A European Television Fiction Renaissance: Premium Production Models and Transnational Circulation 9780367345402, 9780429326486

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A European Television Fiction Renaissance

This book maps the landscape of contemporary European premium television fiction, offering a detailed overview of both the changes in the digital production and distribution and the emergence of specific national and transnational case histories. Combining a media production approach with a textual and audience analysis, the volume offers a complex, stratified, systemic view of ongoing aesthetic, sociocultural and industrial developments in contemporary European TV. With contributions from leading experts in the field, the book first offers an overview of the industrial, policy and cultural context for the renaissance of European television drama over the past decade, based on original comparative research. This research is then supported by case study chapters from the key contexts within which quality European television is being produced, offering a complex and complete picture of the industry’s strengths and limitations, its traditions and trends, its constraints and future perspectives. A European Television Fiction Renaissance is a must-read book for TV scholars working across Europe and beyond in the areas of media studies, international communications and television studies, media industries studies, production studies, European studies, and media policy studies as well as for those with an interest in television drama, Netflix, globalisation, pay TV and on demand. Luca Barra is Associate Professor of Television and Digital Media at Università di Bologna, Italy. Massimo Scaglioni is Full Professor of Media Economics and History at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan.

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A European Television Fiction Renaissance Premium Production Models and Transnational Circulation Edited by Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library ­Cataloguing-in-Publication ­​­ ​­ Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress ­Cataloging-in-Publication ­​­ ​­ Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: ­978-0-367-34540-2 ­​­ ­​­ ­​­ ​­ (hbk) ­ ISBN: ­978-0-429-32648-6 ­​­ ­​­ ­​­ ​­ (ebk) ­ Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of contributors

ix xi xiii



PART 1

Researching European fiction





­



11

vi Contents PART 2

United Kingdom

69

5 A 2 ­ 1st-​­century gold rush? Video on demand and the global competition for UK television

71

PH I LI P DR A K E

6 “­The biggest drama commission in British television history”: Netflix, The Crown, and the UK television ecosystem

86

RO B E RTA P E A R S O N

PART 3

France

101

7 Video on demand platforms, editorial strategies, and logics of production: the case of Netflix France

103

C H R I S T E L TA I L L I B E RT A N D B RU N O C A I L L E R

8 The strategy of “­quality TV”: branding, creating, and producing at Canal+

118

H É L È N E ­M O N N E T-​­C A N TAG R E L

9 What is a quality French series? Reflections on The Bureau

130

FR A NÇOIS JOST

PART 4

Italy

143

10 Towards a new model for Italian TV fiction: Sky Italia originals and the struggle for difference

145

L U C A B A R R A A N D M A S S I M O S C AG L I O N I

1 1 The Holy See(­ing): Splendors and miseries of The Young Pope GI A NC A R LO LOM BA R DI

165

Contents  vii PART 5

Germany

175





PART 6

Spain

211





PART 7

Central and Eastern Europe

241







Index

295

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Figures

3.1 The age of overabundance. Number of titles of scripted pay productions in the US per year 34 3.2 The European renaissance. Ten years of growth in pay fiction. Based on the Ce.R.T.A. research sample: number of original pay TV series (­fi rst seasons and returning seasons) 35 3.3 Industry breakthroughs and production growth in Europe 36 3.4 Genre proportions: comedy vs. drama 39 3.5 Adaptations vs originals 41 3.6 The network of premium productions in France 46 3.7 The network of premium productions in the UK 47 3.8 The network of premium productions in Italy 48 3.9 The network of premium productions in Spain 48 3.10 The network of premium productions in Germany 49 3.11 European premium productions across the five countries 50 3.12 The (indicative) nationality of the players 52 4.1 Exportability of scripted pay television. Number of international titles on air in the five European markets (­by year), excluding repeats in the various markets 57 4.2 Export capability of the main markets. Number of titles exported per country (­out of the total titles produced) and percentage of titles exported in the sampled markets 58 4.3 Circulation index. Circulation rating: the ratio between the total instances of titles exported for the other four countries and the number of titles exported from that country 60 4.4 Exportability by publisher. Percentage of titles exported to one or more countries 60 4.5 Import volumes for European pay products. Number of titles imported in the five European markets (­by year) 61 4.6 Product destinations. Channel and platform ­destinations – ​­first run. Overall percentage and number of titles imported per country 62 16.1 HBO Europe’s production system as of November 2019 250

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Tables

­ ​­ 15.1 Bambú Producciones production history (2008–2019) ­­ ​­ 233

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Contributors

Luca Barra is Associate Professor at Università di Bologna, where he teaches Radio and Television History, Television Production and Contemporary TV Series, and a former post-doctoral research fellow at Università Cattolica, Milan. His principal field is media and television studies, from both a historical and a contemporary perspective, with a focus on industrial, production and distribution cultures. He is the author of books La sitcom. Genere, evoluzione, prospettive (Carocci, Rome 2020), Palinsesto (Laterza, ­ Rome-Bari ­ ​­ 2015) and Risate in scatola (Vita ­ e Pensiero, Milan 2012) and co-editor of Taboo Comedy. Television and Controversial Humour (with C. Bucaria, Palgrave, Basingstoke 2015), Backstage. Studi sulla produzione dei media in Italia (with T. Bonini and S. Splendore, Unicopli, Milan 2015) and Tutta un’altra fiction (with ­ M. Scaglioni, Carocci, Rome 2013). He has also written essays in various journals and edited collections, and is an editorial board member for scientific journals including SERIES. International Journal of TV Serial Narratives, Studi culturali and Comunicazioni sociali. He is editorial consultant for Italian TV studies journal Link. Idee per la televisione and co-director of the book series SuperTele (minimum fax). Bruno Cailler has a doctorate in Information and Communication Sciences since 1999. Lecturer at the University of Nice Côte d’Azur since 2006, after seven years at Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle, he is a socio-economist in media and cultural industries. His initial areas of research are the economy of audiovisual contents production and the strategies for their promotion; he focused also on the local and participatory television, connected and social TV, transmedia and television series. Paolo Carelli,  PhD, teaches International Media Systems at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. He is Researcher at Ce.R.T.A., the Research Centre for Television and Audiovisual Media at the same university, and the didactic coordinator for the Master’s course “Fare Tv. Analisi, Gestione, Comunicazione” at ALMED. He is Adjunct Professor of Media Economy at University of Bergamo.

xiv Contributors Concepción Cascajosa Virino is Senior Lecturer at Carlos III University of Madrid, where she is a member of the TECMERIN research group and director of the MFA in Screenwriting. She has written or edited nine books and over thirty papers on television fiction and media history, including articles in Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, Journal of Spanish ­Cultural Studies, Television and New Media and Feminist Media ­Studies. Her current research deals with the transformation of television production culture in Spain. Philip Drake  is Head of Education and Professor of Media and Creative Industries in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has published widely on screen industries, including ­co-editing ​­ Hollywood and the Law (BFI London, London 2015, with P. McDonald, E. Carman and E. Hoyt), and articles on film distribution, independent film, European co-production, TV performance, and policy and practice in the creative industries. He has advised the Council of Europe on film policy and recently directed a research project on independent film distribution and VOD. Susanne Eichner  is Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Journalism Studies, Aarhus University. Her research takes a cross-media approach, focusing on media reception, media sociology, production ecology and popular serial culture. She is the author of Agency and Media Reception. Experiencing Video Games, Film, and Television (Springer, Berlin 2014) and co-editor of Fernsehen: Europäische Perspektiven (UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, Constance 2014, with E. Prommer) and Transnationale Serienkultur (Springer, Berlin 2013, with L. Mikos and R. Winter). Damiano Garofalo is Assistant Professor at Sapienza Università di Roma, where he teaches Film and Television History. He holds a PhD in Cultural History at the University of Padova, and he worked as a post-doc at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. He has published the books Political Audiences (Mimesis, ­ ­Milan-Udine ​­ 2016) and Storia ­sociale della televisione in Italia (Marsilio, Venice 2018). Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano  is Senior Lecturer at Universidad de Málaga, where he is Deputy Vice- Chancellor of Communication. He has been main researcher on several projects about Spanish and Andalusian Television. He is currently chair of the ECREA Television Studies section, Director of the Production and Media Content section of the Spanish Association of Communication Research (AE-IC) and a member of the editorial board of VIEW. Journal of European Television History and Culture. Dom Holdaway is Assistant Professor at the University of Urbino, where he teaches film history and analysis. He received his PhD at the University of

Contributors  xv Warwick, before completing post-doc fellowships at the Universities of Bologna and Milan. His research focuses on film, television and politics, including issues of representation, funding and distribution, and with a particular emphasis on the Italian case. He has co-authored the book The Walking Dead (Mimesis, Milan-Udine 2017, with M. Scaglioni). François Jost  is Emeritus Professor at the Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III, where he founded the Centre for the Study of Media Images and Sounds (CEISME). As an image specialist, he has written or edited over 30 books on film and television. He has contributed to the development of theoretical studies on TV, and he is the director of Télévision, the first Frenchlanguage scientific journal on the medium. Among his most recent works are: Le Culte du banal (CNRS Éditions, Paris 2007), De quoi les séries américaines sont-elles le symptôme? (CNRS Éditions, Paris 2015), Les ­ ​­ Nouveaux méchants (Bayard, Paris 2015), Breaking Bad. Le Diable est dans les détails (Atlande, Paris 2016), Médias: sortir de la haine (CNRS Éditions, Paris 2020). Giancarlo Lombardi  is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at College of Staten Island and at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of Rooms with a View (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Vancouver 2002) and co-editor of Terrorism Italian Style (IMLR Books, London 2012, with R. Glynn and A. O’Leary), Remembering Aldo Moro (Routledge, London 2012, with R. Glynn) and Italian Political Cinema (Peter Lang, Oxford 2016, with C. Uva). He is finishing a monograph on the rhetoric of fear in Italian television drama from the ’60s and ’70s, while working on a new project on the uses and functions of religion in prestige television drama from the Global North. Artur Majer,  PhD, is Assistant Professor at Łódź Film School/ The Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź and an employee of Telewizja Polska. He is the author of books on the cinema of Juliusz Machulski and on film production financing in Poland, and a member of the Polish Communication Association, the Writers’ Club of the Polish Filmmakers Association and the Polish Society for Film and Media Studies. Lothar Mikos is Professor of Television Studies at Filmuniversität Babelsberg in Potsdam. His main interests are the economy of the global television format trade, television series worldwide, digital distribution, convergence culture, popular genres and formats, and audience studies. He has published widely on television, film and popular culture. His articles appeared in Continuum, International Journal of Cultural ­Studies, Media and Communication, SERIES and many other journals and edited collections. ­ ​­ Hélène Monnet-Cantagrel  has a PhD in Communication studies and teaches Humanities at the ENSAAMA School of Design in Paris. She has

xvi Contributors published several articles and chapters about TV series and the books Les Experts. Au nom de la science (Atlande, Paris 2017) and Le format bible de sériés télévisées (l’Harmattan, Paris 2018). Roberta Pearson  is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham. Her most recent publications include the coauthored ­ Star Trek and American Television (University of California Press, Oakland 2014, with M. Messenger Davies), and Contemporary Transatlantic Television Drama (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2018, edited with M. Hills and M. Hilmes). She is author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 14 books, and author or co-author of over 80 journal articles and book chapters. Cecilia Penati  is Adjunct Professor of Television Studies at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. She is Senior Researcher at Ce.R.T.A., the Research Centre for Television and Audiovisual Media at the same university. She is also Adjunct Professor of Media for the Arts at IULM University of Milan. She has published extensively on television history and communication in journals such as VIEW. Journal of European Television History and Culture, Comunicazioni sociali and Bianco e nero. She is the author of the books Il focolare elettronico (Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2013), La tv delle donne (Unicopli, Milan 2015, with A. Sfardini), and La nuova fabbrica dei sogni (il Saggiatore, Milan 2016, with A. Grasso). Massimo Scaglioni is Professor of Media History and Media Economics at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan. He is also Adjunct Professor of Transmedia Narratives and Television: Industry and Languages at Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) in Lugano. He is the author of several books on media and broadcasting history and industry, including Tv di culto (Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2006), ­Multi-tv. ​­ L’esperienza televisiva nell’età della convergenza (Carocci, Rome 2008, with A. Sfardini), La tv dopo la tv (Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2011), Il servizio pubblico televisivo (Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2016) and The Walking Dead (Mimesis, ­ Milan-Udine 2017, with D. Holdaway). He has edited several collections and written essays for various edited volumes and journals. He is director of Ce.R.T.A., the Research Centre for Television and Audiovisual Media at Università Cattolica, director of studies for the Master’s course “Fare Tv. Analisi, Gestione, Comunicazione” at ALMED and an editorial board member for scientific journals including VIEW. Journal of European Television History and Culture, Media Industries Journal and Comunicazioni sociali. He is currently Principal Investigator for the research project “International Circulation of Italian Cinema” (CinCIt), funded by the Italian Ministry of Education. Anna Sfardini, PhD, is Assistant Professor at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, where she teaches Intercultural Communication and

