Drama Quarterly - Summer 2022 by C21Media

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Drama Quarterly

Shaking up shortform Spain’s Immortal gang series Jacob Batalon on Reginald the Vampire Basking in Afterglow I Love Lucy’s Latin makeover Learning Israel’s Lesson Australia’s True Colours And more...

026 . Summer 2022

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M Y S T E R Y

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LARGER THAN LIFE FAMILY ADVENTURES IN THE PICTURESQUE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE

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Unmissable drama, intriguing stories and some of the best detectives in the business

population 4,900 and declining

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Marie Antoinette

Chloe The Good Karma Hospital

Screw The Curse

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Signora Volpe

Rogue Heroes Then You Run

Grantchester

Peaky Blinders

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Summer 2022 Features

38 Australia reveals its True Colours

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT: Shortform drama Cheaters exec producer Petra Fried discusses how the shortform drama can help the medium go mainstream, before the creatives behind three more bitesize series – Hacked, It’s Fine, I’m Fine and Outlaw – reveal how they tackled the format.

IN FOCUS: El Inmortal (The Immortal) Creator/producer José Manuel Lorenzo and the cast take DQ back to 1990s Spain for this show based on real-life criminal gang Los Miami.

DIRECTOR’S CHAIR: Oliver Hirschbiegel The Downfall director is one of six to contribute episodes to German series Strafe (Punishment). He talks about his love of anthologies, stepping into writing and why TV needs unique filmmakers.

STAR POWER: Jacob Batalon Spider-Man’s ‘Guy in the Chair’ is standing up for his first lead TV role – but Reginald the Vampire’s title character isn’t your usual supersuave bloodsucker.

IN FOCUS: Etterglød (Afterglow) Star Nina Ellen Ødegaard and director Atle Knudsen discuss making this Norwegian drama about love and life, told through the story of a woman facing a devastating illness.

IN FOCUS: Sh’at Efes (The Lesson) A teacher and a pupil push each other to breaking point in this Israeli series. Writer Deakla Keydar, director Eitan Zur and actors Maya Landsmann and Doron Ben-David reveal all.

IN PRODUCTION: True Colours DQ ventures into the Australian outback for a production that breaks new ground as a crime drama set within a First Nations community.

DQ100: Part Two 2022/23 We pick out a range of shows to tune in for and the actors, directors and writers making them, as well as the trends and trailblazers worth catching up with.

18 The Immortal tells a Spanish crime story

26 Jacob Batalon on getss his teeth into hiss first lead TV rolee

48 NHS drama This is Going to Hurt

End Credits 44 I Love Lucy is reimagined in Mexico

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REMADE ABROAD: I Love Lucy SIX OF THE BEST: Donna Sharpe SCENE STEALER: This is Going to Hurt DRAMATIC QUESTION: What next for shortform?

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT: Shortform drama

DQ . Summer 2022

Background image via vecteezy.com

DRAMA GETS SHORTY Cheaters

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT: Shortform drama

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Hacked

Petra Fried, executive producer of Cheaters, discusses how the shortform drama can help the medium go mainstream, before DQ speaks to the creatives behind three more bitesize series – Hacked, It’s Fine, I’m Fine and Outlaw. By Michael Pickard

It’s Fine, I’m Fine

Outlaw

WE NEED EED TO TALK ABO ABOUT: OUT: SShortform hortform d drama rama

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Susan Wokoma and Joshua McGuire in Cheaters

Cheaters

hen it came, the end of Quibi was quick and without the fanfare that had greeted the arrival of the first streaming app dedicated to shortform content. After a US$1.75bn spending spree, the service was online for just eight months, brought down by a combination of factors, from its hit-and-miss offerings and the launch of huge rivals – Disney+ for one – to the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, which rendered useless a service almost singularly designed for commuters to catch ‘quick bites’ of new shows on their way into the office. But while the end of Quibi in December 2020 might have resigned shortform programming to the sidelines, the format is proving incredibly resilient. What once might have been an unloved route to building credits before moving on to ‘traditional’ half-hour and hourlong programming continues to draw attention at film and television festivals, while there is evidence that shortform is also breaking into the mainstream. One example is Cheaters, which emerged from a slate of projects developed by producer Clerkenwell Films (The End of the F***ing World) and financier Anton long before Quibi came – and went. “One of the things about The End of the F***ing World that people responded to was the bitesize length of the episodes – they were significantly shorter than the 30-minute slot – and it’s an undeniable truth that the shorter the episodes, the more likely people are to binge them,” says Petra Fried, executive producer and joint MD at Clerkenwell. She also held an ambition to push the format further than series that feature talking heads or go back and forth between a handful of characters in

a single setting, like Marion & Geoff and State of the Union. “Our feeling was there’s no reason why we shouldn’t make something as ambitious and with as high production values and a similar spend as we would for our other shows,” Fried says. “We started doing that, and then we had a whole slate of developments, of which Cheaters was the first.” When Quibi arrived, “initially, we thought, ‘Great, more people are catching on,’” the exec admits. Its quick collapse meant Clerkenwell put its own shortform projects on the back burner, but the company continued to push forward with its plan to self-finance shows with partners Anton and BBC Studios and sell them to a broadcaster afterwards. As it happened, the BBC stepped in to acquire Cheaters and launched the series – an 18-episode story told in 10-minute chunks – earlier this year. Written and created by Oliver Lyttelton (The Listener), it introduces Fola (Susan Wokoma) and Josh (Joshua McGuire), who share an unlikely, drunken one-night stand in an airport hotel following a chance meeting when their flight is cancelled. Concurring that their night of passion was a mistake, they agree to go their separate ways – only to find Fola and her husband Zack (Jack Fox) have recently bought the house opposite the flat Josh shares with girlfriend Esther (Callie Cooke). “The very positive response from viewers has proven that people do really enjoy drama in short bites, as long as you give them something really satisfying,” Fried says. “My feeling is Cheaters is a really good advert for what you could do if you get this kind of show right.” Getting it right, however, is no easy feat. Fried says writers need to “reset their brain”

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT: Shortform drama

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The BBC series also stars Callie Cooke

to think in 10-minute bits, rather than 30 or 60-minute running times. The story also needs to be suitably “hooky” to keep people watching, with very little character development possible in just one short episode. “With Cheaters, the idea that two people who have a one-night stand in another country, make their way home and discover they live across the road from each other worked as a 10-minute hook,” she says. “Hopefully you then have enough time to develop the characters and add a bit more depth to really help with viewer engagement.” The danger is that a shortform drama could become too reliant on cliffhangers at the end of each episode. “You have to balance quite how hooky you need to be,” the exec says. “If you have a hook every 10 minutes, it becomes predictable and stale. That’s one area we worked hard to get right. Humour is obviously always helpful in terms of wanting people to just enjoy themselves and come back for more.” While working on Cheaters, Clerkenwell and the production team learned some unique lessons about making shortform drama, including the discovery that standard cast agreements designed for half-hour or hourlong episodes weren’t fit for purpose. The decision to budget the show as a six-part, 30-minute series also didn’t quite work.

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You have to balance quite how hooky you need to be. If you have a hook every 10 minutes, it becomes predictable and stale. That’s one area we worked hard to get right. Petra Fried Clerkenwell Films

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“The truth is, with beginnings, middles and ends of episodes in 10 minutes, there was a far higher number of scenes than we had anticipated,” Fried says. “That was an eye-opener for us. We had to amend our expectations, budget and schedule accordingly. “Then just in terms of story, you definitely have to have pack more in than you would in 10 minutes of an hour or a half-hour show. But it was never boring – it couldn’t afford to be. You have to hit the ground running and make sure a lot happens.” Fried says she was “deeply impressed” that the BBC would take a punt on a shortform drama, evidence perhaps that broadcasters are loosening their grip on traditional scheduling in the age of streaming. The series was made available on streamer BBC iPlayer and also aired on BBC One. For territories that aren’t so keen on 10-minute shows, Cheaters has also been edited into half-hour tranches, which still work well dramatically but lose the original format’s distinctiveness. Quibi’s failed experiment “set us all back,” Fried says of the streamer’s “laudable” attempt to bring shortform content in front of bigger audiences. “But the success of Cheaters has taken the shortform story one step further and shown there’s much more variety to be had in shortform than perhaps people imagined.” >

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L-R: Helena Tengan, Alicia Andries and Misha van der Werf star in Hacked

Hacked T

ackling themes of friendship and cyberbullying among the internet generation, Belgian series Hacked serves as a modern parable about privacy in the digital age. Nilou, Malick and Adanne are best friends who share everything with each other. But when their smartphones are compromised, they find themselves at the mercy of a hacker who makes increasingly challenging demands in return for their privacy, leading the three friends to be confronted with their deepest fears and darkest secrets. Consisting of 10 episodes that average 14 minutes apiece, the drama is produced by Dingle for Belgium’s Streamz and GoPlay and distributed by DFW International Sales. It is directed by Laura Van Haecke, who co-writes with Una Kreso. The cast is led by Alicia Andries, Misha Van Der Werf and Helena Tengan. “We take our phones and privacy for granted but actually someone can, in one second, get all this information. It’s not that difficult, and that’s the wake-up call I wanted to give these youngsters,” Van Haecke says of the project, which was named Best Short Form Series at French television festival Canneseries earlier this year. She was approached with the idea behind the series by the show’s producer, who proposed a story about three teenagers whose phones are hacked. She then developed the idea further, building on real-life details and heightening them for dramatic effect. “They all get hacked and all have something to do with the hacker,” she says. “Then they get set challenges, and if they don’t manage to complete them, something on their phones will be spread. They have more information than you would think that they don’t want spread, so they are willing to go far [to stop it]. In the

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It’s something new and a lot of channels are still afraid – ‘What is this shortform? Is there an audience for this?’ – but I do think there is. This is the future. Laura Van Haecke Director and co-writer, Hacked

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end, you realise we are very eager to protect our privacy on our phones but we don’t act like it.” Kreso had previously worked as a script coach on Van Haecke’s short film Howling and they teamed up again to write Hacked, bouncing ideas off each other and taking it in turns to write new drafts of the scripts, at first together in person and then separately over Zoom after the pandemic took hold.

Filming then took place last summer, a year after the 21-day shoot was initially scheduled. The finished series blends traditional camerawork with footage recorded on mobile phones and skateboarding sequences, which all lend themselves to the director’s preference for a realistic visual style akin to a documentary. “I like to have a camera on my shoulder and stay very close to the characters. Then you are able to almost jump into their skin, because those are the movies I like,” she says. “I love beautiful cinematography but, in the end, it can be very ugly if I don’t believe the character. Expressing feelings without saying too much is something I like. “I wanted to have a realistic style, and I wanted to have mixed media with their phones. You don’t see this realistic style that much on TV in Belgium, so it was cool to be able to make something like this.” Having previously directed short films, Van Haecke has now fallen for shortform episodic series that can be binged in the time it takes to watch a single feature length move. “I love it,” she says. “It’s something new and a lot of channels are still afraid – ‘What is this shortform? Is there an audience for this?’ – but I do think there is. This is the future. It’s true, it is difficult. You want to tell a lot of story but you have to cut out a lot of side stories.” Returning to the central theme at the heart of Hacked, the director notes how freely people around the world were willing to hand over their personal information for the sake of a Covid vaccination passport, but would be horrified to let someone else scroll through their phone. “Our privacy is still precious. Think twice before you do or say something,” she says. “That applies to everything in Hacked. Everyone makes mistakes, and we should learn from this and be conscious of what we are doing.”

WE NE NEED TO TALK ABOUT: Shortform drama

DQ Q . Sum mme mer 2 mer 20 02 22 2 Ana Maria Belo as therapist Joanne

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I moved the camera as much as I possibly could, ﬁnding new angles, pushing the intimacy. That’s one thing about therapy – you can really get quite intimate with a person.

