So Much Drama

April 2007

By Bob Jenkins

Drama is making a comeback on European schedules—with promotable events and high-quality series leading the way.

Since the early days of television, a gripping drama with a captivating story line and compelling characters has been a sure-fire way of hooking the audience. For decades, European broadcasters served up a varied menu of fiction programming: series ranging from Derrick and Navarro to Prime Suspect and Ispettore Montalbano; mini-series from Le Châ´¥au des Oliviers to Elizabeth I and Napoleon; topped off by a wide variety of TV movies.

But then in the late ’90s, reality television exploded on the scene and pushed drama out of many preferred time slots. Now that the dust has settled, there are fewer reality shows in prime time, leaving openings for drama. And now that broadcasters have a rich palette of fiction to choose from, the question is, how much are they willing to spend for it?

“There is a state of flux in the market at the moment,” says Justin Bodle, the chairman and chief executive of Power. “Reality has not gone, but drama is definitely on the way back. However, all broadcasters are struggling with drama budgets. I am convinced,” he insists, “that event television is the way forward.”

Power’s latest headline project, Flood, is a perfect example of the “event” television Bodle is talking about. Starring Robert Carlyle, Jessalyn Gilsig, Joanne Whalley and David Suchet, the $32-million production will be released both theatrically and as a mini-series. In the story, the surge of a huge wall of water up the Thames, coinciding with a torrential downpour of rain, floods London and gives authorities just three hours to evacuate the city’s population.

“Flood is just a natural subject, in every sense, for the sort of event television for which, over the years, Power has become renowned. It has high action, a very good script, amazing special effects and a great cast. It is, simply, a big show, a very big show,” enthuses Bodle.

Despite its high price tag, Bodle expects buyers to be very interested in Flood. “Even though the budget per hour is much higher than many dramas, events like Flood actually make more economic sense from a broadcaster’s perspective,” he says. “First, because of the scale and nature of the show, third parties are much more willing to get involved. The ?co-producers on Flood were RTL, RAI, TF1, ITV, CBC, Seven Network Australia and Spain’s Cuatro. So,” continues Bodle, “ITV put up 22 percent of the budget, but they will get 100 percent of the impact. Whereas, if you made a more parochial, lower-budget drama, you wouldn’t get this involvement and you would have to bear the whole cost of the series.”

Another reason why Bodle thinks this high-budget event ?television makes economic sense is, as he puts it, “European networks are realizing that audience share and advertising earnings are not directly correlated. They are realizing that advertisers are willing to pay a premium for a hot event on free TV over the mediocre performance of a long-running cable or satellite series.”

And that brings him to the last reason for believing event television is the way forward for European TV fiction. ?“Drama,” avers Bodle, “is the one genre, possibly along with comedy, that really defines a broadcaster. It sets out who they are and what they are offering. It is also the key way in which a free-TV broadcaster can set itself apart from a cable or satellite channel, and make them have to compete with free TV and not the other way around.”

THE MAIN EVENT

Event mini-series and TV movies are a mainstay of SevenOne International’s catalogue as well. And Jens Richter, the company’s managing director, sees various reasons for an increase in demand for this genre. “First of all, there are a lot of good story lines being developed, and the quality of event fiction has gone up over the last years,” he says. At the same time, he notes, the ratings of U.S. blockbuster movies have gone down because of so much exposure on pay TV, DVD and video on demand. “Free-TV channels need some highlights in their schedules, some real premieres which viewers can’t find elsewhere, and event mini-series and TV movies fill that need.”

Towering Inferno, produced for ProSieben by Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion, whose feature film The Lives of Others won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, is a 90-minute catastrophe TV movie about people trapped inside the burning 368-meter TV tower in Berlin. It stars Stephan Luca and Silke Bodenbender and has been presold to more than 25 countries.

