TV Drama MIPCOM 2019 by World Screen

DRAMA_1019_COVER-ALT.qxp_KID_409_COVER 9/25/19 7:08 PM Page 2

TVDRAMA

WWW.TVDRAMA.WS

OCTOBER 2019

MIPCOM EDITION

Book Adaptations / Crime Dramas / New Voices / Mark Gatiss / Rachel Griffiths / Ava DuVernay Andrew Davies / Jed Mercurio / TIMS&B’s Timur Savci & Burak Sağyaşar / Alexander Woo

DRAMA_1019_DYNAMIC TELEVISION (spread).qxp_Layout 1 9/24/19 12:47 PM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_DYNAMIC TELEVISION (spread).qxp_Layout 1 9/24/19 12:48 PM Page 2

DRAMA_1019_DYNAMIC TELEVISION (spread).qxp_Layout 1 9/24/19 12:48 PM Page 3

DRAMA_1019_DYNAMIC TELEVISION (spread).qxp_Layout 1 9/24/19 12:48 PM Page 4

DRAMA_1019_DYNAMIC TELEVISION (spread).qxp_Layout 1 9/24/19 12:48 PM Page 5

DRAMA_1019_DYNAMIC TELEVISION (spread).qxp_Layout 1 9/24/19 12:48 PM Page 6

DRAMA_1019_LIONSGATE (spread).qxp_Layout 1 9/20/19 9:23 AM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_LIONSGATE (spread).qxp_Layout 1 9/20/19 9:23 AM Page 2

DRAMA_1019_TOC_ALT2.qxp_ASP_1206_MANSHA COLUMN 9/25/19 1:39 PM Page 1

TV DRAMA 13

CONTENTS

Television That Transforms

FEATURES 28 READING ROOM

The importance of known IP is driving competition for book rights.

36 KILLING TIME

A look at the latest trends in crime drama.

We’ve seen quite a few real-life consequences from docs recently. This year, we got to see that happen in the scripted space too, in the aftermath of Netflix streaming When They See Us.

Ricardo Seguin Guise Publisher Anna Carugati Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Executive Editor Chelsea Regan Alison Skilton Associate Editors David Diehl Production & Design Director Phyllis Q. Busell Art Director Simon Weaver Online Director Dana Mattison Senior Sales & Marketing Manager Genovick Acevedo Sales & Marketing Coordinator Andrea Moreno Business Affairs Manager

Ricardo Seguin Guise President Anna Carugati Executive VP Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development TV Drama ©2019 WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, #1207 New York, NY 10010 Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.tvdrama.ws

Ava DuVernay’s moving, rage-inducing miniseries about the infamous Central Park Five case has received much critical acclaim and delivered a fair bit of backlash against some of the central figures in the incident. Elizabeth Lederer, who led the prosecution against the teenagers despite the lack of evidence against them, stepped down from her lecturer post at Columbia Law School. Linda Fairstein, who led the Manhattan District Attorney’s sex crimes unit at the time, was dropped by her publisher. Thanks to social media, Netflix’s global footprint and stunning performances, When They See Us seems to have struck much more of a chord than Ken Burns’ brilliant 2012 documentary about the case. And it’s clear that in bringing injustices to light, dramas can be as effective, if not more so, than documentaries. I got the chance to speak to DuVernay about the “truth-telling” in When They See Us and her expanding TV portfolio for this edition. When They See Us is not the only difficult piece of television that made waves this year. Russell T Davies’ blistering Years and Years is a terrifying look at what our near future may hold. HBO’s Chernobyl aired just a few months before stories emerged about another nuclear accident in Russia. The Terror: Infamy—whose co-creator Alexander Woo is featured in this edition—adds a genre element to the story of America’s horrific internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. There are many stories being told today that have the power to transform our views and give us insights into people and cultures we may not have thought about before. And there are also many stories that really just serve to entertain. For me, the joyful Good Omens was a revelation. I’m not the only one looking for a bit of uplift; our report on trends in crime drama features executives pointing to the demand for “blue-sky” dramas, set in lush locations, less girl-in-the-ditch and more quirky investigators. We also explore the book-adaptations space. Jane Austen’s unfinished Sanditon has been turned into a series; we hear from Andrew Davies and the team behind the production. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is getting a new take via Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, who gives us insights into resurrecting the iconic vampire. We also feature an interview with Jed Mercurio, this year’s World Screen Trendsetter Award honoree, and much more. —Mansha Daswani

GET DAILY NEWS ON TELEVISION DRAMA Photo credits: Ava DuVernay courtesy of Danielle Levitt/August Images; Mark Gatiss courtesy of Eivind Hansen.

44 NEW VOICES

The race to discover and foster new talent is on.

INTERVIEWS

Mark Gatiss

Rachel Griffiths

Ava DuVernay

Andrew Davies

Jed Mercurio

TIMS&B’s Timur Savci & Burak Sağyaşar

Alexander Woo

DRAMA_1019_DYNAMIC TELEVISION (spread).qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 12:34 PM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_DYNAMIC TELEVISION (spread).qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 12:35 PM Page 2

DRAMA_1019_UPS.qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 10:49 AM Page 1

16 TV DRAMA

A+E Networks Miss Scarlet and The Duke Set in Victorian London, A+E Networks’ Miss Scarlet and The Duke centers on Eliza Scarlet, the female heir to a detective agency, and her unlikely business partner “The Duke,” DI William Wellington of Scotland Yard. Together, Eliza and the drinker, gambler and womanizer solve crimes throughout the city, with their fiery relationship front and center in the series. Created by Rachael New, the show stars Kate Phillips and Stuart Martin. “Miss Scarlet and The Duke is in post-production, having filmed all through the summer, and it’s exciting for us to start showing buyers how it’s looking,” says Moreyba Bidessie, director of international scripted development and sales at A+E Networks. “We are so hugely proud of the show—our first original scripted show from A+E Networks International.”

“We’re continuing to look for projects that we can launch in a co-production space that are, very simply, good stories.” —Moreyba Bidessie

Miss Scarlet and The Duke

all3media international Blinded / Diary of an Uber Driver / Van der Valk The thriller Blinded, sold by all3media international, entwines the lives of complex characters within the backdrop of ﬁnance and journalism. “In these times of ‘fake news’ and with the international press always on the attack as well as being attacked, this is a universal story that is spectacular in its writing, acting and overall production value,” says Maria Ishak, senior VP of sales for North America. Diary of an Uber Driver, which springs from a successful blog, features the drama of relatable passengers as well as of the beloved driver Ben. Multiple deals have already been signed for Van der Valk, and the company is looking to add to this at MIPCOM. “It’s a stylish, well-paced contemporary police procedural and has a brilliant local production in Amsterdam,” says Ishak.

“We focus on quality over quantity.” —Maria Ishak

Blinded

ATV The Ottoman / Hercai / Love and Secrets MIPCOM will be the launchpad for ATV’s new series The Ottoman. Osman, the father of the Ottoman Empire, is portrayed in the series by Burak Özçivit, known from the International Emmy Award winner Endless Love and the hit Magniﬁcent Century. There’s a second season of Hercai, which tells a story of love that was born from revenge. “ATV is going to have a special showcase of Hercai on Tuesday, October 15, at MIPCOM, with the attendance of the leading talents,” says Müge Akar, content sales deputy manager. Love and Secrets was a hit this summer in Turkey, and ATV believes it will play well in other countries, too. “Even though TV consumption decreases in the summer season, Love and Secrets managed to stay on the top,” says Akar.

Love and Secrets

“The quality of the premium casts makes the drama more relatable.” —Müge Akar 318 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_NEWEN.qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 12:26 PM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_UPS-2.qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 1:49 PM Page 2

18 TV DRAMA

Banijay Rights The Gulf / The Restaurant / Occupied Banijay Rights’ drama slate features The Gulf, about the moral disintegration of Detective Jess Savage, who is investigating crimes on her home turf of Waiheke Island, New Zealand. “The way the drama explores the idea that even good people, given the wrong circumstances, are capable of committing a terrible crime is universal in its appeal,” says Caroline Torrance, head of scripted. The award-winning series The Restaurant, which follows a family-run eatery in Stockholm, is back with a third season, this one kicking off in 1968. There’s also a third season of the political thriller Occupied. The new season “promises continued international appeal in the way it depicts a near global future through an intense political thriller, which deals with themes of conﬂict and trust,” says Torrance.

“The third season of Occupied is concentrated on the postwar era.”

Occupied

—Caroline Torrance

Dynamic Television Deliver Us / The Sommerdahl Murders / Vagrant Queen A psychotic bully named Mike, charismatic and dangerous, tortures the residents of his small rural town in the Dynamic Television highlight Deliver Us. When a boy dies in an accident involving Mike, a group that includes the boy’s father goes down a dangerous path as they try to get rid of him. The Sommerdahl Murders, based on Anna Grue’s novels, sees detective duo Dan Sommerdahl and Fleming Torp investigate a new murder case each episode. In Vagrant Queen, child queen Elida becomes an orphaned outcast, scavenging the galaxy as she keeps out of reach of her enemies before new information takes her back to the kingdom to face her foe. Dan March, Dynamic Television’s managing partner, says, “We couldn’t be more excited for this slate of new drama, all of which we are very passionate about.”

The Sommerdahl Murders

“Each of these new series brings masterful storytelling that is easily marketed to and accessible by a very broad audience.” —Dan March

Honour

Eccho Rights Everywhere I Go / Heart & Soul / Honour Among the Turkish dramas Eccho Rights is bringing to MIPCOM is Everywhere I Go, which stars Furkan Andic and Aybüke Pusat, who have appeared in such series as Orphan Flowers, Meryem, The Girl Named Feriha and Medcezir. Eccho Rights has aligned with SIC in Portugal to exclusively represent the ongoing drama Heart & Soul, among other titles. Fredrik af Malmborg, Eccho Rights’ managing director, says, “Portugal is a country with huge potential for serial drama that has been gaining recognition in the international market.” The company has already concluded deals in Germany, Belgium and the U.S. for the Swedish drama series Honour. “Eccho Rights’ latest lineup reﬂects our ongoing commitment to representing the best drama from around the world,” says af Malmborg.

“We are proud to have the chance to work with producers from a wide range of countries.” —Fredrik af Malmborg 320 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_Layout 1 9/11/19 3:04 PM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_UPS-2.qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 1:56 PM Page 3

20 TV DRAMA

Electric Entertainment Almost Paradise / The Outpost / Stephen J. Cannell Library Set in the Philippines, the Electric Entertainment title Almost Paradise centers on a DEA agent whose tropical retirement is interrupted by an international drug investigation. “Almost Paradise is a throwback to the popular crime-investigative procedurals from the ’80s and ’90s,” says Sonia Mehandjiyska, head of international distribution at Electric Entertainment. “Based on its beautiful location and genre, it has universal appeal for the entire family.” The Outpost follows a woman named Talon who needs to learn to control a newly discovered supernatural power to take down a religious dictator after her village is destroyed. Electric will also be highlighting the collection of series in its Stephen J. Cannell library, which includes 21 Jump Street, The Commish and more from the award-winning writer and producer.

The Outpost

“We continue to be creative and develop brand-new ideas for series such as Almost Paradise and The Outpost.” —Sonia Mehandjiyska

Global Agency Daydreamer / Sisters / Evermore A romantic adventure propels the Global Agency title Daydreamer, which sees two independent souls, Sanem and Can, discover love and one another in the heart of Istanbul. Sisters Ümran and Umay are driven apart by love and betrayal, and their hostility toward one another leads to a conﬂict between their daughters, Hayat and Hayal, as they uncover their mothers’ secret in Sisters. Over the course of Evermore’s three seasons, a love story has played out between wealthy businessman Faruk and a poor singer named Süreyya, who is battling against deep-rooted family traditions. Along with adding premium dramas and original formats to its catalog, Global Agency “will also be focusing on our best-selling titles and entering new territories,” says Izzet Pinto, the founder and CEO.

”We are excited to share our new strong lineup with our clients during MIPCOM.” —Izzet Pinto Evermore

Rule of 3

Incendo A Brush with Love / The Lead / Rule of 3 Incendo is heading to MIPCOM with a slate of movie-ofthe-week thrillers that includes The Lead and Rule of 3. The Lead tells the story of a reporter stuck covering local news who is kidnapped and becomes the main story herself. Rule of 3, starring Kelly Rutherford, is about a woman whose husband dies in a supposed car accident and only later ﬁnds out he was murdered and that she’s not the only one mourning him. There’s also the romantic TV movie A Brush with Love. “As Incendo looks forward to a bright future and new changes and challenges, we remain a source of the highest quality television ﬁlms with 18 years of knowledge, experience and expertise in production,” says Gavin Reardon, who heads up international sales and co-productions.