It’s Fine, I’m Fine

Stef Smith Creator and director, It’s Fine, I’m Fine

agical realism blends with psychological drama in Australian series It’s Fine, I’m Fine, giving this show about a suburban therapist and her patients an unexpected but fantastical edge. Created by director Stef Smith, the project – with 12 episodes between ﬁve and 10 minutes long – came from her desire to tell stories by working with a lot of different writers and actors, in a setting that wouldn’t require a Hollywood budget. “Therapy came to mind because I’ve had a lot of it,” she says. “It was strategic on my part.” At the centre of the show is Joanne, played by Ana Maria Belo, who helps her patients explore the mess, humour, melancholy and unexpected magic of life. Characters played by actors including Chris Bunton (Felix) and Wendy Mocke (Betty) recur in several episodes, while the show confronts elements of hope, humility and the human condition via stories about unrequited love and mental health. Mocke’s episodes concern cultural taboos around therapy within the Black Pacific Island community, while another confronts a grieving man’s obsession with his dead partner’s laundry. “One thing I love is watching other people, particularly when you see into a moment you’re not meant to see – and that is therapy,” Smith says. “A therapist cannot talk about the sessions, and often people don’t talk about what they disclose to their therapist, so when do you get to see behind those closed doors, that’s what’s happening in our show.” Notably, Joanne appears to foster different relationships with each of her patients. “With Felix, it was very much like a brother-sister relationship,” says Belo. “At the top of each episode’s script, I would have, ‘You’re the older sister here, you’re the mother here...’ She’s brilliant – she’s got it all together for her clients, but not in her personal life. What you realise is all of the patients are actually a mirror of her.” Uniquely, many of the cast also wrote on the series with Smith, including Belo, Bunton, and Mocke. Bunton, for example, created his character as well as the story Felix relays to Joanne about his friend and an ex-girlfriend during their sessions. The actor, who has Down’s syndrome, also wanted there to be authentic representation in his episodes and not just to explore issues connected to his disability. “I wanted to show my personal experience and what it feels like to be betrayed by a friend,” he

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says. “As an advocate for people with disabilities, I would like to break down perceptions and assumptions about people with disabilities.” Belo says writing on the show was “such a gift,” though one she jokingly describes as extra acting homework. “For myself – I’m deaf – and for Chris, it was a gift to be able to know we were writing stories where we didn’t have to go, ‘Look at our disability’ and it was actually just, ‘This is their job or this is what they do or this is what they’re going through.’” Writers were told they could tell stories on any subject, before Smith started bringing certain parameters to the series, such as the fact that Joanne can’t see the elements of magical realism – a ghost sitting in the back of the therapy room or smoke rising from the floor – that feature in each story. Smith then “shot the shit” out of the material, which was filmed in just eight days, running entire scenes with two cameras before changing perspectives and doing it again, with a focus on practical effects shot in camera to create those magical moments. “I moved the camera as much as I possibly could, finding new angles, pushing the intimacy. That’s one thing about therapy – you can really get quite intimate with a person,” the director notes. “And then with magical realism, you can fuck things up a little bit. You can do weird wides where all of a sudden there are disco lights, or you can go with a high angle and it’s raining ash. There was liberation on the creative side of things, but some days we were shooting 17 pages of drama.” Another episode takes place in Auslan (Australian sign language). Belo, who uses Auslan, was tasked with acting while using the language, which emphasises facial expressions that put hand signs into different contexts. “This was full on,” she says. “We knew it was the last day [when we filmed the episode] and we knew we were running over time. It was very emotional, the subject was emotional. There were a lot of feelings that day.” Produced by Photoplay Films, the series had its world premiere at French TV festival Canneseries this year. Smith says her job was just to maintain a sense of connection between the audience and every story. “I just want them to care,” she adds. “That’s the point of the show. I want people to be moved or surprised or shocked.” >

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT: Shortform drama

nspired by true events, Danish shortform drama Fredløs (Outlaw) is a story about identity and alienation, and the consequences of not feeling recognised by society. The eight-part drama, whose episodes run between 15 and 20 minutes, introduces Mohammed (Besir Zeciri), a man with a good job, a pregnant girlfriend and a bright future. But when he is arrested for armed robbery, his life is thrown into chaos. Behind bars, Mo experiences racism and betrayal, and learns his girlfriend has aborted their baby after beginning to doubt his innocence. But he finds peace in Islam with the support of the prison chef, and when he is released eight months later, he becomes involved in an Islamic relief organisation providing emergency aid in Syria. Produced by Strong Productions and Splay One for Denmark’s DR3, the project was already in development with writer Babak Vakili when co-writer Malthe Jagd Miehe-Renard joined the team. “As it’s a story based on true events, we had a timeline from the beginning and had a lot of research to do before we started going into what the story should be dramatically and structurally. We took it from there from the first steps Babak had made,” Miehe-Renard says. The writers conducted interviews with those familiar with the real events that led to the man on whom Mo is based heading to Syria in 2015, where he later died. But the creative team behind Fredøs didn’t want to focus on what happened after he arrived in war-torn Syria, but what sparked his decision to travel there in the first place. Director Laurits Flensted-Jensen’s documentary background brings an authentic tone to the series, his first television project. Two child refugees from Syria were also cast to reflect Mo’s story and what he himself went through when he came to Denmark. “We didn’t think the most interesting part was that he went to Syria, it was the things that happened that led him to want to go,” says Miehe-Renar. “It ends when he leaves Denmark. That’s the point of his life we know the least about, so we can’t go in and tell a story without it being completely fictional. That’s not something we wanted to do. We just end it when he leaves. We’re not sure what happened after that, just that he unfortunately passes away at some point.”

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Outlaw

The tone of the series was particularly important for producer Siri Bøge Dynesen, who wanted to tell Mo’s story in a nuanced way. “That’s’ why Laurits was the perfect choice [to direct],” she says. “The way he works with his characters, it’s very important to him that they’re nuanced characters and they’re not black and white. They’re people. He treats his characters with a lot of respect and love, and I thought that was the most important thing for the story. We wanted to tell a story people could see themselves in, and we were of course concerned it’s about a man who ends up where he ends up, and we wanted to tell this more positive story about this man.” “It would have been very easy for us to make a radicalisation story, but we didn’t want to do that because we don’t know that’s what happened,” Miehe-Renard says. “His concrete

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Even though we were doing it in shortform on a small budget, people gave something more to that process because they felt that responsibility to the events and the people involved. Laurits Flensted-Jensen Director, Outlaw

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intentions are unknown to everyone but him, but it doesn’t seem like he was ready to go to war. It seems like he wanted to help and do aid work. We also talked to a lot of people who have gone to Syria in real life to do aid work, so it’s not something that’s so crazy to do.” Miehe-Renard and Vakili wrote the series “in complete symbiosis” with each other, working through every way they could conceivably tell the story, from characters and structure to the starting point and the ending. When Flensted-Jensen then joined the project, he injected some “much-needed energy” into the development process, bringing a fresh eye to the script and his own thoughts to how it might be filmed. But there were two major concerns the creative team had – one was how to handle such a big story, and the other was its fragility. “You could easily walk in the wrong direction. We were eager to honour the story and the real people involved and take really good care of it,” Flensted-Jensen says. “In the end, we had to approach it like it was just fiction. When you’re building fictional characters, you always start with very little material and you add all the layers. That’s how we made it in the end.” Though the weight of responsibility towards the real story sat heavily on their shoulders, they believe that pressure added something to the finished series, which is distributed by DR Sales and had its international premiere at French television festival Series Mania earlier this year. “Even though we were doing it in shortform on a small budget, people gave something more to that process because they felt that responsibility to the events and the people involved,” the director adds. “We had to take really good care of the story and, in the end, that gave it something more than when you have a high budget or a lot of resources. It really adds something.” DQ

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IN FOCUS: The Immortal

DQ . Summer 2022

Immortal combat Inspired by true events, El Inmortal (The Immortal) charts one man’s criminal reign across Europe. Creator/producer José Manuel Lorenzo and the cast tell DQ about dramatising the story, overcoming the pandemic and recreating 1990s Spain.

A CREATIVE MIXTURE OF TRUE CRIME AND GANGSTER FICTION, SPANISH DRAMA EL INMORTAL (THE IMMORTAL) TELLS A STORY THAT WILL BE FAMILIAR TO MANY. Set in 1990s Madrid, the eight-part series chronicles the rise of Los Miami, a gang that controlled the city’s nightclubs and cocaine trafficking and was led by one man who sought to become the most powerful drug dealer in Europe. “I knew the story because everyone in Spain knows it and knows this gang, especially if you live in Madrid,” says Álex Garcia, who plays José Antonio, a fictionalised version of Los Miami leader Juan Carlos Peña. “Telling the story from scratch is very interesting because the gang starts from nothing and then becomes like a mafia. It’s a really big thing – and it’s a family story.” Revolving around José and his organisation, the series follows his rags-to-riches journey, during which he survives numerous assassination attempts that give him an almost mythical status as ‘El Inmortal.’ Despite knowing the story that inspired the series, Garcia

(Antidisturbios, Un Asunto Privado) tells DQ he was determined to play the character in the script – who is also portrayed as a loyal family man – rather than the man he thought he knew. “Everybody has these two sides – the dark one and the good one,” he says. “It was José’s circumstances that led him to start this gang. He’s a man with a big heart with his family and he doesn’t even know his dark side. That’s the point - he doesn’t think he’s using it, he’s just surviving. That’s the only way to find the balance [with the character].” Alongside Garcia, the series also stars Emilio Palacios, Marcel Borrás, Jason Day, María Hervás, Teresa Riott, Claudia Pineda, Jon Kortajarena and Catalina Sopelana. Hervás plays Isabel, a woman from the other side of Madrid who is drawn into José’s world after she meets him in a nightclub. “Isabel is from a high-class world. You always feel very attracted to everything that is not like you, to the opposite world of your own, and she’s very wild inside, so José is probably the reflection of everything she cannot show but is inside her,” the

IN FOCUS: The Immortal

DQ . Summer 2022

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I don’t even like gangster series – those shows where every ﬁve minutes there has to be a killing or an explosion or cars ﬂying around. No, I like series about characters. José Manuel Lorenzo Creator and producer

José Manuel Lorenzo (centre) chats to actors on set

actor explains. “She’s someone who tries not to think about life too much but just does things. He’s doing things all the time, he’s an action man. That’s something she admires.” Hervás describes the relationship between José and Isabel as “very wild, very animalistic,” and viewers will see her make some important decisions about the role she plays in his life, not least when they have a daughter together. “Isabel and José don’t think about their decisions too much. They are intuitive and wild, so I don’t think Isabel worries, ‘Will he be a good father for my children?’ No, [she thinks] ‘I really want to fuck him and later we will see.’ What she finds is a man in trouble.” Further complicating matters is the introduction of a character known only as La Rubia (The Blonde). Even Teresa Riott, who plays her, admits she is “quite a mysterious character” – someone who wears clothes like a shield to stop people getting too close. “She always looks nice and shows off the money she has,” Riott says. “She’s a very intelligent woman, but she cannot sit doing nothing. She likes action and the

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IN FOCUS: The Immortal

< opportunity to have money, and she robs people like José.

