Flanders (360) Magazine #3 - Fall 2014

THREE | FALL 2014

RUN MALIN RUN WHAT IS MALIN-SARAH GOZIN UP TO?

THE THURISTAR TOUCH JOERI CHRISTIAEN IS BACK!

MARSMAN MODE DOING SOMETHING

UNCONVENTIONAL IN TELEVISION DRAMA

GRIN’S GLOBAL GAME CAPTURING THE IMAGINATIONS OF GAMERS AROUND THE GLOBE

THE MISSING

MALIN SARAH GOZIN talk TEXT IAN MUNDELL PORTRAIT SAM SISK

MALIN-SARAH GOZIN IS ONE OF BELGIUM’S FIRST SHOW RUNNERS, ADAPTING THE AMERICAN WAY OF CREATING TV WITH SERIES SUCH AS THE DARKLY HUMOROUS MURDER MYSTERY CLAN AND DATING AGENCY

SITCOM

CONNIE

&

CLYDE .

TOGETHER WITH VEERLE BAETENS AND CHRISTOPHE DIRICKX, SHE IS CURRENTLY WRITING A PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER,

TABULA RASA .

Did you set out to become a show runner?

It happened naturally. I came up with the idea of Clan, I developed it, and when production company Caviar said ‘Now we need to find a screenwriter...’ I said that I would love to write it myself or co-write with another writer who has more experience. So I did that, with Bert Van Dael. Once we had the scripts I realised that I wanted to be involved in the rest of the process.

Around that time I came across the concept of the show runner.

Did you have any training?

I did a workshop in Los Angeles with the MediaXchange programme, which over a week gives you the opportunity to attend writers’ rooms, meet show runners and see what they do on set. And we decided to try that approach on Clan. There were also precedents here, I wasn’t the very first to visit writers’ rooms.

How does the role differ in Flanders from the USA? In the US the show runner is generally the creator of the show, then he either writes it or he heads the writers’ room. I say ‘he’ because I noticed that in the US it’s usually guys. He follows the whole process through the shoot, usually working with different directors on each episode, until the final steps of the editing process. In Belgium, the process is more or less the same. The only difference is that we’re more used to having an author-director for the whole series, so the show runner tends to work in tandem with him.

It’s like a creative cross-pollination.

How did it work on Clan?

I worked with two directors, Nathalie Basteyns doing the first part of the shoot and Kaat Beels doing the second. I was on set as well, so I was a bit like the back-up disk for the two directors. We had two different time-lines and we were not shooting chronologically, so sometimes that was really complicated. But I knew the script back-to-front, and that helped a lot.

What did you learn from that experience?

Following all the steps in the production of Clan so closely, I learned a lot about the reality of making fiction. One of the things you pick up very quickly is to write more condense in order to fit more in one shooting day.

Was Connie & Clyde arranged in the same way?

Where I had one co-writer on Clan, for Connie & Clyde I had a whole writers’ room, so as the show runner I was far more busy reading different drafts, giving notes and steering things rather than start up drafts myself.

But we had just one director, Guy Goossens. The plot of Connie & Clyde was much less complicated than Clan, but we had fewer shooting days, so it was good to be on set to be able to simplify things or do rewrites to make up for lost time.

What are the most important qualities for being a show runner?

You have to know exactly what you want to say, in terms of story, characters and tone of voice. You have to be consistent, but you can’t be stubborn. You have to be flexible and listen to people. And you have to try to harmonise the creative and the practical aspects of the job.

MALIN-SARAH’S LIST OF NEW SERIES FROM FLANDERS

Amateurs

µ AMATEURS

µ BEAU SÉJOUR

A raw, contemporary whodunit with a surreal twist, penned

by Bert Van Dael and Sanne Nuyens, directed by the Clan team of Nathalie Basteyns and Kaat Beels. Produced by deMENSEN.

µ THE DAY (DE DAG)

What are you working on now?