“Our reputation and work speak for themselves.” —Gavin Reardon 322 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_MISTCO_INSERT_1019_ALT.qxp_Layout 1 9/30/19 2:50 PM Page 2

DRAMA_MISTCO_INSERT_1019_ALT.qxp_Layout 1 9/30/19 2:51 PM Page 3

DRAMA_MISTCO_INSERT_1019_ALT.qxp_Layout 1 9/30/19 2:51 PM Page 4

DRAMA_MISTCO_INSERT_1019_ALT.qxp_Layout 1 9/30/19 2:51 PM Page 5

DRAMA_MISTCO_INSERT_1019_ALT.qxp_Layout 1 9/30/19 2:51 PM Page 6

DRAMA_MISTCO_INSERT_1019_ALT.qxp_Layout 1 9/30/19 2:51 PM Page 7

DRAMA_1019_UPS.qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 10:49 AM Page 4

TV DRAMA 21

Inter Medya Bitter Lands / Tainted Love / Behzat Ç. From TIMS&B Productions, the period drama Bitter Lands has already been sold by Inter Medya into a slew of international markets. The Turkish drama tells the story of a legendary love that begins in Istanbul during the 1970s and continues in the lands of Çukurova in southern Turkey through the trials of evil, ambition and tyranny. “Bitter Lands asks whether love is eternal against facts of life and tests the resistance of love and kindness amid a series of turbulent events,” says Can Okan, founder and CEO of Inter Medya. Also from TIMS&B, Tainted Love is about life challenges, family secrets, love and self-sacriﬁce. Inter Medya recently acquired the rights for the novel Behzat Ç. and produced nine new episodes for the Turkish SVOD platform BluTV.

Bitter Lands

“Inter Medya has managed to reach an important position as a distributor of Turkish series and feature ﬁlms in the international market for more than 27 years.”

—Can Okan

Kanal D International

Love Trap

Ruthless City / Love Trap / Wounded Love At MIPCOM, Kanal D International is shining a light on its new drama Ruthless City and successful romantic comedy Love Trap, as well as returning series Wounded Love and Price of Passion. The company has already sold its drama series in a wide variety of markets. “Our penetration in all regions continues to grow,” says Kerim Emrah Turna, executive director of Kanal D International. He adds that Turkish dramas have made strong inroads in Central and Eastern Europe and have recently started to make their way into Western Europe, notably in Spain. Other healthy markets are the CIS territories and Latin America. Going forward, furthering the footprint of the Kanal D Drama channel is a top priority, with a European launch coming “in a very short period.”

“We plan to have Kanal D Drama in Europe, Africa and Asia shortly.”

—Kerim Emrah Turna

The Trial of Christine Keeler

Keshet International The Trial of Christine Keeler / Secret Bridesmaids’ Business / Black B*tch (Total Control) The Trial of Christine Keeler, which tells the story of the Profumo affair political sex scandal, is among Keshet International’s highlights. A wedding turns deadly when a stranger invited by a bridesmaid ends up triggering a potentially fatal chain reaction that opens a world of secrets in Secret Bridesmaids’ Business. Rachel Griffiths (Brothers & Sisters) stars in the Australia-set political drama Black B*tch (Total Control). Rose Hughes, VP of sales at Keshet International, says: “From the richly evocative re-creation of the Swinging Sixties in The Trial of Christine Keeler to the expansive, sun-drenched Outback featured in Black B*tch and the richly decaying autumnal Australian vineyards of Secret Bridesmaids’ Business, these beautifully crafted series will take viewers on a journey with their universal stories of power, intrigue, sex, politics and revenge.”

“Keshet International has an ongoing pipeline of high-end, glossy-looking and star-studded dramas.”

—Rose Hughes

10/19 WORLD SCREEN 323

DRAMA_1019_UPS.qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 10:50 AM Page 5

22 TV DRAMA

Lionsgate Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist / Manhunt: Lone Wolf / Ambitions Suburgatory’s Jane Levy stars in the Lionsgate title Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, a drama about a computer coder who starts to hear the innermost thoughts of those around her through songs following an unusual event. The anthology series Manhunt: Lone Wolf chronicles the search for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomber, Eric Rudolph, who’s played by Jack Huston. Also set in Atlanta, Georgia, Ambitions is a multigenerational family saga from Will Packer (Girls Trip, Straight Outta Compton). “It’s important to align ourselves with great content creators and understand that every buyer has different needs,” says Agapy Kapouranis, president of international television and digital distribution at Lionsgate. “Our goal is to meet and exceed those needs with quality content that connects and resonates with audiences.”

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist

“Our lineup showcases our ability to collaborate with exceptional storytellers and leverage our producing partnerships to bring premium content to the market.”

—Agapy Kapouranis

A Miracle

Madd Entertainment Kuzgun / A Miracle The second season of Kuzgun leads Madd Entertainment’s MIPCOM slate. The series centers on the titular orphaned son of an honest cop who had refused to make a deal with a drug lord and was subsequently backstabbed by his best friend and colleague. Twenty years after his father’s death, Kuzgun inﬁltrates the gang of the man who had betrayed him—only to see his plans for revenge complicated when he runs into his childhood sweetheart Dila. Deniz Cantutan, Madd Entertainment’s senior sales manager, says, “Kuzgun’s ﬁrst season was already successful in national and international markets, and we are sure that the introduction of new stars will bring bigger excitement to the viewers.” Also on the company’s slate is the Turkish adaptation of The Good Doctor, A Miracle, starring Taner Ölmez and Onur Tuna.

“Turkey has been creating powerful stories for many years.”

—Deniz Cantutan

My Champion

MISTCO Melek (A Mother’s Struggle) / My Champion / Hold My Hand Shot in Gaziantep, Turkey, the MISTCO highlight Melek (A Mother’s Struggle) centers on the plight of a woman as she sacrifices everything for her children in her fight to protect them. “We have very high expectations for it, as it has a universal story reflecting all mothers’ reactions when their children are in need,” says Aysegul Tuzun, MISTCO’s VP of sales and marketing. My Champion tells the story of a retired boxer who returns to the ring in an effort to save his sick son. Hold My Hand’s second season is also on MISTCO’s MIPCOM slate. Tuzun, who dubs Hold My Hand a modern Cinderella story, adds, “Our brand-new titles Melek and My Champion will touch people’s hearts, and everyone watching these series will see a piece of their lives and make connections with them.”

“With human stories, we are actually creating universal stories.”

—Aysegul Tuzun

324 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_A+E NETWORKS.qxp_Layout 1 9/26/19 2:30 PM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_UPS.qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 10:50 AM Page 6

24 TV DRAMA

Red Arrow Studios International Dignity / The Bank Hacker / Vienna Blood The drama slate from Red Arrow Studios International features the thriller Dignity, inspired by the real-life story of a mysterious German sect established by a former Nazi soldier in Chile. In the character-driven thriller The Bank Hacker, a teenager joins a team of expert conmen and commits a daring heist. Meanwhile, the crime drama Vienna Blood is set in 1900s Austria, where cultures and ideas collide in the capital city’s cafes and opera houses. Regarding MIPCOM, Bo Stehmeier, president of Red Arrow Studios International, says that the company is “focused on delivering an impressive and diverse slate of new shows that covers all genres and reﬂects the quality and ambition of our global network of in-house production companies and outstanding third-party producers.”

Dignity

“These titles reﬂect the trends and demands we are seeing from program buyers internationally.”

—Bo Stehmeier

Russia Television and Radio/Sovtelexport Ekaterina. Pretenders / Godunov / One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Sovtelexport, which distributes content from Russia Television and Radio (RTR) and other producers, has a number of historical dramas on offer, including Ekaterina. Pretenders. In the series, the rule of the mighty Ekaterina the Great is threatened as numerous pretenders appear with claims to the throne. Also in the way of historical drama, Godunov looks at the Russian statesman Boris Godunov’s rise to power after the death of Ivan the Terrible. Sovtelexport is also presenting the movie One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (working title), based on the novel by Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn about survival in a Soviet labor camp. “Every year, the RTR catalog is being replenished by the best and most successful local productions,” says Julia Matyash, director of Sovtelexport.

Ekaterina. Pretenders

“Our mission has always been to introduce the best Russian TV products to the world.”

—Julia Matyash

Series Mania

Series Mania March 20-28, 2020 / Lille, France Series Mania has now had two editions held in Lille, France, and both were met with “overwhelming success,” according to Laurence Herszberg, founder and general director. “We certainly expect even greater results in 2020.” This year, the event welcomed over 72,000 participants and 2,700 professionals from 59 countries at the Series Mania Forum. On the Forum side, key highlights of the 2019 edition included the Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, where a jury of international industry executives selected the French drama Purple among the 16 projects highlighted. The 2020 Forum is slated for March 25 to 27. “From the very beginning, our aim has been to become the content development hub in Europe, covering everything related to series—from emerging talent and production companies to passionate fans,” Herszberg says.

“The move to Lille has allowed us to expand, both in terms of size and initiatives.”

—Laurence Herszberg

326 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_BEYOND DISTRIBUTION.qxp_Layout 1 9/20/19 9:50 AM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_UPS.qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 10:50 AM Page 7

The Reckless

26 TV DRAMA

Star Media Under Military Law / The Reckless / Detective Anna Filming is underway for the fourth season of Star Media’s Under Military Law, which is based on events that occurred during Nazi Germany’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. The Reckless, directed by Darya Poltoratskaya, focuses on the stories of two different young women with difficult lives. Vlad Riashyn, founder and general producer at Star Media, says the fact that the series focuses on strong women is “extremely relevant nowadays, so we could not ignore it.” The Detective Anna series sees the titular 19-year-old discover that she has supernatural powers that enable her to solve mysterious crimes in 19th-century Zatonsk, Russia. At MIPCOM, Star Media will also be shining a spotlight on The Rurik Dynasty, its production about that ruling period in Russian history, as well as the new eight-episode thriller series Cold Shores.

“We hope that these shows will be appreciated by our international colleagues and subsequently ﬁnd audiences abroad.” —Vlad Riashyn

Viacom18/IndiaCast Media Distribution Sons of Lord Ram & Sita / The Accidental English Teacher / Web of Love Viacom18/IndiaCast Media Distribution has launched a series of new programs this year, including Sons of Lord Ram & Sita, which unearths the virtues of Lord Ram and Goddess Sita through the lens of their sons and narrates how the children become instrumental in bringing their estranged parents together. The Accidental English Teacher is about an illiterate young army widow who is offered a job teaching English in a small village school, which gives her a chance to educate herself. Web of Love traces the journey of three individuals whose lives are entwined in one marriage. “Viacom18 has always been a pioneer in presenting strong and socially relevant concepts and has grown leaps and bounds with its engaging storylines,” says Debkumar Dasgupta, senior VP and business head, syndication.

ZDF Enterprises

The Accidental English Teacher

“While our content is symbolic of the core culture and diversity of India, our approach has always been global.” —Debkumar Dasgupta

Ottilie von Faber-Castell

Dead Still / The Wall / Ottilie von Faber-Castell Headlining ZDF Enterprises’ drama slate is Dead Still, set in 1880s Ireland in the Victorian-era heyday of postmortem photography. It’s “a macabre comedy about the strange adventures of Blennerhasset and Molloy, Dublin’s most famed memorial photographers,” says Robert Franke, VP of ZDFE.drama. In the miniseries The Wall, two sisters and their grown-up children ﬁnd themselves on different sides of the political fence in a rapidly disintegrating East Germany. It follows as a third sister, believed to have drowned years before, turns up in the West with a secret to tell on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Ottilie von FaberCastell is set in Germany toward the end of the 19th century and is based on the true story of a young woman who inherits the famous pencil-manufacturing empire.

“We work with renowned producers and popular actors.” —Robert Franke 328 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_KESHET INTERNATIONAL.qxp_Layout 1 9/18/19 1:50 PM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_BOOKS_ALT.qxp_REAL_408_NIGHT 9/25/19 11:15 AM Page 2

28 TV DRAMA

Endemol Shine’s Our Century.

Reading

Room

The importance of known IP is driving intense competition for book rights. By Steve Clarke Endemol Shine’s Our Century.

330 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_ATV_INSERT_1019_INSERT.qxp_Layout 1 9/30/19 2:49 PM Page 2

DRAMA_ATV_INSERT_1019_INSERT.qxp_Layout 1 9/30/19 2:49 PM Page 3

DRAMA_1019_BOOKS_ALT.qxp_REAL_408_NIGHT 9/25/19 11:16 AM Page 4

TV DRAMA 29

dapting books for TV is as old as the medium itself. But in the age of peak TV, the imperative to option a title and maybe, just maybe, discover the next Game of Thrones—based of course on the fantasy novels of George R. R. Martin—has never been greater. Crime novels by Agatha Christie or P. D. James; spy tales spun by John le Carré or Graham Greene; classic literature penned by Jane Austen or Charles Dickens; contemporary fiction like Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose quintet; or a memoir such as Howard Marks’ Mr Nice. These stories offer potentially rich pickings for producers and distributors. “In the old days, people used to read the whole Booker shortlist, pick a couple of titles they liked and see if the rights were available,” recalls Hilary Salmon, the head of drama London at BBC Studios. “Now the rights will not be available because the books have been optioned at the proof stage.”

