EU Grapples With America’s Quality TV Challenge

PREMIUM: After concentrating for many years on the aim of producing feature films to compete with Hollywood output, European authorities tasked with supporting production are re-focusing on how to create a flow of high-quality television programming to compete with the newer generation of American small-screen fare, Jay Stuart reports.

“We are now probably seeing more creativity in American television than in American movies,” said Aviva Silver, the head of unit of the European Commission’s MEDIA Programme, last week.

The MEDIA Programme was launched in 1991 and its current six-year phase, with a cumulative budget of €755 million, ends in 2013. Continuation of the program until 2020 is under discussion.

Underlining the state of competition between Europe and America is the extraordinary coincidence of a head-to-head clash between series on exactly the same Renaissance theme, the Borgias in Italy. One is European co-production Borgia, ending its 12-episode run on Canal+ in France on tonight (November 14). The other is Showtime’s The Borgias, driven creatively by Irish director Neil Jordan. A second series is currently in production.

The MEDIA Programme invested €560,000 in Borgia. The show is a co-production of Atlantique Productions of France and Germany’s EOS Entertainment of Germany in cooperation with Canal+, ZDF and Austrian network ORF. Germany’s Beta Film is handling worldwide sales.

Borgia has American input in that it was created by U.S. producer Tom Fontana and stars John Doman, one of the lead players in The Wire, as Rodrigo Borgia. But it has not broken into the Anglo market. While Borgia is on Sky Italia, Sky Atlantic in the U.K. has gone with The Borgias. Distribution of Borgia in the American market is limited to Netflix.

Of the money that the MEDIA Programme invested in Borgia, €60,000 went to development.

“Development is a crucial area,” said Pierre Saint-André, the head of French drama and co-productions at Canal+, in the thick of the production process of Borgia. “In television series, writing is the key. We do not have the writing wherewithal that exists in the U.S., where it’s treated as part of an industry.”

“We need to examine how to facilitate television co-production beyond the pilot,” Silver said. “We do not support the production of pilots. We hope that in the next generation we can have more impact. Television series will be central to our strategy.”

She acknowledged that making European co-production work remains very difficult. As an example of just how difficult, she pointed to the Oscar-winning German feature film The Lives Of Others, which tapped no fewer than 52 sources of financing.