really understanding this?’, ‘Is this just a polemic that is going to go unchallenged?’” he added.

The BBC has come under increasing political pressure from the UK government on issues such as the licence fee, governance and executive appointments, and some critics have accused it of inadequately scrutinising the ruling Conservative Party.

Asked if he felt pressure from above and would shy away from commissioning factual content on political hot-potato issues such as Brexit, Holland said: “I wouldn’t shy away from anything. You take on subjects that are going to resonate with the audience, whether that be Brexit or the Charles Moore documentary series that we commissioned about Thatcher’s relationship with Reagan, or a series on climate change. We will go into areas with great complexity and it’s our job to illuminate them.”

No regrets for YouTube over ditching scripted

While big-budget scripted is driving streaming subscriptions around the globe, YouTube has no regrets about moving out of the scripted space four years ago and focusing squarely on unscripted.

“Honestly, we never even looked back,” Luke Hyams, head of originals EMEA at YouTube, told a Content London panel on Tuesday.

The Google-owned platform has been refi ning and fi ne-tuning its unscripted commissioning strategy over the past year, and Hyams believes the company is poised for continued growth.

“What we’ve found over the last year that’s worked for us is when there’s a big moment in the real world that we can make a YouTube original that feels like it is connected to it,” he said, citing a fi ve-hour Pride special launched last year, and a planned Fifa World Cup special for next year.

Creating original content for YouTube is a unique proposition,

as the programming is competing with its own user-generated content. And while the videosharing platform has worked with celebrities to Luke Hyams attract eyeballs, Hyams said the talent found on the platform has never been more important to its original content ambitions. “I’ll be real with you – YouTube talent has never been more key for us, particularly UK YouTube talent, which we feel has a bright future,” he said.

Penélope Cruz explores child marriage for VIS Social Impact, Paramount+

The second project to originate from the cause-driven production division of ViacomCBS International Studios (VIS) will be a docuseries about child marriage, narrated and exec produced by movie star Penélope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) for Paramount+.

Not a Bride (4x30') comes from Pedro Almodóvar's prodco El Deseo and Madrid-based Mogambo and will expose the shockingly high rate of child marriages around the world. It will be discussed at Content London later today as part of a session on VIS Social Impact, the fl edgling studio division dedicated to the development of social impact-driven content.

Written and directed by Dario Troiani (Violet, Kalebegiak, A.W.), the series has been picked up by ViacomCBS streaming service Paramount+ internationally.

Netfl ix unveils UK scripted slate

An adaptation of David Nicholls novel One Day and new projects with Jane Featherstone and The End of the F**king World creator Charlie Covell are among a raft of Netfl ix UK commissions unveiled at Content London yesterday.

The series adaptation of One Day, which was published in 2009 and turned into a feature fi lm starring Anne Hathaway in 2011, will be produced by Mediawan/Leonineowned Drama Republic Production with Universal International Studios and Focus Features.

It will be written by a team led by Nicole Taylor (Three Girls), who will work with Anna Jordan, Vinay Patel and Bijan Sheibani.

Anne Mensah, Netfl ix’s VP of original UK series, Sophie Klein, Lindsay Salt and Tom Lyons, all managers of UK series at the streamer, also discussed Supacell, created by British rapper and

Netfl ix’s Anne Mensah

fi lmmaker Andrew Onwubolu, aka Rapman. Set in South London, it follows a group of ordinary people who unexpectedly develop superpowers with no clear connection between them other than them all being black. The six-part sci-fi series is written by Onwubolu, who will also direct, and produced by Netfl ix.

Netfl ix also announced three other commissions that will be fi lmed across the UK in 2022. These include Eric, described as a tense and surprising thriller created and written by Abi Morgan and produced for Netfl ix by Sister in association with Little Chick.

Set against the backdrop of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, the show is exec produced by Jane Featherstone and Lucy Dyke for Sister and Morgan for Little Chick.