But he sees her as an opportunity help to kill the competition, and La Rubia and José Antonio build a very strong relationship. She’s always ready for action.” Before he was cast as José, Garcia read the first six scripts in one day. A fan of gangster dramas such as Italy’s Romanzo Criminale and iconic US series The Sopranos, he was particularly interested in showing a deeper side to the character than just his bad-boy image. g “People don’t want to stop for the small things in life, but that’s most important for me,” he says. “When I read the script, I called my manager and said, ‘Wow, this is a good one.’ It’s a good

Above: Álex Garcia as gang leader José Antonio Right: Co-stars María Hervás (left) and Teresa Riott receive wardrobe adjustments on location

structure and they describe their characters in ways I love – with Maria, with Teresa, with José’s father. It has very good structure, descriptions and details. When you see the characters’ dark sides, you don’t see something artificial; you see the dark side of all of us, in a way.” Hervás (Arde Madrid, El Pueblo) found she could relate to the story of The Immortal through first-hand experience, thanks to the fact there were members of Los Miami living in her neighbourhood at the time when the series is set. “It was funny because when the script came to me, it was like, ‘OK, it’s about this gang I already knew from my childhood,” she says. “But my character is not so involved in the gang. It was interesting trying to see the story from the outside. I am from a humble family, not like Isabel. It has been very beautiful to watch the whole story from another point of view.” Meanwhile, playing La Rubia represented a greater personal challenge for Riott. More used to being cast as “lighter, beautiful and nice” characters, the actor says “it’s quite difficult to find

DQ . Summer 2022

the opposite kinds of characters” in Spanish TV. “I had to make a transformation and put myself on the dark side, and find a way to be a bad or evil person without judging. It’s the first time I’ve done this. The script didn’t just come to me – I had to work for the character, with research and doing my best in auditions, and then they gave me the part. I loved it.” Produced by Spanish streamer Movistar+ in association with Telemundo Streaming Studios and in collaboration with DLO Producciones, The Immortal was created by José Manuel Lorenzo. It is directed by David Ulloa and Rafa Montesinos, and written by Diego Sotelo and David Moreno. Beta Film is the distributor. With a slate including La Fortuna, Dime Quién Soy (Tell Me Who I Am), La Unidad (The Unit), Arde Madrid and Vida Perfecta (Perfect Life), Movistar+ has built up an enviable catalogue of original programming that has also found success around the world. The Immortal, says head of original programming Domingo Corral, is a perfect example of the type of show that is at home on the platform. “It’s a high-end, premium drama with a unique voice and, at the same time, it’s a show that grabs you from the first minute,” he says. “That’s so difficult to get. Sometimes you make a show and you don’t get everything you want, but El Inmortal represents exactly what we want to do in original production.” Lorenzo picks up: “The public is very close to this story – it’s local history. But the way we produce and the way we shoot the series is very premium, very international and very ambitious.” When it came to chronicling the rise of Juan Carlos Peña and Los Miami, Lorenzo wasn’t interested in a “documentary about this guy.” He continues: “The life of this guy is not something I appreciate very much. It’s very repetitive. I don’t even like gangster series – those shows where every five minutes there has to be a killing or an explosion or cars flying around. No, I like series about characters, like Dime Quién Soy, which is a historical series we did together but is based on character. “What I like is the life of these characters, so this is what I tried to do. This is a fictional drama inspired by reality, but we built the fiction. We were really interested in the life of the people we created in the series. We were interested in the personal problems, the values, the family, the betrayal and the conflict between the gangs.” That much is in evidence in the opening episodes, where the story shines a light on José’s family life – he is particularly protective of his younger brother – as much as his burgeoning criminal enterprise. “This is the balance of the series,” Lorenzo notes. “It starts with this guy who is really poor, from a poor neighbourhood, with no education and no possibilities in life, who decides to be in the drug business as a drug dealer because he wants to make money in an easy way. We have to remember this is 90s Spain, and the 90s in Spain were crazy years. We had come out of a dictatorship and turned into a democracy and everybody felt crazy. Those years are really interesting.”

DQ . Summer 2022

IN FOCUS: The Immortal

Then as José’s world expands, so too does the series. “We are more elegant in every episode,” Lorenzo says. “We tell stories that happen in many places, in Madrid and Ibiza, and about his personal life with his brother LA RUTA (THE ROUTE) and with his father, who appears and From Madrid-based Caballo Films, the makers of crime drama changes the family’s life. Then there’s a Antidisturbios (Riot Police), comes this story of five friends living in fight between gangs and the first time Valencia, trying to find their place in the world during the 1980s and this guy goes to jail. The series moves 90s at a time when the city became a focal point for dance music. The completely from his old neighbourhood eight-part series was commissioned by Atresmedia. tresmedia. to a big house in the rich area of Madrid. It changes the way he dresses, the RAPA way he lives, his friends – everything This six-part series, from producer Portocabo (Hierro) and Movistar+, changes through the series.” revolves around the assassination of Amparo Seoane, the mayor of Between Lorenzo and the writers, Cedeira, and the two people who become obsessed with catching the developing The Immortal was a case killer. Maite is a Civil Guard sergeant, while Tomás is the only witness to of working out which parts of history to the murder. For Maite, it’s her job. But for Tomás, it’s the chance to play include and what needed to be invented, out a story like the ones he enjoys reading. Their investigations begin particularly when it came to the family. to affect the whole town – a place where everyone had something to Sotelo and Moreno began developing gain or lose from Amparo’s death. the scripts, before directors Ulloa and Montesinos brought their ideas about LA EDAD DE LA IRA (THE AGE OF ANGER) how to marry the story with the way they When Marco’s father is murdered, all the evidence suggests the wanted to shoot 90s Madrid. teenager is responsible, following a heated argument between the pair. The next crucial step was to secure As his teachers and classmates are left in shock by the events, his best the services of cinematographer David friends and eldest brother are left to reveal the difficult situation Marco Omedes, with whom Lorenzo had was living through. But did he kill his father? The drama is produced by previously worked on Dime Quién Soy. Bang Bang Media for Atresmedia. “But I knew we needed a completely different style from that. I talked to FUERZA DE PAZ (PEACE FORCE) him for many hours about how the Produced by Alea Media for TVE, Peace Force finds army sergeant photography had to change through the Paula Elgueta on a peace mission in Equitorial Guinea when she learns series and evolve with the characters that her colleague and future husband has died. Unable to accept the through every episode. He did a official verdict of suicide, Paula believes he has been murdered and fantastic job,” Lorenzo says. sets out to investigate. Composer Lucas Vidal was called upon to create the music for the series – which had its world premiere at French television festival Canneseries this spring – while Lorenzo was simultaneously so much,” Lorenzo says. “Ibiza has changed completely. I’ve building the cast. lived there for 30 years, I know it very well and you don’t find “Álex Garcia is unbelievable,” he says of his leading man. “He anything like it was in the 90s.” built a character much better than the real one. Then we have Madrid has similarly changed with the times, but while the the team we built around Alex – Teresa, Maria, Emilio Palacios, Spanish capital was able to play a part in the series during Marcel Borrás, Claudia Pineda, Jason Day. We have to be proud the 17-week shoot, Ibiza and its famous beach parties were of what we did and the way we did it, bringing people with us recreated in Alicante and nearby Altea, Denia, Jávea and step by step.” Benidorm on the Costa Blanca. But thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, The Immortal might While Garcia says everyone in Spain will know the story of not have been completed at all had it not been the faith and Los Miami, local is global in the TV industry. That’s why Lorenzo backing provided by Corral and Movistar. “This series was very believes this seemingly domestic gangster story will have difficult to shoot because we started and then we stopped and universal appeal. “When you try to be international, it’s shit,” we were very close to not producing it,” Lorenzo reveals. “We he says. “Whether it’s an American, Swedish, Norwegian or stopped for one year and we were very concerned about how German series, it’s local stories that attract me the most.” we were going to start this kind of series again during Covid. Corral agrees that any successful series “has to be authentic Everybody was brave and courageous and surpassed all the and rooted in a local place and with local people.” problems we had.” “This show is a good example of that,” he adds. “What you “Most of our faith was put in José’s leadership,” says Corral. have to reflect is universal conflicts, and the production values “He’s an amazing producer and creator and, even in the middle have to meet the best international standards. The combination of the Covid crisis, you can trust him to take the production to a of these things – the authenticity that comes from doing successful place, and that’s what has happened.” something truly local, with universal conflicts and top-level Once production was up and running, recreating the 90s production – makes a show travel.” proved to be another sticking point, as “everything has changed DQ

What’s next? Four Spanish series teased at Series Mania

DIRECTOR’S CHAIR: Oliver Hirschbiegel

DQ . Summer 2022

GLUTTON FOR Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel is one of six directors to contribute episodes to German series Strafe (Punishment). He tells DQ about his love of anthologies, stepping into writing and why television needs unique filmmakers.

liver Hirschbiegel is in Rome, taking a break from an 88-day shoot for his latest TV project, Sky Italia’s Unwanted. It’s a piece of work the German director describes as “classic Hirschbiegel” – working with an ensemble cast and an often conﬁned and claustrophobic setting – and it’s not hard to see why. The story concerns a group of shipwrecked refugees from Africa who are picked up by the crew of a cruise ship. Filming has involved building long, narrow corridors, restaurants and the captain’s bridge. “We had three major sets in Rome, including 18-metrelong corridors. We built the whole bridge, which was 35 metres wide, then we shot on an actual cruise ship for four weeks,” Hirschbiegel says. “We have another three days of shooting in Rome and then we shoot for two or three weeks in Africa for the flashbacks.” Hirschbiegel is best known for helming Second World War

feature Der Untergang (Downfall), which famously chronicled Hitler’s last days in his bunker, and Irish film Five Minutes from Heaven. More recently, he has been racking up small-screen credits, directing episodes of Borgia, Billions and Berlin-set gang drama 4 Blocks as well as Cold War spy thriller Der gleiche Himmel (The Same Sky) and the German entry in Criminal, Netflix’s international crime franchise. Hirschbiegel likens Unwanted to Five Minutes of Heaven, a 2009 film starring Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt, owing to its focus on complicated sociopolitical issues and themes of guilt, duty and responsibility. “This is the same but it’s a series,” Hirschbiegel says of Unwanted, “so it’s aiming to be suspenseful and entertaining at the same time as talking about a very important issue. I just go for the stories I find fascinating.” Discussing how he arrives at his visual style, the filmmaker says he doesn’t have a specific approach. “I

don’t know really, I just follow the content and the content defines the form,” he says. What he does know is that he likes to approach scenes from a character’s perspective – asking what they need, what they want, what defines them – with a mixture of long takes, long shots and close-ups. Those techniques are certainly present in Der Taucher (The Diver), Hirschbiegel’s latest TV work, which forms one entry in Strafe (Punishment), an anthology of six short films based on stories by Ferdinand von Schirach. The films all highlight themes of punishment, guilt and justice, told in different genres, including marital drama, psychological thriller and crime. Each is helmed by a different German director, with Hirschbiegel being joined by Helene Hegemann, Mia Spengler, Patrick Vollrath, Hüseyin Tabak and David Wnendt. Produced by Moovie for streamer RTL+ and distributed by Wild Bunch TV, the series

DQ . Summer 2022

DIRECTOR’S CHAIR: Oliver Hirschbiegel

PUNISHMENT

Katharina Hauter leads the cast of The Diver, Hirschbiegel’s instalment of Punishment

launches locally in June after two instalments – The Diver and Tabak’s Der Dorn (The Thorn) – had their world premieres at French festival Canneseries this spring. “I took it much further in The Diver,” Hirschbiegel says of directing the episode, which features wide shots of the Bavarian landscape and still close-ups of the characters. “It’s what I like to watch. I don’t like too much cutting. I want to be with the characters and to be able to focus on what’s really going on. I like to be forced to watch and listen. The more you cut, the less you’re forced to do that and everything is done for you. The Diver is what I really like to do.” Set in a deeply religious community in Bavaria, The Diver tells the story of an unusual fetish that leads to death. When Claudia (Katharina Hauter) is arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband Andreas (Jan Krauter), she is forced to confront the circumstances in which she found his body: lying on the bathroom floor with a noose around his neck in an act of sexual gratification gone wrong. Claudia tells the authorities that she cut him loose and then moved him to the bed before calling the doctor, but is that the whole truth?