Contributors  xvii Media and Communication. Since 2008, she is Senior Researcher at Ce.R.T.A., the Research Centre for Television and Audiovisual Media at the same university. She wrote MultiTv. L’esperienza televisiva nell’età della convergenza (Carocci, Rome 2008, with M. Scaglioni), Reality tv (Unicopli, Milan 2009), Politica pop (il Mulino, Bologna 2009, with G. Mazzoleni) and La tv delle donne (Unicopli, Milan 2015, with C. Penati). She ­co-edited ​­ La televisione. Modelli teorici e percorsi ­d’analisi (Carocci, Rome 2018, with M. Scaglioni). Petr Szczepanik  is Associate Professor at Charles University, Prague. He has written books on the Czech media industries of the 1930s and on the ­state-socialist ​­ production mode, and ­co-edited ​­ Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Culture (Palgrave, London 2013, with P.  Vonderau). He led the EU-funded FIND project (www.projectfind. cz, 2012–2014), which used student internships for a collective ethnography of production cultures. In 2015, he was the main author of an industry report on practices of screenplay development for the Czech Film Fund. He is leading the Screen Industries in Central and Eastern Europe Research Group (Charles University, a part of the EU-funded project KREAS), and working on the strategies for public service media’s sustainability in the internet era, on the digitization of Czech audiovisual industry and the impacts of the EU Digital Single Market strategy on film and TV distribution, and on practices and professional identities of ­East-Central ​­ European producers. Christel Taillibert is Lecturer (with habilitation thesis to supervise research) at the University of Nice Côte d’Azur, and a member of the laboratory of research LIRCES. Her research focuses on educational cinematography, film festivals, cinephilia and video on demand platforms. She published many articles and three books: Vidéo à la demande: une nouvelle médiation? (l’Harmattan, Paris 2020), Tribulations festivalières (l’Harmattan, ­ Paris 2009), and L’Institut international du cinématographe éducatif (l’Harmattan, Paris 1999). Balázs Varga is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He writes and lectures on Hungarian cinema, contemporary European cinema, production studies, popular films and documentaries. He worked at the Hungarian National Film Archives from 1993 to 2007. He is a founding editor of Metropolis, a scholarly journal on film theory and history based in Budapest. He has published several articles in books and journals in English, Italian, Polish, Czech and Hungarian. His most recent book in Hungarian is Filmrendszerváltások. A magyar film intézményeinek átalakulása 1990–2010 (l’Harmattan, Budapest 2016).

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1

Introduction The many steps and factors of a European renaissance Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni

In little over a decade, from 2008 to 2020, television scripted-series production in Europe underwent a succession of major changes, prompting what we term here a European television fiction renaissance. It all started when the big pay TV operators began producing more and more original series in the main national markets. The aim was to transcend the national boundaries within which the public service broadcasters and commercial networks had traditionally conceived television fiction. Naturally, the role of pay TV, both in the early seminal years and during the decade that followed, must be contextualized within the broader transformations of digitalization and convergence affecting Europe’s media and television arena. Yet – and this is the thesis of this volume, and the hypothesis of the underlying research  – it was precisely the emergent “premium model” that profoundly marked the whole period, with major repercussions for the kinds of titles produced and the production and distribution practices involved. At the same time, the supranational success and critical acclaim of the much-discussed, much-studied Nordic noir genre was helping European series made in smaller markets, in contexts where the public service broadcasters had a strong presence, to gain global relevance. What has received less attention, though, despite its enduring ramifications, is the gradual emergence of a high-quality/ high-end fiction genre that sprang from local commissioning by numerous pay TV operators, and then became consolidated as the big over-the-top global platforms joined in with their production efforts. These are all the elements that inspired an unprecedented model of premium European TV series. This process of change came to a halt with the SARS- Cov-2 virus pandemic in the first half of 2020. While the long-term effects of the crisis on scripted-series and, more generally, various media contents remain to be studied and identified, of course, early 2020 has certainly witnessed a radical, abrupt halt in fiction production. Covid-19 has had a major, direct impact on audiovisual production throughout the world, and it is not yet clear whether this watershed moment will mark the end of the European renaissance or the beginning of a further phase of rethinking and reshaping. It could prove a moment of reflection after a period of intense innovation

2  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni in which the series devised and made for a subscriber audience – often conceived of as a disparate collection of niches across the products’ country of origin and the many other contexts where the title is distributed – have driven the TV industry forward.

Three perspectives for a systemic approach In the decade (and a bit) considered here, then, an original production/ distribution model for premium television fiction has developed, through trial and error, and then become established. The golden age of US network, cable and on-demand series, articulating complex narratives and distinctive visual and writing styles has inspired production companies, pay TVs, and non-linear platforms in major markets and emerging districts across Europe while developing and renewing an industrial production and distribution method (with showrunners instead of screenwriters/ directors and with branding and promotion as key factors, following the US industrial model). They have created abundant fresh scripted fictional content that has enjoyed wide global circulation for the first time, to be sold to international audiovisual markets and watched by large international audiences. This phenomenon is of increasing interest not only to scholars and to professionals but also to television viewers and fans in general, in Europe and further afield  – as the ratings, the public discussions, and the critical and professional discourses confirm. The first part of this edited collection, entitled Researching European Fiction, presents the results of an original study. Parts 2 –7, by a constellation of renowned European television and media scholars, examine the main European markets: the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Central and Eastern Europe (with specific focus on Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary). The volume thus provides the first- ever mapping of contemporary European premium fiction, illuminating these ongoing aesthetic, sociocultural, and industrial developments through a wide range of original contributions and case histories. The aim is to offer a detailed overview of the changes in the digital production and distribution scenario, along with the emergence of national specificities. To do so, the collection explores and combines three distinct perspectives. The first is the progressive delineation of a completely transnational television scenario in Europe, with the birth of media conglomerates operating in several linguistic and cultural markets that can invest what it takes to develop, produce, and distribute high- concept, high-budget TV series. The analysis focuses on large European or national and transnational conglomerates (Sky Europe, Canal+, Movistar+), on US players entering the European market with original co-productions (HBO Europe, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video), and on independent transnational production companies (like the mega-indies Fremantle or Endemol and their subsidiaries, or some dynamic national players whose production

Introduction  3 success makes them a target in increasingly intense new conglomerative processes: the Italian company Cattleya, for example, was recently acquired by United Kingdom’s ITV Studios). The second level regards the development over time, through various experiments, of an original model for producing, distributing, promoting, and programming premium television fiction, with several common traits (partially original and unique, partially adapted from the US television arena), which are then tailored to the different markets’ languages and cultural specificities. The analysis explores how the pay broadcasters and platforms often began within their comfort zone with smaller texts (as miniseries and adaptations), before investing in more ambitious projects with global audience appeal involving numerous episodes and seasons. Together with the industrial and (relatively recent) historical aspects, the third level of analysis looks at the creation of particular aesthetics and formats. Some specificities apply on account of individual companies’ editorial guidelines, but there are also common traits that establish the idea and the imagery of a pan-European fiction, with its own writing, shooting, directing, and editing choices and a common feel to the narratives, characters, and genres adopted. The volume’s various chapters discuss specific trends and individual titles, with their routes to success and their circulation trajectories, and the emergence of a “quality European TV” with its own spaces and its own distribution, circulation, and promotion practices, as well as its own public discourse and recognition. The collection’s most original feature is therefore its multilayered, systemic approach. On one hand, the various sections and chapters explicitly address most of the markets and countries where premium fiction has acquired significance over the last ten years. It does so at both a macro level (mapping the European scenario and establishing connections among nations and regions) and a micro level (zooming in on individual countries’ media systems, their key players, and important texts). While the initial chapters present the results of an original study on the emergence of premium fiction throughout the continent, the subsequent sections address the situation in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, plus some important (yet often overlooked) hubs in Central and Eastern Europe. On the other hand, the book presents various theoretical and methodological perspectives, from media economics to television production studies, from textual analysis to cultural studies, and from media sociology to semiotics. The analysis of industries and markets is balanced with an array of specific case histories probing key titles, their content, and how they have been received. The quantitative data used are original or derived from marketing studies and reports, complementing qualitative in-depth interviews, comments, promotional and publicity materials, as well as audience reactions. Several original interviews were made exclusively for this volume, providing a direct access to writers’ rooms, creation routines, development issues, commissioners’ thoughts, and distribution decisions. A large number of theoretical

4  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni and methodological tools, then, has been widely deployed to investigate the texts and their production contexts.

Industry, authorship, international circulation The collection focuses directly on several creative and production entities. It considers the major European conglomerates and the non-European companies entering the market with original ideas, content, and productions. Through a varied set of case studies addressing the textual and creative side as well as production and distribution, the book highlights the industry’s strengths and limitations, its traditions and trends, and its constraints and future perspectives. As a result, the volume offers a complex, stratified, systemic view of this crucial trend in contemporary European television. Titles that have acquired a sizeable international audience and at least as much critical attention – such as The Crown, The Returned, The Bureau, Gomorrah, The Young Pope, Babylon Berlin, Deutschland 83, Cable Girls, and Burning Bush, to name but a few of those figuring in the following pages  – can therefore be seen as the outcome of a progressive change involving a series of factors. One such was television/media production and distribution, where the co-production strategies pursued by several major European commissioners like Sky or Canal+ sat alongside the OTT platforms’ decision to fully fund various European projects, some very highbudget. Another factor was the concrete product-development practices, allied to the concept of author itself. This has shifted from the traditional European cinematographic figure of the director as deus ex machina to the imported US idea of showrunner, only to return sometimes, paradoxically, to ways of leveraging the marketing value of big names and single brands in the form of authors, screenwriters, and directors, as with Oscar winner Paolo Sorrentino on The Young Pope and many others. Before the period in question, moreover, when European scripted series travelled across national boundaries, it was often by happy chance (with the obvious exception of the British productions) or anyway only in a few specific cases (as with some co-productions between European PSBs or the Nordic noir, which has succeeded more in establishing a style than in attracting huge audiences). The “premium model”, however, is structurally based on an ability to develop series both for particular national markets and, often just as importantly, for transnational if not global markets. That is true for the first flavour of pay productions to emerge, by pay TV broadcasters that were increasingly looking to make distinctive original content as the decade wore on. It is also true for the second variant, with the global OTT platforms that wanted (or were increasingly steered by regulatory needs) to make local products but always with an international flavour. From the mid-2010s, the role of the on-demand services  – especially Netflix  – grew and grew,

Introduction  5 as  did  their  investment in high-budget content. The North American platforms thus came to Europe and took up a model that the pay broadcasters had already defined and honed, only they took it further. They dedicated more resources to original-content creation and had more and more titles in production at the same time in different countries. On one hand, these factors seem to threaten the purely national players’ ability to compete on budgets and on sourcing relevant stories and intellectual property, in a further move towards projects with shared production and distribution. On the other, more resources became available, so it is reported, for European producers and creative professionals (screenwriters and directors) to develop ideas and products. The future of this European renaissance is very much up in the air in the new (post-?)coronavirus era. At stake is Europe’s ability to keep producing series that can circulate in the continent’s various countries as well as on a global stage and that are amenable to subscription models, thus contributing to strengthen the television medium’s cultural legitimacy (as it has already happened in North America, starting with the role of the cable networks). Only time will tell if these twelve years (between 2008 and 2020) represented a peak of creative quality and production quantity before a reset to a more modest role within the broader, more geographically diverse global scene. Or perhaps whether they will prove a first adventurous step en route to a second equally fecund period and the establishment of a specific model not only for premium production by pay operators and non-linear services, but also, in turn, for the enriched, more complex output by the free mainstream commercial and public service networks.

