True to Life

Live-action shows targeting the tween set are still generating loyal fan bases for kids’ networks worldwide.

In the kids’ television-production market, live action is the place to be. Young ones can’t seem to get enough of it, and children’s content buyers were once again be putting live-action series at the top of their shopping lists at MIPCOM.

“There’s lots of demand and a real dearth of live action available,” says Cathy Payne, the chief executive of Endemol Worldwide Distribution, home to the Southern Star and Endemol finished-program catalogues.

It’s an observation backed up by Debbie MacDonald, Nickelodeon UK’s VP and programming director. “For the last seven to eight years, live action has been what everybody is after and it will be key to all kids’ channels way into the future,” she predicts.

One reason behind the expanding demand for the genre is the general social trend of children growing out of tailor-made animation at an earlier age than they used to. Payne observes, “By the age of 4 or 5, children are beginning to turn their backs on animation and are looking for content that is more engaging.”

“Live-action drama is very popular with school-aged kids,” agrees Jenny Buckland, the CEO of the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF). “Animation is extremely competitive and unless a show really stands out or develops a following because there are loads and loads of episodes, children, especially girls, grow out of it after a while.”

Edward Galton, the managing director of distribution at the London-based kids’ entertainment specialist CAKE, echoes this sentiment: “In the U.S., which takes a lead in live action, the trend was that kids were walking away from animation at a younger age and turning to the prime-time drama series, which weren’t necessarily aimed at them. That was how they got the taste for live action in the first place.”

Galton continues, “The smarter players out there—Disney, for example—concluded that the best strategy was supplying kids with programming designed specifically for them. The result was the creation of shows such as Hannah Montana and High School Musical, classic examples of live-action shows which have a huge reputation nowadays for working well with kids.”

Comedies such as Disney’s groundbreaking series Hannah Montana and Nickelodeon’s iCarly demonstrate the key features of children’s live-action shows that have appeal among tween girls. They have strong, highly aspirational female lead characters with lives that are extraordinary in some way.

“Disney certainly has a formula—typically producing shows with a female lead that are grounded in a reality children or tweens recognize, but which crucially contain a strong aspirational quality,” says Josh Scherba, the senior VP of distribution at DECODE Enterprises.

Most successful series share common qualities. They all tend to focus on key areas around which the drama is developed, declares Frank Saperstein, E1 Television’s senior VP of children’s and animated content. “They focus on worlds which are important for kids—family, where they get support, and school, where friends come from. The most successful shows have a third pillar: an extraordinary feature that makes the lead stand out.”

Saperstein adds, “These days, kids are a lot smarter and want more than a show which offers them a couple of attractive characters and a laugh track. Successful live action is all about getting smart, strong writing that doesn’t talk down to kids and deals with issues that are real in their lives, while at the same time providing them with entertainment. They want characters that are relatable—not plastic cookie-cutter views of what adults think they should be.”

The ACTF has offered several successful live-action series to the international market over the past 20 years, the most famous of which is Round the Twist. “We are also distributing Mortified and Lockie Leonard at the moment, and they have proved hugely successful, too, having sold into more than 100 countries,” says Buckland. “If you look at those three series, they are all set in the great outdoors, on the coast. They are very warm series, with wonderful families and characters, and most important of all, they are funny. They are based in real life, but they tap into the fantasy world that all children have in their imagination. Unlike adult dramas, where children and youth are quite often portrayed as ‘trouble,’ in live-action children’s dramas, children are the heroes—the problem-solvers and adventurers—and that’s empowering. I think that’s why their appeal has been universal.”

Hans Bourlon, a cofounder and joint managing director of the Benelux kids’ producer Studio 100, stresses that the best shows adhere to some familiar dramatic basics. “In my opinion, it’s all about recognizable, timeless characters and good scenarios. Young people have to be able to identify with characters and recognize their emotional conflicts.

“Looking at what other people make is never a good idea,” Bourlon continues. “Neither is market research about what people want. It all starts with a hunch of what is interesting for young people today. I would recommend not trying to make a carbon copy of Hannah Montana.”

Another key feature of the best kids’ live action is the chemistry between the on-screen talent. “What separates the successful from the less successful—certainly in live-action comedy—is the quality of scripting and acting,” says DECODE’s Scherba. “Getting the chemistry right starts with writing, but the casting is all important. If you can get a group working together in an ensemble, hopefully a bit of magic will emerge to enhance the comedy.”

Chemistry played a big part in the success of Life with Derek, Family Channel’s Daphne Ballon-scripted Canadian comedy in which Casey has to relocate from Toronto to live with stepbrother Derek following the marriage of their divorcee parents. Shane Kinnear, the VP of sales, marketing and digital media for Toronto-based Shaftesbury Films, which distributes the show, stresses the chemistry in the series is unusually good because of the way it was shot on location in Newfoundland. “All the kids and families moved to the same townhouse complex in the same building as a way of bringing the show in on budget. They had dinner together often and lived as a family and got to know each other really well, which you can see in the show.” Shaftesbury is following up Life with Derek with the original movie Vacation with Derek. Other live-action fare from Shaftesbury includes Overruled! and Connor Undercover.

If children’s live action is a successful genre, it has also been somewhat limited in its almost exclusive focus on appealing to girls. One area ripe for development is the boy-centric live-action genre, E1’s Saperstein maintains. “Right now it’s no secret that the cry is out for more boy-centric properties after years of girl-centric shows. Kids’ live action has been dominated by female-skewing shows because originally it was thought to be girls that were principally trending away from animation earlier than boys.”

One answer may be to lure boys back with fantasy-based live-action concepts. “I’d like to see more shows coming up that are both fun and fantasy-driven,” says CAKE’s Galton. “Broadcasters are still underlining [the idea] that comedy is very important, but if you look at the success of the Harry Potter movie franchise, it’s clear that kids still get excited about fantasy. There’s an opportunity for more fantasy-based kids’ live action.”

One of CAKE’s latest projects will be the new series Cartoon Gene from Canada’s GalaKids, the producer of The Worst Witch. Cartoon Gene will follow the life of a teenage boy with human and cartoon DNA. The show promises a combination of live action and CG animation.

Shaftesbury’s Kinnear notes that another developing trend in kids’ live action is the need to capitalize on the digital potential of content. “We have to remember that we are increasingly dealing with a very technologically savvy audience, so a 30-minute live-action sitcom needs to deliver in online, mobile and in print media. It’s not just about a 30-minute show and that’s the end of it. These days you have to figure out how to take the characters and stories and repurpose them.”

Taking digital seriously provides its own rewards, says Kinnear. “We established a much more direct relationship with our audience on Life with Derek. Viewers provided us with 6,000 entirely reedited episodes we didn’t ask for. They reedited their favorite episodes with their own music, mixing the stories up and telling it from their point of view.”

It helped Shaftesbury find out more about what the audience liked and disliked, which fed into the show’s development. “On Life with Derek, it has already informed how we create material for online. We discovered that our viewers’ favorite character was the youngest, who provides the show with a lot of light relief. We decided to use her more in the online world.”