Now I’m writing Tabula Rasa, a psychological thriller, along with the actress Veerle Baetens (The Broken Circle Breakdown) and Christophe Dirickx, the screenwriter of The Misfortunates. Writing with an actress is new for me, but it’s reinvigorating and very interesting.

An actress really thinks from the character’s perspective, and that’s important, because in a good story it’s the characters who have to drive the plot, and not the other way around.

Are you involved in the US remake of Clan?

I’m not writing or involved that way, but since Caviar is executive producer I have the chance to meet show runner Steve Blackman from time to time, read his versions and discuss them. He did Private Practice, Bones and more recently the Emmy nominated Fargo series, and he is the perfect guy to do Clan. The characters are under his skin, he gets the tone of voice completely.

Do you have other plans in the USA? I’ve signed with the ICM agency, to see if we can launch ideas that we are developing here in Belgium much earlier over there. These projects would be separate from the Belgian shows, and creatively adapted to the US market. So now we are meeting different studios, pitching projects and getting to know people.

A power struggle shakes a small-town amateur dramatic group intent on winning a national prize. Director Frank Van Passel (The Emperor of Taste) returns to the small screen with this drama series written by Jef Hoogmartens, Jonas van Geel and Steve Aernouts. Caviar produces.

A striking series about a hostage situation in a bank, which promises a very refreshing and innovative narrative structure.

Written by Jonas Geirnaert and Julie Mahieu. Produced by FBO.

µ THE ELEVENTH OF THE ELEVENTH

(DEN ELFDE VAN DEN ELFDE)

A tragi-comic musical series that takes place in the days before the annual carnival in a small village. Written by Tom Van Dyck for his Toespijs production house.

µ BIKER BOYS

Bart De Pauw (Quiz Me Quick) saddles up with Ben Segers and Jonas Van Geel to look for the origins of the Vespa. A humorous road trip on the border between fiction and reality.

Produced by Koeken Troef.

Clan on flandersimage.com Trailer Clan

Biker Boys ©VRT - Nyk Dekeyser

on the knight shift THE SUCCESS OF CARTOON ECO-COMEDY PLANKTON INVASION PUT JOERI CHRISTIAEN AT THE HEAD OF A LARGE TEAM. NOW HE WANTS

kids

TO BRING THAT EXPERIENCE BACK HOME. 'I LEARNED SO MUCH,' HE SAYS. 'I WANT TO PULL A LOT OF WHAT I LEARNED BACK TO FLANDERS AND ACHIEVE EVEN MORE SPECTACULAR

TEXT IAN MUNDELL PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

THINGS HERE.'

Plankton Invasion began as an after-hours project while Christiaen was working as a storyboarder, animator and animation director in Ghent. He had been following the global warming debate and wanted to contribute to the discussion. So he came up with a scenario that flipped the usual environmental message on its head. There are millions of plankton in the sea, and they need more space to live in. This means more water. So the plankton leader hatches a plan to melt the polar ice, drown the land and rule the world! He sends a crack squad ashore to start the operation: Captain John C Star, Sergeant Pulpo Kalmarez and Doctor Anna Medusa.

These characters had their first adventures in short cartoons made for the web, produced by Tinkertree. As well as drawing thousands of viewers, they also attracted the attention of French animation company TeamTO, which proposed developing the concept into a kids’ TV series. Canal+ came on board, with Vivi Film and Tinkertree producing in Belgium.

In the process, Christiaen went from working largely on his own to leading a large team, mainly at TeamTO’s studios in Paris and at La Cartoucherie in Valence. ‘I directed 25 episodes on my own, while co-directing the rest with French colleagues,’ he recalls. ‘At a certain point there were around 80 people working on the show, in Paris, Valence, Ghent and Brussels. I was spending a lot of time on the road, but it was a fantastic experience.’