The structure of this volume This edited collection comprises seven themed sections. Part 1 outlines the main results of a study on the genesis of the pay-series model, which developed over several years, largely during the period in question. The germ of the work dates back to 2011–2013. Carried out by Ce.R.T.A. – the Research Centre for Television and Audiovisual Media at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan (Italy) – it spotlighted the advent of the pay model in Italy when Sky Italia began producing series from the 2007–2008 season. The first fruit of this research effort was the volume Tutta un’altra fiction. La serialità pay in Italia e nel mondo. Il modello Sky, edited by Massimo Scaglioni and Luca Barra and printed by Italian publishing house Carocci in 2013. The scope has expanded in the ensuing years, until 2019, with a comparative study of the same phenomena that had taken root in parallel in numerous European markets, identifying common trends and mutual influences. In Chapter  2, the two editors offer a macro-level outline of the factors underpinning this European renaissance. In particular, they consider the major changes in the European scene on an industrial level, addressing the developments that have affected and reshaped creative and

6  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni writing practices, the independent production fabric, and the broadcasters and the digital platforms, the latter with their increasingly active commissioning roles. In the third chapter, Dom Holdaway, Cecilia Penati, and Anna Sfardini discuss an initial, large portion of the comparative study’s results in greater detail. Taking a quantitative approach, and using network analysis to probe the extent of the phenomenon in the five largest European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK), they are able to highlight the country-specific ­ ​­ traits and some across-the-board ­ ­​­ ​­ trends in European contemporary premium fiction production (such as the prevalence of drama or the growing industrial capacity). A second piece of the research is thoroughly examined in Chapter 4, by Paolo Carelli and Damiano Garofalo. Their original analysis of the quantitative data collected by Ce.R.T.A. pinpoints some of the main international circulation pathways for pay-TV fiction, in many foreign markets, which is one of the most distinctive features of the new premium model in progress. The second section of the book is dedicated to the UK. There, pay series screened on operators such as Sky UK, Netflix, and Amazon have to contend with a rich, illustrious tradition of scripted free content with a strong international outlook. In Chapter  5, Philip Drake dissects the systemic changes accompanying Netflix’s and Amazon Prime Video’s ventures into scripted- content production in a context dominated by the free-toair and public service broadcasters, noting the potential risks especially for the latter, as well as the impact of big budgets on a multilayered production landscape. Then Roberta Pearson in Chapter 6 analyses a watershed title for the UK sector: The Crown. With an estimated budget of 100 million pounds per season, it is the clearest exemplar of a high- end product with astronomical hourly costs that brings out a story deeply rooted in the nation’s culture about the Queen!, while exploiting the systematic global distribution possibilities of a platform like Netflix: the difference between an unproblematic worldwide reception and local issues highlights some crucial tensions. Part 3 of the book shifts focus to the French market, whose industrial and cultural features are very different from the UK’s, and often considered as an example of a protectionist regulation and its effects. In Chapter  7, Christel Taillibert and Bruno Cailler take the point of view of political economy of media to examine Netflix’s arrival in the European country that, more than any other, has supported local content production through stringent regulation. Although the global platform promises new production resources, it also risks forcing the system into unexpected new directions that rake up the potential for economic and cultural conflict. In Chapter 8, Hélène Monnet- Cantagrel studies a leading light in the French audiovisual arena since the 1980s: pay television Canal+ has an equally complex role, balancing strong support for French audiovisual products with the introduction of production and narrative methods inspired by US quality television. One of the main consequences of the emergence

Introduction  7 of premium  quality  series with international ambitions, modelled on a “French sort-of-HBO”, is the radical reappraisal of authorship, a notion with a long tradition behind it in France. This theme receives close attention in Chapter 9 from François Jost, who uses the case of The Bureau to elicit the key traits of “typically French” quality series, which depart in many ways from the long-established national tradition: a close textual analysis is accompanied here by an insightful theoretical standpoint on the difficulties of defining a TV series’ authorship and its local specificities. Part 4 of the volume travels to Italy, a country that has shown in recent years that it can belie its historical indifference to its audiovisual products’ supranational circulation, with benefits spreading from pay television to on demand operators and (back) to public service broadcasting. In Chapter  10, Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni probe the origins of the Sky model and its early steps. From its advent in 2008, it seems to have radically altered both the production practices and the nature of the scripted products, hitherto made by only the mainstream PSB or commercial networks. Italy is one of the countries at the root of the European renaissance: the core characteristics of European quality output permeate many of its products, from Romanzo criminale to Gomorrah and the two limited series by Paolo Sorrentino. The last ones, and especially The Young Pope, is the focus of Chapter 11, where Giancarlo Lombardi illuminates not only the specific features of the project and the end product created and developed by a showrunner- director with a highly recognizable brand, but also its unique status as an anti-series: the focus on aesthetic and narrative traits is complemented by an understanding of its national and international reception and by the identification of textual trends across TV series. Part 5 considers Germany, a crucial market for scripted-content produc​­ tion traditionally oriented, however, at a national or G erman-speaking audience. The German TV and media scene has had a slow start, but then has innovated significantly with the emergence of fictions commissioned by the main pay TV operators (as Sky Deutschland) or the OTT platforms (as Netflix). In Chapter  12, Lothar Mikos runs through the main stages in the development of the German television fiction production arena. He spotlights how what is in many ways a new production model, aimed at creating high-end series with export potential, has shifted the balance among the players in the country that produces the most hours of scripted content in continental Europe. The case histories of Babylon Berlin, You Are Wanted and 4 Blocks clearly reconstruct a ­step-by-step ­​­ ​­ approach by an already strong local TV and media industry. Susanne Eichner continues the discussion in Chapter 13, with a detailed study of the cases that have done more to transform the production methods and the resulting content, starting from In the Face of the Crime. Of these, Deutschland 83, a singular product for commercial channel RTL after an initial high-profile airing stateside on Sundance TV in the US, is something of a game- changer. Even

8  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni more so, Babylon Berlin (made by Sky, and the most expensive series ever produced in the country) gave the German new wave a direction that would lead to international hits like Dark, part of its maker Netflix’s global catalogue. In all these cases, location and history worked as important factors of ­German-ness. ​­ Part 6 of the book investigates another European continental market that, besides Germany, has been the liveliest in the last ten years: Spain. Developments in premium television series are examined here through two stages in the supply chain’s evolution. In Chapter 14, Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano explores the changes in the Iberian pay TV arena, with the transition from Canal+ to Movistar+, in what has proved a profound influence on the decade: together with the distribution, a relevant feature has been a growing original fiction production, ranging from comedies to dramas and fantasy series with a global appeal. Then in Chapter 15, Concepción Cascajosa Virino shows us inside one of the main production companies behind the flourishing Spanish market. Bambú Producciones created titles like Las chicas del cable and Velvet Colección, becoming one of the most important production partners for Netflix and Movistar+ during the decade: through interviews and industry data, the production company history intersects with the evolution of its main creators and creations. Having considered Europe’s largest markets, the book finally turns its attention in the seventh and final part to the active, complex Central and Eastern European scene, where premium television has played a vital role in shaping the language of series in the region. Chapter 16, by Petr Szczepanik, takes the case of HBO Europe, its original- content production policies, and its dealings with PSBs in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The focus here is put not only on the development in the region (and especially in Czech Republic) but also on the connections with the US company and on the progressive development of other services and original productions in different European markets (as the Nordic countries, HBO Adria and HBO Spain). In Chapter  17, Artur Majer recounts the history of the Polish television industry, looking at the elements of continuity and discontinuity in premium series by Canal+ and HBO Poland in an arena dominated by mainstream networks and the public-service broadcaster, and especially focusing on relevant series and their authors. Last but not least, in Chapter 18, Balázs Varga looks behind the scenes at HBO Europe’s first headquarters, in Budapest, and focuses on the Hungarian premium production, from adaptations to actual originals. Here, from 2007, HBO developed original productions for the countries in the region, establishing a policy of differentiating production across the various Central and Eastern European states. Looking at the scripted format adaptations and at premium productions in Hungary also allows to have a more complex understanding of issues as cultural proximity, quality television, and glocalization.

Introduction  9 On completing this far-reaching journey lasting more than a decade across numerous European countries and markets, the readers will have gained a clearer grasp of the great many factors at play that have helped to shape the renaissance in European-made TV series over recent years. This systemic analysis, characteristic of television and media studies, unpicking textual and contextual factors (not only content, but also the means of producing, distributing, promoting, and consuming it), shows how fiction that aspires to be different, distinctive, high quality, and exportable across national boundaries is rooted in the profound changes in the industrial and production scenario over the last ten years. Some of these changes are linked; others have proceeded in parallel. Some are synchronized; others have short time lags. But they all affect television markets and different cultures and societies, creating a puzzle of content that stands out in the increasingly globalized television scenario from the still dominant series model – America’s – while borrowing some of its defining traits. Europe’s journey to complexity in its television series arena, then, owes much, much, and in many countries most of all, to the premium model.

Acknowledgements First of all, the editors want to thank all the authors of this collection, for their useful insights and constant collaboration in shaping an actually transnational, and sometimes trans-disciplinary, project. Following an ongoing phenomenon has made it possible – though conferences, first and ongoing results, emails, and informal chats – to elaborate a shared, in progress mapping of an emergent field. Moreover, each authors’ personal connections and deep understanding of different television and media systems have made it at least a bit easier to succeed in completing an ambitious and complex task. The original project for this volume came from the research carried out by Ce.R.T.A. – the Research Centre for Television and Audiovisual Media at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, under the scientific direction of prof. Massimo Scaglioni. The Research Centre has been founded by prof. Aldo Grasso, and to him both the editors express strong gratitude for the long-lasting support. Together with the authors of the first section’s chapters, we would like to acknowledge the work and the help in the research of other members of Ce.R.T.A. staff: Joyce Faelli, Valentina Moscatelli, and Elena Prati. The investigation on the Italian model of premium television fiction has also been originally funded by Sky Italia: the editors are deeply grateful to Andrea Scrosati, Gianluca Rumori, and Nicola Maccanico. An important strength of this volume, adopting a systemic approach and including a frequent media and television production studies perspectives, is the possibility to directly engage with creative figures, showrunners, producers, commissioners, and professionals involved in this European television fiction renaissance. Therefore, we would like to express gratitude to

10  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni all the television industry practitioners, experts, and managers whom we and the chapters’ authors had the chance to interview. Their support both in the first and second steps of the research has been fundamental, as well as their enrichment of this edited collection – thanks to direct quotes and indirect insights. We want to thank also the several intermediaries who made these connections possible. Lastly, we are especially grateful to the anonymous reviewers, and all the national and international friends and colleagues who supported us along the way.

Part 1

Researching European fiction

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfrancis.com

2

The grounds for a renaissance in European fiction Transnational writing, production and distribution approaches, and strategies Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni

A decade of systemic change in the European arena During the 2000s, the critical, journalistic, and academic debate on television series focused in particular on the development of scripted products originating in North America. The discussion has been framed both qualitatively – as a “new golden age” that emerged amid the new concepts of quality television and then complex TV (McCabe and Akass 2007; Newman and Levine 2011; Mittell 2015)  – and quantitatively, with the notion of “peak TV” (as defined by John Landgraf, head of FX Networks, and measured by his team’s annual research reports). As Jason Mittell has observed, in the increasingly systemic approach adopted in television studies, it is not very useful to study the development of the series macro-genre in solely aesthetic- cum-textual terms (Mittell 2015). The emergence of complex TV, for example, can be fully understood only when contextualized within the industrial, technological, and consumer changes in recent decades, as television as a medium has transitioned from a network- centred ­ ​­ ­­ ​­ ­ to a fully-fledged “post-network” era (Lotz 2014). The on-going changes in the European arena over that timeframe have received rather less constant and systematic attention, partly because the scenario is more complex, being fragmented into myriad national markets. Some labels have indeed become established, underlining the vibrancy and growing international importance of some European production scenes, from “Nordic noir” (Hansen and Waade 2017) to the “Italian renaissance” (Vivarelli 2018). But the decisive step has not always been taken, namely linking the development of European series products to an array of changes that have swept across Europe in similar or different ways to the US. A key factor in this transformation has been the gradual development of premium television – in the more traditional forms of pay TV and, later, in the emerging video on demand services, especially the SVOD (subscription video on demand) model. It was in this very period, especially on the cusp of the crucial second decade, that European fiction production saw an increasingly pivotal role emerge for the many pay players, from Sky Europe group

14  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni (in Italy, Germany, and the UK) and Canal+ (in France) to HBO Europe (in Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe) and the global SVOD services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Disney+. Premium television’s role in scripted- content production has played out more on a qualitative level, with new innovations in the product concepts and their “transnational ambition”, than in merely quantitative terms. Of the 922 fiction titles made on average each year in the EU, most are commissions by the traditional free-to-air broadcasters, especially the PSBs, led by some of the larger, more dynamic markets like Germany, France, and the UK (Fontaine 2017). This apparent continuity with the past – mainstream and free-to-air networks, whether public or commercial, still have a big hand in fiction production, largely for domestic consumption – conceals however a growing phenomenon. The subscription-based operators in particular are beginning to produce titles mainly for transnational niche audiences, with burgeoning budgets (and production values), medium-length formats (7+ episodes per season), and international co-productions. This change is instrumental in what may be termed a “European renaissance” in Europeanmade fiction. In Europe as in the US, the 2000s saw significant growth in the number of players on the media market and a pronounced convergent trend. In the 2010s pay market, “traditional” satellite and cable operators (like Canal+, Movistar+ or Sky) tended increasingly to work with or compete against OTT players (especially Netflix and Amazon). There has also been a notable trend towards vertical integration in the market, involving many European groups too. Canal+, for example, controls the StudioCanal production company, while the Sky Europe group, acquired by the US conglomerate Comcast in 2018, launched Sky Studios the following year. And numerous other integration initiatives have shaped Europe’s production scenario, such as the acquisition by Britain’s ITV Studios of Italian production company Cattleya. Lastly, in an increasingly crowded field where once separate markets and platforms – media, telecommunications, and internet (PWC 2018) – are becoming more and more integrated, producing exclusive original content to sustain recognizable brands, foster customer/subscriber loyalty, and catalyse prospective viewers has become a crucial competitive lever in the increasingly important direct-to- consumer arena (the offering financed mostly by subscriptions and only partially by advertising). This last factor brings us to the starting point of the research project on the production and distribution of scripted-premium television series in various European countries over the last decade, run by Ce.R.T.A. – the Research Centre for Television and Audiovisual Media at Università Cattolica, Milan – and discussed in Part 1 of this edited collection. In just ten years (2008–2017), the dynamics of producing scripted content in Europe have undergone crucial changes, primarily regarding not the output volume but its aesthetic traits, production methods, and chances of success overseas. A central plank of the study was the creation of a data set on

