Gaumont Television’s Elizabeth Dreyer

The company’s head of European co-productions offers up insight into her strategy for making successful multi-country co-pros and her views on trends in the drama business today.

The storied French film studio Gaumont has been steadily ramping up its TV slate over the last few years, developing scripted projects both in the U.S. and in France. Dreyer’s mandate is to roll out English-language dramas from Europe that can resonate across the globe.

TV DRAMA: Tell us about your role at Gaumont and the shows you’re working on.
DREYER: I started in July 2014, European co-production being a new activity for Gaumont. They’d started the U.S. office five years prior, and French television at around the same time. This was the last piece of the puzzle. I’m looking for European stories, European storytellers, and bringing those to global audiences. I inherited a couple of projects that were early attempts to do international co-productions and then got right into Spy City, which was brought to us by our German co-production partner Odeon. Novelist William Boyd is creating this show for the small screen. It’s set in Berlin in 1961 just before the wall goes up. The Americans, Russians, French and British are all controlling their sectors of the city and all the spies are spying on each other. He’s woven a wonderful web. Because he’s William Boyd he’s managed to keep it accessible. So it’s not going to be a what-the-hell-is-going-on-here kind of show. We’re attaching a U.K. producer to that now and we’ll be going to the British channels. And we’re attaching a German director as well and getting the tone right for our co-producing territories. We’re also developing 1001 by Lars Lundström. We went straight to him as we’re huge fans of Real Humans. And we’re in financing on Ken Sanzel’s show Crosshair, a passion project of his set in Europe. He has an incredible voice.

TV DRAMA: How do you manage multiple partners on a project so that all the territories get what they need and you get a show you can sell widely on the international market?
DREYER: There’s a lot of diplomacy involved. What I find myself doing is explaining a lot to our French co-producers about what needs to be done abroad. Those are usually conversations about how talent works. We’re working with U.S. writers and those deals are complicated and other-worldly to our French co-producers who’ve originated these great ideas. The talent just works so differently in the U.S. when you’re dealing with U.S. agencies. It’s not rocket science, it’s just a lot of educating both sides on what’s done habitually, what the expectations are.

TV DRAMA: People often talk about the Euro-puddings of the ’90s and how you don’t see those anymore. What changed in the market to allow for truly international co-pros that can work in multiple markets?
DREYER: I don’t think things are that different now. You still have the Euro-puddings—they just have a harder time getting financed. Sometimes you can feel actors working their mouths around the English [in shows written in Europe]. You just need somebody who creatively in the driver’s seat is really paying attention. There are things where the accents are a bit all over the place. I come from the film side and have produced things in English out of Europe and I see how that can go wrong just because people are not paying attention.

TV DRAMA: What are some of the trends you’re seeing in European drama?
DREYER: The broadcasters still all want procedurals. The European market is changing very slowly. The channels want to take big swings; they’re trying. But it’s hard—they still have to treat their home territory right, they still have to give their audiences what they want. But you do feel a willingness from RTL, from Rai, to think about what’s the show that could work for us at home and abroad. Whereas that door was completely closed a couple of years ago, now it’s just opened a bit and they’re willing to have those conversations.

There’s the question of what language you’re telling these stories in. It’s an interesting one. Narcos was developed by our U.S. team but it’s really changed the game for us internationally in terms of the stories you can tell and what language you can do a show in. The projects we’re looking at we’re now saying, the characters can speak French in this part, they can speak German to each other.

TV DRAMA: What kind of slate are you looking to build at Gaumont this year?
DREYER: We do have an idea for a procedural that we think is really strong and different, and that we think can be set anywhere. What we keep talking about is showing people worlds they haven’t seen before, really getting behind the scenes of a place. For us it’s about worlds and storytellers. I want to find really accomplished writers who say, this is a world that I am really enthusiastic about and I want to show people that world. The market has become very fragmented. There’s a show for everybody. That makes it trickier for those of us who are developing and looking for partners and wanting to produce these shows. It’s hard to target who you’re making a show for. But as long as you believe in the story and the storytelling, it starts there.

TV DRAMA: Is it getting harder to gain access to those great storytellers, given how crowded the market is?
DREYER: It’s my major challenge: finding a writer for a project. They’re all very busy. There aren’t enough writers. Everybody says so. And the market hasn’t evolved enough here where you can [get a show commissioned from a] great piece of writing by somebody with no credits. I hope it will get there. And there are people like Frank Spotnitz and Paul Abbott who are training writers on their shows, and writing programs like Serial Eyes—the new voices are being nurtured.