The idea of turning von Schirach’s stories into an anthology series came from Moovie founder and executive producer Oliver Berben, who approached various directors to pick one story with a view to adapting it for TV. “I never write so, for me, it was like, ‘Are you sure you want me to write this?’” Hirschbiegel recalls. “He said, ‘You can do it.’ I wasn’t so sure. Then because I was afraid of doing it by myself, I asked Bernd Lange if he could be my co-writer, but in this case as more of a coach. “The writing went really well, to my surprise. It was very fulfilling. At a certain point, Bernd said, ‘This coaching thing is one thing but I have to write something as well otherwise I can’t have this credit,’ so he did write bits of the lawyer talking to Claudia.” Von Schirach’s original story was told in just a handful of pages, meaning the writers had to unpack his condensed writing style and twist his words into a half-hour TV episode. Hirschbiegel also made some additions, such as including Claudia’s drawn-out struggle to move Andreas’s body from the bathroom to the bed. “In films, people move dead bodies around as if they’re nothing. But if you ever try it for real, even

with a living person, it’s almost impossible,” Hirschbiegel says. “You either need help or you have to be very inventive, as she is.” All the stories in Punishment are very different, from a museum guard who falls under the spell of a marble statue to a woman’s attempt to escape a toxic relationship. But none of the directors spoke to each other about their individual

“

I don’t like too much cutting. I want to be with the characters and to be able to focus on what’s really going on. I like to be forced to watch and listen. Oliver Hirschbiegel

projects until after filming was completed between July and November last year. The films were all set around Berlin, Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia. As a writer, Hirschbiegel found himself immersed in the world of the story and its characters, adding notes about specific images he imagined and wanted to >

”

DIRECTOR’S CHAIR: Oliver Hirschbiegel

DQ D Q . Sum umm me er 2022

Hirschbiegel directs all episodes of Sky Italia series Unwanted

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on set. “As I hardly ever write, it’s hard for me to talk about myself as a writer,” he says. “It irritated me how well it worked. When you’re directing, usually if there’s a problem, if something doesn’t quite work out, it’s in the writing. If it’s easy to direct something, if things fall into place with a nudge here and a nudge there, you know you’re dealing with good pages, which luckily happened to me on Unwanted. It’s a 96% watertight script – and that was the same with me here, so I’m thinking I should do some more writing.” Hirschbiegel found the key to writing The Diver was its structure, with the story unfolding across Easter weekend. Numerous scenes take place inside a packed church, and the director attended several real-life services where he noted the church would be shrouded in darkness on Good Friday, only to be full of light come Easter Sunday. “There’s a similarity between that and what happens to my

character and everything she goes through,” he says. “Then, of course, Germany in my eyes is such a unique and strange country and it’s hardly ever depicted the way it is. I thought I’d give it another try with some German realism, especially in the countryside, which is beautiful but there’s something very scary about it at the same time.” The stunning Bavarian backdrops are nearly as important to The Diver as Hauter, on whom the camera is almost exclusively trained as Claudia deals with her struggling marriage to a seemingly depressed Andreas, the discovery she makes after returning home and her subsequent journey through the German judicial system. “She’s a brilliant actress,” Hirschbiegel says of his lead, who has previously appeared in Tatort and Die Protokollantin (The Typist). “I didn’t have to tell her that much, really. I auditioned many big-name actresses, but I’d never seen Katharina. Then I saw her reading and I knew she had it. It was her. It was the way I envisioned it, which sometimes happens. I was lucky, she was lucky, and then we just collaborated on such a beautiful level. It was a very beautiful shoot.” Whether it’s helming a single instalment of an anthology or shooting all eight episodes of a series, as with Unwanted, Hirschbiegel doesn’t believe the practical role of a director is changing amid the continuing TV drama boom. What is changing, he believes, is the importance of having a director with a singular vision or artistic style that can

make a show stand out in such a crowded landscape. “Smart streamers and networks are starting to understand that if they want something unique and not just more of the same, they need ﬁlmmakers,” he says. “That’s what some of my colleagues and I have experienced lately. Sky, for example, is very collaborative. It was very important for them to have me on board and develop this with [writer] Stefano Bises. There was a lot of input coming from my end that Stefano appreciated. That’s how good shows are generated. “Apple also say they want people like me with their own voice. If you look at what they’ve done lately, I’d say it pays off because they do interesting shows – the most interesting shows. Not all of them work, but there’s a sense of being sharp in choosing and then trusting the vision of a filmmaker. That’s good for the future, not just for directors but for the audience because we create things that are a little different and, in the end, that’s what the audience wants.” As such, Hirschbiegel particularly enjoyed making The Diver, which he describes as “a bit off the grid.” “I love anthologies. I hope it works because I’m a total sucker for them. There should be way more,” he adds. “It’s like when you go to school in Germany, you get bags with lots of surprises in them – Schultüte. Anthologies are like that. You know the basic frame but you never know what you’re going to get. You hit the button and just go, and there’s always something new with different people. I love that. I hope it works out.” DQ

Scripted Series / Drama 18 x 60’ Natpe Budapest / Suite 215 redarrowstudios.com/international

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STAR POWER: Jacob Batalon

DQ . Summer 2022

Vampire Batalon Spider-Man’s ‘Guy in the Chair’ Jacob Batalon is standing up for his first lead role in a TV series with supernatural drama Reginald the Vampire. He tells DQ about getting his teeth into the production both on screen and behind the scenes.

DQ . Summer 2022

STAR POWER: Jacob Batalon

or the last five years, US actor Jacob Batalon has established himself as a global star after landing a role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). As Ned Leeds, Peter Parker’s best friend, he has appeared alongside Tom Holland and Zendaya in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home and last year’s entry Spider-Man: No Way Home, which has become the sixth highest-grossing movie of all time. Since joining the MCU, Batalon has also made cameo appearances in other blockbuster titles including Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: End Game. But now he’s stepping up to lead a series of his own. In Reginald the Vampire, based on Johnny B Truant’s Fat Vampire novels, Batalon brings his charisma and sense of humour to the titular character in a show that aims to upturn familiar tropes within the supernatural genre. “It has all the of makings of a really amazing show – and I’m not trying to be biased or anything because I’m Reginald,” Batalon tells DQ. “It’s about this normal guy who becomes a vampire, and he’s dealing with a lot of very human things and also dealing with the vampire community, which is very vain and which only likes beautiful, fit people and not normal, regular, thoughtful, amazing people. He’s the hero – he wins and he gets the girl in the end, but also a lot of bad things happen to him, so we’ll see what happens.” For much of the past year, Batalon has been touring the world to promote No Way Home, which was released on the big screen in December and completes the MCU Spider-Man trilogy starring Holland as the comic book webslinger. While no further instalments have yet been confirmed, the actor marvels at the fact the third film was able to be completed at all, with filming taking place during the Covid-19 pandemic before a vaccine was available. “We were just very lucky to have done so,” he says. “My life, you know, it’s been nice. It’s been really fun, but I don’t really focus too much on fame. I’m not really looking for it. I’m really thankful for the success, and it’s put me in the position to do Reginald the Vampire. “The last year, my life has been absolutely crazy, especially doing the show, because the show has been taking the majority of the last five months of my life. I’ve put a lot of myself into it – my blood, sweat and tears, all real, by the way, and also fake blood, which gets everywhere. But it’s been great. It’s been really amazing for sure.” Coming out of the MCU, it’s unlikely Batalon would have been short of offers to continue acting, either on the big or small screen. But in terms of what he wanted from his next role,

“truly I was looking for things that just intrigued me, things that I found to be different and not something that’s a reiteration of anything,” he says. He found all of this in Reginald the Vampire, which he says was unlike anything he’d read before. The series introduces Reginald, a newly turned vampire who crashes into a world populated by beautiful, fit and vain bloodsuckers. Across 10 episodes, he will go face-to-face with a bully boss, fall for a human girl he can’t have and meet a vampire chieftain who wants him dead, while discovering a few powers of his own. Commissioned by US cable channel Syfy, the show is produced by Great Pacific Media, Modern Story, December Films and Cineflix Studios. Hulu will have second-window US rights, while Prime Video will carry the series in Canada, Australia and New Zealand following deals with distributor Cineflix Rights. Batalon read showrunner Harley Peyton (Twin Peaks)’s first two scripts and was impressed by the “funny, relatable story.” Reginald “is very much an everyday person. He’s not like the romance novels suggest,” he says. “He’s not like

Above: Jacob Batalon with Tom Holland and Zendaya in Spider-Man: No Way Home Opposite: The actor takes the lead in Reginald the Vampire

STAR POWER: Jacob Batalon

DQ . Summer 2022

< the prototypical leading man that Hollywood tries to portray.

He’s very much an everyday person, and we need to embrace the idea that not everyone has to look a certain way to be the hero of the story.” At the start of the series, Reginald isn’t a vampire at all. “He’s just very normal,” says Batalon, who describes his character as a “thoughtful and neurotic person. He’s dealt with being a person who’s not seen as societally beautiful his whole life. He’s dealt with the sort of judgements that come with that, unrequited love and bullies who don’t really understand him, but he doesn’t let that deter him. He just accepts his fate.” Then when he does become a vampire, Reginald gets a new life through death as he struggles to come to terms with his fate as the newest member of the undead and everything that comes with it. “He doesn’t manage it well at all. The entire show is an exploration of how he doesn’t do that well, not even a little bit,” Batalon says. “And even when he does get a grip on it, he immediately fumbles the bag, which is a very human sort of thing to do. It’s about finding yourself.”

“

I know for a fact that people will love Reginald the Vampire. I don’t want to bank my entire career on it, but it’s just such a great show that I know people will ﬁnd it funny and relatable and will ﬁnd the storylines interesting and the characters so dynamic. Jacob Batalon

”

Joining Batalon on screen is a cast that includes Mandela Van Peebles (Mayor of Kingstown) as Maurice, who becomes a vampire coach to Reginald, and Em Haine (Fargo) as Sarah, Reginald’s human co-worker at the Slushy Shack. “Maurice is my sire. He turns me into a vampire and he reluctantly becomes my mentor,” Batalon says. “As all random friendships happen, you start off kind of distant but, as the show goes on, we start to have a bond that’s inseparable. “Sarah starts out as Reginald’s co-worker, and I feel like there’s a lot of unrequited love there [on Reginald’s part]. That’s a very interesting storyline. It becomes an amazing, sweet romance. Reginald fumbles the bag quite a bit with that.” The actor praises both his co-stars and the writing for bringing together a myriad of genres and tones – from comedy and drama to romcom and coming-of-age story. It’s why he feels the show will have universal appeal. “And that’s a really important thing for us,” he adds. “We want everyone to enjoy the show because we made it for everyone.” On set, Batalon had to adjust to the rigours of television production. Making a film, “there’s a lot of waiting involved,” with up to two pages of the script being captured each day. On Reginald the Vampire, he would film 10 or 11 pages per day.

STAR POWER: Jacob Batalon

DQ . Summer 2022

Drama with teeth: Four more series with fangs at the forefront

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER Over seven seasons, Sarah Michelle Gellar played the titular teenager who must come to terms with her calling as the latest in a line of Slayers and battle a slew of demons with the help of her Watcher and her friends. The show also led to five-season spinoff Angel, starring David Boreanaz.

BEING HUMAN A vampire called John Mitchell, played by Guy Flanagan in the pilot and Aidan Turner (above) in the series proper, was among a bunch of supernatural beings – the others being a ghost and a werewolf – who shared a flat together in Toby Whithouse’s Bristol-set comedy-drama.

“The main difference for me was being in every single day. I got to work with everyone and everyone had a different flavour,” he says. “It was amazing, but the preparation needed for me to come in and spew monologue after monologue, that was a whole Shakespearean thing, for sure.” As number one on the call sheet, Batalon channelled the lessons he had learned from his big-screen experience, where his main takeaway was that the most successful people are the most relatable, helpful and easy to work with. “I really wanted to create a culture where people could feel safe. I didn’t want people to feel like I hated them or judged them or anything like that,” he says. “I wanted them to feel accepted, heard and understood.” Batalon’s role extended behind the scenes, working as a coexecutive producer and collaborating with Peyton, lead director Jeremiah Chechik (Shadowhunters) and exec producers Todd Berger (Wynonna Earp) and Lindsay Macadam. “They all very much believed in me in that they trusted my opinion and my vision. That made me feel really confident,” the actor says. “It was interesting to play both sides. You learn a lot about the business aspect and showrunning. As actors, we don’t really think about that stuff. It was like a whole new world of insight. In turn, it taught me a lot about being an actor as well. I was very enlightened.” The main challenge the production faced was ensuring the safety of cast and crew amid the pandemic. “We had a few setbacks here and there, but thankfully we were able to finish and we were just really grateful to actually work in a time when not a lot of people could,” Batalon says. “We were able to make the best of it because that’s all you can do. Other than that, it was an amazing time.”

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS A mockumentary comedy spin-off from Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s 2014 film of the same name, this FX series follows four vampire housemates attempting to fit in with the modern world. It stars Kayvan Novak (above), Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillén and Mark Proksch.

DRACULA Danish star Claes Bang (above) gained international recognition for his performance as the Big Daddy of all vampires in this threepart BBC and Netflix interpretation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Also starring Dolly Wells, the miniseries was written by Sherlock creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat.