Grounds for renaissance in European fiction  15 all 172 productions commissioned by pay broadcasters and OTT operators in the years in question in the main national markets (France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the UK). This information allowed us to analyse numerous issues: the progressive growth in annual production volumes; the main genres; the relationship between original content and adaptations from existing sources (novels, films, other media products, etc.); the products’ degree of innovation and durability (measurable as the number of new titles per season and the number of series spawning further seasons); national and international co-productions; and how each country’s products circulated in Europe and North America. Building the data set went hand in hand with a qualitative-research effort to flesh out the most significant case studies in the various countries and to interview professionals at different levels in the chain (commissioners, producers, authors, and screenwriters). Using media production studies tools and paying due attention to media and television production cultures (Caldwell 2008), ethnographic observations were made (through structured in-depth interviews and more informal conversations), and promotional and press materials were studied (via interviews conducted for various publicity purposes that often yielded other equally interesting insights into the various players’ approaches and criteria). The results will be discussed in detail in the next two chapters. Here, we examine the main common issues influencing developments in the writing of European fiction products, changes in production methods, and the reasons behind the strategies of the broadcasters and big media groups concerned. The picture emerges of a work in progress. The decade was certainly a crucial transitional period, as the main players revamped their strategies for an evolving market that was yet to bed down and would continue to change. The global OTT operators’ role was growing in terms of European and global subscriber numbers and their investment in scripted content (Parrot Analytics 2019). But pay TV (and the traditional free-to-air broadcasters) were repositioning themselves to adapt to the new context, developing their stand-alone streaming on demand services to resist competition from the global players, while also broaching more or less tactical agreements, such as distribution partnerships with these very competitors. Undoubtedly, though, pay and subscription-based operators played an especially innovative part in fiction production during the decade. And to a large extent – and this is the book’s core thesis – the contemporary renaissance in European fiction is rooted here. For the development of pay TV (on satellite, cable, and digital), with the aforementioned need to commission high-budget, high- concept scripted products with supranational ambitions, triggered a process that later also impacted to some degree on the free broadcasters, which pivoted part of their own production output along similar lines in many countries. Examples include My Brilliant Friend, an unprecedented co-production between HBO and the Italian public-service

16  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni broadcaster Rai, and Deutschland 83, a partnership between Germany’s RTL and the US channel Sundance TV. Before exploring each of the three main professional viewpoints involved in this European television fiction renaissance, prompted initially by the cable and satellite pay networks and then by the non-linear operators, some preliminary comments about the European scene may be opportune. First, production volumes: in the five main markets (France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the UK), pay output leapt from just 8 to 70 titles per year between 2008 and 2017. That still might not seem many, but the brands were highly recognizable, which began to boost the hitherto limited international circulation of European-made products. A second point concerns the link between the European TV and media industry and the growth in premium products for international circulation. There have been several significant developments. The classic pay arena saw the advent of Sky Deutschland, part of Sky Europe group, in 2009, and the 2015 launch of Movistar+ in Spain, a subsidiary of the telecommunication company Telefonica. Global OTT services gradually arrived in the main markets, starting with Netflix in the UK (2012), Germany and France (2014), then Italy and Spain (2015), followed by Amazon Prime Video (in the principal markets since 2016). Not to mention the subsequent amendments to the European Audiovisual Media Services directive in 2010 and 2018, with a gradual tightening of the promotion and production obligations on OTT operators (Bondebjerg et  al. 2017). A third comment regards the characteristics of the scripted premium product compared to the free-to-air broadcasters’ offering. While many of the classic formats are either very short (TV movies and miniseries) or very long (soaps), the pay product has the typical traits of high- end fiction. Hence the medium-long formats, the prevalence of drama, and original scripts often closely linked to national cultural mores or adaptations of intellectual property of an equally national flavour (like literature or film). A fourth point concerns the international circulation of these products in the main European national markets, the wider continent (Central and Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, and Scandinavia), and North America. Indeed, 55% of the series made by the pay networks graduate to these supranational contexts. There are various other common traits to note. The most active players were Sky Europe and Canal+, especially in the beginning, followed by Netflix in the second half of the decade. There were differences among the national markets, with France and the UK accounting for the most titles and hours (respectively 35% and 44% of the data set titles); Italy, meanwhile – with only 11% of the sample of premium series produced – saw its products enjoy wider international circulation, as a bridge between the most dynamic countries and the markets that began to thrive during the decade (Germany and Spain). Finally, European pay series became increasingly oriented to a US “industrial” model: the number of returning series with multiple seasons rose, along with the co-productions and international partnerships.

Grounds for renaissance in European fiction  17 ­

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18  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni other creative figures. Following the US model, tailored though to the needs of markets and contexts of different sizes and traditions, the European fiction arena has invested these roles with new value over the last 20 years, turning them into a key driver of a profound and still on-going renewal. Indeed, the screenwriter has become the creator and head writer, sometimes in a fair approximation to a showrunner role, managing the entire project and keeping it on the right editorial track. As is frequently the case, this was no sudden change but a gradual shift, often proceeding by trial and error but always rooted in good practice, facilitating circulation from one country to another and embracing approaches proven to work elsewhere. A strong differentiator in contemporary European fiction is the space afforded to the individual vision of a specific author: sometimes the director, more often the scriptwriter or screenwriter. After decades of TV fiction based on an assembly line of essentially interchangeable roles – where the personnel changed from one episode or season to the next, feeding the “machine” even in the absence of an industry – lately an overall creative figure has gained greater freedom and, inevitably therefore, greater responsibility. In premium European fiction, there is often one voice and one alone. They do not compromise, or at least they try not to, and they often have the last word on the key decisions. The European paradigm is Scandinavian, from Sweden and Denmark in particular, where the so- called “single vision” is now a pillar of contemporary Nordic drama. The genre has travelled well all over the world (Bauer, Hochscherf and Philipsen 2013; Redvall 2013; Hochscherf and Philipsen 2017; Waade, Redvall and Jensen 2020), and the premium operators in the UK and the main continental countries have taken heed. In France, different episodes often feel different, depending on who is directing. We have always sought overall coherence; we wanted each sequence to belong to the same whole, and that has also impacted on how the work is organised. For example, with the second director, Frédéric Mermoud, it was clear from the outset that I would be overseeing his work. And that is fairly unusual here (Fabrice Gobert, head writer of The Returned/ Les Revenants, in Morabito 2013, 92). The person who comes up with the idea and develops it in practice provides a direction, a unique viewpoint that is clear and well-defined, and they can keep an overall beady eye on the story’s coherence. Where there are fewer episodes and seasons, a single creative role can closely supervise the whole project, guiding it, taking a broad view and making the crucial decisions. A second and related key point is that the author gradually becomes a brand. Often, the main creative roles acquire additional value as champions and guardians of the product. What was long the province of the leading actors (and partly still is) – in helping to make the title immediately recognizable, forging a specific association with a genre and a character, attracting

Grounds for renaissance in European fiction  19 audience attention and building loyalty – is now also a task for the creators and concept people in contemporary premium European fiction. They too become a brand, a promise of quality, a validation of success. This is another reason why the writing stage (and later the product promotion) brings in the author of the novel, the multi-award-winning director, the public figures who underwrite the narrative’s truth with their social commitment, and above all the head writer who puts their authorial stamp on the whole operation. This adds an extra layer of value that underscores television’s social and cultural impact. A third pan-European trend in premium fiction is screenwriters’ and scriptwriters’ acknowledgement of how television creativity is always subject to constraints and how you need to get your hands dirty if you want better results. In nurturing the idea and the unique vision of an author (who is already a brand or anyway can become one), it is often the need to follow the rules (the genre traits, the breadth of the formats, the technicalities of casting, the set, the editing, and the target audience in front of the screen) that actually makes for a more effective and fruitful creative effort. For where there are no limits to overcome – or at least to push up against – there is no creativity. Creating, developing, and making a fiction product is a concrete, practical, operational matter. So the writer is increasingly present on set, often regularly, to closely oversee the making of what they wrote and to intervene when necessary: The screenwriter’s is not an abstract job. They don’t just conceive a story and some dialogue; what they have, or should have, is an idea. We often work with directors who draw intelligently on the writing, who discuss things to develop a shared vision of the series together. Everything, though, is left to common sense, to how it feels in the moment: it would be hard to frame this prerogative in a contract. I couldn’t shoot an episode: I have no technical training and no experience, and I am not sure I would even want to. But I do want to select the actors. I want to see the lighting that the director has in mind. I want to be there for the editing, for that is the last step in the writing. All this now is down to common sense, to the trust that builds between director and screenwriter (Stefano Bises, head writer of Gomorrah. The Series, in Barra 2018b, 27–28). Making fiction is a complex job. It involves many heads, hands and faces, compromises and hitches, a trial of ambition by everyday realities, and time ticking away. So the guiding principle is to simplify the difficult, finding a way to make the processes work and avoid useless loops. You can do anything as long as it does not make someone else’s life harder: just be useful, and don’t get in the way. On set, in the director’s and producer’s domain, screenwriters can lend a hand, in the right practical spirit, over and above their formal duties and established roles. And everyone wins.

20  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni Along with the ever-stronger recognition of the author’s unique vision, their transformation into a brand, and their broader involvement in making a series, there is another observable trend: elevating the person with the idea (and the job of writing it) to the broader role of showrunner. Everything revolves around the creator figure, steadily helming a series made largely in their image, but the desire to claim the prestigious and glamorous title of showrunner chafes against the difficulty of pinning down its exact scope. Actually, showrunner is both a real operational role and another form of power (from creative control to having the last word on set) in an already complex power structure. Only sometimes do this label and this power correspond to a formal responsibility, founded on economic oversight of the project. Often, what creative figures, scriptwriters, screenwriters, and directors really want (but can’t have, perhaps fortunately given their dread of the accountability that goes with it) is control over budgets and resources. So in Europe, the transition to the American showrunner model is nearly always a compromise, with greater yet incomplete power for the screenwriter and a sharing of responsibility and credit with others. These first four premium-fiction writing trends are processes that play out in parallel in the different contexts of the individual European countries to varying degrees, with a progressive adoption of what has already worked elsewhere. Other developments, though, spring from a gradual ­cross-fertilization ​­ and stronger, ­better-developed ​­ mutual relationships. On one hand, the writers’ rooms on major European fiction productions (and co-productions) are increasingly embracing a degree of multilingualism. Screenwriters with different languages and cultures are finding a place  – in parallel, moreover, with the increasing diversity of casts and crews, chosen for their varied origins and multiple skills to facilitate the content’s international circulation. Thus a tentative, precarious balance becomes established between domestic needs and opening up to other linguistic, political, and sociocultural contexts and different traditions: Language is not a major problem from a creative perspective. The stories speak a universal language already, so if you find people with the right sensibilities for working on a given kind of story, the shared language can be found, regardless of whether one person speaks mostly Italian and the other mostly English (Leonardo Fasoli, head writer on ZeroZeroZero, in Guarnaccia 2018b, 95). The linguistic and cultural melting pot acts as a counterweight to the greater uniformity of European fiction written in the global lingua franca, English, for creative and operational reasons. A shared language undoubtedly simplifies the processes in the writers’ room. It is often bound up with the ensuing need and desire for the actors to act in English. It interweaves with a parallel rediscovery of dubbing (including from other languages into

Grounds for renaissance in European fiction  21 English), enabled by digital platforms like Netflix and their need to target a broad (yet still premium) audience. And English facilitates dialogue with a global array of production companies and commissioners, allowing them to check the scripts, send notes and suggestions, and oversee the results. Here, too, the screenwriter has a larger role and greater responsibility. Their proven ability gives the platform a sense of security, as it works to catapult them from the national to the global stage: An international focus means more responsibility for the screenwriter: when Cattleya hired us, Netflix asked particularly that the head writers create a certain number of episodes. Netflix is a player that says: “OK, these are the writers you say are good, so get them to write as many episodes as possible”. That rather struck me, for it gives the writer much more power. And that’s what makes the difference (Barbara Petronio, head writer on Suburra, in Guarnaccia 2018a, 155). For European TV fiction writing, then, premium production has given screenwriters new value, as authors and brands, along with a renewed responsibility for creative matters as well as some operational ones. They take the role of head writer, bestriding a national and indeed global stage. On one hand, some processes are standardized for uniformity across the European markets, stateside-style. On the other, the individual titles become more particular and exceptional, based on what the projects and their commissioners require. On the creative side too, an overall drive has emerged towards a more industrial yet  always judicious development approach that takes into account the primarily artisanal nature of the creative effort, always centred on prototypes and failures. But this sometimes works well, and the resulting hits become templates to copy elsewhere.

