MIPTV: The Week in Drama

The prominence of European drama could be seen across MIPTV this year. Some 450 programmers took part in the MIPDrama Buyers’ Summit on the Sunday before MIPTV began to screen ten projects from across Europe that are currently in production. Mediaset España and Producciones Mandarina’s Dangerous Moms (Señoras del (H)Ampa) was hailed as a stand-out as it landed the Coup de Cœur Award. Canneseries, in its second edition, featured ten completed series in competition, and again a Spanish contender came out on top, with Perfect Life (Déjate Llevar) named as the best series.

The other major theme last week was the crucial importance of access to talent, with In Development Drama proving to be a hub of activity in the Palais. The market’s focus on the creative process also included an inspiring keynote conversation between showrunner and executive producer Ilene Chaiken (Empire, The L Word) and World Screen’s Anna Carugati. To a packed Debussy Theatre, Chaiken weighed in on the role of the showrunner today, noting, “It’s a mysterious job. Even outside of the American television industry, most people don’t know what it is. It’s changed a bit in the last couple of years. There are star showrunners now who have become so famous that people actually know the job exists. It’s a job that still starts with the writing. There’s no showrunner that isn’t first and foremost a writer. The biggest responsibility is telling those stories, breaking the stories, writing the stories, staffing the room, plotting the course of a season of television. But beyond that, the showrunner is responsible for overseeing a vast organization, for hiring or signing off on every department head, for choosing the directors, for casting, and that’s just the making of the show. Then she—or sometimes he!—also interfaces with the studio, publicity, marketing. It has a lot of executive functions that tie into the creative functions.”

Chaiken went on to discuss the importance of storytelling that pushes boundaries. These shows “do have an impact on the world. Telling stories changes culture. Telling stories changes lives, changes the way one individual feels about herself or himself and changes the way the rest of the world understands an individual’s experience. I also think that the audience has changed in significant ways. They are much more sophisticated and hungrier for new stories. In some ways, the audiences have changed faster than the programmers. What television does best and what is needed and wanted is to see something we haven’t seen before but makes us feel connected to one another.”

Outside of In Development, the business of selling drama continued at a brisk pace, with a host of new and returning shows available to the buyers in attendance. ZDF Enterprises screened Victor Lessard, a Canadian series that is heading into its third season, with author and screenwriter Martin Michaud, Pixcom’s Nicola Merola and ZDF Enterprises’ Robert Franke on hand to discuss the genesis of the Quebec-based show.

It was a busy week for Turkish drama, with Madd Entertainment inking deals with RTL in Hungary and TVKLAN in Albania, ATV selling Hercai to Kanal D in Romania, Inter Medya sealing two agreements on Bitter Lands and SPI International/FilmBox’s Timeless Drama Channel (TDC) going live with ten operators, making the Turkish drama channel available in more than 1 million homes.

Keshet International notched up deals across its foreign-language slate, including shows from Israel and Turkey, and expanded its roster via a deal with NTV. Russia’s NTV also inked a deal with Dori Media Group and announced that Global Agency had sold its period drama Aria of the Doomed to TenTime in the Middle East.

Elsewhere in European drama, Eccho Rights presold Honour to RTL Germany, ORF-Enterprise revealed it is bringing three new Tatort (Scene of the Crime) features to Italy’s Giallo, Imagina International Sales announced the premiere of Locked Up (Vis a vis) on Hulu Japan, as well as a host of other agreements, and Viaplay took a package of French Canal+ Creation Originale series from STUDIOCANAL.

Asian dramas also made some headlines, with French format deals on Nippon TV’s Mother and Woman–My Life for My Children–, a Turkish drama in the works based on ABS-CBN’s A Mother’s Guilt, and One Life Studios partnering with the Cambodian Broadcasting Service (CBS) to launch Chandragupta Maurya on the CBS Group channels CTN and myTV.

MIPTV also saw news of new dramas in the works, including Alibi commissioning We Hunt Together, Fremantle’s Dancing Ledge Productions teaming up with best-selling crime novelist Lee Child (Jack Reacher) to produce Lee Child: True Crime, and SPI International inking a deal to co-produce three films and four TV series per year with movie director and producer Philippe Martinez.

Catch up on these stories and more on TVDrama.ws and read our recap of format news here.