While TV and film alike are littered with vampires, Batalon believes Reginald stands out quite simply because of his appearance. “He doesn’t look like them. Reginald is the ‘anti’ version of what that is, and he turns the tropes on their head,” he says. “That’s important because, with our show, we play on the idea that vampires only care about vain, vapid things, and Reginald is the complete opposite. He’s thoughtful and insightful, and he’s very much a deep person as opposed to just a beautiful being. What people will love the most about the show is that no one is taking themselves too seriously. There are big, bad vampires, for sure, but we’re not brooding in every scene.” And with modern television characterised by numerous channels and an ever-increasing selection of streaming platforms, Batalon is confident that a “quirky sci-fi dramedy” such as this can find an audience, whether that’s in the US or around the world. “There’s nothing really like it out there,” he says. “I’ve been around the world and it’s something no one has ever really seen. I know for a fact that people will love it. I don’t want to bank my entire career on it, but it’s just such a great show that I know people will find it funny and relatable and will find the storylines interesting and the characters so dynamic.” Having gained experience in a producing role, Batalon now has plans to work more behind the camera in addition to his acting career, where he is open to a new season of Reginald the Vampire and other opportunities that may come his way. “I’ve read a lot of scripts where it’s all very interesting, but it really needs to be something that speaks to me,” he says. “I’ll DQ do anything that is just wild and zany.”

IN FOCUS: Afterglow

Nina Ellen Ødegård as Ester in Etterglød (Afterglow)

DQ . Summer 2022

IN FOCUS: Afterglow

DQ . Summer 2022

Highs & glows Star Nina Ellen Ødegård and director Atle Knudsen tell DQ about making Norwegian drama Etterglød (Afterglow), a series of love and life told through the story of a woman facing a devastating illness.

or a woman who is often the life and soul of the party, turning 40 gives Ester the chance to celebrate in style. Yet as the events of Norwegian drama Etterglød (Afterglow) play out, the occasion turns out to be more than bittersweet when it is revealed she has cancer. As her diagnosis and the subsequent treatment begin to take their toll on Ester, her illness also begins to weigh heavily on those around her, particularly her partner and their children, with nobody in her orbit left unaffected by her ordeal. But this seven-part series, created by Atle Knudsen and commissioned by Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, is not about misery and sadness. Instead, it focuses on the joy of living and being surrounded by loved ones as Ester’s friends and family begin to look at their own lives with renewed vigour while supporting her in a series filled with both exuberant and melancholic moments. Nina Ellen Ødegård (Besatt) stars as Ester, with Thorbjørn Harr playing her partner Arild,

who had been looking forward to a happy future as a family but must now become her rock as their plans fall apart around them. The cast also includes Sara Khorami, Per Kjerstad, Hermann Sabado and Hanne Skille Reitan. “In everyone’s lives there is both darkness and light. This story is recognisable in that way and sharpened with the story of cancer,” Ødegård says. “Maybe everyone hasn’t experienced this themselves but knows someone who has. But the energy of the series celebrates living and keeps the hope that we can live through dark times. There is always light and darkness.” Reading the scripts, the actor found Ester’s story immensely touching and was drawn to a character who is fun, strong and tender. “I thought it was a great opportunity and a challenge. The whole spectrum of a human being is in this character,” she says. “In every scene, I tried to bring as many colours to the character as possible and to just be in the moment. The thing I was most scared of was playing someone with cancer who feels >

IN FOCUS: Afterglow

DQ . Summer 2022

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As well as focusing on Ester, the series also looks at the impact of her cancer diagnosis on those around her, such as her partner Arild, played by Thorbjørn Harr

“

I hope we show off Osllo. It’s not a touristy postcard d version – we wanted to show off life in Oslo and use differeent locations around the city. c We don’t use stock imagess or wide landscape shots. la Atle Kn Knudsen Creator and an director

for her children and partner all the time – but life isn’t like that all the time [when someone has cancer]. They can be happy.” To follow Ester’s journey through her illness and care for her and her close-knit family at every turn, viewers should be invested in her story from the beginning, but the actor admits she is not always so likeable. “She’s very present in everyone’s life, so I tried to be very present and look everybody in the eye, but she’s a bit rude in the beginning,” Ødegård admits. “That’s the surprising touch, maybe, because she’s not a gentle person. But it’s really important that we fall in love with her very quickly, and Atle helped me with that. It’s difficult if you’re going to go in with a character where it’s like, ‘Oh, she’s just good.’ I just tried to make her a person.” Produced by Monster Scripted and distributed by Reinvent International Sales, Afterglow is based on an idea by creator and director Knudsen. It is written by Kjetil Indregard and Mads Løken and had its world premiere at French television festival Canneseries earlier this year, where it was the only Norwegian show in competition and won the High School award for best series. For Knudsen, Afterglow has been a very involving production, having been in the script room with the writers since the first pitch to NRK in 2018. It is also a deeply personal project, owing to the fact his late wife also suffered from portrayed in the cancer, though the events portr series are wholly fictional. “From the beginning, it was a vvery personal story for me,” he says. “I room with the was in the roo scriptwriters all the time, where so we discussed discu characters were the charac going, what they would do, where we w should we put them. “We love emotional course, and we stories, of cou something from my took somethin life. My wife personal lif

was very sick. Some of the other stories are also some of my stories and the scriptwriters’ stories, and we built them up with our characters. Then, of course, we had to find Ester.” Ødegård, Knudsen says, was the first person he imagined for the role, having seen her in the theatre. “She’s got this light and this power and a bit of darkness, and she’s one of Norway’s best actors,” the director continues. “When Ester is getting sick and when the story explodes, it’s about what happens to all the people around her. It’s an ensemble story, with Ester’s story in front, of course. But it’s about all the characters. I fell in love with every character, following all their stories, and also the children’s stories, such as Lars, the older boy, who is falling in love and struggling with that when his mother is sick.” Knudsen and cinematographer Torke Riise Svenson spoke a lot about how they could use minimal perspectives for each scene, with some only filmed from one angle – an approach that challenged Ødegård. “It was a test of acting because I could only act with the person in front of me and that’s the picture. It’s all about the acting,” she says. “Maybe that’s why I recognised myself in the work. Sometimes when you do film or TV, you think, ‘Is this what we made? I didn’t think it would be like this.’” “It was just a discussion, talking every day,” Knudsen adds. “Torke was looking for the right picture for the scene and I would say, ‘Maybe we need this one, nothing more.’ So the editing process was really good.” “Also, with the production design and costumes, we were looking for life in every scene and each setting. We were only filming on location, all around Oslo. I hope we show off Oslo. It’s not a touristy postcard version – we wanted to show off life in Oslo and use different locations around the city. We don’t use stock images or wide landscape shots. We just wanted to follow the story and the characters.” Ødegård describes her experience making the series, which debuts on NRK this autumn, as an “adventure,” though she admits she has felt a certain responsibility playing Ester. “That has been a bit hard, but when I told Atle about it, he said, ‘You can ask me anything, I will tell you anything.’ Having that trust, I could always look him in the eyes if a scene wasn’t working,” she says. “We worked very closely but we didn’t speak a lot. It was important not to play his late wife but a true character that we could make together. I didn’t want to over-talk it.” “It’s personal, but I really wanted it to be a fictional story,” Knudsen adds. “I didn’t use my story, and Nina and everyone else in the cast and crew were very respectful about my story. There was a lot of heart from everyone, from the runners to the producers. Everyone was working with a lot of heart.” DQ

IN FOCUS: The Lesson

DQ . Summer 2022

TEACHER

A teacher and a pupil push each other to breaking point as tempers flare in Israeli drama Sh’at Efes (The Lesson). Writer Deakla Keydar, director Eitan Zur and actors Maya Landsmann and Doron Ben-David take DQ to school.

hen a political discussion between a student and her teacher erupts into accusations of racism, it sets off an emotional conflict that spills out beyond the classroom walls. In this fight over justice, 43-year-old teacher Amir and 17-year-old pupil Lian both prove to be as stubborn as each other, refusing to back down even when things spiral out of control and their argument leaves a devastating trail that will change their lives forever. Across six episodes, Sh’at Efes (The Lesson) follows the ripple effect of this row from the classroom to the whole school, the wider community, the media and even today’s political reality in Israel.

Produced by Jasmine TV for Israel’s Kan 11 and distributed by Federation Entertainment, the series has provoked a range of reactions from viewers at home and abroad. Two episodes were screened in competition at French television festival Canneseries, where The Lesson had its international premiere earlier this year and subsequently won awards for Best Series and Best Performance for Maya Landsmann, who plays Lian. “What surprised us was everyone was so touched and very involved,” creator and writer Deakla Keydar tells DQ. “It’s about people, and although people speak different languages, their feelings are quite international. People told me afterwards they couldn’t decide which side they were on.”

DQ . Summer 2022

STUDENT

Doron Ben-David and Maya Landsmann face off in The Lesson

“

I was interested in people and what makes people do things. What kind of vulnerability makes you act this way when you’re hurt, and then how do you hurt the other side? Deakla Keydar Writer

”

Landsmann adds: “People in Israel told me, ‘I hate you so much… but I love you.’” Her character Lian is just one of a number of students settling into Amir’s civics class, but her solution to stopping harassment at the local swimming pool sparks a debate about racism that quickly boils over into personal recriminations as Amir challenges his students again and again. Afterwards, when both parties refuse to apologise, events spiral further out of control. “What I liked most in the script were the relationships between the characters,” says Doron Ben-David, who plays Amir. “It was really important for me and really challenged me to play the main character because a lot of the time he gets into difficult situations.” As for Lian, “she’s a monster!” exclaims

Landsmann. “I identify with her in some ways because when I was in high school, I was like her. I stupidly thought I knew everything. In my real life, my opinions are so different [from Lian’s], so it was very interesting to act differently. It was also like a lesson for me in that you can have all these different opinions, not just one. I can understand this side and another side, and I can be this and this.” “Being a teenager is about having strong opinions, and it doesn’t really matter what they’re about,” Keydar says. “That’s what makes us go very far with them without really understanding the meaning.” Meanwhile, Amir has his own problems. “It’s my opinion that he acts from a lot of ego,” Ben-David says. “You could see from the scripts for the

IN FOCUS: The Lesson

DQ . Summer 2022

Deakla Keydar at Canneseries

Ben-David plays provocative teacher Amir

whole series ser that it always goes the same way. Once he thinks he’s right, he does something makes everything else turn upside-down.” that mak Keydar describes Amir as an actor in his Keyda while series director Eitan Zur own class, cla that the two central characters have notes th that stem from growing up as part of beliefs th different generations. “He has h his own ideology. It’s not only to provoke,” Zur says of Amir. “The story brings up issues that were not issues 15 years ago there were laws. You couldn’t say, because th not allowed at the pool.’ Nowadays in ‘Arabs are n you can argue about. He’s Israel, it’s something so from the old school and he says, ‘No, there is a law and mo morals.’” As the creator of two characters who are perhaps m more similar that they realise, “that’s

a subject for my therapy,” Keydar jokes. “We are talking about two people who are so stubborn. I don’t know who invented them.” While writing The Lesson, she says she would “freeze” if she ever thought too much about what the series has to say about modern Israeli society, “because then I immediately feel like I have to say something so smart. I just wanted to write a story and be very truthful and very honest. “I was interested in people and what makes people do things. What kind of vulnerability makes you act this way when you’re hurt, and then how do you hurt the other side? That’s how conflict begins.” Lian, she says, is not a political animal. “But Amir has his own blind spots. He has principles and morals in the right place but he can’t see his students as people.”

IN FOCUS: The Lesson

DQ . Summer 2022

Don’t I know you from somewhere?

Landsmann (left) in Sad City Girls

MAYA LANDSMANN A rising star in Israeli television, Landsmann has enjoyed recurring roles in series including Haachayot Hamutzlachot Sheli (Sisters) and supermarket comedy Kupa Rashit (Cash Register). More prominent parts have since arrived in Hamefakedet (Dismissed), the story of an army officer putting a bunch of difficult recruits through orientation, and Yeladot Sach’sechaniot (Sad City Girls), a comedy about two young women, opposites in every regard, who end up as roommates.

