Europe Takes Aim

From the U.K. to France, Germany to Iceland and beyond, Europe has become a prolific provider of drama series to the global market.

Some 2.5 million viewers in the U.K. tuned in to the first episode of Deutschland 83 last month. The ratings on Channel 4 make the RTL commission the highest-rated foreign-language drama in U.K. history. The impressive U.K. numbers come after a buzz-generating American launch on SundanceTV last summer and a slate of other international deals. “It’s turned into the best-selling German drama in a very long time,” says Jens Richter, the CEO of FremantleMedia Inter­national, which is distributing the show. “It’s one of the best-selling non-English-language dramas in a long time.”

It has, indeed, been a good few years for European drama, with the Scandinavians, the French, the Germans and others joining the Brits as go-to suppliers for prime-time scripted product.

“When you look at the market, there is an opening for European non-English-language drama,” Richter says. “There’s been good stuff coming out of Scandinavia for years. There are good shows coming out of France, out of Spain, out of Italy. Why not Germany? UFA, FremantleMedia’s German arm [which produced Deutschland 83], is the biggest producer of drama in Germany, and Germany is the biggest TV market on the continent and spends the most money on local production. So it was almost overdue! Generation War won the International Emmy [in 2014] and proved that the unexpected shows can come out of Germany.”

Alexander Coridass, president and CEO of ZDF Enterprises, is also feeling bullish about what’s happening in the German scripted market at present.

“With a drama output that’s among the best in Europe both in quantity and quality, Germany is in a truly privileged situation, and fiction is the programmatic spine of all major players, no matter whether in free TV, pay TV or VOD,” Coridass notes. “ZDF alone produces more than 300 new episodes every year, primarily for the genres of crime, family and drama. These series, which can rake in an enormous viewership, are also a bank for international sales.”

Coridass notes that German broadcasters are also beginning to experiment with edgier fare, notably Generation War and Deutschland 83 as well as The Team and Blochin. “I see the following new trend: very strong projects in limited series that prove to be particularly successful for both nonlinear and niche broadcasters, and strong mainstream series that grab the broad audience of linear broadcasters.”

Coridass adds, “We are very satisfied with the European hit status of German series and TV movies. They are aired in many important markets—from Italy to other Southern European, Central and Eastern European countries, to the Benelux and Northern Europe. In particular, many productions that are not given flashy write-ups in the press secure us long-term, profitable sales volumes—and we are still making 60 to 70 percent of our turnover with linear TV. But our more ‘niche’ oriented programs are also doing very well.”

Red Arrow International, a division of ProSiebenSat.1, has been diversifying its scripted slate over the last few years but still sees the benefit of having high-end local series to offer the market. Its newest German highlight is Einstein, and Henrik Pabst, managing director of Red Arrow International, expects the SAT.1 series to generate both finished-program and format sales.

“In general, European drama is on the rise, but it’s not without its challenges,” Pabst observes. “European broadcasters are spending less money, so financing is more fragmented. That leads to the problem of several cooks. If you have a restaurant, it doesn’t make sense to have ten chefs in the kitchen! There must always be a very strong vision at the start of any project.”

SCRIPTED FORMULAS 
“Partnership has become the flavor of the month,” agrees Lionel Uzan, co-founder and managing director of Federation Entertainment, which has such scripted properties on its slate as the French hit The Bureau, Netflix’s upcoming Marseille, the Finnish show Replacements and the Israeli drama Hostages. It is also the French partner on Lookout Point’s The Collection with BBC Worldwide and Amazon.

And when it comes to how best to manage those collaborations across borders, many agree that it begins with open communication. “It’s all about knowing what the broadcasters are looking for and which production companies would fit with which projects,” says Maartje Horchner, head of acquisitions at all3media international, which has been stepping up its scripted co-production activities. “It is an interesting development that so many more channels have hired heads of co-production. Whereas previously this would probably only be the bigger channels, even smaller and digital channels and of course the VOD platforms (worldwide and national) have hired people to lead their co-production opportunities and therefore have become an interested partner to us.”

Gaumont Television created a new international co-production role in 2014 to tap into these opportunities around the world. “They’d started the U.S. office five years prior, and French television at around the same time,” says Elizabeth Dreyer, the studio’s Paris-based head of international co-production. “This was the last piece of the puzzle. I’m looking for European stories and storytellers, and bringing them to global audiences.”

In the works are the 1960s-set Spy City with novelist William Boyd, 1001 by Lars Lundström and Ken Sanzel’s show Crosshair. Asked about how to manage complex co-pro partnerships, Dreyer notes, “There’s a lot of diplomacy involved. I find myself explaining a lot to our French co-producers about what needs to be done abroad. Those are usually conversations about how talent works. We’re working with U.S. writers and those deals are complicated and other-worldly to our French co-producers who’ve originated these great ideas. The talent just works so differently in the U.S. when you’re dealing with U.S. agencies. It’s not rocket science, it’s just a lot of educating both sides on what’s done habitually, what the expectations are.”

The international co-pros of today are a far cry from the so-called “Euro-puddings” of the ’90s. But, Dreyer observes, “You still have the Euro-puddings—they just have a harder time getting financed. Sometimes you can feel actors working their mouths around the English [in shows written in Europe]. You just need somebody in the driver’s seat who is really paying attention.”