The Hunt for Troy is a 2×90-minute adventure mini-series produced by teamWorx Television & Film for Sat.1 with a production budget of approximately ?10 million. It stars Heino Ferch, one of the most popular actors in Germany, and the famous French actress M鬡nie Doutey, who also stars in Clara Sheller, a successful series on France 2. Choosing a French actress for the lead female role was instrumental in securing the French broadcaster M6 as a presale partner. The Hunt for Troy was presold to more than 20 countries.

As Richter explains, this kind of big-budget programming ranges from true stories to catastrophes, family entertainment, adventure, or screen adaptations of classic novels. “These kinds of story lines can have a very wide international appeal when you put enough money behind them and shoot them in the right locations,” he explains. “And you can put CGI behind it, which is possible these days because CGI prices have come down a lot and are affordable for television. If you bring some partners together—German, French, Spanish and Italian broadcasters—and you add some financing, then you can realize productions that have quite high budgets and can fit the need for events.”

These are sentiments very much shared by Rola Bauer, a managing director of Tandem Communications. Although, as Bauer freely admits, “Tandem is an unusual company in that, despite being based in Munich, we produce in English what I describe as ‘international drama,’ by which I mean drama that is neither exactly American nor European.” While accepting that “local production is very much on the increase,” Bauer agrees with Bodle and Richter: “Pressures on budgets mean that event television, which brings together many partners and looks great in the schedule, is very much in demand at the moment.”

Tandem’s flexible approach to projects is neatly illustrated by two of its most recent ones. Ring of the Nibelungs, which in the U.S. was known as Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King, was developed entirely in-house by Tandem. The ?20 million ($26 million), four-hour mini-series, starring Kristanna L? Benno F? and Max von Sydow, was financed by Tandem and sold to broadcasters such as SCI FI Channel in the U.S., Channel 4 in the U.K. and Sat.1 in Germany. The 2007 production The Company, based on Robert Littell’s bestselling book, and starring Chris O’Donnell, Alfred Molina and Michael Keaton, is a co-production with Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions, Sony Pictures Television and John Calley Productions.

A TOUCH OF CRIME

The appeal of shows featuring cops, detectives and agents never seems to wane. SevenOne International is rolling out Special Unit, a series of 13 45-minute episodes about an anti-terrorist group made for Sat.1.

Germany’s preference for police drama is also underlined by Oliver Sch?, the head of Bavaria Media Television. “Certainly in Germany there is a move towards harder drama,” he says. “There used to be a lot of such material on German television in the ’90s, but then there was a move to romantic comedy. Now we see a return to real, hard drama, in ?particular thrillers partly inspired by the success of U.S. series such as CSI and partly due to romantic overkill.”

German producers are not the only ones to have displayed a skill for cop series. British producers have a long, distinguished tradition in this genre. “The areas where the Brits have excelled in drama have been in the crime thrillers and murder-mystery series,” says Cathy Payne, the chief executive of Southern Star International. “They are at the top of their game in that kind of drama and they also do very well the softer murder-mystery plot-driven self-contained episodic series.” She cites as examples Wire in the Blood, the highly successful series starring Robson Green as clinical psychologist Tony Hill, who possesses a power of empathy beyond the established boundaries of his science, which enables him to put himself in the shoes of both murderer and victim. Wire in the Blood is produced by Coastal Productions for ITV in the U.K. and is distributed internationally by Southern Star. Coastal and BBC America will be co-producing the fifth season of Wire in the Blood, which will be shot in the U.S.

Southern Star owns a stake in the British producer Carnival and sells its product internationally. Carnival has recently produced three supernatural-themed movies for BBC One. Sea of Souls: Prayer Tree is about Ian and Karen, who embark on a new life in Scotland after the tragic death of their son. While renovating their new home, a derelict Victorian mansion, they unearth a series of ancient carved scriptures and paintings. Empathy is about a straight-talking ex-con, paroled after nine years in prison, who discovers a remarkable ability on the day he is released—a psychic connection to anyone or anything he touches. Life Line is a thriller about a man who ?loses the love of his life and turns to a mysterious chat line for the bereaved, but discovers that his beloved has transformed into a vengeful possessed woman.