Ben-David in Israeli drama hit Fauda

DORON BEN-DAVID A regular fixture on Israeli screens for the past 15 years, Ben-David is best known for starring in Fauda, the action drama that explores both sides of the IsraeliPalestine conflict. He plays Hertzl ‘Steve’ Pinto, a member of Doron Kavillio (Lior Raz)’s unit that, in season one, returns to service to track down a terrorist that Doron falsely believed they killed 18 months earlier. Ben-David also recently appeared in Manayek, a crime drama in which a veteran cop working a police corruption case discovers the prime suspect is his best friend.

The story of The Lesson is rooted in a real incident that happened in 2014, when a 12th grade student criticised their civics teacher on Facebook. “I was curious about what happened underneath that and what would make me do that,” Keydar says. “Like Maya, I was a problematic student and I asked myself what would make me go all the way to get my teacher fired. For me, the answer was always a very personal thing they said. I would never care [enough] about a teacher if [like Lian] I only had two months until graduation. I would save my energy. I would be arguing with him to death but I would never go and post anything [online, as Lian later does].” Keydar wrote the series by herself, but she gives her two “phenomenal” leading actors a lot of credit for bringing to life characters who are two sides of the same coin. “I had to put myself in the same scene as a male and a female, right wing and left wing, so we had to have a lot of conversations and creative dialogue,” she says. “I am also lucky to have Eitan as my director. He was very involved in my scripts and we also had a script editor, so they helped me to not go crazy.” “Usually I don’t like to just get the script. I prefer to be as involved as possible,” Zur says. “What I tried to emphasise in the casting with these two amazing actors is it’s not only the way they act but something in their personality. You see that in the reactions Maya got – ‘I hate you and I love you.’ It comes from them, from their personalities. Between the three of us, including the script editor, it was a very good and tight process. From when I came in to the point when we were ready to shoot, it was only a few months.” As is often the case with television projects, Keydar’s journey to getting The Lesson on screen was a long one that ended in a sprint to the finish. She first began working on the script five years ago, and “had many scripts that I threw away” before she met Zur. “The most challenging thing for me as a writer was to find the right language, because my writing is more like prose than a script,” she says. “The story never really changed, so I came to Eitan with a very processed story but the language was not right. Eitan was marking a lot of text and said, ‘Deakla, it’s enough. You don’t project the script onto the TV.’” Once a script is completed, Zur isn’t a director who likes to rehearse extensively with his actors.

Instead, he will wait until he walks on set to figure out how he is going to shoot a scene. “Usually I’m not very planned; I prefer to see what is going on the set,” he says. “I had the honour of being on the set, so I had many chances to watch how Eitan works with the actors,” Keydar says. “It was an amazing experience. He leads them through the scene, then he comes and corrects the places that are not right or don’t look natural or organic. It makes the actors bring so much of themselves because he trusts them. It’s an amazing process. On the first one or two days, I said, ‘Where is the directing?’ But it’s such a smart and creative way that gets everyone involved.” Landsmann agrees, describing the confidence she had on set working in such a relaxed environment. “He trusted us,” she says of the director. “There was a lot of energy on set and, when we would finish a scene, he would put on a song and that’s when you know you’ve finished. It’s more than work. Deakla was also there, so it was like having mum and dad there. It was nice to see the relationship between them. I still remember the day we shot ‘the lesson.’ It was very tense. It was amazing.” “We did four takes of 13 pages, each time with different camera angles, but we did the whole scene each time,” Ben-David adds. “When I came to the editing room, I said it looks like what we meant, but I didn’t know it was going to be like this. It was like a documentary. You could feel it was important. Even I felt it, and I was there.” The actor says even the crew were fully immersed in the story they were all working on, while Keydar has already fielded questions about what happens next.“The director’s assistant told me to remember this,” she says, “because that never happens. Nobody on the crew ever wants to know what will happen next.” “What happened on The Lesson, you cannot see it on every set in Israel,” Ben-David says. “It was very special. Eitan gave all the cast and crew time to be in the scene, even if it took 20 or 30 seconds.” He also praises Keydar for writing the show’s dialogue in a way that was specific to each character. “In Israel and in a lot of series, everyone talks the same. The teacher talks like the student, the student talks like the teacher and the warrior talks like the enemy,” he notes. “But she knows how to be very specific and choose the right words and sentences for the characters. “As for Maya, it’s not enough to say she was good. She was very inspiring and authentic and she gave me a lot of space. Together we managed to get the words off the page.” DQ

IN PRODUCTION: True Colours

DQ . Summer 2022

Australian series True Colours breaks new ground as a crime drama set within a First Nations community. David Jowsey, co-MD and producer at Bunya Productions, explains how the four-parter takes viewers into a world they won’t have seen before.

Outback with

DQ . Summer 2022

a bang

s viewers around the world continue to embrace foreign-language series, a four-part crime drama is set to herald a first for Australian television by featuring the First Nations language of Arrernte. True Colours begins with an investigation into a car accident that soon turns into the hunt for a killer. Thirty percent of the series plays out in Arrernte, with the action taking place against the backdrop of the Macdonnell Ranges, east of Mparntwe (Alice Springs), deep into the Northern Territory. Aboriginal detective Toni Alma (Rarriwuy Hick) is assigned to the case in Perdar Theendar – the community she left as a child and has had little to do with since. As the clues lead back to her own family, Toni has to navigate her way between the white and black laws and the complexities of the Aboriginal art world to find a killer who is way too close to home. “It’s a bit of a groundbreaking show for Australia because it’s got a section of Aboriginal language in it,” says David Jowsey, co-MD and producer at Bunya Productions, the company behind the series. “It’s also set in a traditional community, in a traditional world, so we hear the language and see traditional culture. We haven’t really seen a lot of that. Most things are urban, so when you go out into these more traditional spaces, it creates a whole different world. The world of the series is really interesting.” Commissioned by SBS and National Indigenous Television (NITV), True Colours is based on an original idea by Arrernte singer-songwriter Warren H Williams and co-creator, writer and director Erica Glynn. Williams stars alongside Hick and fellow cast members Luke Arnold (Never Tear Us Apart), Errol Shand (Operation Buffalo), Emilie de Ravin (Remember Me), Trisha Morton Thomas (Total Control), Ben Oxenbould (The Kettering Incident) and Miranda Otto (The Unusual Suspects). Produced by Bunya, it is backed by Screen Australia’s First Nations Department, Screen NSW, Screen Territory and distributor About Premium Content, which has already sold True Colours to US streamer Sundance Now. The series was codeveloped with the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association. “It’s a crime drama set in the Aboriginal art world, which is just totally fascinating,” Jowsey continues. “We’ve got an Aboriginal female cop working in the mainstream going home to her community, where she hasn’t been for a long time. She’s a bit out of sorts with her family because they all operate under traditional law and have their own legal system, so she’s right in the middle of it, caught between two worlds.” >

IN PRODUCTION: True Colours

True Colours stars Rarriwuy Hick as a detective who must return to the community she left as a child

Bunya has built a reputation for telling Aboriginal stories set in the Australian outback, having produced series such as Mystery Road and films including Sweet Country. True Colours, Jowsey says, will take viewers into an unseen world as Toni is tasked with infiltrating a tight-knit community that doesn’t want to reveal the answers she is looking for. “It’s like a western with a cop trying to solve a murder, so it’s very accessible for international audiences but this collision of law is just fascinating,” he says. “You don’t really know what’s going on. She has protocols where she can’t talk to certain people. It’s a really interesting world no one’s really seen before. Even in Australia, we haven’t really seen it. That’s what I mean by groundbreaking.” When Toni is initially tasked with investigating the car crash, she is extremely reluctant to return home, owing to longstanding issues with her family. Once she does go back, she finds herself unsure whether her family are telling her the truth as she winds up involved in a murder inquiry. “She is seen as an outsider. She’s given a lot of warnings by people, they don’t want her there,” Jowsey says. “She gets the feeling they’re lying to her. It’s a tricky line she’s walking because you can get into trouble if you push it too far and break protocols. There could be actual consequences, so there’s quite a lot of jeopardy for her taking on this role.” Bringing True Colours to air has been a long journey working with Williams and writers and directors Glynn and Steven McGregor (Sweet Country), with Danielle MacLean (Mystery Road) also on writing duties. “Warren always wanted to make a TV show and he had this idea, so he brought it to a TV organisation in Alice Springs, they brought it to us and we worked with Erica and Steve to put a team together,” Jowsey says. “We brought one of our heavy-hitting crime story producers, Michaeley O’Brien, who did the first season of Mystery Road, so we put an orthodox drama team together with this idea we could never access because we don’t know anything about it. A lot of it is sacred.” The production team worked closely with Williams and the Amoonguna community near Mparntwe, where the series was filmed. The scripts were written both in English and Arrernte, with a third version written in phonetic Arrernte. A lot of original artworks were hired for use in the series, while artists were also commissioned to produce hundreds of paintings. Filming was complicated by both the pandemic and local wildlife. “There was a horse there who would roam freely and bite people if they didn’t feed him. That was scary,” Jowsey recalls. “Then there were a lot of brown snakes

DQ . Summer 2022

around one night when we were shooting, attacking the crew. One crew member had to jump on the bonnet of their truck. These snakes are six feet long. They’ll kill you if they bite you, and there just seemed to be a night when they all came out. It’s pretty crazy shooting in Australia.” But filming on location amid breathtaking landscapes and working with members of the Indigenous community are all part of Bunya’s emphasis on authenticity. “We make sure our collaboration with the community is solid,” the producer explains. “It’s something we’ve done a lot of over the years. What people are looking

“

What people are looking for is genre, but with something you haven’t seen before, because there are so many crime shows. This is a unique perspective on it and I think people are going to like it. David Jowsey Bunya Productions

”

for is genre, but with something you haven’t seen before, because there are so many crime shows. This is a unique perspective on it and I think people are going to like it.” That ‘Trojan horse’ approach is one familiar to Bunya, with Jowsey describing it as the company’s modus operandi. “We like crime and westerns and working in the outback, so we use a genre to make something people can recognise. But inside that, we put a story about culture, history or identity, and that is a conversation with the Australian public and, more globally, with Indigenous issues. As long as you hit those genre buttons, audiences can relate and watch it anywhere.” DQ

Harness the power of the world’s leading online programme market Visit C21Screenings.net to start screening now

ONES TO WATCH: DQ100 Q

DQ . Summer 2022

NICÔLE LECKY

0 0 1 In the second part of the DQ100 2022/23, DQ picks out a range of shows to tune in for and the actors, directors and writers making them, as well as some of the trends and trailblazers worth catching up with.

FESTNING NORGE THIS DYSTOPIAN DRAMA (AKA THE FORTRESS), COMMISSIONED BY SCANDI STREAMER VIAPLAY, follows the fateful consequences of Norway’s decision to isolate itself and its citizens from the rest of the world. In 2037, the country is surrounded by an enormous wall, inside which its people enjoy a privileged, sheltered and self-sufficient existence. But when a deadly pandemic breaks out, its inhabitants soon find the barriers built to protect them instead hold them prisoner. Tobias Santelmann, Selome Emnetu and Russell Tovey (right) lead the international cast.

ACTOR, WRITER AND SINGER-SONGWRITER LECKY IS THE CREATIVE FORCE BEHIND BBC DRAMA MOOD, an unflinching, funny and affecting six-part series featuring an original al soundtrack performed by Lecky herself. Based on her er own play, called Superhoe, the series stars Lecky as Sasha, a 25-year-old wannabe singer and rapper who – homeless and forced to fend for herself – finds her er way into the dark and nd intoxicating world of social media influencing. ncing. With two songs perr episode, music plays ys an important part in n the show as a means ns to convey Sasha’s thoughts and emotions ions without needing to say them to anotherr character, while the e story also touches on topical pical themes such as the e rise of homelessness, sex work and social media addiction. ddiction.

ØYSTEIN KARLSEN

NORWEGIAN SCREENWRITER KARLSEN’S CREDITS INCLUDE DAG, ONE NIGHT AND EXIT, the series that took Norway by storm with its depiction of extravagant lives of male bankers who spend their earnings on wild parties, drugs and prostitutes. Øystein also created BritBox drama Whitstable Pearl, which is produced by Buccaneer Media, and is now working with the same firm on So Long, Marianne. The eight-parter is based on the extraordinary lives of Marianne Ihlen and Leonard Cohen – two lonely people who fall in love in a period of their lives when they are trying to figure out who they are and where their place in the world is, set against the backdrops of Oslo, London, New York, Montreal and the Greek island of Hydra.