There were two seasons of Plankton Invasion, adding up to 78 seven-minute episodes. ‘The ideas kept on coming,’ Christiaen says. ‘The more you work on a show the more the characters come to life.’ The series sold to more than 25 countries, including the USA, where it still plays on Netflix.

character-driven

Paradoxically, being busy with Plankton Invasion made Christiaen want to start a new project on the side. ‘I’m an all-round artist, so when I’m just storyboarding, writing and

directing I also have this urge to animate or to create things.’

He unearthed a joke he had animated back in 2003, about a not-so-brave knight whose quest to save a princess takes an unexpected turn. ‘I wanted to use the same joke, but turn it into a character-driven short film, with more of a story.’

The idea was to make the film, 850 Meters, with a small team of animators, but Christiaen ended up doing most of the work himself, after hours. His company Thuristar produced the film, alongside Lunanime as co-producer, and with the participation again of Canal+. Part of the drive to make the film was that Christiaen thought it might have spin-off potential. And he was right. As it picked up festival selections around the world, broadcasters also began to show an interest.

My Knight and Me is a spin-off in which Henri of Orange, his squire Jimmy and the princess Cat go questing, armed only with boldness, ingenuity and dumb luck. Presented at

RISING THURISTAR Joeri Christiaen’s production company, Thuristar, is taking on a more prominent role, both in developing his own projects and in making them happen in Flanders. In the driving seat is Perrine Gauthier, previously associate producer at TeamTO, who became Thuristar’s inhouse producer in April this year.

Her role is to deal with the editorial and artistic development of the company’s projects, as well as the financing and production side of things. She has also been busy looking for local artists to contribute to future projects, such as the 2D sections of My Knight and Me. ‘There is a big animation community in Flanders, and a lot of talent to discover,’ she explains.

These collaborations could be with individual artists or a partnership with a small studio. In the long-term, Thuristar may even develop its own small studio, although Gauthier is cautious. ‘A studio can become a monster that you have to feed.’ She also sees Thuristar working with other directors, either on projects conceived in-house or on their own ideas. ‘We’ve already got a few people sending us things, and in 2015 we will start looking seriously at other projects. That could be short films or series, but also new media content. And of course, eventually we would love to produce feature films.’

Cartoon Forum in 2012, the project attracted a record audience of more than 300 investors, broadcasters and distributors. The series, made up of 52 13-minute episodes, is produced by TeamTO and Thuristar, with both Belgium’s VRT’s Ketnet and RTBF’s Ouftivi, and Canal+ in France already on board.

My Knight and Me will go deeper into Christiaen’s fascination for epic adventures, which began reading comic strips such as De Rode Ridder (The Red Knight) when he was a child. ‘I love epics, especially the bad ones. The machismo, the manly knights... I love to take that down.’ He will direct all episodes, working with a head of storyboards and an art director rather than co-directors. The series is co-written by Thierry Gaudin, a collaborator on Plankton Invasion, and Simpsons veteran Joel H Cohen joining to punch-up scripts. The 3D animation will take place in Valence, but 2D elements of the series – illustrating the plans our heroes come up with in each episode – are scheduled to be made in Flanders.

find your talent

Another project focuses on the man behind the knight, an animated actor, Roger Flambé. 'From the very beginning I had the idea of making this guy not just a character, but an animated actor that plays a part in a show, and to treat him like a live-action actor,' Christiaen explains.

He already cast Flambé as an extra in Fair Trading, a one-minute short Christiaen made in 2009 for a competition organised by Belgium's Trade for Development Center. 850 Meters was Flambé’s first major role, and now in this new TV series format he is out to win more parts in animated TV shows. 'He goes to castings, for roles that he will surely never get,' Christiaen explains. 'For example, a show called My Little Piggy. And although Roger clearly isn’t a cute little piglet, he truly believes that he can get the part. This obviously leads to a lot of comedy.' The animated kid actors he is up against are recurrent characters, each with their own personality. 'Underneath this is the idea that everyone has a talent, you just have to find it.'