BOOK CLUB Such is the hunger for content that it is not only successful novels that are being snapped up. “In the last couple of years, we’ve put in bids involving large sums of money for factual books that haven’t even been written yet, based on a 15-page proposal,” adds Salmon, who in July announced that BBC Studios is developing Mr Nice in tandem with Independent; a feature film based on Marks’ career as a cannabis smuggler was released in 2010. Lars Blomgren, Endemol Shine Group’s head of scripted for EMEA, agrees, “Nowadays a lot of book rights disappear before the book is published.” Some of the most garlanded television of the past two years owes its origins to the printed word. A Very English Scandal, starring Hugh Grant in a career-deﬁning performance as disgraced British politician Jeremy Thorpe, and Ben Whishaw as his lover, Norman Scott, was based on John Preston’s account of the same name. Few TV shows capture the zeitgeist more than Killing Eve, adapted from the Codename Villanelle series of novellas written by Luke Jennings. Margaret Atwood’s classic tome formed the basis for The Handmaid’s Tale; Big Little Lies was based on Liane Moriarty’s Australian bestseller. And don’t forget the rave reviews for Hulu’s reboot of Catch-22, starring George Clooney, a novel considered impossible to successfully adapt for television. No one needs reminding that Amazon reportedly spent $250 million alone on securing the rights to J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. So what exactly is driving the rash of book adaptations? “We find known IP raises a project significantly in the eyes of potential buyers,” says Dan Cohen, president of worldwide home entertainment and television

distribution at Paramount Pictures Worldwide Television Licensing and Distribution. Cohen and his team landed Channel 4 and Sky Italia as partners on Catch-22. “We have successfully licensed the series throughout the world and it has played to great success,” he adds. “With book adaptations, you are able to build on the readers’ expectations and you already have a fan base,” says Françoise Guyonnet, the executive managing director for TV series at STUDIOCANAL. “Audiences will be familiar with the subject matter, and there is already an appetite for the story. A book adaptation will also significantly cut down the development time on a project. I think that the reality is that investors— broadcasters and platforms—are looking for security.” “I am not sure that book adaptations are over-indexing against scripted shows based on original ideas,” suggests Richard Halliwell, the CEO of DRG. “Certainly shows based on books provide an element of security. A lot of the work is done already. If it’s a successful book, there is potentially a proven audience.” BBC Studios’ Salmon agrees, noting, “In terms of the story working and audiences being interested in watching it, a book adaptation is as much of a guarantee as you could ask for.” TV’s creative ambition in the age of high-end, boxset drama is another factor driving the spate of book adaptations. Splashing the cash on an event series derived from a novel offers producers the opportunity to make TV as visually accomplished as any feature film. The Ink Factory’s 2016 adaptation of le Carré’s The Night Manager, directed by Susanne Bier, “felt like we were being given a Bond movie every week for six weeks,” opines Salmon. As DRG’s Halliwell says, “With budgets seeming to go only one way, the ability to more fully realize ambitious books through TV adaptations is becoming easier and easier.” He adds, “If you can short-cut the connection to an audience, book sales give you not just numbers but also demographics and geography as well.” Paramount Television boasts an eclectic mix of book-based projects, Cohen notes, including Looking for Alaska, an eight-episode limited series based on the John Green novel of the same name, and The Devil in the White City, based on the nonfiction book about an architect and a serial killer in the run-up to the 1893 World’s Fair. Both are destined for Hulu. It is one thing to re-adapt a proven winner like Lord of the Rings or Great Expectations. A far bigger challenge is discovering new titles that can translate into compelling TV, a task that requires producers and distributors to forge relationships with agents, publishers and other third parties.

READING THE MARKET “From a distributor’s point of view, there’s been a trend of getting close to the core content,” explains Halliwell. “Simply acquiring and selling doesn’t work anymore. Increasingly, distributors are looking for novel ways to move up the value chain.” His company has a relationship with The Development Partnership, part of The Artists Partnership, a talent agency that represents wordsmiths, several of whom work with DRG. He adds:

10/19 WORLD SCREEN 331

DRAMA_1019_BOOKS_ALT.qxp_REAL_408_NIGHT 9/25/19 11:16 AM Page 5

30 TV DRAMA

Looking for Alaska, a limited series for Hulu based on the John Green novel, is produced by Paramount Television.

“We have two or three long-standing relationships with the likes of Anthony Horowitz and Peter James [creator of fictional detective Roy Grace] who we’ve been collaborating with for some time.”

FAMILY TREE Sometimes there is a ready-made supply of new titles in house. Late last year, STUDIOCANAL’s parent company, Vivendi, entered a deal to acquire the secondlargest French publisher, Editis, an umbrella firm for 50 publishing houses. Editis publishes 4,000 new titles a year and boasts a catalog spanning 45,000 books. “This gives us a huge opportunity to delve into the Editis library and find synergies,” Guyonnet explains. One relatively new source of stories available to producers hunting down new books is the digital phenomenon Wattpad. Netﬂix and Hulu have both sourced stories from the hundreds of millions posted on Wattpad. The mobile reading app has launched Wattpad Studios and has alliances with Sony Pictures Television in the U.S., Bavaria Fiction in Germany, Mediacorp in Singapore, iﬂix in Indonesia, Mediaset in Italy, Lagardère Studios in France, NL Film in the Netherlands, CBC in Canada and Huayi Brothers in Korea, among others. “We can tell the screenwriters and producers, Keep chapters one, five and seven,” Allen Lau, Wattpad’s CEO and co-founder, says of how data and analytics can be used in the adaptation process. “In chapter seven, only keep the first two paragraphs because they

generated the most comments. By analyzing the 100,000 comments on a story, we can tell you, Cut out this character. We can provide data and insights that weren’t possible before. In the past, with so many movie adaptations of books, people would say, It sucks, the book is so much better! It was because the screenwriter had no idea what the audience would like and which chapters or paragraphs are the most important. It’s all based on guesswork. We take that out of the equation. We’re not replacing the job of the screenwriter; we’re not replacing the job of the editor. We’re turning humans into superheroes. We equip them with the right data and insights so they can make the best possible decisions.” For platforms and channels that crave a younger audience, Wattpad looks like a potential gold mine. However, it seems that multiplatform players are yet to tap into its potential. “We’re still gravitating to known authors, but it is an amazing source for new material,” says Tanya Lopez, executive VP for movies, limited series and original movie acquisitions at A+E Networks’ Lifetime and Lifetime Movies. At Endemol Shine, Blomgren thinks Wattpad offers great potential. “It’s interesting the way they find their stories, and we’re always desperate for distinctive stories,” he says. “It’s a valuable way of pre-testing the popularity of an unknown book,” remarks Ruth Berry, the managing

332 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_KSTAR MEDIA_ff.qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 12:20 PM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_BOOKS_ALT.qxp_REAL_408_NIGHT 9/25/19 2:19 PM Page 6

32 TV DRAMA

she says. “They are also multi-dimensional. Reading the same book at different ages, you read it differently every time. The richness of the material gives the creator broad possibilities to reinvent and interpret a wellknown story and to ﬁnd new meanings in it. TV’s constant technological revolution provides new opportunities to enhance the production values and to create extraordinary and authentic worlds.”

BACK TO THE WELL

A+E Networks’ Lifetime has a series of TV movies based on V.C. Andrews novels, including Dark Angel.

director at ITV Studios Global Entertainment, highlighting Wattpad’s ability to track reader reaction to its titles. At the other end of the literary world are classic stories that filmmakers keep returning to. ITV’s acclaimed 2018 seven-part reboot of Vanity Fair, co-produced with Amazon Studios, came 20 years after the BBC last serialized the book. Why return to William Thackeray’s magnum opus? “People love the story,” says Berry. “You know there is a ready-made audience and already a level of success. Storytelling moves on; production values have grown. There are new actors and new writers. People always have a passion to reinvent or retell.”

Lifetime’s Lopez insists that the decision to make a new version of a book that’s already been produced for TV or film can be difficult. “We don’t do it that often,” she says. “It happens when we feel we can either make the production better or introduce it to a new audience with a more contemporary cast.” STUDIOCANAL will launch a contemporary version of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds at MIPCOM, produced by Urban Myth Films in partnership with Fox Networks Group Europe & Africa and AGC Television. Starring Gabriel Byrne and Elizabeth McGovern, the new version of the sci-ﬁ classic is set in modern Europe. “We will look at the humanity in the story,” explains Guyonnet. “It examines how people react under an alien threat and how they try to survive it. The emphasis is on the characters, rather than the science ﬁction.” One of the advantages of choosing classics is that the producers need not worry unduly over taking liberties with the author’s work. Adapting the work of a living author can pose challenges. How involved in book adaptations are authors? “We take it case-by-case,” says DRG’s Halliwell. “Helen FitzGerald, who wrote The Cry, was very comfortable for Synchronicity Films and Jacquelin Perske to adapt it without too much influence.” DRG will distribute an adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s novella The Body, reimagined as an eight-part, highconcept series and relocated from Europe to the U.S. “We want it to be a long-running, returning series,” says Halliwell. “Hanif is very comfortable with it, but he wants to be involved creatively.”

CLASSICAL FORM As Blomgren points out, everybody knows that Shakespeare’s plays have been reimagined for centuries. “One reason is that the audience wants to see these plays again,” he says. “A lot of it is down to timing. Certain stories are better at certain times.” Russia Television and Radio/Sovtelexport distributes Karen Shakhnazarov’s eightpart version of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina— a classic novel that has been adapted for ﬁlm and television some 20 times. Julia Matyash, the director of Sovtelexport, explains the attraction of adapting great literature. “Great books are usually telling great stories, with strong characters and universal problems,”

STUDIOCANAL represents Sanctuary, adapted from a novel by Marie Hermanson.

334 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_ELECTRIC ENTERTAINMENT.qxp_Layout 1 9/20/19 10:43 AM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_BOOKS_ALT.qxp_REAL_408_NIGHT 9/25/19 2:25 PM Page 7

34 TV DRAMA

painful for any author. Besides, the director has his own vision, which is more important for the movie. In some cases, the novel can be used for creating a totally new story.”

CREATIVE LICENSE Endemol Shine’s Blomgren observes, “As far as we can, we try to stick to the characters, and then if we want to do major changes, we discuss them with the novelist. Writing a script is very different from writing a novel. It’s quite rare that we would reach out to an author. We’d rather people did what they’re best at.” Some prominent authors are working directly with platforms to develop content—of note, Neil Gaiman with Amazon Studios following the success of Good Omens, and Harlan Coben with Netflix. Author recognition, a book’s sales ﬁgures and the continuity offered by a series of novels are all crucial to deciding which titles to adapt. Ultimately, though, for any successful book-to-TV project, a lot depends on the richness of the story’s central character. This is one reason why the BBC is developing Mr Nice. “Howard Marks is the classic eccentric British anti-hero—and that brings with it a lot of international appeal,” explains Salmon. “Marks is very appealing to young people.” “Finding unique characters is the most important consideration when you’re considering which books to option,” emphasizes Blomgren. “It’s more important in TV than it is in feature films.” Guyonnet agrees: “A good story requires strong characters. We look at location too. The story can be local, but it needs to have global appeal to attract an international audience.”

STICKER SHOCK

Sovtelexport has licensed the eightpart Anna Karenina into numerous markets across the globe.

At STUDIOCANAL, authors are “very involved” in the ﬁrm’s TV adaptations. “Sabri Louatah, whose novels were adapted into Savages, wrote the scripts in collaboration with Rebecca Zlotowski, [Benjamin Charbit] and David Elkaïm,” says Guyonnet. “We believe it is very important to work closely with the original writer, even if the screen version is very different. The author will help retain the essence of the book and what made it a success originally. We never want to move too far away from that.” At Russia Television and Radio, Matyash’s approach is different. “A popular author’s name is deﬁnitely a big marketing plus for the project. With contemporary authors, it can be a very delicate and complicated matter. “A novel and a movie are different art objects. Starting from the script, the changes can be drastic. This can be very

This hyper-competitive market for book adaptations has inevitably resulted in hefty price inflation for the right IP–and there is no sign of this cooling. “The cost of optioning books has gone up faster than house prices,” says BBC Studios’ Salmon. “In under five years, it’s increased tenfold.” Inevitably, bidding wars occur and publishers, agents and in-demand writers are increasingly applying pressure on producers to put substantial development muscle behind projects based on their books. “Their mantra is, ‘You’ve got to be serious about our property,’ ” Salmon explains. “‘If you’re going to pick our title, we want to know something is going to happen and we’re going to charge you for the privilege.’” “You’re investing a huge amount of money before a word of the script is written,” echoes Halliwell. In partnership with Synchronicity Films, DRG won the auction to develop Heather Morris’s bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz, for what is believed to be close to a six-figure sum. “The fact that it was number one on The Times’s best-sellers’ list gave us a degree of comfort that those inflated prices can be worth it,” he adds. Production is expected to start in early 2020. “Optioning book rights has become something of an arms race,” Halliwell concludes. “People are spending vulgar sums of money on securing rights. If Wattpad could give access to stories at a more commercially beneficial rate, it’s going to be worth looking at.”

336 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_RED ARROW STUDIOS.qxp_Layout 1 9/20/19 10:23 AM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_CRIME.qxp_REAL_408_NIGHT 9/25/19 10:43 AM Page 2

36 TV DRAMA

ZDF Enterprises’ Kristina Ohlsson’s Sthlm Requiem. 338 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_CRIME.qxp_REAL_408_NIGHT 9/25/19 2:30 PM Page 4

Killing

Time

Andy Fry spotlights what’s new in the always popular crime-drama genre.

rime dramas have been a staple on broadcaster schedules since the dawn of television. So it’s no wonder that when SVODs started upping their original content game, crime drama was front and center (think Narcos on Netﬂix, Bosch on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+’s upcoming Shantaram). “As the genre grows, so does the range of crime drama coming to market, from one-off TV movies to long-running franchises such as Midsomer Murders, which is currently celebrating over 20 years of success,” says Maartje Horchner, the executive VP of content at all3media international. “Procedurals, particularly those with many episodes, remain popular and provide ﬂexibility to broadcasters who need to be innovative with scheduling,” Horchner adds. Robert Franke, VP of ZDFE.drama at ZDF Enterprises (ZDFE), references his company’s success with German procedurals. “German case-of-the-week crime dramas work well for us internationally. We sell hundreds of episodes to European broadcasters because they know they can schedule them in any order, which is one of the limitations of a limited series with an extended story arc.” The classic example of this is ZDFE’s SOKO crime procedural franchise, which has spawned several popular spinoffs since it launched in 1978. “They are so popular with buyers,” says Franke. “They are entertaining and easy to digest, with a consistent formula that audiences and networks around the world trust.” However, a fundamental shift in the market has been the growth of “bingeable” limited series, of six to ten episodes, at the expense of U.S.-originated case-of-theweek procedurals.