ONES TO WATCH: DQ100 Q

DQ . Summer 2022

CORRIE CHEN ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S BIGGEST RISING TALENTS, Chen has worked on projects in both comedy and drama, directing Homecoming Queens, Mustangs FC, Five Bedrooms and Sisters. She has recently directed episodes of SeaChange and Wentworth and was the sole director on New Gold Mountain, a historical drama telling the untold story of the Chinese-Australian experience during the Australian Gold Rush. Her latest project is Bad Behaviour, a fourpart series for streamer Stan. It focuses on a star student who arrives for a year of character building at the wilderness campus of an exclusive girls’ boarding school, only to find herself in a dormitory surrounded by the most volatile and the most vulnerable. The series promises to delve into the darker side of the school experience and how its effects can carry over into adulthood.

ALAQUA COX COX, A NATIVE AMERICAN ACTOR, BECAME AN INSTANT GLOBAL STAR when she joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2021 as the unforgiving Maya Lopez, a character who first appeared in Disney+ show Hawkeye. In that series, Maya was revealed to be a deaf gang leader who was determined to seek revenge against the person she believed killed her father. Cox, who is deaf in real life, is now taking centre stage in Echo, a Marvel Studios series coming to Disney+ in 2023. This origin story revisits Maya, whose ruthless behaviour in New York City catches up with her in her home town, where she must face the past and reconnect with her Native American roots and community if she has any hope of moving forward.

HEAD TO DRAMAQUARTERLY.COM FOR THE REST OF PART TWO OF THE DQ100 2022/23, FEATURING...

ACTORS

Bridget Christie, Sinéad Keenan, Ukweli Roach and Lincoln Younes

DIRECTORS Otto Bathurst, Lucy Forbes, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Aneil Karia

WRITERS Cash Carraway, Ainslie Clouston, Saskia Noort and Jacqueline Perske

SERIES Oderbruch, Ouija, Sanningen (Fallen) and Truelove

TRENDS & TRAILBLAZERS Heartstopper, Adjani Salmon, Reunions and Triple C

99 44

END CREDITS: S: Rem Remade made A Abroad broad

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Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in I Love Lucy

REMADE ABROAD AT A TIME WHEN THE MAJORITY OF US TELEVISION WAS PROVIDED BY JUST THREE MAJOR NETWORKS, a

sitcom about one woman’s relentless attempts to break into showbiz catapulted its star to national fame. I Love Lucy ran for six seasons and 181 episodes between 1951 and 1957, turning Lucille Ball into a household name. She played Lucy, a young housewife living in New York City with her bandleader husband Ricky (Ball’s real husband Desi Arnaz), all the while concocting different schemes to appear in his nightclub. One of the most influential sitcoms of all time, the show has now been updated and reimagined as Todo Por Lucy (All For Lucy), a Spanish-language series starring Mexican actors Natalia Téllez (Después de Ti) and Daniel Tovar (Mirreyes vs Godínez) as Lucy and Ricky. Produced by Endemol Shine Boomdog and Elefantec Gobal for Prime Video audiences in the US and Latin America, it picks up the story of Lucy, a 21st century woman who wants to be in love but doesn’t want to give up her individuality. Pitched as a romantic comedy that focuses on the lives of everyday couples, Todo Por Lucy emerged from discussions between Boomdog and Paramount Global Content Distribution, which holds licensing rights to the g original series. “It seemed like a great idea and we fell in love with the project,” says producer Clara Machado. ado. “We are absolute fans of Desi si Arnaz, Lucille Ball and I Love Lucy. ucy. They are really important figures es in the history of television, so off course it was something that we knew, w, that in a certain way we grew up with, th, and

Producer Clara Machado and Jerry Rodriguez, head of scripted at Mexico’s Endemol Shine Boomdog, reveal how classic US sitcom I Love Lucy has been given a modern twist in Spanish-language comedy Todo Por Lucy. we connected immediately to the material and the idea of doing an adaptation.” More than 70 years since it first aired, I Love Lucy retains its easy watchability, its electric chemistry between Ball and Arnaz and storylines that continue to resonate with modern families. “It’s the sort of comedy that makes you laugh because it reminds you

“

It’s a huge responsibility with some of these shows because they’re classics and people are expecting something at the same level. The adaptation has to talk to new audiences at the same time, so that’s a challenge. Jerry Rodriguez

”

in, that you of a situation you’ve been b where you’re recognise, regardless regardles Machado says. “That’s the watching it,” Machad key to its success – its universality.” original scripts, Reading the o genius,” the producer “they’re genius continues. “It was a great continu opportunity to revisit oppo

the scenes and the situations that are already there and reinterpret them for modern times. We wanted to honour that and revisit those situations and pay homage to figures we love and knew the audience would love as well.” Some plot points have been adjusted for contemporary viewers, but the producer says Todo Por Lucy retains a faithfulness to the original series. “People will recognise the characters and the situations, most likely. We had to adapt the plot points but we kept it very close to the original in terms of where the story is going,” she says. “The beauty of I Love Lucy is Ricky loving Lucy and doing everything for her, and helping her out of these insane situations. That was also the essence of our adaptation, to have our Ricky doing everything for her, with the same group of characters all revolving around her. “When we were reimagining this couple, we were thinking about how women nowadays don’t want to marry so young, so our couple are not married. Lucy is an independent woman who doesn’t want to get married, and part of her conflict is that she’s trying to figure out how to keep being herself while being part of a loving couple. That just created great situations. It’s amazing how it is an adaptation that fits into the original.” Also joining the cast are Andrés Zuno and Daniel Haddad as couple Esteban and Federico, Lucy and Ricky’s next-door neighbours. In the original, Lucy’s best friends

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END CREDITS: Remade Abroad

Natalia Téllez and Daniel Tovar take the lead in Todo Por Lucy

I Love Lucy/Todo Por Lucy were Ethel and Fred Mertz, played by Vivian Vance and William Frawley. “We’re super excited about it and Andrés and Daniel did an amazing job. We also changed it so they are family in our version – they are Ricky’s uncles – and they interact really well with Lucy and Ricky,” she says. “The four of them are just an amazing ensemble and portray how people love each other, and that’s what we love about the series. When you see them, you will love them. The actors are incredible.” But in a world of streaming platforms where audiences are more open than ever to watching series not in their own language, what is the value of remaking series, particularly when it comes to a classic like I Love Lucy? “Those kinds of shows are still super welcome,” says Jerry Rodriguez, head of scripted at Boomdog. “It’s a huge responsibility with some of these shows because they’re classics and people are expecting something at the same level. Of course, the adaptation has to talk to new audiences at the same time, so that’s a challenge. “Just to have the opportunity to bring these great pieces into our times with a modern twist, with language audiences can relate to and understand, that’s something we should keep doing, especially for those series that weren’t as available as shows are now with platforms and streamers. We should be able to bring these shows back and revisit them.” Meanwhile, it’s one thing to remake I Love Lucy, but it’s quite another to replace the chemistry between the original show’s married leads. Machado believes they’ve found two actors up to the job in Tovar and Téllez, especially the latter, who had the unenviable task of living up to four-time Emmy winner Ball.

“When we started looking for our Lucy, we looked into Mexican comedy talent that is out there and we immediately fell in love with Natalia,” she says. “[The role] fit her like a glove. She’s adorable and she has the same charisma and energy. She also really connected to her character and the original Lucille. She’s been really amazing.” The series, which comes from showrunner and director Joe Rendon, was filmed at a studio in Mexico City, but unlike I Love Lucy, there was no live audience during recordings because of the pandemic. Todo Por Lucy’s visual style also separates it from the original and other classic studio-based multicamera sitcoms – another example of how the format has been updated for modern audiences. “We were supposed to have a live audience but we didn’t in the end. But it gives the show a more dynamic feel,” Rodriguez says. “That’s kind of interesting. It’s more modern – it’s not so staged or theatrical. That helped in the end.” With an initial 10-episode order, there’s the potential for Todo Por Lucy to run for another 170 episodes if it hopes to match the output of I Love Lucy. Machado isn’t looking too far ahead, but says the Spanish-language series could be the perfect pick-me-up for viewers looking for an entertaining and light-hearted watch. “It’s one of those shows you just want to watch when you want to feel good and just forget your problems, to laugh a little bit at yourself, have a great time and enjoy life,” she says. “That’s the beauty of it.” DQ

Téllez fit the role ‘like a glove,’ according to Machado

45 99

END CREDITS: Six of the Best

DQ . Summer 2022

SIX OF THE BEST

Donna Sharpe The Trom and West of Liberty screenwriter highlights standout female-written scenes from half-a-dozen series, including wrestling drama GLOW and Northern Irish comedy Derry Girls. Unbelievable The standout scene of this miniseries is from episode five, written by showrunner Susannah Grant and Jennifer Schurr, when Detective Karen Duvall is driving alone and we see on her face how draining and depressing her job is. Then a silly kids’ song comes on the radio and for a few brief seconds she lets her guard down. Then her face goes back to flat and exhausted, and we see how her deep commitment means she can never really switch off. There’s no real drama, but it tells us all about this really interesting detective. GLOW The S3 finale is written by series creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch and features a scene through which we realise that the ‘frenemy’ relationship between main characters Ruth and Debbie is the real love story of this show. It’s Christmas and there’s a dash through the Las Vegas airport. Debbie tells Ruth that their colleague is buying a TV network. Debbie’s going to be president, with big hair and power suits. They’re making a show and they want Ruth to direct it. But Ruth is clear she still prefers to be acting in unpaid Chekhov productions because then she feels like a real creative. What I love in this scene is these frenemies cannot respect each other’s choices. It’s like this romcom com love story between female friends. ds. Derry Girls I love this particular scene ene from the finale of season one.. There’s no dialogue and, as a writer, ter, I find non-dialogue scenes fascinating scinating and important. In the scene, ene, we hear an off-screen newscaster scaster relaying the news of the day to

the adult characters – that a bomb has exploded in Derry. This is such an enormous shock and so terrible that Granda Joe actually puts a hand on Da Gerry’s shoulder. It’s such a tiny gesture that would mean nothing if it were between different characters, but it carries so much weight through the build-up of their relationship. Through this one gesture, you really understand how catastrophic this incident is. It’s really beautiful. Succession I’ve chosen the seventh episode of S1, written by Lucy Prebble, where the Roy family assemble for sessions with a corporate therapist. After the session has broken up, the therapist dives headfirst into the infinity pool, but everyone watching deliberately chooses not to mention it is really shallow. He emerges bloody, with missing teeth. It’s this really violent moment but no one has touched him. You really get the sense that this is what happens to people who assume it’s possible to Hailee Steinfeld and Whiz Khalifa as Emily and Death in Dickinson

GLOW’s leading duo Betty Gilpin (left) and Alison Brie

“

Ther a wonderful scene in the There’s Dickinson pilot when Death whisks Emily away in his carriage. She asks Death to take her, he refuses and it’s a fabulous reimagining of the inner mind of the lead character. Donna Sharpe bring sanity to the Roy family. It’s a great piece of action, not dialogue, writing. Dickinson There’s a wonderful scene in the pilot when the character of Death whisks Emily away in his carriage. She asks Death to take her, he refuses and it’s a fabulous reimagining of the inner mind of the lead character, hugely entertaining and surprising to watch. It also delivers subtle exposition about the time and place, and it shows Emily at her most vulnerable. In addition, it hilariously pinpoints Shiri Appleby (left) and Constance Zimmer in UnReal

Derry Girls

”

the self-obsession of teenage girls in general and writers in particular. We just saw her best friend, lover and far less privileged Sue watch every single member of her family die, yet Emily romanticises death in her head. It told me that, as a viewer, I should get on board for a wild ride. UnReal The final episode of this four-season show was written by creators Marti Noxon and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, and Stacey Rukeyser. I love that Rachel Goldberg (Shiri Appleby) and Quinn King (Constance Zimmer) are genius, dysfunctional female leads in this hideous workplace, a fictional reality show. After Quinn pretends she miscarried an unhealthy foetus rather than reveal she chose to have an abortion, Rachel – the trainwreck young producer and Quinn’s mentee/whipping girl – gives her condolences. They curl up in bed together, and it’s very obvious from the way they hold each other fro that Quinn is the mother figure and tha Rachel is the child, and we know the Ra only mother and the only daughter onl these two could ever want are each the other. They’re bound by friendship, oth dysfunction, good old-fashioned dys lunacy… take your pick. They’re a lun terrifying, double-headed monster ter and yet it’s beautiful underplayed by DQ Zimmer and Appleby. Zim

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END CREDITS: Scene Stealers

DQ . Sum mm me er 2 20 022

Ben Whishaw as junior doctor Adam

Lead director Lucy Forbes looks back on the opening scene of the BBC’s hospital-set comedy-drama This is Going to Hurt, which stars Ben Whishaw as a struggling junior doctor working for the NHS.

