Freedom Scripted’s Mike Ellen

Freedom Scripted opened for business in 2018, founded by former BBC, STV and World Productions executive Mike Ellen, who now serves as managing director and creative director of the Glasgow-based label. The company has since opened offices in London and Berlin as well to continue expanding its focus on high-end drama. The label has a range of projects in development, including adaptations of the Alex Morrow detective novels, Engleby and Ayesha’s Gift. Ellen talks to TV Drama about the company’s creative ethos, the book-based IP it has in its pipeline, the company’s first-look deal with All3Media International and the challenges and opportunities in the current market.

TV DRAMA: What does Freedom Scripted bring to every project it works on, and what does it look for in projects it becomes involved in?
ELLEN: There’s a pretty interesting term [that] somebody we were talking to recently coined: subversive mainstream. I really like that because we do want to make entertainment, we want to make shows for big audiences, but we want to bring something a little different to the table. We also look for character-led pieces, a little bit of wit and mischief and something that will give the audience a takeaway, a show that [they] want to talk about with their friends, at work the next day or online. Something that’s relevant as well.

TV DRAMA: With last year’s strikes in the U.S. rippling throughout the industry, current economic conditions and the state of disruption everyone’s dealing with, how is Freedom Scripted navigating the climate?
ELLEN: In a weird kind of way, we’re in a fortunate situation in that we are quite a new company. We’re just about to make our first show. So, we haven’t been used to any particular way of doing business. In that sense, because we’ve been in development to this point rather than production, it probably hasn’t affected us as much as it has others. I think where it did impact us was the squeeze on finances and budgets. For a new indie like ourselves, we traditionally go to the likes of BBC and Channel 4, and those broadcasters have had pressures to deal with and have been making less programs at the same time. There’s obviously been a lot of churn and change with streamers, but I think it’s worth bearing in mind that we’re still in a kind of boom for scripted content. There’s still a huge desire among audiences for that. If you get the right show, as a few shows have shown recently, you can still attract huge audiences to your streamer or your broadcast. It’s about just staying calm, but then maybe ripping it up and starting again in terms of your business model and how you think about what your particular strengths are as a company, without giving up on your values and your company culture. It’s been a challenging time, but there [are] always opportunities when there’s change as well. It may be that we’re not quite so accustomed to certain ways of doing business, certain margins and what have you, so we’re a little bit less blown off course by some of the things that happened. Obviously when it comes to the strikes, there was definitely a ripple effect or a knock-on effect in the U.K., but it wasn’t as direct as it was in the States.

TV DRAMA: You mentioned that with change comes opportunity as well. What do you think are the biggest areas of opportunity in the drama business over the next year or two?
ELLEN: There [are] a lot of different types of opportunity, depending on where you are and who you are. For a company like us, the opportunities are in making high-quality premium drama for more modest budgets—from about €1 million to €3 million per hour, which, for some broadcasters and some streamers, that’s actually quite cheap. A lot of European program-makers are used to making programs for under €2 million and doing it in co-pro. So, I think there’s definitely opportunity for us in that space, and then some of those shows can help us grow to punch through to other price levels. I think co-pros and affordable budget shows are a real opportunity. We’re well placed having our headquarters outside of London and having relatively low overheads and having to be quite innovative in how we make shows. We’re quite well placed to take advantage of some of those opportunities. Also, this kind of changing of the guard or flipping of how things are done, that does create openings for newer talents, more diverse talents and general creatives who will grab an opportunity with both hands.

TV DRAMA: What has been working best in scripted lately in terms of genres? What do you think is driving that trend?
ELLEN: The hardy perennial is crime. The genres and precincts that work best in TV traditionally have always been crime, with some medical and legal and things like that. I think it’s because they’re high stakes. Depending on what kind of show you’re making, if you’re going to any kind of volume, those kinds of settings and precincts throw out high-stakes stories time and time again and grip audiences. They’re not reliant on every writer who works on that show being an absolute genius. Having said that, we are very attracted to genre-adjacent shows with big character stories, a degree of complexity and depictions of the human experience that you wouldn’t find in those big factory shows necessarily. But the obvious genres or set of genres that keep delivering are crime and all its subsets.

TV DRAMA: Early last year, you signed a first-look deal with All3Media International. What has that relationship meant for the company?
ELLEN: The first thing is it helps us support our slate, and it joins the dots in terms of our very early-stage creative discussions with writers or around IP and how we would chart a path for that potential show through to distribution. It means that we’re able to have those chats at an earlier stage and think about not only how to get commissions but how to make sure those local programs go to global audiences. That obviously feeds back to what we decide to go with and what we decide to work on because nobody wants to be developing things that don’t have a shot at getting made. So, it’s the art of the possibility for us.