At The Mediapro Studio, which has 30-plus Spanish- and English-language productions on its slate, the focus in the crime-drama space is on “two trends that still have a long way to go: shorter formats and hybrids that will help renew the genre and keep audiences excited,” says Spanish writer and producer Mariano Baselga, a senior development executive at the company. “Procedurals still have the power to bring large audiences to free-to-air, and they allow for reruns. However, our focus will be innovative, serialized dramas.”

BINGE ON Growing demand for binge-viewing opportunities has led to “serialized crime shows like Baptiste and Hidden, a serial made up of interweaving narratives linked by a single crime,” Horchner says. “Both can be broadcast weekly or enjoyed as a box set.” In Horchner’s opinion, the evolution of crime drama also includes some increasingly innovative storytelling methods. “Liar lets the audience see the crime from the perspective of the victim. Meanwhile, Blood, a psychological thriller about family and memory, is told from the point of view of the perpetrator’s daughter.” Carrie Stein, executive VP of global scripted series at Kew Media Group, thinks that the HBO breakout hit Big Little Lies has caused a shiver of excitement across the TV industry. “It’s a show that has a crime at the heart of its narrative, but it is so much more than a crime series. That’s how I’m looking at my development slate right now. There is crime in there, but explored from a different angle to traditional shows.” María-Jesús Pérez, international sales director at Spanish public broadcaster RTVE, believes that characters have

10/19 WORLD SCREEN 339

TV DRAMA 37

DRAMA_1019_CRIME.qxp_REAL_408_NIGHT 9/25/19 10:45 AM Page 5

38 TV DRAMA

Hidden is a Welsh drama that has sold widely for all3media international.

become more critical in crime dramas, “and their personal storylines are interwoven with the cases. Crime resolution is no longer the only plot that matters; developing the real life of the characters is important because it adds authenticity.” Horchner also stresses that “the best crime series have a relatable detective, whether that is a police officer like Inspector George Gently or the London PR whiz turned Cotswold-dwelling amateur sleuth in Agatha Raisin.” Caroline Torrance, the head of scripted at Banijay Rights, points out that “audiences love crime dramas that have strong characters—but also a strong sense of place. In Hierro, the director’s aim was to connect the landscape of El Hierro, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, with the intensity of the storyline.” Torrance makes a similar point about The Gulf, a six-part German-New Zealand thriller that will be launched at MIPCOM. “The Gulf is set on a beautiful island with lush vineyards, white sand beaches and olive groves—where location plays a big role in the story. It is about the moral disintegration of Detective Jess Savage as she investigates crimes in Waiheke Island, New Zealand.”

SCANDI SCANDALS It was the global success of Nordic noir crime dramas that paved the way for content creators and audiences to think differently about location, Torrance says. ZDFE was one of the ﬁrst players outside Scandinavia to recognize the potential of Nordic noir, backing series such as The Killing, Blue Eyes, Thicker Than Water and Arne Dahl. One of its newer offerings is the book-based Kristina Ohlsson’s Sthlm Requiem. “These days, Nordic shows remain key to our crime portfolio, although the challenge is always to move the formula on,” Franke observes. “We have a show called Before We Die, which is selling well despite not being a typical Nordic noir series. It centers on a woman in her [early 60s], which gives it a different emotional feel.”

Franke says ZDFE has another offbeat Nordic noir series, based around Jens Lapidus’s acclaimed novel Top Dog, and is also seeking to expand its portfolio into English-language crime drama. “And as an alternative to the bleak world of Nordic noir drama, we are pushing back the boundaries of dramas from other territories,” Franke adds. “There is deﬁnitely a demand for a kind of lighter, blue-sky drama that is not all about bodies buried in snow. For example, we are talking to potential partners in South Africa, where there is a lot of creative talent.”

BLUE-SKY APPEAL With one new show set against the majestic backdrop of St. Petersburg, Kew Media’s Stein stresses that “you have to have some distinctive elements now, more than just a crime.” However, extending the point made by ZDFE’s Franke, she says she is not so interested in relentlessly bleak dramas but “more in sexy blue-sky thrillers in exotic locations. There have been some terriﬁc series like Trapped that transport you to an icy enclosed world, but I’m looking more along the lines of Riviera than Nordic noir.” Stein isn’t quite ready to discuss details of her crime slate just yet, but she says one advanced concept is a whodunnit set among a quirky community on Staten Island, New York. “There’s something unique and complicated about that community that we want to tap into. For example, it’s known as being home to a high number of 9/11 widows. And it has an interesting mix of immigrants.” A new sense of daring in choice of location has not, however, changed the basic fact that broadcasters and platforms like to invest in known IP where it is available. “They are keen to acquire crime dramas based on highly successful books as there is a ready-made fan base,” says Banijay’s Torrance. “Rebecka Martinsson, produced by Yellow Bird for TV4 Sweden, is a riveting drama series based on Åsa Larsson’s best-selling crime novels.”

340 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_ZDF.qxp_Layout 1 9/11/19 3:17 PM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_CRIME.qxp_REAL_408_NIGHT 9/25/19 2:40 PM Page 6

40 TV DRAMA

NTV’s Beyond Death merges the crime and supernatural genres.

There is also a lot of interest in reboot or “origin” stories, says Torrance, who points out that Netﬂix has ordered the six-part Young Wallander, about the early years of iconic detective Kurt Wallander.

BACK FOR MORE

[viewers] know all the particulars of the crime, and besides it helps the screenwriters to better define the characters and the situations.” “They interest audiences, as we can all tell by the rise in true-crime documentaries,” adds Mediapro’s Baselga. “As the volume of scripted shows increases and we are bombarded by all kinds of imaginable plots and twists, to have a real story to tell makes you stand out from the rest.” Timur Weinstein, general producer at Russia’s NTV Broadcasting Company, says viewers are “excited to watch stories that show real-life situations. So, a lot of our projects are based on true stories. The basis of the crime series Death Highway is a story about a gang attacking drivers on a highway. The Consultant is based on the biography of one of the most notorious killers of the 20th century, Andrei Chikatilo.”

Horchner at all3media international can also point to a high-proﬁle reboot, the three-part series Van der Valk. “There is a continuing need for 90-minute procedural crime dramas, so we are pleased to answer that demand. The program is being shot on location in Amsterdam. It has already been presold to ITV in the U.K., France Télévisions and NPO in the Netherlands.” There’s even scope for shows that build crime narratives around familiar characters from history, notes Torrance. “Casanova Investigates is in development at Banijay Studios Italy. Set in 18th century Venice, adventurer Giacomo Casanova is entrusted by a female secret society to investigate murders whose victims are women. Casanova’s mission to avenge female victims touches on the issue of violence against women, something that still happens everywhere today.” And, of course, contemporary crimes are ripe for adaptation, especially following the recent success of FX in the U.S. with its O.J. Simpson and Gianni Versace limited series. RTVE’s Pérez is relatively upbeat about the prospects for basing shows on real-life crime stories. “They can make the story more attractive for the local audience because the potential Estoy Vivo (I’m Alive) has been a strong seller for Spanish public broadcaster RTVE. 342 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_KEW MEDIA GROUP.qxp_Layout 1 9/23/19 11:45 AM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_CRIME.qxp_REAL_408_NIGHT 9/25/19 2:44 PM Page 7

42 TV DRAMA

Location is central to the storyline of Banijay Rights’ Spanish crime thriller Hierro.

At all3media international, meanwhile, Horchner references The Interrogation, “a verbatim drama based on the transcripts of police interviews of a suspected murderer. This authentic form of storytelling sourced every word from real interviews.” Kew Media’s Stein, however, doesn’t show too much interest in real-life crime stories. “They tend to focus on older stories that the public has forgotten about. Possibly that’s because they present a few legal challenges, or maybe it’s because non-scripted is strong in the truecrime area. But it’s not an area that is especially prominent on our development slate right now.”

MAKING THE CUT Despite the popularity of the crime-drama genre, Stein says it is not an easy one to get right. “We get shown a lot of crime stories—and often the writing is really good. But it takes more than that to make something pop. You’re not going to have global success with a crime drama unless you have something really special.” RTVE’s Pérez also acknowledges that it is difficult to stand out. RTVE’s response, she says, has been to innovate with hybrid shows like Estoy Vivo (I’m Alive). “It’s a perfect combination of sci-ﬁ and authentic detective drama.” This approach has paid off internationally, says Pérez. “Estoy Vivo has been sold to different channels and platforms in LatAm, the U.S. and Europe, and we have agreements for the format to be adapted in the U.S., France and Italy.” NTV’s Weinstein agrees that “viewers prefer mixed-genre stories to pure crime. For example, Shadow Behind has crime and melodrama features, and Beyond Death combines the crime and [paranormal] genres.” “You need a distinctive voice, a personality that stands out from the rest and makes it unique,” adds Mediapro’s Baselga. “This, together with a good story, is the key for shows to cross borders.” Getting a show greenlit internationally is only part of the challenge. Even more challenging, says Baselga, is securing a renewal. “The higher the concept, the bolder

the bet, the harder it will be to keep up with the premise,” he warns. “That is always the challenge. The best solution to that is good writing.” Spain has become, like the Nordic territories, a hot scripted market, attracting the interest of several international distributors. Russian producers like NTV are similarly looking to raise their profile in the global drama sector. “It’s important for us to find stories that are interesting to audiences in different territories,” Weinstein says. “We are constantly looking for ideas that can be implemented in any country.” He is confident that NTV can compete effectively. “Due to the tough competition in Russia, the level of production is really high,” he explains. As for partnering with overseas firms, Weinstein says, “We are just entering the co-pro market. A key consideration for us is that Russian viewers prefer watching projects in Russian.”

AIDING AND ABETTING As audiences have become more receptive to the use of exotic locations as backdrops for crime dramas, the potential for coproductions has increased, says Torrance at Banijay. The result has been a steady stream of fish-out-of-water detective stories, cross-border culture clashes and groups of international citizens fighting for their lives in remote locations. As Torrance points out, Hierro, The Gulf and next year’s GR5 are all co-pros. Horchner at all3media international adds that crime dramas “have such a broad appeal, there is a great deal of scope to coproduce and co-develop series.” “The trend is currently to co-produce all content,” says RTVE’s Pérez. “It makes it possible to have more money and that means a better product that can reach global audiences.” Whether or not a show is financed across borders, the end goal is the same—coming up with a concept that will travel around the globe. “The globalization of audiences is here to stay,” Mediapro’s Baselga says. “So even if one single operator finances a show completely on its own, they are looking at not one but all markets.”

344 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_INCENDO.qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 12:53 PM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_NEWVOICES.qxp_EUR_1006_ELLENDER 9/25/19 2:47 PM Page 1

44 TV DRAMA

MarVista’s The Year of Spectacular Men.

New Voices The race to discover and foster fresh talent is on. By Chelsea Regan

an one embark on a discussion about new voices without taking a moment to mention the stratospheric rise of Phoebe Waller-Bridge? In 2016, Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, adapted from her onewoman play, earned raves after airing on BBC Three. It found an international audience on Amazon Prime and earned a second season that dominated the Primetime Emmys this year. As for Killing Eve, the series Waller-Bridge wrote and produced for BBC America based on Luke Jennings’ Codename Villanelle, it took her proﬁle and that of its stars to new heights. Next for the now new-ish voice of Waller-Bridge is a writing credit on the latest addition to the James Bond franchise (No Time to Die), an overall deal at Amazon Studios and Run, a series she’s producing and starring in for HBO alongside Vicky Jones, which has Entertainment One (eOne) behind it. Of Waller-Bridge, Polly Williams, eOne’s head of scripted drama, says: “She’s rocketed into the outer space of brilliance.” While Williams is excited about Run and the military thriller Tenacity, a show eOne is doing for ITV with Bad Wolf, the company is, as ever, on the hunt for more content from creators on the rise. “We’re in an environment now where people are taking more risks,” says Williams. “If a younger writer has done a

stand-out spec or a fantastic short or a brilliant play, people are much more quick to get a jump on that and take that writer on.” Following a similar trajectory to Waller-Bridge is Ambreen Razia, whose one-woman play The Diary of a Hounslow Girl became a pilot from CPL Productions for BBC Three called Hounslow Diaries, co-funded by Red Arrow Studios. Carlo Dusi, executive VP of commercial strategy for scripted at Red Arrow Studios International, says, “Being proactive and being plugged-in is important. We try to make sure that, as a team, we keep an eye on everything that’s coming out— ﬁlm, television, even stage work here in the U.K.”