Roger Flambé, (animated) actor was pitched at the recent Cartoon Forum as a series of 39 seven-minute episodes. It is being developed as a majority Thuristar production, with VRT’s Ketnet as a co-producer. The aim is that most of the animation will be done in Flanders.

The feedback from other potential partners is very positive. 'People react to the fact that he is more than a character, he is a personality, he transcends the media,' says Perrine Gauthier, who is producing and cowriting the show. 'People talk about Roger as if he is real.' This means that Flambé has to be a likeable character. 'He's driven by enthusiasm, not by arrogance. He loves what he does, and even if he never gets the role, he never gets depressed. He always finds a positive way out.'

thuristar.com Plankton Invasion on flandersimage.com Trailer Plankton Invasion Teaser 850 meters

My Knight and Me

Roger Flambé

OH, brother ...

THE

NEW

DRAMA

SERIES

MARSMAN BEGAN WITH A DESIRE TO PRESENT AUTISM AND ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH THE CONDITION TO A TV AUDIENCE. BUT IN ORDER TO DO THAT, SOMETHING ELSE HAD TO GO ON THE SCREEN. ‘I DIDN’T WANT TO TELL A STORY ABOUT

AUTISM,’

EXPLAINS

MATHIAS SERCU, WHO WROTE THE SERIES AND CO-DIRECTED IT WITH ESHREF REYBROUCK. ‘IT’S A STORY ABOUT PEOPLE, AND ONE OF THEM HAS AUTISM. THAT

IS

COMMON

prime TEXT IAN MUNDELL PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

IN

LIFE.’

Sercu conceived the series while putting on a stage play he had written about two young men with autism who set out to walk to the sea. He played one of the men, while David Cantens played the other. ‘During rehearsals I saw David do things that impressed me so much that I started thinking of another story, with another character,’ he recalls.

But this time, rather than the limited exposure of live theatre, he wanted to reach out to the much bigger audience offered by TV. ‘I have a brother with autism, so it’s something that is very important to me,’ he explains.

Sercu was encouraged to write by Serge Bierset, then head of drama with production house Sultan Sushi. Known mainly for its factual programmes, the company was also building a name for itself in fiction, with series such as Red Sonja and Danni Lowinski.

And it was managing director Jan Keersmaekers who suggested a creative alliance with Reybrouck, a promising assistant director then looking for his first directing project.

Although Reybrouck does not have Sercu’s personal connection with autism, he was drawn to the subject and the script. ‘I read the first two or three episodes and I was blown away,’ he recalls. ‘Maybe it’s because Mathias is an actor, but the dialogue is different. Even when we had the first reading, you could feel that all the actors were comfortable.’

tragi-comedy

Marsman also presented a chance to do something unconventional in Flemish TV. ‘I wanted to make something slow, using no more shots than necessary,’ Reybrouck explains. ‘The other big thing was to focus always on one character, and tell the story through him.’

That character is Nico Marsman, a man in his forties who has to look after his autistic brother Rudy when their mother dies. This is challenging enough, but when he loses his job and finds his marriage on the rocks, the result is more than just a mid-life crisis.

To help him through, there are his friends Mark, Peter and Ludovic (they all play in a band called The Men from Mars) and his 20-year-old daughter, Femke.

The series is described as a tragi-comedy, and both directors consider the humour an important part of the mix. ‘Humour is essential, otherwise it would be too depressing to watch,’ says Reybrouck.

But it is also important that the humour falls equally on all the characters. ‘It’s the same for Rudy as it is for the rest,’ Sercu insists. ‘And there’s no point where we are laughing at Rudy. This series is made with a lot of love, not just for people with autism but for mankind. And of course we laugh at it, because it’s funny.’