Granada in the U.K. also produces vast quantities of drama, which its international arm sells around the world. Noel Hedges, Granada International’s head of drama, is perhaps most excited by Instinct, written by Lizzie Mickery, who also wrote the acclaimed drama Messiah. “Instinct,” says Hedges, “introduces an innovative new detective character through a really gripping story line.”

Granada International will be offering buyers The Jane Austen Collection: Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Emma, three two-hour costume drama adaptations of Jane Austen’s classic novels starring Billie Piper (Doctor Who), Felicity Jones (The Worst Witch) and Kate Beckinsale (The Aviator; Pearl Harbor). Mansfield Park is a co-production of Company Pictures and WGBH Boston; Northanger Abbey is a co-production of Granada and WGBH Boston; and Emma is produced by United Film and Television Productions in association with Chestermead and A&E.

LOCAL FLAVOR

The emergence of big-budget, high-end event television in European drama is further underlined by France’s Marathon. One of the largest independent producers in the country, Marathon has long been known for the glitzy and highly successful day-time drama Saint Tropez, which, since its launch in 1996, has run to 440 hours and been sold to over 120 territories. But in 2005 the company turned its attention to mini-series with a 6×90-minute thriller called Dolmen, for TF1. The savage beauty of Ty Kern, an island off the coast of Brittany, is the backdrop for a series of events as strange as they are dramatic as one by one members of the island’s long-standing families die under mysterious circumstances.

Starring Ingrid Chauvin, Dolmen played for six weeks on TF1 during the summer and averaged 12 million viewers per episode. The managing director of Marathon International, Emmanuelle Bouilhaguet, describes the series as “exceptionally successful.” This success was repeated elsewhere. “On RTL TVI in Belgium it averaged a 37.9-percent share with an audience of 618,000—a phenomenal achievement for a network which averages between 350,000 and 400,000 viewers in prime time,” explains Bouilhaguet, who is equally buoyant at the success on RTL II in Germany, where Dolmen doubled the ratings of its time slot.

Such was the success Marathon had with Dolmen that the company is producing another mini-series, this time for M6. The 8-hour series, Secrets, which will again star Ingrid Chauvin, is another police investigation, this time into why the names of three women, apparently with nothing linking them, should all be on the hit list of a dead assassin.

Although not strictly “event” television in the same way as mini-series are, Channel 4’s drama series, according to commissioning editor Liza Marshall, “are often political, provocative and with something bold to say. This is a necessary consequence of the fact that we don’t make as much drama as the BBC or ITV, and therefore what we do make has to have an impact.” Although Channel 4 commissions about 1,000 hours of drama a year, the vast majority of that is accounted for by its youth-oriented soap Hollyoaks. “So,” says Marshall, “most of the rest of the output is made up of homegrown drama series and one-off dramas.”

One such series is All in the Game, starring Ray Winstone, which takes a hard look at the murky world of corruption in British football.

Likely to be controversial is Britz, a 2×2-hour examination of a British Muslim family and in particular a brother and sister, one of whom joins MI5, and the other of whom becomes politically active. The drama examines the way in which British anti-terror legislation, post 9/11, has radicalized sections of the British Muslim community.

The big idea

“High-concept” is certainly how one would describe Primeval, which was made for ITV1 by Impossible Pictures, whose executive producer Tim Haines headed the team responsible for Walking with Dinosaurs. “The idea for Primeval came to me when we were making that series, and I thought, wouldn’t it be great to have these creatures walking around familiar contemporary landscapes?” says Haines. Douglas Henshall stars as Professor Nick Cutter, who is asked by the government to head up a team to investigate when a tear in time allows dinosaurs to appear in modern-day Britain and then to disappear back into their own time. Both ITV and Impossible are hoping that Primeval could be a sci-fi franchise in the mold of the BBC’s Doctor Who.