TALENT, TALENT, TALENT As Red Arrow’s Dusi points out, the bigger players are scooping up top-level talent with exclusive deals, shrinking the pool for others to choose from. One way to grow the talent pool is by adding to it those who are on the rise. “Being in the medium-size range of studio level, we see it as a great opportunity to focus our energies on the younger, up-and-coming, newer and fresher talent,” says Dusi. Keshet International (KI) is shoring up its talent reserves through a strategy that combines bidding on the right talent and being creative in sourcing it. “Thinking outside of the box

346 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_INTELLECTA.qxp_Layout 1 9/18/19 10:18 AM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_NEWVOICES.qxp_EUR_1006_ELLENDER 9/25/19 2:54 PM Page 2

46 TV DRAMA

Swedish actresses Sofia Helin, Anja Lundqvist, Alexandra Rapaport and Julia Dufvenius teamed to create Honour, which is distributed by Eccho Rights.

in how you source talent is a big challenge for us and other media companies moving forward,” says Atar Dekel, KI’s VP of global drama. For Stockholm, a drama that KI represents based on an Israeli book, the company went to the book’s author, Noa Yedlin, and brought her on board as a writer on the series. “Coming from such a small market, we know how to take chances,” says Dekel. At MarVista Entertainment, the state of the industry is proving to be a boon for its business model. “We’re now able to connect the dots even more speciﬁcally between the talent that we want to give an opportunity to and the perfect platform for them to get their content on,” says Hannah Pillemer, head of creative affairs. Fredrik af Malmborg, managing director at Eccho Rights, can see the bright side too. “If you are a good showrunner or writer, there are lots of new models to explore. And we are working actively to support key talent to ﬁnd new business models,” he says.

AGENTS OF CHANGE Alongside the new crop of talent are agents eager to sign them. “There are a lot of younger agents now, who are going out of their way to find young talent that is just emerging out of film school and ambitious and hungry,” eOne’s Williams observes. In addition to going through agents and managers, MarVista has another valued recruitment tactic—its reputation. “We kind of act as a farm team for new talent; we’ve given so many directors their first or second feature and the same with writers. We’ve been able to generate great word-of-mouth throughout the creative community,” says Pillemer. She adds, “A lot of actors and actresses that we’re working with are now looking to take more creative control. We have a great opportunity in place for them to come in and say, We’ll take a chance on you; we’ll have you write and produce your first feature. We’ll have you direct your first feature.” (The company worked with actress Lea Thompson on her feature film directorial debut, The Year of Spectacular Men.) A quartet of top Swedish actresses teamed up to create Heder (Honour), a title in Eccho Rights’ catalog, serving as executive producers and starring in it. Eccho Rights has sold the Viaplay commission to RTL in Germany and VRT in Belgium, among other markets.

With Scandi drama going strong, distributors are eager to get into business with creatives across the region. But, in this competitive climate, studios and distributors are keener than ever to source new talent from outside of the more traditional markets. Eccho Rights has recently taken on titles from SIC in Portugal and has long been in the Russian market, distributing such titles as Trotsky and Silver Spoon. It also represents Servant of the People, a Ukrainian series about a teacher who becomes president, which stars comedian-turned-real-life-president Volodymyr Zelensky. “We’re looking at emerging talent out of the European market,” says Williams. “I think Spain is a very exciting place right now because there’s a lot of talent coming out of there. We’re working with French showrunners on something, we’re working with an Italian production company. We’re looking at brilliant content worldwide.” MarVista has a partnership with Hemisphere Media Group in Latin America and is having conversations with producers in France and Germany.

SUPPORT SYSTEMS When it comes to aligning with new talent, some companies, including MarVista, are eager to ink overall deals with some of their favored producers. “First-look and development is also something that we’re actively exploring now,” says Pillemer. “It’s kind of all on the table at the moment. If you’re going to cast this wide net, you might ﬁnd the next Ryan Coogler, and you better lock him in.” At eOne, Williams says, “We have big-scale [deals], some small boutique ones, deals with actors, managers, writers.” And once eOne signs talent, it supports them. “We have a lot of really brilliant creative executives who can do in-theweeds development and be a source of support to writers and producers,” she says. Once the project becomes more developed, the company can help with casting and ﬁnding directors as well. Dekel sees KI as an “incubator” for new talent, where they “not only have access to our group of very seasoned executives, but we also offer a unique hands-on approach when it comes to development,” she says. “We can come in early. We can come in late. And, if it’s stories that have some relevance to Israel, there’s always our channel” as a potential commissioning broadcaster, she says. The market, as competitive as it might be, is a breeding ground for opportunity—for the undiscovered to get their voices heard and for studios and distributors to be the ones to lift them up. Though a challenge, the downsides to it seem to pale in comparison to the upsides. “What’s so great about the creative community right now and the time that we’re in is that people are realizing that diversity in storytelling is working,” says Pillemer. “People want to see different kinds of stories and the best way you can do that is by really nurturing talent that we haven’t yet heard from.”

348 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_RUSSIA TV RADIO.qxp_Layout 1 9/20/19 10:09 AM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_MARKGATISS.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 10:49 AM Page 1

48 TV DRAMA

350 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_MARKGATISS.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 4:29 PM Page 2

TV DRAMA 49

Mark Gatiss

ark Gatiss is quite the renaissance man. You’ve seen him in Game of Thrones, Wolf Hall and Sherlock—the acclaimed BBC drama that he co-created with Steven Moffat—among numerous other shows. He is behind several installments of BBC Four’s Christmas ghost stories, including the upcoming M. R. James adaptation, Martin’s Close. He has starred in a slew of radio and stage plays and written Doctor Who novels and a biography of film director James Whale. This August, Gatiss wrapped filming on Dracula, his latest collaboration with Moffat, which is destined for BBC One in the U.K. and Netflix everywhere else. Gatiss speaks to TV Drama about putting a new spin on Bram Stoker’s iconic character, his long-running collaboration with Moffat and what he misses most about playing Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s older, powerful brother, who may or may not actually be running the country. By Mansha Daswani TV DRAMA: How did the idea come about for you and Steven Moffat to do a new Dracula? GATISS: It has a strange genesis because it’s been in the works, not definitively, for quite a long time. We had just started shooting series three of Sherlock and we came back from an awards ceremony, and I had a picture on my phone of Benedict Cumberbatch’s silhouette. I showed it to Ben Stephenson, who was then the head of drama [commissioning] at the BBC, and said, “It looks like Dracula, doesn’t it?” And he said, “Do you want to do it?” That was literally the beginning of it. That’s two drama commissioners ago. It only really came to fruition when we’d finished the last series of Sherlock. We thought, maybe we should do Dracula if they still want it. And they did. That’s how it started. TV DRAMA: What was your approach to retelling this wellknown story? GATISS: It’s a Sherlock approach, except that it’s period, in that we wanted to look at the story, which has been told a lot, and see what it is that people love about it and still respond to. Go back to the essence of it and find out what worked and what we could do [that was] different. TV DRAMA: How did you go about finding your lead? GATISS: It was similar to Sherlock in that we didn’t want anyone with any baggage. Benedict kind of came out of left field for everybody. We wanted to try to do a similar thing. As with Sherlock, there was a long list of potentials but we knew the sort of thing we were after, and then Kate Rhodes James, the casting director, [asked if we had] seen the film The Square.

And we watched it and Dracula walked on! [Laughs] We wanted someone with dark good looks, a kind of leading-man presence, and not British. Claes [Bang] has a fantastically light touch. And yet, of course, he looks like three James Bonds all at the same time! He can be very scary and very brooding, but he also has a lovely twinkle to him. If someone has been around for 500 years, they’d have a detached humor about the world! TV DRAMA: Why do you think vampires remain such an obsession for so many people? GATISS: First, it’s a very old tradition. It’s in virtually every culture, which is interesting. Secondly, it’s the character of Dracula himself, the apotheosis of the seductive outsider. Literally someone tapping at your window that you shouldn’t let in but you sort of want to. There’s a strange and fantastically unhealthy thing going on there about the seductive nature of death and everything that is forbidden. There’s something really interesting about what vampires mean to different generations. We’ve been through the Twilight phase—the gentle vegetarian vampires! I think we’re trying to bring back a much more full-blooded—no pun intended—vampire. You can look back, and people have written books about what [the symbolism] means. Do they represent cataclysm? Do they represent fear of the East, of the outsider? Do they represent corruption from within? You can make it be about whatever you want it to be about! [Laughs] That might be one of the reasons it’s survived. TV DRAMA: You used the three-episode format with great success on Sherlock. What’s appealing about this model?

10/19 WORLD SCREEN 351

DRAMA_1019_MARKGATISS.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 10:53 AM Page 3

50 TV DRAMA

make things I’d like to watch. That’s a good yardstick to go by—something I’d watch on a bank holiday Monday. TV DRAMA: Did knowing that Netﬂix would position it as a “global original” factor into how you approached telling the story? GATISS: You must never do that because otherwise, you’re immediately self-editing. You’re trying to second-guess things. Nobody knows why something works or doesn’t. We had no idea Sherlock would be the international sensation that it is. You couldn’t predict it. If you could, you’d bottle it and do it again! If you were to write things around, I wonder if this will be popular in the Indian subcontinent, you’d go crazy. We make what we want to make and see what happens. TV DRAMA: You’re also working on a new ghost story for BBC Four. How did those come about? GATISS: This is my fourth one. I’m a huge fan of Christmas ghost stories. It used to be an annual tradition on the BBC and it’s come back patchily over the years. Again, it’s what I want to watch. I did an M. R. James story in 2013, and last year I did an original story called The Dead Room with Simon Callow. This year I have another M. R. James, with Peter Capaldi, called Martin’s Close. It’s a quick shoot—it only took four days. I did it right at the end of Dracula—just because I didn’t have enough to do! [Laughs] TV DRAMA: When you’re acting in other people’s shows, do you ever ﬁnd yourself wanting to rewrite the scripts? GATISS: Yes, but I have a great deal of respect for the writer, and I know that look in someone’s eyes when you bring up something—because I have that look myself! It is very frustrating to have quibbles over a line you’ve been working on for 12 months, and which you know [the actor] read the night before! When the boot is on the other foot, I’m extremely careful and generous, as it were, about that. Because I know what it feels like to be on the other side. Claes Bang stars as Bram Stoker’s iconic vampire in the new Dracula for BBC One and Netflix.

GATISS: A Dracula film is usually roughly 90 minutes long. So we have three. As with Sherlock, it’s both faithful and faithless at the same time. We’ve done a lot of stuff from the novel, and we’ve done a lot of new stuff and ignored some stuff. It’s a wonderful palette to play with because you have a lot of time to tell your story. We treat them as films. We promise, we’ll do the three best Dracula films you didn’t know you wanted! [Laughs] TV DRAMA: How did your creative collaboration with Steven Moffat start? GATISS: We’ve been friends for 20 odd years. When we were both working on the first series of the rebooted Doctor Who in 2005, we were always traveling together to Cardiff. We were on a train and we started talking about Sherlock Holmes and how much we loved the Basil Rathbone films. The West was in the middle of a new war in Afghanistan and I said, “It’s funny that in the first story, A Study in Scarlet, Doctor Watson is invalided out of service in Afghanistan.” We looked at each other and I said, “Someone should do that again.” And that’s how that began. We’ve been doing that on and off for ten years—it’s been ten years since we made the pilot. And then Dracula is the next thing along. We have a shared worldview of storytelling and we both love things that are fun. I like to 352 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

TV DRAMA: Are there other classic characters you’d like to reboot? GATISS: I know it looks like a reboot agenda, but it isn’t! I always want to do something new. Sometimes it’s hard. If you’re trying to get a brand-new detective off the ground or a brand-new vampire, it’s difficult. It’s not impossible, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying, but it is harder. One of the reasons I did a new ghost story last year was that I don’t want it to be just M. R. James [adaptations]. I wanted to keep refreshing it. If I do more, I’d like to bring in some other stories to adapt or write some more new ones. We’re only nostalgic for these things because they were once new. There are so many sequels and franchises dominating the ﬁlm business, we need to make sure we tell some new stories. Otherwise, it’s just an exercise in recycling. TV DRAMA: Do you miss playing Mycroft? GATISS: I do, but what I miss at the moment is the idea that Mycroft might be running the country. I’d be really, really reassured if there was someone like Mycroft running the country. There desperately isn’t! Otherwise, we wouldn’t be in this bloody mess. However, I am prepared to step in at any moment and address the nation to calm people.