Production ambitions: European indies go global The development of a European premium series genre with its own defining traits stems from changes in writing practices and from the substantial decade-long metamorphosis in the landscape of production houses active in the continent’s main markets. It is a t wo-way process. On one hand, some companies have made a supranational name for themselves through internationally popular products; on the other, Europe’s production arena has been consolidated through various major international acquisitions. In particular, the process affects some producers that are prominent players in the emergence of European pay series. Italian production company Cattleya, for example, has made outstanding Italian renaissance titles, from Romanzo criminale, Gomorrah and Suburra to ZeroZeroZero and Romulus. It was taken over in 2017, as a 51% stake went to ITV Studios group, one of Britain’s biggest entertainment producers and a leading

22  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni content exporter. Still in Italy, the production house Wildside – maker of ​­ The Young Pope, The New Pope, Il miracolo and My Brilliant Friend – was acquired in 2015 by global group Fremantle (with a 62.5% holding) before splitting into two companies, Wildside and The Apartment. In the UK, the country with the strongest export tradition, many high-end series for international markets have emerged from the mega-indie Endemol UK. With its series of subsidiaries, it has produced drama with Zeppotron/ House of Tomorrow (Black ­ Mirror) and Tiger Aspect Productions (Fortitude ­ and Ripper Street). Riviera is an Anglo-French coproduction between Archery Pictures and the French multinational Altice, which set up Altice Studios in 2016. German producer Wiedemann  & Berg, the maker of Dark for Netflix, was established in 2009 with investment from Endemol Shine and acquired in 2019 by the media company Leonine Holding (formerly Tele München Group). In France, Atlantique Productions resumed operations in 2009, as part of the multimedia group Lagardère, for the international coTunnel, a remake of the ­production Borgia. Still in France, Le tunnel/The ­ hit Scandinavian series Broen/Bron, was co-produced by Kudos and Shine ­ France, another Endemol subsidiary. These are all good examples of European production companies responding to a changing media arena and developing a series of projects with international aspirations right from the start. They are a ready response to the needs that have gradually emerged in a pay- commissioning world that aims to build co-productions with high production values for transnational and increasingly niche audiences. Essentially, in the main European markets and especially those accustomed to producing domestic fiction with no particular supranational pretensions, these independent production companies are using their economic solidity (especially when subsidiaries of large groups) to meet the need to go global or to infuse their content with greater ambition. The relationship between a product’s aspirations and its production journey is thrown into sharp relief by a producer: You have to find the right level of ambition for the project you are holding. So you don’t always start with one thing and get to America right away [as occurred, however, with the coproductions launched by Wildside between Sky Italia and HBO for The Young Pope/ The New Pope and between HBO and Rai for My Brilliant Friend, ed.]. So the producer has a network of international relations composed of counterparts, or television stations with which they have a historical relationship. In Europe, in the “construction” phase, all the major television players are accessible to European producers. The problem is that, when you get there, you have to define a few elements: is this an Italian product that I am selling abroad as an Italian product, or is this an international product, with a global star system? This is the great division that happens at some point (Mario Gianani, producer, Wildside/ Fremantle, in Noto 2019).

Grounds for renaissance in European fiction  23 A swathe of renewed European production companies, then, finds itself at a crossroads where all roads lead, one way or another, to an emphatic internationalization of the content and production practices. One initial approach is something of a departure, in particular from the productions made on the continent (the UK, in contrast, is traditionally accustomed to transatlantic co-productions). This avenue involves major productions that follow the rules used in the world’s most dynamic, complex, and competitive market: the US. From this perspective, Wildside’s Italian experience with titles like The Young Pope/ The New Pope or Il miracolo is a major watershed, and not just for Italy. As the producer goes on to underline, the series by Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino significantly changed some long-established practices: ­ ​­ The Young Pope came with an assumption that until then was unthinkable for any industry and broadcaster. It is customary that, when European talents – recognized by an Oscar and therefore with an international reputation and exposure  – decide to make a more ambitious product, they remain in the US to do so. In other words, they are born in a country, they go to the States, and there they find the means, the possibilities to realize their product, especially if this product is in English […]. Here the opposite took place: Paolo Sorrentino did all this with Wildside, in Europe. So what happened? He had an idea. An international idea. He tells a story of the Vatican and the Pope, of a world that is recognizable even abroad but, at the same time, is very Italian. He gave the protagonist a foreign, US point of view […]. It was a very ambitious project in the way he wrote and imagined it; he didn’t imagine a classic European production, since it was not a project for European broadcasters: once you’ve seen it, you cannot consider it a primetime show for Raiuno [Italy’s primary PSB channel] but just a series for a pay TV broadcaster like Sky Italia. Nevertheless, Sky represents only a quarter of this product, so if Sky had been the only mover you would have made a different series – but not this one (Mario Gianani, producer, Wildside/ Fremantle, in Noto 2019). While The Young Pope is a new departure for the Italian market, many more projects are conceived in a local/national European context with supranational circulation in mind. First among these are co-productions involving various commissioners and/or production companies. This highend content, often based on intellectual property from a given country and adapted to pay operators’ needs, targets demanding niche audiences with often high-budget products. The producers stress how vital it is in the new market context to create projects with transnational ambition from the outset – from when an intellectual property is identified (or created) to be transformed into an end product. Cattleya founder Riccardo Tozzi underlines the profound differences from this perspective that are beginning to

24  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni define this particular production chain compared to the more traditional approaches used for cinema or products for the domestic market: Considering new TV series, which are mainly produced for pay TV services and SVOD platforms but occasionally also for classic TV channels that are now changing their way of thinking about series, products are made for international release from the beginning, since these new forms of distribution are virtually region-free – as in the case of Netflix, Prime Video or Sky, which also spreads its products across the many countries where it is present. In fact, even when working specifically with Rai or Mediaset, products will have an international distribution. Series naturally have a global spread, since the platforms through which they are screened are already international, either because they work globally or because they have a global network. The same does not apply to movies, which are generally restricted to a national production workflow and require a huge effort to find distribution (Riccardo Tozzi, producer, Cattleya/ ITV Studios, in Brembilla and Garofalo 2019). A production company’s work can be described as a “transformation” practice that tailors the intellectual property on a national, European, or global scale to arrive at the finished product: I always use the term “transformation”, because production work takes intellectual property  – which is normally an idea, a script, various screenplays – and transforms them into a final product […]. Of course, intellectual property is at the origin of everything. But intellectual property alone is not enough, because it has to go through a first degree of transformation. If it is a book – or simply an idea – it must have the right artistic “translator” who knows how to make it watchable and readable to others, how to make it immediately appealing. So far we are talking about purely artistic figures: there is a need for scriptwriters, directors, writers, etc. From this point of view, if you want to compete in an international market, you know that you are competing with an infinite number of projects that have very high quality standards […]. To access these top professionals, be they writers, screenwriters or directors, you must present them with the potential for a product that suits their levels of quality and ambition. You then have to set up a distribution chain that allows you to finance a product that will keep up with these expectations – because size matters in our business. It’s true that there are artistic expressions, especially cinematographic ones, that with little money can create great surprises, but they are increasingly rare. When it comes to television, it is almost impossible for this to happen. So it’s hard for the industry to manage this. Normally you have to build things up to a certain level and, depending on the project’s

Grounds for renaissance in European fiction  25 ambition, the professional figures you must involve are different. The fundamental thing is to what extent a product is appealing and who makes it appealing (Mario Gianani, producer, Wildside/ Fremantle, in Noto 2019). Over the last ten years, then, a series of new opportunities has opened up for European producers. On one hand, the European pay networks and an array of production companies are looking to set up international coproductions for high-budget projects; on the other, SVOD services like Netflix and Prime are starting to produce original content in several European countries. So while European producers need to have greater international aspirations, over-the-top operators have an imperative to localize. The latter need productions that can give their various catalogues a more national flavour while retaining a certain global appeal (this is also essential given the local-production quotas required under the evolving European legal framework). Netflix has launched an ambitious programme to produce high-budget original series, working with numerous production companies active especially in the premium- content arena and even with free-toair broadcasters. Adopting a creative and production model validated on Romanzo criminale and Gomorrah, in partnership with Cattleya and the Italian PSB (Rai), Netflix took a hand in the production of Suburra in 2017. Similarly, Amazon Prime Video joined with Tiger Aspect Productions from Endemol UK group to produce two seasons of the BBC series Ripper Street. In short, the international expertise gleaned from a succession of European production companies found fresh expression in “more national” (even if not “exclusively national”) terms to meet global on demand operators’ specific needs, as Mario Gianani observes: In the local territory, they [the OTT global services] want a very strong identity and presence, for instance in Italian. Actually, they do precisely the opposite of what we would expect, when we say that they will lead to the internationalization of product tastes. No, they want to follow in the Italian product’s footsteps; they follow the Italian audience. Then again, Netflix has a slightly younger audience, so they make Baby rather than other products (Mario Gianani, producer, Wildside/ Fremantle, in Noto 2019). The array of approaches and opportunities is varied. Pay and on-demand players are operating on the European markets, working with the producers to calibrate the international ambition of the projects launched (from high-budget affairs with global hopes, like The Young Pope or The Crown, to those more oriented to a continental European horizon, such as Babylon Berlin, Gomorrah or Les Revenants, and those with a more markedly ­ ​­ national-centric focus, with Suburra or Las chicas del cable). In this context, the pay and subscription-based output that ramped up considerably

26  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni in the 2010s has some shared traits, which the various production houses have variously sought to modulate. First of all, there is frequent demand for titles with a “cinematographic” level of artistry. From Cattleya to X Filme Creative Pool, of Babylon Berlin renown, and from Wildside to Kowalski Films, which is behind the Spanish offering La zona, many production companies have a fine cinematic pedigree, backed by artists and technicians from the film industry. This quest for cinema-like quality is reflected in the use of major international film festivals as shop windows for their premium products (in 2016, for example, The Young Pope previewed at the Venice Festival, as did The New Pope in 2019). European production companies with international ambitions face a second challenge, about “scouting” intellectual property at national level with potential transnational appeal. Examples include Roberto Saviano’s bestselling novels Gomorrah and ZeroZeroZero, Volker Kutscher’s series of stories for Babylon Berlin, and hit films remade as series like Les Revenants (the Robin ­Campillo–directed ­ ​­ 2004 film), or other already-existing TV products, as with Le tunnel/The ­ Tunnel or the Netflix reboot of Black Mirror.

Broadcasters’ responsibilities: commissioning across linear and ­non-linear ​­ platforms The profound changes in the 2000s have affected not only fiction writing and production but also its distribution. Faced with the establishment of a broad, plentiful multichannel offering from premium TV and the ondemand platforms, fiction has played a fundamental role in all European countries’ schedules. It has proved a differentiating factor in the various offerings, reaching new audiences and adding distinctive value to national television series and the many projects with international appeal or conceived with transnational circulation in mind. Broadcasting developments are accurately reflected in a significant shift in the role of those who commission, oversee, and air European fiction products, operating in an increasingly wide-ranging commissioner role. The television networks, media groups, and digital services used to be more in the background before and after the product life cycle was completed, making their mark on the texts mainly through the channel brands. Once again in recent years, the premium players have driven a rethink of the entire production chain, fostering the constant active engagement of those who make the productions possible and reap the outcomes, putting the product in touch with its viewers. From this perspective, the principal and widespread tendency has been a more prominent editorial and operational role for the brands behind the offering and platform. For Canal+, HBO Europe, Movistar+, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Sky (in its various European guises) don’t just host the content; they shape it, lay down procedures, and set guidelines, enabling texts and products that would not be the same – or might not even exist – without