‘The main concern for us was to make something that would be honest,’ Reybrouck goes on. ‘When Rudy is funny, he is honest,’ Sercu adds, ‘and when he is having a crisis, he is honest.’

vote of confidence

Even though Marsman is their directorial debut, Sultan Sushi gave Reybrouck and Sercu all the control they wanted. ‘We could decide everything, and that doesn’t always happen,’ says Reybrouck.

The directors also got a vote of confidence from Flemish public broadcaster VRT, which commissioned the eight-episode series for its main channel, Eén. ‘Marsman is not that mainstream, so it was a bit of a risk for them.’ Reybrouck says. ‘They felt that it had the potential to be a funny story, but also a warm story,’ Sercu adds, ‘and it felt like something new for them too.’

Given the origins of the project, David Cantens was the obvious choice to play Rudy.

In addition to his previous experience playing an autistic character, it helped that he was not well-known on television, so viewers would have no preconceived ideas about him.

His main challenge was to adapt his stage work to the rhythm of filming for TV. ‘On stage, once you start you act for one hour and it becomes unconscious,’ Sercu explains. ‘But with television it is harder, because you only record small pieces at a time.’

critical success

Nico is played by Jurgen Delnaet, a stage actor with movie credits including Moscow, Belgium and Halfway. ‘I love his voice, and the way he presents himself,’ Sercu says. ‘He has something.’ Nico’s wife, Vera, is played by Maaike Cafmeyer, while his bandmates are played by Tom Audenaert (known for the film Come As You Are/Hasta la vista), Robbie Cleiren and Sercu himself.

Reybrouck and Sercu worked closely together as co-directors, finding a natural way to divide the labour. ‘I’m an actor, and the writer, so I have an idea of how it should be performed,’ Sercu says, ‘while Eshref has an education that I haven’t had on the technical side. He sees how it will look on the screen.’

Reybrouck’s visual inspirations ranged from the Coen brothers’ movie A Serious Man, to The Weather Man, The Reader and The Door in the Floor. Meanwhile Sercu namechecks Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies, for its approach to storytelling and its characters who are both painful and funny to watch.

Broadcast in the spring of 2014, Marsman had a very positive reaction, both from viewers in general and the autism community. ‘People were convinced that David is really a guy with autism,’ Sercu says. ‘And people with autism have written to say they recognise themselves in the way he played Rudy. And that’s great.’

The series has also been a critical success and is beginning to get international festival dates, such as Filmfest Potsdam and Festival Tous Écrans in Geneva. It recently won the Prix Italia for Best Drama Series and is also nominated for the Prix Europa.

Meanwhile, Sercu and Reybrouck are beginning to think about future collaborations, both for TV and the big screen. ‘We have a lot of ideas, and an idea is always the first step,’ says Sercu, ‘but we are taking our time.’

Marsman on flandersimage.com

All stills Marsman

WRITING FOR YOURSELF The first thing that Mathias Sercu thinks of when he writes is the dialogue. This seems natural for an actor, yet it has interesting consequences. ‘When you write, you play all the roles,’ he says.

‘And being an actor, I want to play everything!’

When it came to Marsman he was also one of the directors, so theoretically he could take his pick. Rudy was reserved for David Cantens, and while it was tempting to choose Nico, the character spends so much time on screen that directing would be impractical.

Eventually Sercu used the writerdirector’s privilege to cast himself against type, as Nico’s friend Mark. ‘No director in Belgium would ask me to play an obese ex-drummer with one arm, an alcohol problem and no job,’ he jokes, before making the point more seriously.

‘In theatre, actors play a lot of different parts, but in films and in television there is a lot more money involved, and so there is a bigger risk. There is a tendency to pick an actor because he has played something like that already, and not because he has never played something like that.’

grin’s fairy tales 'WOOLFE' IS A DOUBLE FAIRY TALE, A VIDEO GAME RIFFING ON THE STORY OF LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD THAT HAS RAPIDLY CAPTURED THE IMAGINATIONS OF GAMERS AROUND THE WORLD. NOT BAD FOR A SMALL GAME DESIGN STUDIO FROM ANTWERP.