Establishing a franchise that is recognized as strong and successful is one possible way of dealing with another European ?drama trend identified by Mark Gray, the VP of programming at FremantleMedia Enterprises. “I have to say that internationally the competition for drama slots is much more intense now than it ever was in the past,” he says. “First, because broadcasters, even in the smaller markets of Eastern Europe, are increasingly producing their own drama, and television is a very parochial business. People like to see actors of their own culture, speaking their own language and playing out stories set in a familiar environment. Secondly,” he continues, “there is the strong reemergence of American drama such as Lost, CSI and Desperate Housewives, which have all become pretty ubiquitous.”

FremantleMedia has a vast amount of drama to sell, including long-running series such as The Bill and Neighbours, from its various production companies, such as Grundy UFA, which produced, with great success, the telenovela Bianca for ZDF. “Of course, ‘telenovela’ is very much a buzz word at the moment, but also, in my opinion, a very much misused one,” opines Gray. “Shows such as Ugly Betty are comedy dramas and, apart from the basic story line, have very little in common with the original, 250-half-hour concept from ??Latin America.” By way of illustration, Gray points to Monarch Cove, the U.S. version of Bianca that the company made for Lifetime. “It’s 14 one-hours, and, apart from the fact that both stories concern a woman released from prison after having been wrongly accused of murdering her father, there is very little in common between the two shows.”

YOUNG AT HEART

But, without doubt, the two big FremantleMedia launches at MIPTV were The Best Years and the second season of Falcon Beach, which made its debut at last year’s MIPTV. “Given that it’s been a year since we launched this series, sales have been phenomenal,” enthuses Gray, saying, “We have racked up sales to 30 or 40 countries, and mostly to major broadcasters such as the BBC in the U.K., and M6 in France. We certainly feel there is a strong demand emerging worldwide for this sort of drama attracting the younger demo that is so difficult to get, which is why we are making such a big push into this area.”

The Best Years is set in the exclusive Charles University in Massachusetts, and opens as orphan and scholar Samantha Best arrives for her freshman year. “It is the story of bright young things as they navigate their way through the ups and downs of university life,” says the creator and executive producer, Aaron Martin. The 13 one-hour episodes will air on The N in the U.S and on Global Television in Canada.

Falcon Beach is set in a North American beachside community during the few months of the summer vacation, and is very much a coming of age saga. “It deals with all the usual issues people in their late teens and early twenties have to deal with, such as sex and drugs,” says Gray, although he is quick to add, “This means it is somewhat edgy, but in the U.S. it plays on ABC Family, so it is in no sense a ‘hard’ series.”

Also set in a holiday resort, this time a ski resort, is Whistler, a new offering from Fireworks International. The company was attracted to the project because “following the success of Desperate Housewives we realized there really wasn’t another ensemble piece like that around,” explains Greg Phillips, the president of Fireworks International.

Whistler focuses on the battle between three families for dominance in the resort. And, says Phillips, “it has all the usual trappings of such a saga: wealth, sex, intrigue, power, betrayal and revenge, and it has a lot in common with classic network episodic dramas such as Dallas in that, as well as the glitz and the glamour, and being an ensemble piece, it also allows characters and over-arching story lines to develop over a period of time, while each episode is also a self-contained story.”

Phillips takes Gray’s point about the increase in local production, but remains sanguine. “It has to be recognized that standards are increasing all around the world, and we do face increased competition from local production,” he acknowledges. “But,” he continued, “everyone now has slots for quality scripted drama, due to the success of series such as Lost and Desperate Housewives, and if we continue to offer quality and originality there will always be a place for our shows.”

There’s no question that Fireworks’s other MIPTV debutant, Blood Ties, qualifies on the last count, centering, as it does, on the relationship between private eye and former cop Vicki Nelson; her former partner—both romantic and ?professional—detective Mike Celluci; and Henry Fitzroy, a 450-year-old vampire and bastard son of Henry VIII. The series is based on the Blood series of books by Tanya Huff. Each week the trio solve crimes and battle against occult forces. “It is very much in the tradition of Buffy and Charmed, and,” observes Phillips, “perfectly in line with our aim of offering the market something that they cannot get elsewhere.”