Patrick Spence

This interview originally appeared in the MIPCOM 2014 issue of TV Europe.

British screenwriter Simon Donald wanted to make a film about a violent crime that takes place in an isolated community in the Arctic—until he told his friend Patrick Spence about the concept. Spence, who heads up Fifty Fathoms—a drama label under the umbrella of Tiger Aspect and Endemol—told Donald that the idea would make for a compelling TV show, and Fortitude quickly landed a commission at Sky Atlantic. With an all-star cast that includes Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon, Christopher Eccleston, Richard Dormer and Sofie Gråbøl, the 12-parter has been picked up by Pivot in the U.S. as its first scripted co-pro in a deal brokered by the show’s global distributor, Sky Vision. Spence, exec producer on Fortitude, tells TV Europe about recreating an Arctic setting, finding his dream cast and managing happy and healthy co-production relationships.

TV EUROPE: Where did you film Fortitude?
SPENCE: You can’t film that far north in the Arctic Circle, where you’re in the middle of nowhere. We looked at filming in Canada and Norway and Iceland. We chose Iceland because the architecture and the scenery were closer to the real Arctic than we could find on the coasts of Canada and Norway. The story demands that it is set beside the sea as well as being in the Arctic. This one particular town in Iceland mirrored perfectly what we were looking for. It was a long, long search.
We shot all of our interiors in London on an enormous self-built studio out near Heathrow Airport.

TV EUROPE: What kind of production challenges did you encounter in Iceland?
SPENCE: It’s a very isolated part of the world. It was very hard to find accommodation. There wasn’t as much snow as we were hoping there would be, so that presented its own challenges. The weather was very hard to predict, and we had to fly a lot of crew over—not just from London. The brilliant Icelandic crew—we work with the same crew that has worked on Game of Thrones—had to fly over from Reykjavik on the other side of the island. It was very, very isolated. It’s hard to live in a place that is that far away from anything for any extended period of time. But an enormous family feel developed around the crew; it was lovely.

TV EUROPE: As you and Simon mapped out the episodes, did you think about those viewers who won’t watch it week to week but will rather wait till it’s done and binge on the whole season?
SPENCE: We were making this show very specifically for Sky Atlantic and we know it is being transmitted in its first instance across 12 consecutive weeks. One story spread across 12 weeks, highly serialized—you need it to feel hooky and involving on a number of different levels. But by the same token, many of the shows we now binge watch are actually shows that were made for weekly viewing. So I’m going to say yes and no. No, we didn’t make it for binge viewing, because it’s made for a weekly view. On the other hand, yes, we hope that each episode ends in such a way that you don’t want to stop.

TV EUROPE: Twelve episodes is a big commitment for a British broadcaster. Was there a learning curve for you and the production team, adjusting to telling this story over a longer period of time?
SPENCE: Undoubtedly. I have exec produced big shows in this country that have been 12 episodes long, but never one story, and never with so many characters. The challenge that Simon set for himself and the team was to keep a number of different balls up in the air at the same time. Story-lining that many characters on that scale with that tone across 12 episodes was something none of us had ever done before. And it was exhilarating and frightening and wonderful and eye-opening. We learned on the job. It’s quite an experience to sit in front of a whiteboard with 12 episodes with story beats across each episode. We were constantly fine-tuning all the way through the script process and the production process. One small change in one episode would affect two or three different strands three episodes later. It’s like a sound mixer in a recording studio, constantly twiddling the dial. It’s wonderful. I loved it. In post-production, we’re still in a way constantly evolving the story as those performances bring different insights and different moments that you can use in different ways that you weren’t quite expecting. It’s a fantastic experience. I can’t wait to do it again.

TV EUROPE: From your perspective, what makes for a successful co-pro alliance that allows you to deliver the show you want—and your partners get the show they want?
SPENCE: My answer is going to sound simplistic and possibly naïve, but it is the way we operated on Fortitude. We would not get into a relationship with anyone until they had read the script and signed up to a long conversation with Simon, signed up to his vision. When in doubt, if there was disagreement, Simon’s vision would have to hold sway. There are, I’m sure, some broadcasters who wouldn’t have been happy with that. It doesn’t mean you don’t have discussions about the best way to tell a story, but in the end, everyone is signed to one vision. And it works. It required that conviction up front and that confidence to say, this is the only way it will work for us. We found partners that [supported that].

TV EUROPE: Are you aiming for a second season or do you see this as a limited-run event piece?
SPENCE: We’ve got story after story ready to come out of the Arctic setting. We set it in the Arctic for a very specific, clear reason that won’t become evident until later in the series. The setting and the world up there and what’s happening to the environment, the wealth of secrets metaphorically hidden under the ice, is just too good to be true. So we’ve created a community that we want to come back to year after year. The crime thriller in the first [season] will come to an end, but the world in which it’s set will be ripe for more stories of a very particular kind that only Fortitude could tell. That’s why we’re so proud of it. It’s a show not like any other.

TV EUROPE: Why do you think the show will resonate internationally?
SPENCE: It was created organically as an idea that came out of one writer’s head and it was a very particular story he wanted to tell. But what it does beautifully is, because it’s true to one single idea, it allows for a world that is international. The Arctic Circle is not, emotionally or geographically, owned by anyone. So it feels like a place that you might want to live in if you were that way minded. It’s one of the last frontier towns in the world. There are several of them up in the Arctic, where you are living in the middle of nowhere. Therefore, the notion of community becomes incredibly important. So you are creating a world that anyone might want to be a part of, that at its heart is very warm and vibrant and cosmopolitan. At the same time, we’re running a thread of fear, an unsettling tone through that community, that hopefully will strike a chord and trigger some of the more deep-rooted fears that everyone feels around the world. The other wonderful thing about it is that, because it’s an international community, it means there are characters from all over the world. As you watch the show, it doesn’t feel odd that you have a Spanish character and a Norwegian character and a Swedish character and an American character and a Russian character and four or five British characters. It feels wonderfully, organically international.