Like a lot of overnight sensations, 'Woolfe' is the result of many years of hard work. Grin, the company behind the game, was created in 2002 at a time when software developments made possible new ways of playing games on the internet. ‘We were ready to conquer the world with online 3D games,’ says Wim Wouters, the company founder.

Grin’s games were popular, but online advertising was in its infancy and there was no other way to make them pay. ‘We had a huge response – 400,000 people a day were playing our games – but we had no monetisation system. That was a problem.’

In the end, Wouters bought out his two partners in the company and went on alone. He designed web sites and did 3D animation for hire, until the business possibilities caught up with the technology. A market developed for promotional games, generating buzz for products, and for education and training games. These ‘serious games’ paid the rent and honed his team’s skills.

In 2012 Grin won support from the VAF/Game Fund to develop 'Forest Pals', an educational game for pre-school children on the iPad. Hiring people to work on the game, Wouters met 3D modeller Davy Penasse.

‘He had a truly cool portfolio, but wasn’t really suited for the 'Forest Pals' job,’ Wouters recalls. But in that portfolio was a short animation featuring Little Red Riding Hood in a dark forest. This was the beginning of 'Woolfe'.

Wouters committed some of Grin’s savings to developing this idea further, and put in another bid to the VAF, winning support to work it up into a full-blown game. ‘It was the kind of project we had been dreaming of for years: something a little bigger, a little less serious, back to the roots of why we started the company.’

The main character in the game is Red Riding Hood herself.

Armed with a large, sharp axe, she must make her way through a world inspired by her own and other fairy tales, with a dash of Tim Burton and Dutch painter Anton Pieck thrown in for good measure. There is still a big, bad wolf in the game, but now he is a big, bad industrialist. ‘That’s where the name comes from – BB Woolfe from Woolfe industries. That’s your opponent.’

The game recalls classic platform titles such as 'Mario Bros' and 'Crash Bandicoot'. ‘It’s got this retro gameplay feel to it, but we want our graphics, our environments and our

game TEXT IAN MUNDELL PORTRAIT BART DEWAELE

story to feel really polished and atmospheric, like you are submerged in this wonderful fairy tale world.’ It is also meant to be playable, for a large audience. ‘It’s not a game that you can’t win.’

steam

"Woolfe's" first public accolade came at the Game Connection conference, where it was nominated in the hardcore PC-console category. ‘Out of 300 entries we were in the top five, and that was really really cool.’

The next step was to tackle Steam, an online platform where players buy and download games. To get on Steam you pitch your game to the users – 75 million around the world – and if enough people want to play the game is ‘green-lit’.

It can take months to attract the votes you need. ‘After five days we got green-lit, which is on a par with the fastest greenlight times on the platform.’

With this kind of support, Grin could afford to stay independent rather than strike a deal with an established game developer or production company. The development budget was closed with a loan from local investment company PMV and the team set to work.

‘We thought we would take the risk, because we would keep full control of what we were doing,’ Wouters says. ‘We believe in the project, and we saw that a lot of other people believed in it.’

More support came when Microsoft asked to put 'Woolfe' in its Xbox portfolio for the opening of the E3 trade show in Los Angeles. ‘That was huge for us. It’s publicity you can’t buy.’

A YOUNG INDUSTRY The Belgian games industry is young and relatively small, with only a handful of companies such as Grin with more than a decade of experience. ‘I don’t think there is any company in Belgium that has such a big hit that it can live from its own productions, apart from Larian Studios,’ says Wouters, who is also chair of the Flemish Games Association (Flega).

The VAF/Game Fund provides some support for game development, but otherwise funding is thin on the ground. ‘Apart from PMV Cultuurinvest there are not many investors who know enough about games to take the risk.’

In contrast, there is no shortage of young talent. This is largely thanks to the department of digital arts and entertainment at Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen. ‘They have been delivering really good 3D artists and programmers on a consistent scale for the last few years.’