On the other hand, there’s a degree of market intel when you’re working with a company like All3Media. They can let us know what the trends are, what’s been commissioned in other territories and share some stories from our local market. Then, of course, we’re thankfully at a stage now with one of our shows where we’re looking to put a finance plan together. Already having an existing relationship with All3Media means that we just lift the phone to them, and we can start that chat even before greenlights.

Also, to be honest, there’s a degree with a small company, a startup company, of affirmation and brand associations. So, if we’re going into a broadcaster and they know that we’re already working with the likes of All3Media or BBC Studios or any other recognizable distributor, then it gives them a bit of comfort, like, All right, these guys roughly know what they’re doing and they can probably deliver a program on budget and in a professional manner.

TV DRAMA: Last year, Freedom Scripted opened new offices in London and Berlin. Tell me what drove that decision and what kinds of opportunities this opens for the company.
ELLEN: The first thing is we’re very keen to make the most of the original headquarters being in Glasgow and in the nations and regions of the U.K., but at the same time, we don’t expect any special favors because of that. We absolutely want to compete and set our bar as high as any indie in London or the rest of the world. As in other territories, there’s usually one or two cities where there’s a real concentration of agents and broadcasters who are there to make decisions. In the U.K., that place is London still. So, in terms of having those meetings, picking up informal intel and being seen as a serious player, I think it’s good to have a presence, however modest, in London. Our head of development is based down there. We’ve got a base at Somerset House, and it means we can use that when we’re down there. Our head of development is always with me or a colleague when we go in to see people. It just makes an awful lot of sense in terms of practicality but also how we’re perceived. We want to be local, but we want to be  competing with everybody else.

In terms of Berlin and Germany, that’s a long-standing, slightly accidental but organic connection we have. I had a couple connections over in Germany, in Berlin in particular. When I started the label off, then that grew. We’re working with some German showrunners who are one of the leading showrunner teams in that territory on an English-language show. Then, we have a show in development with BBC that’s set in Germany. We’ve got a number of other different connections and bits of IP and shows that have German connections to them. The other thing is Berlin is like one of the centers of the world creatively. So, there are tangible connections over there. We’re working on shows set there. We’re working with talent there. But then, it’s just an incredibly cool place as well. We’ve very keen to be a European as well as a U.K. company. To be honest, being from Glasgow, we weren’t enormous fans of Brexit, and we’re determined not to look inward, and look outward to our nearest neighbors, who are in Europe. So, there are all sorts of cultural reasons and hopefully business reasons as well for us to have a footprint over there.

Again, it means we’re not pigeonholed as being a Scottish company or a U.K. company. We’re out there meeting people and talking to people from further afield. I think there’s huge opportunities in Europe as well because the language barrier is effectively breaking down, even since the company started. There [have] been many examples of co-productions across territories of even English-language shows being made in Germany and so on and so forth. It’s only going to get more like that.

TV DRAMA: You recently announced that you’re adapting Engleby for the screen, as well as Ayesha’s Gift, and you previously signed on to adapt the Alex Morrow detective novels. What do you look for in a novel to determine if it would be ideal for the screen?
ELLEN: First of all, you are usually looking for some identifiable genre elements. In the case of all three of those, there is an unconventional crime plot running through them. In Ayesha’s Gift, there’s a kind of investigative strand. In Engleby, there’s a highly unconventional mystery strand. In the case of the Morrow series, they’re more conventional detective thriller books. There are literary aspects to, for instance, Engleby, and there’s a sort of true-crime or true-life aspect to Ayesha’s Gift and also a really interesting geopolitical aspect to it and an aspect that deals with British identity or second-generation South Asian-British identity. So, there [are] lots and lots of interesting things going on, but there’s something to hang those elements on, which talks to genre and talks in this case to investigative crime and those sorts of things. But above all, we need to love those books and love the author and find the right screenwriter to do justice to them. That’s a huge factor. Having IP is not the be all, end all, but it is great when it works. It does help, probably increasingly, but at the same time, we don’t worship at the altar of IP.

TV DRAMA: Is there anything else you’d like to add about what Freedom Scripted is working on?
ELLEN: One of the most exciting shows we’re working on is a legal show called The Devils. That’s with one of the U.K.’s most exciting up-and-coming writers, Namsi Khan. She’s just written on the most recent season of True Detective. She’s served time in writers’ rooms and writing episodes for shows like His Dark Materials, The Midwich Cuckoo and Humans. We’ve been trying to work with Namsi for ages, and everything just came together on this particular development. So, we’re developing that for BBC Drama. It’s set in Edinburgh for a U.K.-wide audience, about trainee advocates, their life in court, their life outside of court, the challenges of making it in that world. It’s got a little bit of industry, maybe a bit of blue lights and maybe a bit of a show like The Good Wife or even going way back, there was a show that was really big called This Life. It’s one of the most exciting things we’ve worked on. It’s such a great script. Namsi has done an amazing job. It’s really bold.