DRAMA_1019_MADD TV f.qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 7:02 PM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_GRIFFITHS.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 11:30 AM Page 1

52 TV DRAMA

354 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_GRIFFITHS.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 3:11 PM Page 2

TV DRAMA 53

Rachel Griffiths

achel Griffiths had already made a name for herself on television and in film in her native Australia before landing her breakout U.S. role as Brenda Chenowith in HBO’s Six Feet Under. She followed that up with five seasons as Sarah Walker on Greg Berlanti’s Brothers & Sisters. Griffiths continues to move seamlessly between television and film and between U.S. and Australian productions. Her latest is the ABC Australia commission Total Control (also known as Black B*tch), which she co-created, executive produces and stars in. The timely political drama focuses on an Indigenous woman thrust into the limelight and the embattled prime minister looking By Mansha Daswani to use her as part of a power play. TV DRAMA: I understand you had the seed of the idea for the show a long time ago. GRIFFITHS: I had the seed of an idea, but it’s a bit like saying I have an idea for a superhero who has spider powers! I had a title and pitch, if you like, about our superheroine, an Indigenous senator who is helicoptered in and brings down the government. But the extremely complex fleshing out was not mine. In my original thinking, there was no female PM, so [my character] didn’t exist. I had 5 percent of a germination of an idea! I pitched the title and a very brief logline to Darren [Dale, at Blackfella Films]. They had been working on their own Indigenous-led political project. Unusually, and similarly to me, they wanted to do it without satire. So many political shows in Australia are either satire or biopics. I guess not many people are interested in the drama of the political sphere. Both Miranda Dear [Blackfella’s head of drama] and Darren were committed to the idea that that could be very fertile ground. What my pitch did for them was shift it to the female and raise the relevancy for them. In my original scheming, subconsciously there was something about that title that came out of a sense that women are so often given language and interrogated or held to standards that are about undermining their legitimacy. So Boris Johnson is the legitimate heir to the Prime Ministership but Theresa May, who had a great sense of diligence and worked very hard to bring her colleagues with her, is seen as illegitimate. Mostly because she is female and somewhat swotty. She can’t prance about with an entitled air! We’re exploring those things. I read a really good piece talking about a radical flavor of the anti-parliamentarianism that is flaring up amongst our democracies. [The show] sits in the political climate of this moment. TV DRAMA: That’s what I loved about watching the first episode: It felt deeply rooted in Australian culture and

politics and touched on themes that I feel like we’re all dealing with in some shape or form, wherever we are. GRIFFITHS: There are real questions about how to renew our democracies. Democracies are often weakened in the name of the people. So one must be careful that in the course of changing the mechanisms and mores you use to renew democracy, we’re not, in fact, weakening it. Brexit is an extraordinary example of a very simplistic vote that was put to the people and that very simplistic vote is now being used to hold parliamentary democracy hostage. It’s a vote that is hard to account for because there were so many lies upon which it was predicated. I think this show is quite brave in exploring the outsider in politics, the push to make our representatives more representative. I’m sure there are more Etonians in Parliament in England than there are women of color. The notion of the outsider coming in to be uncompromising is also very dangerous. I’ll bring down the government if my party votes this way on something. So the very idea of a broad church is under assault. It’s a zero-sum game moment. You’re with us or against us. It’s quite terrifying. TV DRAMA: Deborah Mailman is great as incoming Senator Alex Irving. Was she in mind early in the process? GRIFFITHS: It’s the kind of a show where you want to write for a talent who you know exists. Deborah has won more awards than any other Australian actress and has never been given a lead. The extraordinary thing about Deb is that she is one of those actors where the audience is prepared to walk in her shoes. You can have actors who are really spiky and controversial, and they incite a different feeling within us. We might admire their choices, but you’re not empathizing with them, if you like. And knowing we had Deb, it just gave us permission to keep stretching what we could ask of the audience because we felt she could take the audience a long way.

10/19 WORLD SCREEN 355

DRAMA_1019_GRIFFITHS.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 3:15 PM Page 3

54 TV DRAMA

participating is quite established, and for good reason. I’m very inspired by many of my colleagues like Nicole [Kidman] and Reese [Witherspoon] and others who have been doing it. It’s becoming quite normal in television. TV DRAMA: Are you finding that there are more interesting roles in TV rather than film now, especially for women? GRIFFITHS: That’s certainly why I made the move from primarily doing independent films to television in 2001 with Six Feet Under. At the time, that was quite radical. But as I said at the time, the best script that arrived in my fax machine, as happened then, was the pilot episode of Six Feet Under. It was just such an extraordinary thing, one of the most extraordinary things I had ever read. [Black B*tch] is a great example of having a very complex female character who is both flawed and strong, with six hours to pull it off. In television, a character can be developed in a way that film finds very difficult. I think there’s a great joy for an audience watching a particular actor get tortured over a series! [Laughs] There’s something hugely satisfying, whether that’s six episodes or six years. It’s quite wondrous watching people grow up and gain agency. TV DRAMA: I still think Six Feet Under has the best series finale ever written. GRIFFITHS: It’s inarguable that the last 15 minutes of Six Feet Under is possibly the best 15 minutes of cinema, whether that be television or film, ever.

Rachel Griffiths stars in and co-created Black B*tch (a.k.a Total Control), which is being launched at MIPCOM by Keshet International.

TV DRAMA: How did you prepare for your role as Prime Minister Rachel Anderson? Were there any real-life politicians you took inspiration from? GRIFFITHS: I was watching Theresa May quite a lot. I was interested in how women behave under pressure. I had just watched episode six and I wanted to re-voice a few sections where I felt I was a bit weak, [but then I thought], is it just apparent that she is a dead woman walking from the start of the episode? I wondered if that came from my digesting Theresa May’s ﬁnal months. She went in with conﬁdence thinking she would create consensus and hadn’t quite factored in the recklessness of the hard-liners to have their will, whether that be of the people or not. So yes, I studied her. And [former Australian Prime Minister] Julia Gillard. But because she is a conservative and a true daughter of the party, Theresa May is the model of the centrist, good swotty girl. Brightest in class, and didn’t get there on privilege but on merit. TV DRAMA: How did you juggle the multiple hats of cocreator, executive producer and star? GRIFFITHS: I actually think it’s the perfect combination! As an actor, you feel such huge pride that you’re prepared to give everything; there’s that skin in the game. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do to keep seeing the show do well around the world. In many ways, the cocreator job is fairly much done by the time the actor work starts. To me, directing-acting is the grand riddle that makes no sense, even though many extraordinary people seem to pull it off! The history of EPing and 356 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

TV DRAMA: We have to talk about the title. ABC is billing it as Total Control. GRIFFITHS: A national broadcaster has extra sensitivities, especially in an age when it is constantly under attack for being a competitor to for-profit networks who take umbrage about its existence. But also, we are engaging in quite a few outdoor campaigns and appreciate that that title may be difficult to contextualize in an outdoor advertising environment. There’s a lot of talk about it being a title of reclamation. For me, it’s less reclamation and really a title designed to make white people feel uncomfortable and be aware. If white people are uncomfortable with the title, imagine how women of color feel when that is what they are called. So in no way are we trying to normalize it. And in the context of the show, it’s only hurtful. TV DRAMA: I’ve been watching When They See Us on Netflix and wondering if that kind of show would make it on broadcast television in the U.S. today. How important is it for you that your show is airing on a national public broadcaster in Australia? GRIFFITHS: I haven’t given up on the broadcasters. The seminal television of my life was Roots. So I don’t think mainstream network television can’t contribute in a significant way to the national conversation. I’m thrilled that this is on the national broadcaster [in Australia]. I certainly think this would not have been made by any of our free-to-air networks. We also wanted it to be seen by the world. The themes it touches on are global. It does one of those rare things where it’s so true of place, it’s so specifically indigenous to Australia, and it has the capacity to resonate elsewhere.

DRAMA_1019 VIACOM 18 - INDIACASTf.qxp_Layout 1 9/20/19 10:05 AM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_DUVERNAY_ALT3.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 11:01 AM Page 1

56 TV DRAMA

TV DRAMA: When did you decide you wanted to make a drama about the Central Park Five? What kinds of research did you have to do? DUVERNAY: I was invited to tell the story by Raymond Santana, one of the five. He contacted me on social media and invited me to talk with him about the story. I did and fell in love with the guys and decided to take on the truthtelling involved in this story. There has been so much injustice, so many lies, so much misinformation. So over a period of four years, I went about interviewing them extensively, their families as well, researching every shred of press, also confidential materials and public court documents that I could get my hands on. I assembled a writers’ room to work off of my outline. I wrote each of the episodes in concert with a writer I selected. TV DRAMA: It’s a lot to cover in four episodes. What was the approach to constructing each episode arc? DUVERNAY: When writing a big story like this, it’s always a challenge to figure out what the beginning, middle and end are. I looked at it as phases of the case. The first episode deals with police aggression, the arrest and precinct behavior. The second deals with court and bail and judges and defense attorneys and prosecutors. The third deals with post-incarceration and juvenile detention. And the fourth deals with incarceration itself. Breaking it up through the different levers of the case gave us an outline, a structure, a guidepost, and we began telling stories within each of those buckets. TV DRAMA: How did you go about assembling your writers’ room?

Ava DuVernay By Mansha Daswani

our years in the works, When They See Us earned a whopping 16 Emmy nominations, including outstanding limited series. The gut-wrenching Netflix miniseries tells the stories of Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise, unjustly convicted on rape and assault charges in the notorious 1989 Central Park jogger case when they were just teenagers. When They See Us was directed and co-written by Ava DuVernay, who has emerged as one of the most important voices in Hollywood. She has a multi-million-dollar-overall deal at Warner Bros., a filmography that includes Selma (nominated for a best picture Oscar) and 13th (a documentary about mass incarceration that also earned an Oscar nomination), and an expanding slate of TV shows, including OWN’s recently renewed Queen Sugar. DuVernay talks to TV Drama about telling the Central Park Five’s harrowing stories and championing diverse voices in film and television. 358 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DUVERNAY: Hand-picked folks that I admired. Robin Swicord was the ﬁrst person I called. She’s a writing mentor of mine. I actually wrote Selma at her house. She encouraged me early on in my career when I was just writing. I trusted her, and she eventually became a co-EP on the project. Attica Locke is a novelist-turned-screenwriter. I loved her voice. She had a lot of experience in legal story and running through paperwork and trying to decipher cases. So she was perfect. And then Michael Starrbury is a writer I had been working with on two other scripts. We’re in total synch in what we do. With the three of them, I was able to sit down with a partner, look across the table from someone who I trusted, who was as passionate as I was, and had a lot of talent. That’s how we did it. TV DRAMA: The entire cast is fantastic, but those young actors, in particular, are phenomenal. How did you work with them to prepare them for the roles they were playing?

DRAMA_1019_DUVERNAY_ALT3.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 11:01 AM Page 2

TV DRAMA 57

DUVERNAY: The biggest thing we had to do, beyond the usual work, was bring the boys up to speed on the case, and then go beyond the facts of the case. [We were] trying to help them get inside the case in a more intimate way. So putting it into context of some of the current cases they are familiar with. And taking them through exercises that allowed them to place themselves in [the case]. And then ﬁnally meeting their counterparts, meeting the man they’d be playing, looking in his eyes and letting him tell them stories. We did that with each boy. I felt it was very effective. TV DRAMA: Talk about the importance of being able to tell this story on Netflix. DUVERNAY: It’s the exposure. It’s like nothing you can get elsewhere. [I made] a $100-plus million film for Disney and it wasn’t distributed in as many places and territories and countries. It wasn’t exposed to as many people as this was, in their own language, in their own home. This is the kind of film that I don’t think people would necessarily go to the theater for. But they will definitely sit in the safety and comfort of their own home and tackle some of the tougher subject matter and cry alone and ask questions and turn off and take a break and come back. The platform allowed for the perfect confluence of circumstances for folks to really take it in and feel it deeply. TV DRAMA: Let’s talk about Queen Sugar. How did you decide to bring the Natalie Baszile book to television? DUVERNAY: This was another invitation, by Oprah Winfrey. There were two or three books she was thinking about. [She asked,] Do any of them interest you? Queen Sugar, the idea of images of black people

on land, dealing with ideas of property and society and culture and identity, captured my imagination. I’d never adapted a book before; [I was attracted to] the idea you can go in and take seeds of what works in a text and then adorn it with other things to allow it to grow for years and years. It really felt like taking seeds and watering them, so it’s been a beautiful time on that show. It’s my pride and joy. TV DRAMA: Queen Sugar has an all-female team of directors. What’s been your approach to building the team there? DUVERNAY: The opportunity given to me by Oprah’s network and Warner Bros. was to make the show in my likeness, which is people of color, women of all kinds. Our crew is very inclusive, our directors are all women, our writers’ room looks like the United Nations. Our crew over-indexes in department heads of color and women department heads. That’s everything from the editing room to the grip to the costume design to the production design to the casting. You have black women making a show about themselves, and that is something that we don’t often get the opportunity to do. I’m honored to have been given that opportunity. TV DRAMA: What’s it been like working with Oprah? DUVERNAY: She gives me the freedom to create and to explore and she gives me the power to make those creations and explorations become a reality. It’s been an incredible working relationship. TV DRAMA: You’re so engaged with your fans on Twitter, especially around Queen Sugar. Why has that been important for you? 10/19 WORLD SCREEN 359

When They See Us on Netflix earned 16 Emmy nominations this year.

DRAMA_1019_DUVERNAY_ALT3.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 11:02 AM Page 3

58 TV DRAMA

Queen Sugar recently landed a fifth-season renewal on OWN.

DUVERNAY: Twitter is an opportunity to enter a room and talk with people. When I get on, that’s what I think about every day. It doesn’t keep me in isolation in my own world as a director going in and out of editing rooms and sets and in my own head. I force myself to get on there and read different people’s opinions, hear different people’s voices. I’ve learned so much from hearing from people other than myself. I’ve learned a lot from people like me. It allows me to remember the voices that I carry with me into boardrooms and editing rooms and sets. I’ve really embraced it in that way. I find it fascinating, and creepy, but more than anything it’s a room with a lot of conversations going on, and I like to talk, so it’s perfect for me! TV DRAMA: In terms of your journey from publicist to director and writer, when were you confident enough in your skills to be able to say, This is what I want to do full time? DUVERNAY: It didn’t come from confidence; it came from really being clear that it was the time to step out into the gap and take a risk. It was brave and unknowing, but not confidence. The confidence didn’t come until a long time later, and that’s always still an ongoing muscle that has to be exercised to acquire and keep confidence. But overall, when I started, it was just about giving it a try. TV DRAMA: How are you positioning your collective, ARRAY? DUVERNAY: It’s an advocacy collective and our goal is to disrupt every system that marginalizes people out. 360 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

We’ve distributed 28 films by hand over the last nine years, with no money, no P&A budgets, no billboards, no nothing. We are showing the work of filmmakers of color and women filmmakers all over the world, in arthouse theaters and on the sides of walls with sheets and in museums and schools and YMCAs and wherever we can get a screen. We’re saying, yes we can have a show where women direct every episode and 90 percent of these women will have never directed an episode, and we will put dozens of new women into the DGA [Directors Guild of America] and the television system. Whether it’s production, distribution, exhibition, we’re constantly thinking about and incubating and executing ways, through ARRAY, to disrupt. We’re incubating all kinds of ways to get into how film and television are made, to look at the pressure points that we feel are weak and apply pressure to try to break them. TV DRAMA: What’s next for you? DUVERNAY: I’m working on a number of television shows that I’m thrilled with. Right now we’re shooting a show called Cherish the Day [for OWN]. It’s an eight-episode romance anthology. Every episode is one day in the life of a black couple. There are a couple of shows that are dealing with romance in dramatic situations, like Underground, or in comedic situations, like Insecure. I love both of those shows, but for me, it’s a question of, How can you preserve love within your household when the world tells you that it doesn’t love you? So that’s the idea of getting into the nooks and crannies of the relationship. That has a lot of my focus right now.