Grounds for renaissance in European fiction  27 them. Commissioning has a “discreet charm”, a perennial presence. The networks and platforms don’t just oversee; they contribute actively to the writing and production, maintaining a constant dialogue with the other professionals involved; they manage the entire product life cycle, from conception to airing and exploiting the subsequent windows (often internationally); and they use their enduring global relationship networks both to make the project possible with suitable co-financing and to extend its life afterwards, furthering its circulation overseas and outside the pay window. In this increasingly rich and complex scenario, the commissioner carves out a key role as a link, a weaver of threads. A television fiction product is a living creature. Working on it is a journey of unexpected twists, turns, and subtle adjustments, a constant hive of activity lasting for months, even years, an ecosystem teeming with life. And in all this, the commissioner doesn’t merely exercise power; they encourage dialogue. The art of negotiation, the power of discussion, reaching agreement, persuading others, defending your opinions, or changing your mind: it is all about finding the best way forward  – together. The dialogue is all the more fruitful when there is mutual respect, when the group has strong personal and professional bonds, often forged in the heat of previous endeavours. Beyond formal roles, this is what often makes it possible to blur the boundaries between the various tasks, enabling everyone to broaden their experience, including in more informal ways. As HBO Europe has shown, often it is the network that spurs the group to raise the bar: Burning Bush is an important story about Czechoslovakia. It was shot in the Czech Republic, and they didn’t try to make it anywhere else or do it in English. They wanted to safeguard its identity, to make something authentic and interesting, at least for that particular audience. Yet they developed the script to be accessible for other countries too, and I think this is a very positive thing (Agnieszka Holland, director and screenwriter of Burning Bush, in Carini 2013, 79). On the production side, then, the commissioner is both the hub who coordinates many different requirements (often for numerous other projects at the same time) and the driving force who seeks and enables international dialogue, exposure to others’ experiences, and the quest for new audiences and new markets. To do this, the broadcaster tends not to centralize control and responsibility, preferring to act as a project leader, as head of a consortium including other networks and producers. Thus, all the complexity of a contemporary series’ life cycle receives due consideration, now involving several phases both on the national market (free, pay, on-demand, first run, and repeats) and internationally. Transnational projects are planned out right from the start, to leverage their appeal abroad, and the broadcaster brings in production companies and creative figures who are equal to the

28  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni task along with other overseas players involved to a greater or lesser extent in the result: We are developing Diavoli, adapted from a book by a leading financier who made it big in the City. It is the story of high finance that controls not only the financial market but the whole world. This is a good example where the central character is Italian, the story was written by an Italian author, Guido Maria Brera, and 80% of it is set in London, with a little in the USA. It is an international product with strong Italian roots. So there is an Italian production company with an Italian writing group, supplemented by two British screenwriters who adapt the bones of the series a little, and a director who will probably be British or American (Nils Hartmann, head of original productions at Sky Italia, in Guarnaccia 2018c, 119–120). A similar openness to the international, initially almost by chance but then with increasing conviction, can be detected on the distribution side, as commissioners look to bring their productions to full fruition. Instead of putting everything into one market ­only – ​­national ­free-to-air ­​­ ​­ (as ­ happened for decades in the traditional model)  – with premium European series, there are many income streams, large and small, taking account of both the stratification provided by digital and the symbolic and economic effects of global circulation. The network of relationships (sometimes with large media groups and platforms active across several markets) enables premium fiction to reach different audiences in once unheard-of ways and to acquire truly transnational scope: If you think of a series like Babylon Berlin, produced by our German cousins, which is a very realistic and historically accurate portrait of 1920s Berlin, then clearly there are possibilities. Many Italians watched Babylon Berlin for the same reason that many German and British viewers tuned into Gomorrah. Here we have a production model where two directors, Henk Handloegten and Achim von Borries, worked together with the series creator, Tom Tykwer, who was also the showrunner, and everyone was on the same level. Once, it was hard to imagine that a German series might be seen in Italy, but things have changed. On the contrary, plenty of Italian productions go down very well abroad (Nils Hartmann, in Guarnaccia 2018c, 129). In their triple role as creative, production and distribution support, the European pay TV media groups and global on-demand platforms have consistently contributed to developing, honing, and establishing alternative fiction models, from finance to broadcasting, which have then spread within the individual national markets and overseas. In an industry made of prototypes, where every series has to be new and different, the best way to avoid

Grounds for renaissance in European fiction  29 mistakes (or to make fewer of them) is to learn from the best, from those who are already making the best job of something similar under similar conditions. That applies to the ideas and storylines, the genres and formats, the authors and actors, and the creative figures and professionals. So contemporary European fiction production is a continual passing of the baton, with mutual inspiration and unexpected cross-fertilization, whether from the Danes to the British or the Italians to the Germans and, similarly, from premium pay television to the ­free-to-air ­​­ ​­ commercial and ­public-service ​­ offerings. It is not just about copying, but healthy competition that enriches the national production output and feeds symbiotically off European and transnational efforts, prompting more virtuous circles, always overseen by the commissioners. This (gradual) production and distribution metamorphosis is not without repercussions, though, including for the content and its imaginaries. A common thread in contemporary European fiction is that it is about stories, settings, and characters that share some globalizing and some very local traits in order to adapt to the international market and be exciting not only to national audiences but also overseas. These products are bound up with imaginaries that may sometimes be stereotyped and crude but clearly evince the specific national characteristics with the local milieu and lifestyles. It is primarily the crime genre, in this context, that offers a common perspective with internationally recognizable themes and provides room for personalizing national elements and rethinking the local identity. And adaptations of novels, films, and news stories, investment in major authors and actors, a careful shaping of the visual and aural style, and well- constructed dialogue and settings also help to connote the standard of an offering. Over and above the themes common to the fiction circulating abroad as ready-made, though, the need to appeal to global audiences and stakeholders also entails a clear divergence of approach, as the ingredients of a mainstream national hit seldom work over the border. On one hand, then, premium titles – and ultimately all series in general – go for a “cosmopolitan generalism”, with just a few titles, big names, big budgets, and broad appeal. On the other, other fiction productions settle for a smaller national audience share in a prized niche, profiled and appealing to investors, as the commissioners look to augment these ratings with similar viewer groups abroad. For these are products for a tightly defined audience, echoing an US aesthetic tempered by a national flavour – or, even more often, by a British and Nordic koiné that can elicit broad interest. And in between these polar opposites, there is huge scope for an array of nuances: You have got to do something different, something rooted in a local culture but with global reach. It may seem rather a stupid word, but ultimately what sums this all up best is glocal. If you think of the European hit titles in recent years, they all have this trait, from The Bureau to Les Revenants to Babylon Berlin to Deutschland 83. They are all

30  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni products that took a very local happening and made it into a global success (Scrosati 2018). Aiming for the global market, then, helps to bridge the gap that has long separated the various European national outputs, making them weaker than and different from their US counterpart. If the texts, stories, writing, and production processes change, then the production/distribution models and the broadcasters’ goals must change too. And having an ever-stronger relationship with other European partners helps: I see three kinds of product. An entirely local kind of fiction with only local promotion resources and a low budget. An event-product, where the brands are strong enough to attract ample resources across several markets: the audience is not niche; the series raises the network’s profile; it’s exclusive to you. The third kind is trickier: you have one investor but you need to find others on the market to fill the gap. We are trying to develop this direction, with products with a kind of language that goes down well abroad too (Daniele Cesarano, showrunner, Romanzo criminale and Suburra, and later Mediaset commissioner, in Barra 2018a, 58–59). ­ ​­ In recent years, although the process is still under way, two contrasting ways of managing the work are coming together (and quite often clashing). In one corner is the centralized approach typical, for example, of the early days of the big global on-demand groups like Netflix and Amazon, which preferred to maintain strong oversight from the US even for their initial European productions, often drawing on what had already worked in the pay television world. In the other is the localization network model, where the big European groups use local management teams that talk to each other and are largely independent within a framework of supervision and shared guidelines. As with the content, so with the television commissioning and management models: the global ends up encountering the national in a variety of nuanced hybrids according to the companies’ habits and favoured approaches. To conclude, both the analysis of the state of play in premium European fiction production over a ten-year period (and in the immediately preceding and ensuing years) and the description of some shared across-the-board strategies for writing, production, and commissioning clearly reveal all the complexity of a still evolving scenario that is seeking a stable model, while also needing to reckon with a much changed and continually evolving media and television environment. Both in single European countries and in shared transnational projects, in premium fiction (and thus, to a greater extent, in the rest of the audiovisual sector, too) authorship is increasingly plural, shared, and multi-layered. A truly collective work inevitably has many authors, and on projects that can run for years there will be many

Grounds for renaissance in European fiction  31 people who can have a say. Depending on where the emphasis is placed – the “authorial signature” or the budget, the writing quality or the visual style, the production company house habits or the uniformity of offering across networks and platforms – plenty of evidence emerges in favour of each suspect. The authorial factor is a way to simplify a collective project. A creative work that is always collegiate, never individual, is therefore a fundamentally shared process. There is a single vision, of course, but there are also several stakeholders. At least in spirit, contemporary premium European fiction is a field where all the players are striving to put themselves in the others’ shoes, to understand their respective needs. For the screenwriter, director, producer, and commissioner are the vertices of a structure that can take various forms, always with a shared aim in mind. And this dearly won yet fruitful harmony has brought about a European renaissance.

Acknowledgements The chapter was conceived and developed jointly by the two authors: Sections titled “A decade of systemic change in the European arena” and “Production ambitions: European Indies go global” are written by Massimo Scaglioni and Sections titled “Writing-centred productions: European authors move towards a showrunner model” and “Broadcasters’ responsibilities: Commissioning across linear and non-linear platforms” are written by Luca.

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32  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni Guarnaccia, Fabio. 2018b. “Intervista a Leonardo Fasoli”. In Autori seriali, edited by Fabio Guarnaccia and Luca Barra. Link. Idee per la televisione, 23: 85–97. Guarnaccia, Fabio. 2018c. “Intervista a Nils Hartmann”. In Autori seriali, edited by Fabio Guarnaccia and Luca Barra. Link. Idee per la televisione, 23: 117–129. Hansen, Kim T., and Anne M. Waade. 2017. Locating Nordic Noir. From Beck to The Bridge. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hochscherf, Tobias, and Heidi Philipsen. 2017. Beyond the Bridge. Contemporary Danish Television Drama. London: IB Tauris. Lotz, Amanda D. 2014. The Television Will Be Revolutionized. 2nd ed. New York and London: NYU Press. McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. 2007. Quality TV. Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London and New York: IB Tauris. Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York and London: NYU Press. Morabito, Nico. 2013. “Intervista a Fabrice Gobert”. In Serial Writers, edited by Fabio Guarnaccia and Luca Barra. Link. Idee per la televisione, 15: 91–100. Newman, Michael Z., and Elana Levine. 2011. Legitimating Television. London: Routledge. Noto, Paolo. 2019. “Italian Quality Television Abroad. An Interview with Mario Gianani (Wildside)”. Italiancinema.it, 27 July. Parrot Analytics. 2019. The Global Television Demand Report 2018. Report. PWC. 2018. Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2018–2022. Report. Redvall, Eva N. 2013. Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark. From The Kingdom to The Killing. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Scaglioni, Massimo, and Luca Barra (eds.). 2013. Tutta un’altra fiction. La serialità pay in Italia e nel mondo. Il modello Sky. Rome: Carocci. Scrosati, Andrea. 2018. Personal Interview to the Then Executive Vice-President Programming at Sky Italia. 14 February. Vivarelli, Nick. 2018. “Italian TV Series Grab Global Spotlight”. Variety, 15 June. Waade, Anne M., Eva N. Redvall, and Pia M. Jensen (eds.). 2020. Danish Television Drama. Global Lessons from a Small Nation. London: Palgrave MacMillan.

3

Mapping European ­premium-scripted ​­ TV Trends, patterns, and data in an emerging EU market Dom Holdaway, Cecilia Penati and Anna Sfardini

Introduction. Mapping and studying the production and circulation of European premium scripted content Twenty years ago, when describing the main features of contemporary European television, John Ellis coined the definition “age of plenty” to describe the abundance of players, content, and networks in the new digital ecosystem (Ellis 2000). When it comes to content, at least, the scenario today would rather appear to be an “age of overabundance”, particularly considering the incredible growth of TV and audiovisual products circulating globally, following transformations in distribution and the birth of the OTT services. In recent years, traditional broadcasters and new players including the OTT services have invested billions in the development of original content, both scripted and unscripted. The picture of “overabundance” is particularly clear if we look at US-produced scripted content (Figure 3.1): during the period from 2010 to 2018, there was a remarkable growth of scripted content produced annually by pay channels, certainly by basic and premium cable networks (like AMC and HBO), but also OTTs and various digital aggregators (such as Netflix or Amazon, to mention the most visible and active players). This “overabundance of content” is directly connected to a general evolution of the US media system, or what Lotz has defined as a “revolution”, as the “landing place” of a ­post-network ​­ system (Lotz ­ 2009). During the second decade of the 2000s, the entire ecosystem of European audiovisual content production has changed significantly, in response to the growing relevance of pay and subscription-based players (both traditional and OTT services), the further globalization of markets, and the increasingly central role of original content. While US-scripted pay production has reached an age of oversupply, with series output up 239%, growth in Europe (up 775%) has revolved around various iconic titles with a recognizable brand and, often, strong circulation within Europe and beyond.

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­Figure 3.1 The age of overabundance. Number of titles of scripted pay productions in the US per year. Source: Ce.R.T.A., adapted from FX Networks Research data.