Kaos, meanwhile, comes from Covell and is described as a darkly funny, contemporary spin on the Greek myths. The eight-parter will also be produced by Sister.

The Fuck It Bucket (8x45’) centres on a 17-year-old Londoner after she is released from hospital following a battle with anorexia nervosa and thrust back into the chaotic world of sixth form. A Left Bank Pictures production written by Ripley Parker, its exec producers are Andy Harries, Sian McWilliams, Parker and Rob Bullock. The producer is Huberta Von Liel.

FTA nets hit by ‘talent infl ation’

‘Talent infl ation’ caused by big-budget series will negatively aff ect traditional free-to-air broadcasters and the ability to get smaller dramas across the line, according to executives speaking here at Content London yesterday.

During the State of the Content Nation panel session that opened the event, Wayne Garvie, president of international productions at Sony Pictures Television, voiced his concern over increasing budgets and the issues this creates in recruiting talent.

Garvie said that when Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming The Lord of the Rings series, estimated to cost around US$1bn, arrives in the UK, it will lead to talent infl ation that will have “ramifi cations everywhere down the line.”

“We can all swap stories of people who have doubled their

salaries by going to work for a streamer,” the exec said, noting that more people are turning down shows as they wait for Wayne Garvie bigger productions with bigger pay to come along. “That becomes a problem for the smaller dramas in particular. Getting people to write and work on them is as much a problem as the budget,” Garvie said. Speaking alongside Garvie, Roma Khanna, executive chair at HiddenLight Productions, added: “The money can’t just stay above the line. It has to move below the line. It’s not right if it doesn’t – if these costs go up and up. “Crews will have choices because there’s so much production. There’s no shortage of good ideas; there’s a shortage of the ability to execute, fi nd a writer, fi nd a showrunner, do the work and get it to the point where an outlet wants to produce it.”

Nat Geo, History execs eye celebrity fl avour

Execs from Disney-owned National Geographic and A+E Networkowned History have emphasised the importance of on-screen talent in bringing fresh approaches to their tried and tested genres.

Speaking on the International Unscripted panel yesterday, Simon Raikes, unscripted commissioning editor for Nat Geo International, said: “We are constantly on the lookout for what we call new wine in old bottles - new ways into our stalwart territories of programming. It’s either a new talent or it’s a piece of access.”

Amy Savistsky, senior VP of development at History, added: “Our talent use is here and there traditionally, but we’ve been using a lot of partnerships with celebrities in the US to fund our shows.

“We’ve been doing shows with Morgan Freeman and Laurence Fishburne, and we always start with the idea.” IN BRIEF

Pulse Films acquires rights to Underbelly book

Vice-backed UK production company Pulse Films has secured the rights to Underbelly, the debut novel by married authors Anna Whitehouse and Matt Farquharson. The duo will also adapt the book for the screen, after a deal was brokered between Luke Speed, on behalf of Cathryn Summerhayes of agency the Curtis Brown Group, and Pulse commercial director Tim O’Shea.

Walter Presents to brave Germany’s Dark Woods

Non-English-language drama streaming service Walter Presents has picked up the UK rights to German crime series Dark Woods in a deal with Telepool-owned German distributor Global Screen. Produced by ConradFilm and Bavaria Fiction, the six-part series is based on the real-life disappearance of a woman in 1989. It was originally commissioned by Das Erste. A pan-Scandinavian sales deal has also been agreed, taking the drama to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland on Walter Presents via C More.

Nevis makes music with Sweden’s Gyllene Tider

Nordic drama company Nevis Productions has inked a deal with Swedish pop group Gyllene Tider to produce a TV series and theatrical feature based on the band’s rise to success. Formed in 1978 by Per Gessle, Mats Persson, Micke Andersson, Anders Herrlin and Göran Fritzon, Gyllene Tider are collaborating with Nevis on a biopic about how the band captured the hearts of the Swedish nation.