DRAMA_1019_SERIES MANIA.qxp_Layout 1 9/20/19 10:29 AM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_DAVIES_ALT.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 11:11 AM Page 1

60 TV DRAMA

TV DRAMA: How did you approach taking an 11-chapter fragment and continuing the characters’ story arcs? DAVIES: I’d read it before and never really considered it, thinking it was a shame she didn’t finish because I’d have enjoyed adapting it. Then, looking at it afresh with the idea that maybe I could be the one to finish it, it seemed like a very exciting opportunity. Largely because it seemed like Jane Austen was treating it as a new departure, with different kinds of people in it. Entrepreneurs and businessmen rather than sedate country gentlemen, an energetic heroine and her first black character in Miss Lambe, the West Indian heiress. [Austen] gave us the premise, the set-up for the story, and never really got the plot started. So it was just a big opportunity. TV DRAMA: Tell us about the journey viewers will take over the course of the eight episodes. DAVIES: We go into the story through Charlotte, who is in some ways a bit of an innocent. She’s lived on the family farm for all her years. She’s never been more than five or ten miles from home. On the other hand, she is the oldest of 12 children, so she’s had a lot of opportunity to look after other people. She’s had a lot of responsibility. She’s got her own opinions about life. And she is a nice character through whose eyes we can look at Sanditon and all the people in it. So it starts off as one of those “young girl goes into a strange place and has adventures” stories, which, in Jane Austen’s canon, links it up with something like Northanger Abbey. And then we get to know the other characters bit by bit. Tom Parker is a key character because he’s the one who is making all the action happen.

Andrew Davies By Mansha Daswani

elevision and film producers the world over have been finding creative inspiration in Jane Austen novels for decades, helping to keep her legacy alive more than 100 years after her death. There is perhaps no television writer in the U.K.—or anywhere in the world, for that matter—with more experience in adapting the beloved author’s works than Andrew Davies. He gave us the classic 1995 take on Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth, Northanger Abbey for ITV’s Jane Austen season in 2007 and Sense and Sensibility in 2008 (among numerous other classic book adaptations.) When Red Planet Pictures decided they wanted to take on Austen’s unfinished manuscript Sanditon as the basis for a new period drama, they knew exactly who to go to. For ITV in the U.K. and Masterpiece in the U.S., with BBC Studios handling global distribution, Sanditon follows Charlotte Heywood (Rose Williams) as she moves to a coastal resort and encounters the mysterious businessman Sidney Parker (Theo James), among a slew of other characters. Davies tells TV Drama about the experience of finishing Austen’s last work, which she started writing in the final year of her life.

362 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

He’s trying to turn a tiny ﬁshing village into a grand seaside resort with all the bells and whistles, something like a 19th-century Boardwalk Empire. And then there’s the rest of his family. Very signiﬁcant is his younger brother Sidney, who is a bit of a mystery man, a wheeler and dealer, an adventurer with a dark past, who is nevertheless very loyal to Tom and very much invested in helping him bring his project to fruition. And, of course, we’re looking out for possible love matches for Charlotte. Sidney is one, Sir Edward is possibly another and, as the story develops, another one comes on the scene. So it’s about love, it’s about business, it’s about race, it’s about female emancipation, it has all those things. TV DRAMA: Based on your research, do you have a sense of Jane Austen’s state of mind when she was writing Sanditon? DAVIES: We all think she wrote it when she was dying, but she didn’t know she was dying. She just thought she was feeling not quite [in good health]. In fact, the spirit of the book goes completely counter to

DRAMA_1019_DAVIES_ALT.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 11:09 AM Page 2

TV DRAMA 61

any idea of failing strength or spirit. It’s full of lightness and joy. There’s a key scene when Charlotte arrives at Sanditon and she looks out the window at the sunlight glittering and dancing on the waves, and I thought, what a lovely sensation. Let’s try and capture that sensation of brightness and lightness all the way through this story. And I don’t think that’s being false to Jane Austen at all. It’s one of her funniest books. She just has great fun mocking all the hypochondria and fancies of the people who come to the seaside. That’s part of it. Also, I wanted to make it into a romantic story as well. TV DRAMA: Why do you think her work has been so incredibly well suited to TV and ﬁlm adaptations, sometimes more than once for a single story? DAVIES: Her typical story, at the heart of it, was a sort of fairy tale in which a lovely but disadvantaged heroine gets a happy ending. And within that, she always has interesting characters. She sharply satirizes a lot of them, and she writes wonderful scenes, wonderful dialogue. She gives you a kind of romantic story without ever insulting your intelligence. You always feel she’s a little bit brighter than you are when you’re reading her. She keeps you up to the mark and you can always ﬁnd new things in her stories. At the heart of it, it’s the romantic story plus the intelligence and the deep insight into characters. TV DRAMA: BBC Studios will be looking to roll this out globally this MIPCOM. Is there anything else you’d like

MAKING SANDITON Sanditon is not your mother’s Jane Austen. That’s the clear message from executive producer Belinda Campbell and director Olly Blackburn about the ITV and Masterpiece co-commission based on the author’s ﬁnal, unﬁnished novel. “This is a different Jane Austen,” says Campbell. “What’s wonderful about Jane Austen is the characters are ripe for reinvention every generation. That’s what we’ve done here.” Blackburn stresses the importance of delivering a new kind of period drama. “I feel in my bones that people don’t give the past the credit it deserves. We think all people behaved a certain way and dressed in a certain way. Actually, if you dig into the past, you discover there’s a lot of surprising things there. With the Regency period, which was this really energetic, bullish moment in fashion and politics, the array of styles was extraordinary. I did a deep dive into the period and tried to tease out all the stuff that was really interesting and cool, that may surprise some fans but is not inaccurate in any way. And we’re not doing a straight Austen adaptation—we’re doing something where, by definition, we’re creating a lot of things because she left it unfinished. And within that, what she was doing was different from anything else she had written. It felt like we had permission baked into the actual material to move into a new Regency world that you haven’t seen in other Austen stuff. It was just trying to break out of that

broadcasters and platforms to know about Sanditon and how it might resonate with their audiences? DAVIES: I want them to enjoy it. Have a good time with it. I want it to be a show that you look forward to switching on because it’s full of vibrant young characters. It’s like Love Island, I guess, only Jane Austen’s version!

straightjacket of everyone curtsying and saying the same thing and forgetting about the emotion that is going on beneath.” Adding to the drama’s fresh feel is its relatively youthful cast—and some casting against type. “There are 17 principal characters,” Blackburn says. “That fact alone drove a lot of the casting—that we were going to have a huge number of very different people, all with dialogue, all with quite signiﬁcant plotlines that develop through the season. It was all about getting some people who are what you’d expect and would be fun, and others who are brilliant actors but had never done [a show like] this before. Anne Reid has never played posh before. And then the thing I think people forget a little bit is, Jane Austen wrote about really young people. You’re on the scrap heap if you’re unmarried at 28. So a lot of them are in their early 20s. That meant there would have to be a lot of unknowns or newcomers. It’s super exciting.” The team behind the show is conﬁdent that it will be received well by the global buying community. “It’s a romance, it’s enjoyable, it’s entertaining, it’s a Regency drama as much it is Jane Austen,” Campbell says. “We’re doing something a little different with it. And it’s enormous fun, and it has a huge heart.” Blackburn adds that the show allows audiences to “escape into the past and have fun with people who are dressed really well, up to no good, but suffering the same shit we are—they have envy and love and all the same emotions—they’re just doing it in more fun costumes!”

10/19 WORLD SCREEN 363

Commissioned by ITV and Masterpiece from Red Planet Pictures, Sanditon is being launched at MIPCOM by BBC Studios.

DRAMA_1019_MERCURIO_ALT.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 3:32 PM Page 1

62 TV DRAMA

TV DRAMA: What inspired you to want to write a police drama focused on corruption? MERCURIO: A lot of TV cop shows are what I would describe as the drama of reassurance. They are very formulaic in that they show police officers getting the job done right and catching the bad guys. And here in the U.K., rather like in the U.S., if you watch the news you’ll see that isn’t always the case. A minority of officers commit misconduct and make errors of judgment, and it felt like TV drama was lagging behind in exploring that. TV DRAMA: The ratings have almost doubled since season one, which is quite a feat. What’s contributed to that steady build in audience numbers season after season? MERCURIO: It’s hard to come up with an answer that fully explains it. What we do know is that when people invest in the show, they stay with it. Very few people drop out. As the show has come back season after season, word of mouth has remained strong and that triggered people to commit. That means people who’ve missed a couple of seasons, even if they missed four seasons, they’ve come to the show [in season five]. One of the features of the show that makes it accessible to a new audience is that each season can be watched as a standalone limited miniseries. TV DRAMA: What’s your process as you embark on each new season in terms of mapping out your story arcs? MERCURIO: Two things are really part of my process. The first one is, What is the story of the season, the defining limited story? That is something I need to figure out in regard to who the guest character is and what kind of misconduct this character is alleged to have committed. And then I also need to consider how that is going to fit with the meta-narrative, the overall arc of the series that relates to the returning characters—and possibly relates to previous seasons. That’s something we bring in once the first couple of episodes of

Jed Mercurio By Mansha Daswani

ine of Duty wrapped its fifth season on BBC One earlier this year with more than 9 million viewers, making it one of the U.K.’s biggest shows of 2019. The acclaimed police procedural from Jed Mercurio (also the creator of another British drama megahit, Bodyguard) about an anti-corruption unit has steadily built a loyal fan base in the U.K. since its 2012 launch, first on BBC Two and then on BBC One. Mercurio, a former Royal Air Force officer and hospital doctor turned novelist, screenwriter and showrunner, tells TV Drama about his creative process and keeping the award-winning World Productions show fresh year after year. Mercurio is being honored by World Screen and Reed MIDEM with a Trendsetter Award this year.

364 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

the season are up and running so that the new audience can buy into it, and they don’t feel they are being bombarded with a lot of backstory that they’re not familiar with. Season five features an organized crime group that is involved in relationships with corrupt police officers. So it’s distinctive from other seasons in that we go behind the mask of organized crime and present a story that is breaking fresh ground. With each season we have to find something new to offer our loyal viewers, but also we have to find something which in itself is an exciting proposal for new viewers. TV DRAMA: There is so much story packed into each episode. How do you craft how each episode will play out?

DRAMA_1019_MERCURIO_ALT.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 3:34 PM Page 2

TV DRAMA 63

MERCURIO: The approach to writing the series is episode by episode. It’s really important to us that we deliver an hour of TV that is really gripping and pacey and covers as much ground as possible. What we don’t do is consider the whole arc initially and then divide and compartmentalize over the six episodes. We want each hour to be as intense a viewing experience as possible. TV DRAMA: I remember interviewing Paul Abbott (Shameless, No Offence) a few years ago and he said he liked to write longhand. What’s your writing process like? MERCURIO: I always write on a computer. I’ve never handwritten or written on a typewriter. I don’t think I would have become a writer in the age before computers! I started writing on an old word processor. It’s just essential to the process. Otherwise, redrafting is so arduous. I enjoy writing in development at home or an office where it’s nice and quiet and calm. But as we move into production I don’t have that luxury, so I have to be ﬂexible. You’ll sometimes see me writing on-set—and every now and then they tell me I’m going to be in the shot when the camera moves so I have to move. And then other times I’m in the production office and I just have to deal with the distractions and not be a prima donna and just get on with it. TV DRAMA: How do you juggle being both sole writer and showrunner? MERCURIO: That is manageable because we do six episodes. Because I write all the episodes, I am knowledgable about everything we’re doing. So that gives me a shortcut into those conversations that are ongoing. And also the shoot is typically 16 weeks, so physically it’s not that demanding. TV DRAMA: As you know, it’s super rare to have a single writer on a show in the U.S. Would you consider using a writers’ room? MERCURIO: I would consider a writers’ room. It could be advantageous and might even be a lot of fun. It’s not something that is appropriate to the shows I’m making here in the U.K., but that’s purely because we’re able to do a six-episode season, and also we’re not under pressure to do one season a year. TV DRAMA: Do you use consultants to offer input on the realities of police work? MERCURIO: We’re fortunate to have a couple of police advisors. We had a police advisor who started with us at the beginning of season two who was actually someone I went to school with. I’d completely lost touch with him and he got in touch with me via social media to reintroduce himself and announce that he was a senior police officer. So he became a great asset and we’ve added other advisors as we’ve gone along who are able to give specialist advice if required.