During the last ten years, the European context has presented certain analogies with the growth of US series, even though the various national markets in Europe are far smaller than the entire US one. As Figure  3.2 indicates, traditional and new players alike on the pay side of the market have commissioned and produced a growing number of scripted products. From the very few products (eight series) commissioned by pay players in the main European markets in 2008 to the much more significant 70 titles ten years later, it is no exaggeration to perceive this growth as a European renaissance. This change is particularly relevant for one main reason: while free-toair players such as public service broadcasters and commercial networks make traditional scripted TV products with the aim of reaching a predominantly national, domestic audience, pay players have begun to create products consistently with a more global ambition for their distribution and circulation, making recourse to international alliances and co-productions. A clear exception is, of course, the UK, where scripted content has a long tradition of export. In the Italian case, however, this is particularly evident: the free Rai and Mediaset have traditionally produced hundreds of TV dramas and thousands of hours of scripted TV, but very rarely have these titles circulated abroad. However, today Inspector Montalbano is just one the most recognizable exceptions. In more general terms, this renaissance

Mapping European p ­ remium-­scripted TV   35

­Figure 3.2 The European renaissance. Ten years of growth in pay fiction. Based on the Ce.R.T.A. research sample: number of original pay TV series (first seasons and returning seasons).

in European scripted pay output can be linked to a series of key breakthroughs in the system over the last ten years: the growth in pay TV in all markets, the arrival of US SVOD giants, and the explosion of European OTT platforms (see Figure 3.3). Important spikes in production in key years, and the periods that followed, can be connected to a series of relevant changes: the introduction of the AVMS (Audiovisual Media Services) directive in 2010 and 2011; the “switch off” in Spain (in 2009), Germany, France (2011), the UK, and Italy (2012); and, between 2012 and 2015, the launch of Netflix and Amazon Prime in Germany, Italy, France, and Spain. In this chapter, our aim is to frame these important changes as a kind of paradigm shift: the emergence of pay or subscription service content demonstrates a new centrality of original scripted production, defined by national traits and tastes, and by the ability to forge supra-national appeal and circulation. The data and broad trends introduced here, which are expanded in greater detail below (and in the following chapter) are the results of a research project carried out on the production and circulation of premium scripted series in five Western European countries (Italy, France, Spain, the UK, and Germany) in the decade spanning from 2008 to 2017. The project focused on the production and circulation of

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­Figure 3.3 Industry breakthroughs and production growth in Europe.

­

Mapping European p ­ remium-­scripted TV   37 production: volume (the number of titles, total hours of original programming, numbers of seasons); the players (channels and broadcasters, production companies, co-producers); the distribution platforms (SVOD, pay TV); the origins of the product (original intellectual properties or adapted, pre- sold properties); genres; and scheduling. The resulting sample consists of 164  original products (1,389 hours), produced and distributed by European pay commissioners (broadcasters and OTT services). Secondly, the project focused on European and extra-European circulation, concentrating particularly on the European premium products’ distribution in the US, parts of Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway) and of Central and Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, The Czech Republic, Bulgaria). In the third and final stage, it highlighted and studied the “game changing” countries and relevant case studies of products. In these phases, the database was expanded through quantitative studies of distribution patterns and content, in order to expand on national specificities and international trends together. The aim of this chapter is to provide a summary of these results, focusing in particular on the major tendencies of production and content. First, we examine the formats of scripted series, tracing the US influence on the way premium content is structured and scheduled, and considering the main genre tendencies. The second part examines the origins of European scripted premium television, i.e., the quotas of original and adapted intellectual properties, and the sources of the latter. In the final paragraph, we examine the social connections between certain groups of producers or some “hubs” of production. This section makes use of the tools of social network visualization and analysis, to map out such connections at the five national levels and transnationally.

The formats and genres of European premium fiction European premium TV fiction was founded on the model of US cable TV, and this influence is felt at various levels, from the creative (relating to production ideas and styles) to the economic (connected to specific business models). The point of contact between these two different television contexts is perhaps most evident in the format choices, season lengths and running times of series made in Europe. These retrace, on this side of the globe, choices that have been tried and tested in American subscription TV production for a decade, establishing in both cases a clear distance from the standards of both generalist TV in Europe and US network shows (BanetWeiser, Chris and Freitas 2007). The numbers collected in this research demonstrate that the persistence of this “American” influence can be seen most clearly in dramatic productions. The most common model is that of the “series”, consisting of six to twelve episodes per season (54% of the research sample). This configuration is prevalent in all national contexts, but most common in France and Italy,

38  Dom Holdaway et al. where it exceeds the number of “one-off” products (e.g., the TV movie, which is very rare) and “mini-series” (fewer than six episodes). The choice to mimic the durations of US cable TV is most clear in what could be defined as “flagship products”, which have considerable investment in creative and launch, but also high expectations for returns in terms of audience figures, advertising and international circulation. These are the most representative examples of the main broadcasters’ production models across the various national contexts. For example, the highest profile productions in Sky Italia’s slate (from Romanzo criminale to Gomorrah and 1992) use the series format. In the earliest moments of its entrance into the premium scripted market, however, the company also experimented with the mini-series  – in particular for the biopic genre (Moana, Faccia d’angelo) – and the one-off formula – a handful of Christmas specials. Canal+ in France similarly employs the series format in its top-line programmes, from Le bureau des legendes to Versailles (though within the broader range of productions in the period considered we also find a handful of TV movies); the same is true of Movistar+ in Spain and Sky Deutschland, at least for what is currently its peak product, Babylon Berlin. The British context, on the other hand, is more varied, since Sky UK’s production has a much lower margin of difference between series and mini-series, and between comedies and dramas. As a broad tendency, however, the same principle stands: the broadcaster’s top-line products (e.g., Fortitude, Riviera, Tin Star) also adopt the series format. As they have also entered into the European-scripted premium television market, SVOD operators have followed this same, consolidated model, as the first products in the various national contexts demonstrate (The Crown, Suburra, Dark, Las chicas del ­ cable, Marseille). The US cable model of TV series distinguishes itself from mainstream television for a reduced number of episodes in each season (10–12, rather than 22–23 on the networks) and a runtime of more than 50 minutes (compared to 40 minutes, for free, scripted programming). This moreover constitutes the standard form of contemporary “complex TV” (Mittell 2015), which emerged in the North American context and quickly gained global distribution. Mimicking the “complex” model has allowed European premium fiction to situate itself within the same imaginary, presenting cultural products that are aimed at the pre-existing audiences of (US) scripted cable on premium platforms, grafting itself onto the same system with a similar kind of content but a new kind of local relevance. From the perspective of storytelling, the US cable model implies a certain level of narrative compactness, with only a limited number of episodes. This also enables greater control over the programmes from production companies and broadcasters, as well as the chance to involve high-profile talent and creative groups from the world of filmmaking (for screenwriting, and image and sound production), that are more able to commit to smaller work schedules than the long shoots of generalist TV. Some key examples here are the executive producer Peter

Mapping European p ­ remium-­scripted TV   39 Morgan for The Crown, or the directors Stefano Sollima for Gomorrah and Henk Handloegten for Babylon Berlin (the latter had previously directed Goodbye Lenin). One of the key characteristics of premium scripted content in Europe that this study has traced out are the macro and sub-genres of the series produced during this period, which signal the broadcaster’s production strategies. An initial observation to be made regards the distinction between comedy and drama, both as expressive formulas and as formats: European premium dramas are modelled on US cable production, with hour-long episodes, while comedies tend to fit half-hour formats. As Figure 3.4 shows, dramas constitute a majority of 57% of the sample, with little variance between national contexts. Dramas in fact lend themselves to the ideals of premium production, firstly thanks to their potential for international circulation (whereas comedies tend to represent more local sensibilities). As mentioned, foreign distribution is a key factor in premium scripted content, since it provides an important return on investments in production costs. Second, the format characteristics of dramas overlap perfectly with programming in prized prime-time slots (if destined for linear programming): they can cover an evening of programming for a number of weeks, helping to secure audiences to their host channels, and cohering perfectly with schedules that are already rich with US (complex) dramas. Thirdly, the visual language of drama makes it possible to play with very high production values, justifying a “premium” status that moreover helps to drive and retain subscriptions.

­Figure 3.4 Genre proportions: comedy vs. drama.

40  Dom Holdaway et al. It should be noted, however, that when European fiction adopts comedy production logics, it differentiates itself from the more traditional approaches of generalist television as well as US network models, seeking out a more refined and authorial slant both thematically and in writing style. The UK is an exception here, where, within a richer and more varied production context, we also find examples of classic comedies, which play with the traditional expressive styles of the sit- com and are destined for a more explicitly local audience for Sky One. Within the macro- category of dramas, a comparative interpretation of the findings reveals distinctions between the most common sub- genres in each national context. The most relevant categories overall, in terms of production numbers, are the cop drama and the thriller. Fantasies are little represented, though we find exceptions in the British context – ​­The Last Dragonslayer, or the miniseries based on the Terry Pratchett saga – ­ ​ as well as Les Revenants in France. This follows a tendency that is more or less continuous with the historical production of TV fiction in Europe. The UK market, with the highest total number of programmes, also has the greatest level of variety within the umbrella of the drama. This ranges from high-budget period dramas (Jamestown ­ for Sky One and the emblematic example of The Crown, made by Netflix), to a rich slate of crime thrillers with various nuances (the glossy Riviera or the rarefied, auteur product Tin Star), and some episodes of adventure and fantasy. The French context, and the second largest production market, has a similar trajectory: two high-investment period dramas (Versailles ­ and Borgia) stand out, alongside some other subgenres, from more traditional cop dramas to a spy story (Le Bureau des légendes), even touching on science fiction. The Italian case is particularly interesting in view of a substantial, coherent group of products that intersect national social history, and filter it through the codes of the gangster movie and mob film. This includes one of the first Sky Italia series, Romanzo criminale, which narrates the story of the Banda della Magliana from the 1970s to the 1990s from the perspective of the criminals; Faccia d’angelo, which depicts a protagonist of the Mala del Brenta criminal organization; the vivid portrayal of the Neapolitan camorra in Gomorrah; even the first Italian show produced by Netflix, Suburra, which focuses on the criminal happenings in Rome, and in particular in its coastal neighbourhood, Ostia. In the range of Spanish products, we can perceive a specialization on sentimental melodramas from a more feminine angle, though this is not exclusive. This stands out from the other premium productions which are addressed to a more balanced, if not largely male, target audience. Some examples are Velvet Collection, Vergüenza and Cable Girls; the first two were produced by Movistar+, the latter by Netflix. The opposite tendency is clear in Germany, with a clear prevalence of the thriller genre. This has some ­ interesting variations, from the period drama (Bablyon Berlin) through to

Mapping European p ­ remium-­scripted TV   41 ​­ (the ­ ­ ­sci-fi case of Dark, Netflix’s first German series), and action (You Are Wanted, Prime Video).

The origins of the concept of European ­premium-scripted ​­ TV To grasp the evolution of European fiction TV, it is important to focus on the creative origins of the programmes mapped out here: original stories represent 73% of the products analysed (Figure 3.5). The remaining 27% are adaptations of pre- existing media products (Wells-Lassagne 2017): this includes reconfigurations of feature films, where the television programme then provides either an ideal way to continue the narrative, or it re-adapts and re- elaborates the premise in serial form; of novels; or (in rarer cases) of web-series. As Figure 3.5 shows, the second most common tendency is in fact to re-adapt pre- existing TV shows. In certain significant examples, these premium series remake scripted products produced in other national contexts; in others, we see premium actors remaking shows that had previously been marketed on terrestrial TV, on mainstream networks. This strategy is used in particular by SVOD players. In the UK context, for instance, Netflix sifted through the free-to-air network Channel 4 in search of iconic but discontinued programmes, seeking to revamp them by adding new seasons, but maintaining the same above-the-line creative group. Examples range from the acclaimed, prize-winning  anthological  series

­Figure 3.5 Adaptations vs originals.