SCENE STEALERS This is Going to Hurt

Lucy Forbes on set

HAVING PREVIOUSLY DIRECTED SHOWS SUCH AS IN MY SKIN AND THE END OF THE F***ING WORLD, director Lucy Forbes is no stranger to balancing the delicate demands of comedy and drama in a single series. “For me, comedy and drama walk hand in hand. That’s truthful storytelling to me,” she says. So when she read the script for the first episode of This is Going to Hurt, Adam Kay’s dramatisation of his personal diaries chronicling the funny highs and desperate lows of his time working as a junior doctor for the National Health Service (NHS), “I just really wanted to bring it to life. It didn’t hurt that Ben Whishaw was attached to star, and Adam was incredibly passionate about telling the story in a really authentic, truthful, naturalistic way, which was something I felt was really important to do as well.” The seven-part series, produced by Sister for UK public broadcaster the BBC and AMC in the US, follows Whishaw as Adam, a junior doctor working crippling hours while making life-and-death decisions in the obstetrics and gynaecology department of an NHS hospital. Setting the tone for the whole series, which is distributed by BBC Studios, Forbes wanted everything about the show to feel real, from the performances to the look of the hospital. As it’s Adam’s story, she also wanted the audience to “feel like they were strapped in next to him going along for the ride, rather than being observers of the story. The production even commissioned its own shade of blue for the hospital scrubs.

“We are with Adam the whole time. We don’t stop – if Adam moves, the camera moves and everything is from his perspective,” she says. “It’s his story, it’s his view of the NHS. We shot it handheld so we could react to the story as it played out.” Everything was approached in a naturalistic way, apart from the lighting, which was heightened within the purpose-built hospital set that was constructed at an old university building in Whitechapel, East London. “We used as much natural lighting as possible, as well as practical lights that would actually be there on set to light stuff, again to make it feel real,” says Forbes, “but also to give it a cinematic feel within the mundanity of an environment that everyone knows.” The series opens with Adam waking up. Initially, he doesn’t know where he is, and neither does the viewer as the scene begins with an extreme close-up on Adam’s face. The camera then slowly pulls back to reveal he is in fact in his car, having fallen asleep in the hospital car park after a long shift. “As soon as we discover he’s at a hospital, we’re off,” says Forbes, with the camera following Adam back into the hospital where he is late for his next shift. “We instantly feel the relentlessness of his job. He doesn’t stop moving and we don’t stop, and we’re completely introduced to hospital life and the microcosms of people who appear at the hospital, whether it be someone with a broken leg, someone smoking outside or people having babies.”

DQ . Summer 2022

Very early on, a medical emergency means Adam must rush to help a woman in labour. He brings her to the ward via the hospital’s paternoster lift – a string of open elevator compartments constantly moving on a loop – before help arrives in the form of Shruti Acharya (Ambika Mod), a young trainee still finding her bearings and regularly the target of Adam’s sarcasm, which is often delivered directly to the camera. “The big thing for this opening scene is we really had to bed in Adam as a character and make the audience want to go with him,” Forbes explains. “Getting the right balance of that performance tonally was really important because, on paper, the character is highly complicated. He can be pretty unlikeable. Throughout the series, we slowly reveal why he is like he is and we become more empathetic towards him. It was all about not pushing the humour too far and not making him feel too smartass, but ultimately realising it’s because of the system he’s working within that he behaves in that way. “We set up so much in that opening scene. We set up a very tired doctor dealing with an emergency situation, in an environment that is understaffed, and where the staff who are there aren’t necessarily experienced enough to deal with it – plus getting on this crazy lift. Getting that tone right was something we worked really hard on. We discussed it at length with Adam and worked with Ben to get it right, to make his character likeable just enough that the audience wants to go with him.” The show was largely shot in chronological order, mainly because the production had built the hospital set where they spent seven weeks filming. That helped bed the characters in properly and establish Adam and Shruti’s relationship, which is at the heart of the series. “He’s annoyed and irritated by her, she’s incredibly nervous at the start and, as their relationship builds, shooting chronologically really helped us because that’s what was actually happening,” Forbes recalls. “We had this very fresh actress [Mod] who plays Shruti,

END CREDITS: Scene Stealers

who is incredible, but playing opposite Ben Whishaw, this incredibly experienced national treasure of an actor. Her natural nerves really helped bed in that Shruti and Adam chemistry at the beginning. And as she grew confidence, so did her character.” “Saying that,” the director continues, “the opening scene was so complicated to shoot. We couldn’t film in a real hospital because of Covid, so the exterior of our hospital is in Ealing [in West London]. Our set build is in Whitechapel. We couldn’t build the paternoster lift so we had to use a real one in Sheffield. We could film them getting on in Sheffield, but only two people were allowed to get in the lift, so then we had to build a slightly bigger lift to shoot the interiors with a green screen. “Then we had to shoot the opening shot in the car when he wakes up at our offices because we didn’t have time to shoot in the car park at the hospital. It was incredible. It was just this huge puzzle. “Andreea Paduraru, who plays Andrea, the pregnant lady, was there right at the beginning and right at the end of the shoot for that five -minute scene. We just kept bringing her back for little moments to give birth all over again.” Ultimately, the opening scene sets up the mix of tension and gallows The series opens with humour that runs through the rest of an exhausted Adam the series. It also shows how things asleep in his car inside a hospital can change in a heartbeat. “It just really presses go on the rollercoaster that is life as a junior doctor in the NHS,” says Forbes, “and sets out these really complicated working relationships – that push and pull between the doctors and the midwives, the frustration of an inexperienced junior doctor Adam has to look after and the annoying patients who constantly need attention. It sets up the mess and grit and crazy, relentless world of being a junior doctor.” DQ

Adam soon finds himself dealing with a medical emergency, assisting a pregnant woman

Dramatic Question

Summer 2022

Short can be sweet when it comes to TV

“

Mainstream drama would be wise to take note of how long and baggy some series have become in the age of the 10-episode season, where serialised shows are drawn out for more time than the story can arguably sustain.

”

IF YOU BLINKED, YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED QUIBI, THE SHORTFORM VIDEO SERVICE THAT LAUNCHED – AND CLOSED – WITHIN A MATTER OF MONTHS IN 2020. Its arrival promised to shake up the industry with a slate of 175 original shows planned to roll out in its first year, mixing scripted, unscripted and documentary content that would be released in bite-sized chunks no longer than 10 minutes. Backed to the tune of US$1.75bn by investors including The Walt Disney Company, 21st Century Fox and NBCUniversal, it seemed too good to be true. Sadly, it was. Quibi closed down eight months after launch, with founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman putting its failure down to two reasons – that the idea of focusing on shortform content wasn’t strong enough to support a standalone platform, and its unfortunate timing, launching just weeks after the pandemic, meaning its target audience of commuters was staying at home. Of course, Quibi wasn’t an absolute failure. Series such as Most Dangerous Game and The Fugitive were adrenalinefuelled action dramas with more than enough twists and turns to keep some viewers – this one included – waiting for the next episode to drop. Shows including Mapleworth Murders and #FreeRayshawn also scored Emmy wins. But while the service will be remembered as a notable casualty of the Streaming Wars that have seen players including Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video capture millions of viewers around the world, it would be remiss if shortform content were allowed to also fall by the wayside. The format, which has given many writers and directors their first credits, has long been a festival favourite, while the internet has become a viable outlet for many series – often spin-offs from established favourites, such as Star Trek Shorts and Better Call Saul: Employee Training. Despite those efforts and acclaimed shows such as Nick Hornby’s couples counselling series State of the Union, shortform has yet to really hit the mainstream. The quick demise of Quibi hasn’t helped its cause. But viewers – and broadcasters – would do well to think again about tuning into shows with episodes that run between five and 20 minutes, whether or not you’re watching on the train to work.

Cheaters (p10) is a case in point. This show was financed and produced without a broadcaster, before being picked up by the BBC and proving to be a hit with viewers and critics alike. This messy, funny romcom – which tells the story of a man and a woman, both in separate relationships, who have a one-night stand and then discover they are actually neighbours – could have been a traditional sitcom. Yet its format, consisting of 18 episodes that run to 10 minutes each, is exactly what made the show distinctive, not to mention the fact it is full of smart acting, great writing and numerous plot twists. Furthermore, the short running time meant watching the next episode was often a no-brainer. Deciding whether to stay for one more episode of an hourlong drama can often be tricky, depending on what time of day, or night, you are watching. But when the next episode is just 10 minutes long, that decision is made a lot easier. The irony is that before you know it, you’ve watched six episodes in the same time it would have taken you to watch one more instalment of that drama series you could have watched instead. Judging by the comments under some Cheaters reviews, not everyone was taken by its short running time, perhaps as a result of its irregular scheduling on BBC One while the whole series was immediately available in iPlayer. But the beauty of it was the ability to dive into a great show for 10 minutes, when you wouldn’t have time to watch anything longer, and still get all the humour, drama and character development you might expect from something three or six times longer – just without the lulls and pauses. If anything, mainstream drama would be wise to take note of how long and baggy some series have become in the age of the 10-episode season, where serialised shows are drawn out for more time than the story can arguably sustain. Shortform drama is often made as a consequence of a lack of time, money or both. But when they are as well developed and produced as any other series, there’s no reason why we all won’t be watching more bite-size drama in the future. Michael Pickard Editor, Drama Quarterly

WHO’S WHO EDITORIAL Editorial director Ed Waller ed@c21media.net, Editor of C21Media.net Jonathan Webdale jonathan@c21media.net, DQ editor Michael Pickard michael@c21media.net, C21Media Chief sub editor Gary Smitherman gary@c21media.net, DQ Chief sub editor John Winfield john@c21media.net, News editor Clive Whittingham clive@c21media.net, Senior reporters Nico Franks nico@c21media.net, Karolina Kaminska karolina@c21media.net, Ruth Lawes ruth.lawes@c21media.net, North America Jordan Pinto jordan@c21media.net, Research editor Gün Akyuz gun@c21media.net, Head of television Jason Olive jason@c21media. net, Video editor Sean Sweeney sean@c21media.net SALES Commercial director Odiri Iwuji odiri@c21media.net, Sales director Peter Treacher peter@c21media.net, Business development director Nick Waller nick@c21media.net, Sales manager Hayley Salt hayley@c21media.net, Senior sales executive Richard Segal, Senior sales executive Malvina Marque melvina@c21media.net, Telesales executive Eva Fischer eva@c21media.net EVENTS Event programming director Ruth Palmer ruth@c21media.net, Head of event programming Adam Webb adam.webb@c21media.net, Senior events manager Gemma Burt gemma@c21media.net PRODUCTION Operations director Lucy Scott lucy@c21media.net, Production manager Eleanore Hayes eleanore@c21media.net, Team assistant Courtney Brewster courtney@c21media.net, Head of finance Susan Dean susan@c21media.net, Finance manager Marina Sedra marina@c21media.net, Finance oﬃcer Shuhely Mirza shuhely@c21media.net, Editor-in-chief & managing director David Jenkinson david@c21media.net

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FROM THE CREATORS OF HIERRO

REASONS TO KILL, REASONS TO LIVE

Series | 6 x one hour

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