This is where Grin found its three interns for the 'Woolfe' project: one programmer and two 3D artists. After graduation Wouters was able to take some of them on for the remainder of the project, supplementing the team of six working on the game in-house.

But such opportunities are rare. ‘Most of the really good students go abroad straight away, because there are just not enough cool game developers in Belgium to employ them.’

'Forest Pals'

'Woolfe'

woolfegame.com

Kickstarter campaign

With expectations rising, Grin decided it should go that extra mile to make sure the game delivered. That meant raising more funds, which it decided to do through a Kickstarter campaign. As well as promising investors a more polished game, every backer gets to be in the army of toy soldiers

which Red Riding Hood battles in her journey.

Beta testing of the game begins this autumn, with the finished product due to go on sale in February 2015. In addition to PCs and the X-Box, 'Woolfe' should also be available for Sony's PlayStation.

the missing RENOWNED BRITISH PRODUCTION OUTFIT COMPANY PICTURES ENJOYED A MAJOR INTERNATIONAL SUCCESS WITH 15 TH CENTURY COSTUME DRAMA THE WHITE QUEEN, WHICH WAS ENTIRELY SHOT IN BELGIUM AND HAD STRONG FLEMISH SUPPORT. FOR THEIR NEW TV DRAMA, THE MISSING, THEY TEAMED UP AGAIN WITH BELGIAN CO-PRODUCER CZAR THAT SUPPLIED LOCAL TALENT IN FRONT OF AND BEHIND THE CAMERA - AS WELL AS FINANCIAL SUPPORT THROUGH SCREEN FLANDERS, PUBCASTER VRT AND BELGIUM’S TAX SHELTER.

NXT TEXT GEOFFREY MACNAB

Johan Leysen (r)

Titus De Voogdt

All stills The Missing: © New Pictures - Company Pictures & all3media international

Later on this year, the eight part The Missing will screen on BBC One in the UK, Starz in the US. Belgium’s VRT will follow in 2015, and so will do a number of other broadcasters.

This time round, the series is set in contemporary times. It’s a thriller about a father (played by James Nebitt) desperately trying to track down his very young son, who disappeared while on holiday in France. His obsessive quest to find the missing son puts a strain on his marriage.

‘To shoot the series in France was too expensive and not doable,’ explains Eurydice Gysel of Czar, the Belgian coproducer. ‘Also, you need people who can speak English and sometimes French as well. The Missing is mostly English spoken but also sometimes French - and Flemish actors are good at that,’ she suggests.

The cast includes actors from both sides of the Belgian divide. Ghent-born Flemish-speaking Titus De Voogdt (whose previous credits range from Small Gods over 22nd of May to Cub) has one of the main roles. Also appearing are Paris based Flemish actor Johan Leysen (The Verdict, The American, Young & Beautiful), and French-speaking Belgian actress Emilie Dequenne, still best known internationally for her role in the Dardenne brothers 1999 Palme D’Or winner Rosetta.

The Missing was shot in and around Brussels. Much of the crew was Flemish. The BBC, the main backer, and the US partner Starz had the final approval on creative decisions but Gysel and her team were very closely consulted.

‘We had more creative input than we had on The White Queen. It was not costume so we had our stylists. The main stylist (for the wardrobe) was An Lauwerys,’ the Belgian co-producer recalls. And the music on the opening credits is both composed and performed by Flemish band Amatorski.

As Gysel explains, the advantages for Czar of working on The Missing are self-evident. This is a way of gaining experience on a biggish budget international project and also an excellent opportunity for networking. After The White Queen and The Missing, the ties between Czar and Company Pictures are now very close - and it’s conceivable that the British company might now act as co-producer on some new Czar projects.

‘Company Pictures are really nice and good people with the same attitude as we have for projects in the future,’ Gysel states. ‘We’re discussing already things that can be set up in the future.’

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