Company Pictures’ Michele Buck

Michele Buck, CEO of All3Media-owned Company Pictures, talks to TV Drama about the challenges of operating a British independent today.

Buck co-founded Mammoth Screen and served as joint managing director until 2015, when ITV Studios took full control of the company. Soon thereafter, Buck was approached by All3Media CEO Jane Turton to lead Company, the outfit behind Inspector George Gently, Agatha Raisin, The Missing and Van der Valk.

TV DRAMA: How have you set up your drama development team in order to best meet the needs of the market?
BUCK: Lucy Raffety is my director of development, and Richard Fell is head of drama. Underneath them, we have lots of clever, cutting-edge people. We have a development meeting once a week for about two hours where we all talk about everything: things we’ve seen, things we want, we might talk about a book that some of us have read. We’re open for business to everyone. We’re actively looking for young writers. One of the really good things now is you don’t need one of the 12 top writers in England to get a green light. The SVODs are actively looking for young writers, young female writers, young female black writers. The door is open. That’s exciting. And underneath Lucy, Richard and I, we have five young development executives who all have a different range of experiences, and they are all also tonally different; they all have slightly different tastes. I’m hoping that our interests are varied and our catchment area is quite big. Our development slate at the moment is very eclectic and diverse and for all platforms. In the old days, you had something that could either be BBC or ITV or Channel 4. Now with so many different places to go and drama becoming a little bit more bespoke, if you have a really good idea that is slightly left of center, if it’s good and the writer is good and you can get it there, you should be able to find a home for it. That’s the really exciting bit of the industry.

TV DRAMA: When you do find that young talent, how do you work with them to hone their skills?
BUCK: We offer a very secure home where I’d like to think we’re nurturing them, and I’d like to think we hammock them with safety. They can do what they want and then we hone it and shape it in a very positive way. I’ll be honest; it took me a very long time to get this [development] team together. One of the reasons [for that] is, I like a certain type of person, a positive  person, a nice, supportive, confident person. I don’t want to employ someone who is just going to run roughshod over other people’s ideas and put their own ego first. I’m hoping that what we offer now is nurturing support. We’re confident of what we do and I hope that makes a difference.

TV DRAMA: Tell us about how you work with all3media international on projects. The financing model for Van der Valk was an interesting one.
BUCK: There is a lot of competition for content. The content is either already owned by distributors because distributors own the production companies, or Netflix now wants to own all of the IP. So basically, if your job is to sell content, then where do you get your content? Louise [Pedersen, CEO of all3media international] works in lots of different ways. If you’re a greengrocer and you need to sell apples, but there aren’t any, you plant an orchard and grow your own. Van der Valk is homegrown talent. Louise and all3media international have a template of what they know the industry wants, what sells, what gets good ratings, what works in lots of different territories. I definitely have a reputation for making detective shows. So it was a no-brainer [for all3media international to commission Van der Valk]. Interestingly, it was a brand that I had looked at earlier on in my career to try to get ahold of, but it wasn’t available. So when Chris [Murray, screenwriter] came in the door and said, I want to do this, I said, Yes, let’s look at it again. It’s a brand that people understand. Maybe it’s an older audience, but the younger audience is also going to want to go to Amsterdam and the genre works. So it worked on lots of different levels. Because Louise knows her territories well and what works in what territories, we went out to those territories that it should work in. ARD Degeto in Germany came in, and then others came in. PBS is in. It will go on ITV. Once someone is in, it gives others confidence, and then when people start to see it, and they know they are classy films, there’s more confidence. We’re all very proud of it and pleased with the model. It’s homegrown content that All3Media owns.

TV DRAMA: How do you determine what episode length is best suited to an idea?
BUCK: There are some things that you devise that you know are going to be long-running or returning series. If you look at a book, there are two [factors to consider]. One is the tone. Where does that tone sit in what marketplace? Some marketplaces have their own cut-off; they might not want four-parters; they might only want eight-parters. You might look at a book and go, wow, this just wouldn’t stretch to eight. It’s a combination of the material you want to do, where it sits and what the requirements [are of the potential commissioners]. It just shapes down organically in the end.

TV DRAMA: What benefits does Company Pictures derive from having the backing of All3Media?
BUCK: One, they are owned by Americans, so you have that scale. Two, Jane [Turton] has a really interesting business model. She has seen the advantages of buying production companies, so she’s buying content. I would guess she has one of the best start-up rates—she’s always setting up creatives. Therefore, she has an eclectic bunch of people working for her. If you’re in the group, you feel the power of the intelligence of a large group, but all the companies work in a very autonomous way. I used to own Mammoth and I sold it [to ITV Studios]. Jane offered me the headspace of running an indie, but actually without losing sleep at night! Having started an indie and sold an indie, I didn’t want to do that again. It’s very stressful! I was lucky enough to be offered the job of taking on a company with a brand and a heritage and a library and a reputation, but it’s autonomous. So it runs like I would have run Mammoth, but without the stresses. I have the support of a big company, the intelligence of a big company, and, most importantly, a really good distributor. all3media [international] is a very impressive outfit. Just look at the Van der Valk model—the way Louise has found her own content, made her own content. The bravery that must take, because the exposure is scary. I have a distributor that I can have a really good conversation with: what works, what do you want, what do you not want, this is what I have. I feel like she has an eclectic taste and the company does, too. So what does it give me? It gives me the support and confidence to do what we think we should be doing. And that’s a very rare thing. For creative people, that does make a difference. That is what All3Media offers. You don’t do your best work in a climate of paranoia.

TV DRAMA: How competitive is the quest to secure book IP?
BUCK: Oh my goodness me! Really, really, really competitive. We’re constantly reading books. It’s quite interesting reading manuscripts—not everyone knows about them! It’s a very competitive space and you have to have a shit-hot lawyer on it doing good deals for you. And you have to be quick off the mark. But yes, it is hard. We’re doing some interesting co-production development work with a Canadian production company around really good books [Steve Burrows’ Birder Murder Mysteries with Shaftesbury]. We’d been looking for something to do together for ages.

The jigsaw way of working now, I actually find stimulating. In the old days, you went to ITV or BBC, and they paid for it all. Now it’s much more like feature films. It’s much more, what’s the funding model I need? Each model is different. The co-production we’re trying to do with the Canadians will be a different one than the one we’ve done for Van der Valk. That in itself is a challenge that I personally find really interesting. It’s like three-dimensional chess!