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE 
A new development in the international drama business is Continental European dramas shot in English—think Zodiak Media’s Versailles or Red Arrow’s 100 Code. Pabst notes that “100 Code continues to sell really well. We sold it to Sky Atlantic in the U.K. The way the story is told, it’s absolutely natural that 70 percent of the [dialogue] in the series is English and the rest is Swedish. But it didn’t do us any harm in selling the show. As long as it feels natural that the people speak English, we will continue to produce these Euro­pean co-pros in English. If it’s needed that we build in the local language for the story, we will.”

“The barrier of the language is still there, but it isn’t as high as it used to be,” says Federation’s Uzan.

Dreyer points to Gaumont Television’s U.S. drama Narcos for Netflix, where much of the dialogue is in Spanish. “Narcos really changed the game for us internationally in terms of the stories you can tell and what language you can do a show in. The projects we’re looking at now we’re saying, the characters can speak French in this part, they can speak German to each other.”

Richter acknow­ledges that foreign-language drama can be a tougher sell: “So the proposition you put in front of buyers has to be unique. It doesn’t make sense to come around with non-English-language drama that is just OK.”

However, in this crowded market, even English-language drama can no longer just be average. And for distributors, having a diverse slate is key. At ZDF Enterprises, for example, “Scandinavian series remain a major pillar of our co-production and sales strategy,” Coridass notes, adding that the company is looking at scripted projects out of Central Europe, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and the U.K.

Red Arrow has built up its slate of U.K. scripted and is taking its first Icelandic series to market with Case, which Pabst describes as “The Killing meets Broadchurch.”

For Pabst, one of the biggest challenges in rolling out European drama is finding qualified talent. “So many of the top people and companies are tied up in deals.”

Gaumont’s Dreyer lists finding writers for projects as one of her biggest issues. “They’re all very busy. There aren’t enough writers. Everybody says so. And the market hasn’t evolved enough here where you can [get a show commissioned from a] great piece of writing by somebody with no credits. I hope it will get there. And there are people like Frank Spotnitz and Paul Abbott who are training writers up on their shows, and [there are] writing programs like Serial Eyes—the new voices are being nurtured.”

TALENT MANAGEMENT 
Horchner reports that at all3media, “Some of our writing talent are working with younger script writers. It is a tough market for new writers—commissioners like to bank on security, experience and celebrated talent. It gives them comfort knowing that someone with so many highly acclaimed credits is writing their newest big title. The problem is there is only a small pool of writers who get the commissions—getting those writers to write for you might force producers to wait for them to become available. So for us it is important that there is collaboration, mentoring in some instances, where writers with great acclaim will set up a story and mentor their juniors through writing further episodes.”

Horchner notes that all3media has its own portfolio of sister companies to tap into for its drama-distribution catalogue, but she is still on the lookout for other ventures and talent to tie up with. “We have a healthy stream of new content coming through via the all3media-owned companies, but we also work with third-party independent producers, some of whom we have first-look deals with. In the last 18 months we signed eight first-look deals with production companies across all genres, but our emphasis has firmly been on drama production talent.”

Examples include an alliance with George Faber’s The Forge, and Jack and Harry Williams, the writers of The Missing. “Our drama strategy is to surround ourselves with production talent and the greatest creative minds, which allows us to dip into a pool of fabulous drama developments where we can collaborate on creating and developing content, produced to a high standard—with us helping on the production finance and ultimate exploitation revenues of the shows.”

As for the kinds of projects she’s looking for, Horchner says, “We steer toward big-budget crowd-pulling titles with big-name actors, writers, directors and production talent already attached. The intention is to make them a genuine co-production, with that I mean a co-production where both territories have meaningful input, either by shooting location and/or cast and crew, but sometimes we will consider to have co-productions where it is for funding reasons solely.”

One area that a number of European producers and distributors are exploring is procedurals, given that the U.S. market has shifted much further into serialized storytelling.

“Free- and pay-TV broadcasters are looking for and airing long-running series with self-contained episodes because a large part of the viewers love this kind of TV,” ZDF Enterprises’s Coridass says. “We are often asked when a European series like Derrick will come to 21st century media. I think we already have it in our catalogue [with] A Case of Murder, and series such as Dr. Klein or our SOKO franchise.”

Gaumont’s Dreyer observes that “the European market is changing very slowly. The channels want to take big swings, they are trying, but it’s hard—they still have to treat their home territory right, they still have to give their audiences what they want. But you do feel a willingness from RTL, from Rai, to think about the shows that could work for them at home and [sell well] abroad. That door was completely closed a couple of years ago—now they’re willing to have those conversations.”

What’s helping to drive those conversations, Pabst notes, is that “countries are opening up in terms of tax breaks to incentivize co-productions. Tax breaks are a fundamental piece of the financing.”

Ultimately, “It’s all about the script,” Horchner says. “A good script is the cornerstone of any great drama, but especially for international co-production where sometimes concessions need to be made.”

And, on top of getting the creative right, you need to be spot-on with your windowing strategies. “More buyers is always good,” says Federation’s Uzan on how OTT platforms have impacted the drama-distribution business. “They’ve created competition, which is good. What’s difficult is how to organize your windows. That’s becoming complex. OTT platforms started buying locally and now they’re buying global rights. So what does it mean for a distributor in terms of windowing? What do you favor in terms of deals? Is it good to do a global deal? Is it better to sell territory by territory? What do you do if you get an offer out of Germany from a broadcaster, but you know if you make that sale then maybe a deal with a platform that wants to have the major European territories might be at stake? It’s that complexity we have to address. And I think it’s going to become more and more complex.”