TV DRAMA: Speaking of social media, people tweet about the show a lot. How much do you pay attention to all of that online commentary? MERCURIO: It’s very flattering that people tweet about the show so much. It’s a bit of an asset to the series. Because of the linear distribution here in the U.K., there’s a week between episodes, so people want to talk about the show and there’s a lot written about it in the press. We definitely see social media as an adjunct to the fan experience. Personally, I don’t track it. I do occasionally go on social media if there are specific questions or misunderstandings out there. But I never engage with people’s opinions; it’s only if there’s a factual question being asked that needs to be answered in the right way. TV DRAMA: Tell us about your path to becoming a television writer. MERCURIO: It was a real twist of fate. I was a hospital doctor and I responded to an advert which was put forward in connection with a medical drama that was being developed. And that brought me into contact with a television production company and eventually, through various twists and turns, led to me becoming a scriptwriter. TV DRAMA: I read that you were a huge Star Trek fan as a child. Is sci-ﬁ or fantasy something you’d like to try your hand at? MERCURIO: It is. It’s something I would certainly take on with caution though. There are a lot of great sci-fi shows out there. The bar has been set very high. It’s also something that maybe in the U.K. is a difficult proposition, so it would probably be something that would only happen if I were fortunate enough to be developing a show in the U.S. 10/19 WORLD SCREEN 365

Line of Duty, sold by Kew Media Distribution, is set to return for a sixth season on BBC One.

DRAMA_1019_TIMS.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 11:04 AM Page 1

64 TV DRAMA

366 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

DRAMA_1019_TIMS.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 3:39 PM Page 2

TV DRAMA 65

Timur Savci & Burak Sağyaşar TIMS&B Productions

n Turkey’s competitive drama sector, TIMS&B Productions has emerged as a go-to outfit for compelling, top-rated series. Among its latest hits is Bitter Lands, a lush period piece, set in Southern Turkey in the 1970s, that Inter Medya has been licensing worldwide. Made for ATV, the show is returning for a second season. TIMS&B Productions’ founders Timur Savci—who previously ran Magnificent Century producer TIMS Productions—and Burak Sağyaşar, an actor-turned-producer known for shows like Hayat, tell TV Drama about how Bitter Lands came about and weigh in on their creative alliance. By Mansha Daswani

TV DRAMA: Where did the idea for Bitter Lands come from? SAĞYAŞAR: This was actually an idea and story by our writer Ayfer Tunç. After she handed us this very short story, we were struck by it as soon as we read it and we believed that it could be a success if we were to realize it. TV DRAMA: How is it different from much of the Turkish drama on air today? SAVCI: The most important difference is it is the only period drama right now in Turkey taking place in that speciﬁc time period; and it has a distinct look to it in terms of the production design. Looking at the other series in the Turkish TV industry at the moment, this is a project with a rich ensemble cast, where most characters’ story arcs are essential and profound storylines are delved into. I think these parameters distinguish this series from the rest of the Turkish drama on air today. TV DRAMA: What were the beneﬁts of taking your story and settings outside of Istanbul? And what were the biggest challenges? SAVCI: The biggest challenge is the fact that the cost of production is much higher because, as you might know, this means increased logistics and transportation expenses. Since most technical resources are in Istanbul, we need to ship everything to the shooting location and live there. But in essence, this has provided us with a very noticeable and distinguishing visual capability and an authentic look.

SAĞYAŞAR: This is a major plus. Another advantage is the fact that the cast and crew are 100 percent focused on their work when they are outside Istanbul. TV DRAMA: Why do you think this story has resonated? SAVCI: This is a project that contains a number of stories within. For starters, everyone was able to ﬁnd characters that could appeal to them or they could feel empathy for. This is not only a very powerful love story. Yes, there is a powerful love at the core, but there is also the clash of rich versus poor, the sociological issues of the period, class distinctions, etc., as well as what the social life and situations were evolving into in a developing country at that time. This is all portrayed realistically as well as tapping into the idealistic nostalgia in the memories of the audience. TV DRAMA: What are your plans for the new season? SAVCI: We don’t look at Bitter Lands as just another work—it’s a project we personally love and dote on. That’s why each season is like starting something new for us, as if we’re making another series; we strive to carry the work to a higher level, introduce some new aspects and upgrade the work each season, which is what we did this season as well. SAĞYAŞAR: We have some surprises in store for the audience, both visually and musically speaking and in terms of the story, as well as the addition of some new cast members.

10/19 WORLD SCREEN 367

DRAMA_1019_TIMS.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 11:05 AM Page 3

66 TV DRAMA

Inter Medya has licensed the period drama Bitter Lands into a number of markets worldwide.

TV DRAMA: Amid a challenged economy, how did you manage the budget on this high-production-value series? SAVCI: We and the broadcaster both had to make sacrifices, in the sense that we entered this project taking a great risk in terms of financing and investment. But our faith was so high in this project that we foresaw that we could lay this process over a period of time and reap the benefits in the long run. The current situation confirms that we were right with that forecast. TV DRAMA: Inter Medya has made many deals on the show. How important are these revenues for Turkish producers? SAĞYAŞAR: It’s quite important; and especially with a project of this scale, it becomes very important. But we still cover most of the cost of production on a series from the local market in Turkey. TV DRAMA: Has the international interest in Turkish drama led to you changing your storytelling techniques? SAVCI: Not that much, really. And the reason is, even before the presence of the international market, we were making Turkish series with our know-how and following our own path, and I think it was this originality that generated international interest. But of course, in the aftermath, since we have seen the great value in the global market, working in that industry has affected the production quality and the sustainability of our stories in general. TV DRAMA: How did TIMS&B Productions come about? SAVCI: We founded TIMS&B Productions in January 2017. I have a company called TIMS Productions, founded in 2006, which has had a number of successes, one of which was Magnificent Century, as you may know. And Burak is a producer with an acting background who managed to gain himself a place in the TV industry by producing not one but three series in the first year of his company, Bi Yapim. One of his most important successes is Hayat, distributed by Inter Medya as well. 368 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

SAĞYAŞAR: As rival producers, we decided to join forces and established a partnership in which we aim to be bringing new visions and objectives to the table. We use the following motto to describe TIMS&B Productions: “Pure, bold, original.” TV DRAMA: How does your creative collaboration work? SAVCI: We have characteristics that support each other. Whenever a new idea for a project is spawned or we are in the process of realization, we escalate each other because we are not that alike, actually. And this is a complementary aspect for us and creates a great advantage, even if we may bicker sometimes! [Laughs] SAĞYAŞAR: We may have differing opinions at times, but we always have a consensus at the end since we trust each other completely. TV DRAMA: What are the major trends you’re seeing in Turkish drama today? Are there new storytelling techniques emerging? New genres? SAVCI: Sure, new trends are emerging, especially in the increasingly more male and street-oriented ensemble dramas, which may be a disadvantage for the international market, I’m not sure. But now more than ever more genres are being experimented with on TV. Yet when we assess the current market conditions, 80 percent of production is still composed of the classical Turkish “dizi,” mostly in the melodrama genre. TV DRAMA: Are you looking at co-production opportunities in Latin America or the Middle East? SAVCI: We are very open to such opportunities, and strategically it is of great importance to us. We are interested in co-production projects and are seeking to produce local content abroad for these regions. And we are currently in talks with a number of countries, which we are hoping to announce at this MIPCOM.

DRAMA_1019_GRB STUDIOS.qxp_Layout 1 9/20/19 9:44 AM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_WOO.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 3:44 PM Page 1

68 TV DRAMA

TV DRAMA: How did you approach this part of history, which has not been explored in long-form TV drama before, while adding genre elements to the story? WOO: The genesis came from my co-creator Max Borenstein, who years ago heard a talk that George Takei gave about his experience in the internment. Max pitched to AMC the idea of telling an internment story with this genre element. And I was the beneﬁciary of Max’s extremely successful screenwriting career—he wasn’t available to write the pilot or run the show, so I got to do it! The strategy from the very beginning was to use Japanese kaidan—ghost stories or folklore that is hundreds of thousands of years old. Viewers might be familiar with it from Japanese horror movies like The Ring and The Grudge, the psychologically creepy movies that use a lot of these traditional elements. The idea was to use the genre to help the viewer feel the terror of the historical experience. There’s a danger when you’re doing period [drama] where it can feel like a museum piece— you’re at a safe remove, looking at it through glass. This is something that happened 75 years ago, thank goodness it’s over, immigrants have nothing to worry about now! You don’t want that feeling. You want it to feel very present. You use the elements of horror ﬁlmmaking to make you feel what it’s like to be in the skin of these characters, the atmosphere of dread for these characters, where you are not only experiencing wartime but wartime in an internment camp. TV DRAMA: The show marks a major milestone for Asian representation on American television.

Alexander Woo

The Terror: Infamy By Mansha Daswani

or its second season, AMC’s critically acclaimed horror anthology series The Terror draws on one of the darkest times in modern U.S. history. The Terror: Infamy centers on members of a JapaneseAmerican community, ousted from their homes and sent to internment camps during the Second World War, being haunted by an evil spirit. The series was co-created by playwright-turned-TV-scribe Alexander Woo (True Blood, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks), who also serves as showrunner, and Max Borenstein, with Ridley Scott among its executive producers. Woo talks to TV Drama about fusing Japanese folklore with realworld history, representation on-screen—the series has an almost entirely Japanese-American cast—and working with iconic actor George Takei, a series regular and consultant on the show who was imprisoned in an internment camp as a child.

370 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

WOO: I have to credit our network for never pushing back on the makeup of the cast, or for that matter the amount of Japanese spoken. There is a significant amount of subtitling in our show! We never got any pushback at all. We’re in an environment where there is so much attention being paid to representation. We needed people who could speak Japanese. And as we were going through the casting process, we discovered that just about everyone who was Japanese American coming to read for us had some personal family connection to the internment. Everyone who was of Japanese ancestry in the 1940s was rounded up and put in the camps. As we were telling such a personal and important story to this community, it was incumbent upon us to cast the entire show with actors of Japanese ancestry, including the little kids. This is their story, and they bring something so personal to it.

DRAMA_1019_ GAUMONT (single).qxp_Layout 1 9/25/19 12:45 PM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_WOO.qxp_WSN_1207_IN THE NEWS 9/25/19 11:12 AM Page 2

70 TV DRAMA

the character is feeling, so we understand what it’s like to be in their skin.

The Terror: Infamy on AMC is set against the backdrop of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

And not just our cast, our crew as well. Our cast and crew had 138 immediate relatives interned in the 1940s. That elevated everyone’s work. It made everyone feel we were doing something really special and made everyone work a little bit harder. Our first assistant director [Jason Furukawa] is Japanese Canadian. His parents were interned, and that’s why he dropped everything to work on our show. Our director [Josef Kubota Wladyka] is Japanese American, and his family was at Hiroshima. This is uncompromisingly from a Japanese-American perspective. That speaks to the climate we’re in. There’s a willingness and an openness to tell this story organically. TV DRAMA: There can be a fine line between scary and camp in horror. As someone who has done a lot of genre pieces, how do you negotiate that? WOO: We had a very simple guideline: we will deploy the genre toolbox to evocate the emotional experience of the characters, whether it’s fear or rage or betrayal. We would use it if it helped the viewer gain access to the emotional experience of the characters. If it became prurient or just for the fun of it, then we would set it aside. There were times we had an idea to try an effect— we do a lot with visual effects, special effects and makeup—and they didn’t always hit the mark. And then we had to fine-tune until we got it to a point where we felt, This evokes the horror that our character is going through. We would fine-tune it until we could feel what 372 WORLD SCREEN 10/19

TV DRAMA: How did you assemble your writers’ room? WOO: We have a very small writers’ room—it was me and four others. I’m not Japanese American, I’m Chinese American, so I fully realize that this is not the story of my family. But I realized very quickly, upon meeting with people like George Takei and other internment survivors, that although this is the story of Japanese Americans, it is not exclusively a story for Japanese Americans. It is a story for anyone whose life has been shaped or touched by the immigrant experience, which in the U.S. is just about everyone! I plugged into it as an immigrant story. And I needed some Japanese-American writers. We had Shannon Goss, who worked on ER, Outlander, Reign and Revenge. Her grandfather was at Pearl Harbor when the attack happened, so she has a very personal connection to [the story]. We had Naomi Iizuka, who is the greatest Japanese-American playwright of my generation. I wanted to have a playwright on staff, and I was going to reach out to Naomi to see if she had any recommendations, but it turned out she was on sabbatical and was interested! We were so lucky to have Steven Hanna, who has a Harvard Ph.D. in Japanese folklore. And we have Tony Tost, a self-described redneck from the Ozarks who loves pro-wrestling and Johnny Cash. He’s also a poet by trade and has a poet’s ear. He’s a great cinephile and has an encyclopedic knowledge of Japanese ﬁlms. And to top it all off, Tony has created and run his own show. So much of the task of production is management, so it helps greatly to have someone who has also created and run his own show. It was an extraordinary team. We were really lucky to have the group we had because everyone brought completely different strengths to the story. TV DRAMA: AMC is airing The Terror: Infamy around the world. How do you think it will resonate with international audiences? WOO: Even though it’s an American story, it’s one that will have great appeal to a lot of people. You can approach this show wanting to see this period in history depicted on this scale. You can approach the show wanting to see Asian representation on-screen. You can approach the show just wanting a really great scare! All are perfectly valid. But once you’re in, the goal is the same—it’s to build empathy for these characters. The genre elements and the historical elements all work together to build a relationship and empathy between the viewer and the characters so they go on this journey together.

DRAMA_1019_ VOXX STUDIOS.qxp_Layout 1 9/20/19 9:56 AM Page 1

DRAMA_1019_KANAL D_.qxp_Layout 1 9/20/19 10:03 AM Page 1