42  Dom Holdaway et al. Black Mirror, distributed first by Channel 4 (Garofalo 2017), to the ­generational series Love Sick, on the sentimental lives of a group of British “thirty- somethings”. The latter had a local distribution again on Channel 4, before arriving on the same streaming service and gaining a second season. These two cases reveal two different commissioning strategies for Netflix: while the continuation of a well-known product like Black Mirror could attract new subscriptions from those already familiar with the series across the globe, the case of Love Sick (a much more local and less well-known product) helped to “furnish the catalogue”, providing subscribers with hours of new, unseen content that was coherent with other content on the platform (e.g., Sex Education, The End of the F***ing World). The same logic is at the base of the decision to revamp the Spanish series Velvet, which shifted from Antena 3 to Movistar+, with Velvet Collection. While it is true, from a purely quantitative perspective, that series deriving from adaptations of pre- existing intellectual property are numerically fewer, a qualitative interpretation of the data reveals that the highest profile shows, those which can be defined as the flagships of the countries’ premium production slates, are often the results of a process of media adaptation. The Italian case is particularly significant (Scaglioni and Barra 2013): eight of the eighteen products made in the period of this study are adaptations of previous media brands. This commissioning strategy characterized Sky’s entrance into the fiction market. Romanzo criminale, the first drama produced by Sky and a resounding success (in terms of critical and audience reception, as well as its international distribution) had a t wo-fold media matrix: Giancarlo De Cataldo’s novel, which dramatizes the true events surrounding the Banda della Magliana gang, and the theatrical film adaptation directed by Michele Placido. The same genesis is at the roots of Sky Italia’s most important scripted product, Gomorrah, based on the exposé by Roberto Saviano, which also inspired a film version directed by Matteo Garrone. This was also true of Sky’s noir ­mini-series Quo vadis, baby?, based on a novel by Grazia Verasani ​­ and a theatrical film directed by Gabriele Salvatores. These television operations are founded not only on the notoriety of the single literary IPs that inspired them, but perhaps to a greater extent on the authorship and cultural prestige of their pre- existent media matrices. In turn, these matrices are characterized by socio-historical “issues” (of varying importance) in the collective cultural debate, which therefore helps to guarantee the qualification of these products as premium series, and to distance them from generalist TV. A very similar process underlies the French product Les Revenants, the Canal+ series that adapted the “auteur” theatrical film directed by Robin Campillo (long-time collaborator of Laurent Cantet, creator of a notably auteur style cinema), which gained a significant international circulation and even inspired an adaptation in the US as a scripted format. Literary origins are at the basis of the Spanish series Crematorio,

Mapping European p ­ remium-­scripted TV   43 an original product made by Movistar+, inspired by the eponymous novel by influential, prize-winning writer Rafael Chirbes. The series represents a first attempt at a premium TV series in the Spanish context, with clear cinematographic and literary influences – characteristics that have helped to define the common identity of European pay fiction over the decade considered in this study. Novel adaptation is a classic commissioning model for media products that derive from pre-sold IP. This moreover has enlivened the market of literary rights in relation to the audiovisual media industry, an area that has blossomed noticeably in the era of “complex TV”. Naturally, the publishing success of a novel represents a potential signal of an audience for its onscreen adaptation, as well as a reassurance of its validity and the narrative coherence of its story and characters – elements that have been tried and tested through its literary iteration. It is interesting to note how this occurs particularly in police and crime series – many instances of which appear in this sample of contemporary productions – which are commonly adapted from successful literary sagas. In UK, the mini-series Thorne (Sky One) is exemplary: an adaptation from the best-seller by Mark Billingham, with Inspector Tom Thorne as its protagonist. In Italy, I delitti del BarLume (Sky Uno), from the popular saga by author Marco Malvaldi, depicts the character of the investigator and barista Massimo Viviani. And even Sky Deutschland’s most ambitious, high-budget series to date, Babylon Berlin, faithfully adapts Volker Kutscher’s police-inspector novels set in the 1930s, merging the crime motif with a period-drama connotation. Commissioning series that adapt pre-existing scripted TV formats  – i.e., fiction programmes that were made and broadcast in other national contexts, which are adapted to local markets  – functions according to a partially similar logic. The sample contains several significant examples. The first series proposed by Sky Italia included the Italian version of In Treatment. The Israeli scripted format had already been adapted into a successful HBO series in the US, which circulated across the globe, including to Italy. The local remake of this format, with a cast of film stars (as in the US equivalent) and a clear directorial imprint (guaranteed by Saverio Costanzo) represented an ideal complement to the HBO series, nodding to its viewers and including them in its own target audience. Another interesting case history comes from the Spanish pay channel #0, which produced a local adaptation of the US format Web Therapy, a comedy broadcast on the cable channel Showtime, which represented psychotherapy in an irreverent and ironic way. The Spanish broadcaster’s choice to adapt this format can be interpreted in the light of certain points of common ground between the programming strategies of Showtime and #0, namely a sacrilegious approach to the choice of themes and languages, and a clear emphasis on comedy (Esser, Bernal-Merino and Smith 2016). A final example of this kind of adaptation is The Tunnel, the fruit of a ­French-British ​­ co-production ­ ​­ shown on Sky One UK, which adapted a very successful Scandinavian cop

44  Dom Holdaway et al. ­ show (The Bridge). The Franco-British version continues a trend of cherry picking the most successful products from the Nordic market – after its repeated successes in producing scripted content – then adapting and distributing these in a premium context. The Tunnel is one of the most prominent examples, following the success of the US cable channel AMC’s adaptation of The Killing (based on the Danish series Forbrydelsen).

Social connections and inter/national premium production Further light can be shed on the social and collaborative constellations at the base of this research sample through the tools of social network analysis (Wasserman and Faust 1994). This assumption shares the standpoints of Actor-Network Theory (Latour 2005), i.e., that this context, like all social phenomena, is the result of specific group formations. While we interpret this group of actors as one such formation, we do so within the limits of a necessarily partial perspective, examining a series of historical and geographical snapshots of micro- communities (producers, distributors, and broadcasters of the products within the same geographical and historical limits). Nevertheless, as we seek to show, interpreting these producers as an interconnected social group reveals certain social dynamics (few repeated relationships, specific “hubs” of production in national and international terms) that have produced the rich context of the past decade. Before illustrating these, a few words on methodology. The following results come from the graphic interpretation of recurrent relationships between specific “actors”: production companies, distributors, and broadcasters1. The graphs depict the summation of these relationships, where each actor is a node, and each connecting edge represents collaboration on a premium product2 . Thicker edges represent repeated collaborations; node size refers to the agent’s total “weight”, i.e., the total number of relationships. The main analytical models used below are graph modularity (Newman and Girvan 2004; Newman 2006), which is used to identify communities in the visualization of the network, and betweenness centrality (Freeman 1977), used to evaluate the relevance of a node’s position as a connector to other actors. It is worth signalling one limitation of this model: though it represents collaborations, it does not account for power dynamics. It represents nodes as social equals, without considering, for instance, the greater or minor financial or organizational relevance of any agent on a television product, in part due to the unavailability of more detailed data. Following the reasoning in Bondebjerg et al. (2017, 79– 80), this suffices nevertheless to reveal information about the socio- cultural structure of these networks. National models In mapping out the connections behind premium television fiction according to the five producing nations (or majority co-producers) considered, we

Mapping European p ­ remium-­scripted TV   45 can identify three models of social network: (­1) ­mono-​­centric networks, with a clear central node to which the vast majorities of node are connected ­directly (­France and the UK); (­2) p ­ oly-​­centric connected networks, where each agent is interconnected but without a clear centre (­Italy and Spain); (­3) ­poly-​­centric disconnected networks, consisting of disconnected “­islands” of single/­repeated collaborations (­Germany). It should be noted, however, that all three of these forms can be expected in a relatively small sample dominated by a handful of major media companies. Specifically, the small numbers of productions in Germany, Spain, and Italy naturally lead to this kind of distribution (­with fewer collaborations the interconnectivity of a network is naturally much lower). It is worth keeping in mind this consideration in regard to the variations in repeated collaborations between media companies (­this data is shown in ­Table 3.1). The average degree in each national context refers to the average number of collaborations per agent, but the relatively low numbers in Germany and Spain could simply be connected to the smaller amounts of data. The average weighted degree adjusts this value to include repeated collaborations between producers; the difference between the fourth and fifth columns hence demonstrates the tendency towards partners working together on repeat occasions: in short, this is uncommon. In the British and French networks (­­Figures  3.6 and 3.7), the central nodes are the broadcasters Sky and Canal+, which are connected directly to 92% and 83% of all other nodes, respectively (­of a total of around 80 ­companies in each case). These media conglomerates are fundamental to the creation of this network. Each case is moreover defined by another three tendencies: an immediate community of relatively independent collaborators that work with Sky or Canal+; a series of smaller, interconnected communities that represent also collective, repeated collaborators, centred on a significant production or distribution company; and one or two more peripheral communities that are centred around a competing media company. In the French network (­­Figure 3.6), the only nodes that are disconnected from Canal+ are instead connected to Orange, its main competitor in premium production during this period. The most regular collaborators of these two major players are interconnected through a series of important nodes that have slightly higher centrality in the network. This includes including public and private producers (­Haut et Court, La ­Table 3.1  T  he composition of the “­national” networks Country

Nodes

Edges

Average degree

Average weighted degree

France Germany Italy Spain UK

84 18 21 11 82

155 21 49 15 177

3.69 2.33 4.67 2.72 4.32

4.14 2.33 5.52 2.90 5.56

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­Figure 3.6 The network of premium productions in France.

Parisienne d’Images, Banijay, CNC), as well as international media companies (Sky). Overall, however, the “centrality” of all nodes surrounding Canal+ and Orange is low and with relatively little variance. This can be interpreted as a relatively minor impact on the network; they are important only collectively, and as partners to major media conglomerates. This moreover demonstrates a broad openness to changing constellations of co-productions in premium production, with few repeated connections. Indeed, only 13 collaborations are repeated more than once, and only three more than twice: Canal+ with La Parisienne d’Images (five times) and Haut et Court (three), and Orange with Empreinte Digitale (three repetitions). These tendencies are also found in the British network (Figure 3.7). To a small extent, Sky has stronger ties to its main collaborators, with higher structural centrality of some actors and a greater weight of edges. The most significant collaborators of the then Murdoch’s conglomerate are RHI, Big Talk, NBC Universal, Baby Cow and Tiger Aspect, and, most significantly (through six collaborations each), BBC Worldwide and the Endemol Shine Group. As with French productions, there are certain peripheral sections of the network that are not directly connected to Sky, but rather to its competitors: the BBC and Netflix (both of which nevertheless have a smaller significance than Orange, in France). In fact, the BBC – of course, not a premium producer but a PSB – is one of very few nodes across all of these networks

Mapping European p ­ remium-­scripted TV   47

­Figure 3.7 The network of premium productions in the UK.

that has significant centrality almost entirely due to its collaborations as a distributor. Netflix, on the other hand, has a peripheral position in the network (as in all national contexts), and (unlike both the BBC with Sky and Canal+ with Orange) there are no instances of collaborations with competing broadcasters. Though, overall, production numbers remain too low to make any definitive conclusions, this reveals some potential insight in the competitive strategies of the OTT service in this context. The second model of networks identified above, in the Italian and Spanish contexts (Figures 3.8 and 3.9), reveals broadly dislocated, small production communities that are interconnected only by weak ties (infrequent collaborations between broadcasters and/or production companies). In Italy, these are dominated by Sky and a group of international co-producers (including HBO, Canal+, Mediapro and Wildside), and more peripherally, connected by mutual collaborations with La7, a small group of Fox Channels productions. In Spain, two communities are centred over Canal+ and Movistar+, following the evolution of the company and the change of name and brand. In Germany (Figure 3.10), the most important relationships (in numerical terms) are dominated by NBC Universal, Turner/ Wiedemann & Berg, and Sky – however, considering the small number of productions involved (8), it would be risky and little substantiated, here, to conclude that this premium production context is less collaborative.

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­Figure 3.8 The network of premium productions in Italy.

­Figure 3.9 The network of premium productions in Spain.

The international model Mapping out these connections in a single, transnational network (Figure 3.11) in part reconfirms some of the tendencies seen at a national level, while also challenging others and highlighting certain key international players. The first observation to be made here regards the overall

Mapping European p ­ remium-­scripted TV   49

­Figure 3.10 The network of premium productions in Germany.

interconnectivity of the network: of 190 nodes, 188 are joined (the remaining two are ProSieben and Talpa, connected on the production of Jerks but unconnected to any other companies). Second – unsurprisingly, given the much larger markets in the UK and France – the links between these agents produce a poly- centric network that is inescapably dominated by Sky and Canal+, each connected, respectively, to 44.7% and 44.2% of the network (this includes eight common collaborators, and a connection to each other with a weight of three). The production tendency witnessed separately in the British and French contexts, therefore, categorizes premium production across Western Europe, too. However, this is due to the high level of connectivity in their national contexts and has little to do with a transnational role: Canal+ is tied to only six new nodes, thanks to its initial presence also in Spain; Sky, on the other hand, to just 18 others, thanks to presence in Italy. Analysing the betweenness centrality of the nodes reveals an interesting point of difference to the single-nation networks: the increased relevance of competing broadcasters. This includes both those that already had

­Figure 3.11 European premium productions across the five countries.

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Mapping European p ­ remium-­scripted TV   51 prominent positions at the national level (La7 in Italy, Movistar+ in Spain, NBC Universal in Germany as well as Orange and BBC), but also notably Netflix  – which had previously been “socially” insignificant at national levels. Though it is only connected through shared production companies, and never collaborations with competitors, the international network confirms a more prominent position for Netflix (and, to a lesser degree, Amazon). This also applies to several significant media production groups and distributors, both at a national level (e.g., Mod Producciones, Wildside, Fédération Entertainment) and at an international one (most significantly, Beta Film and Endemol Shine, Amazon). The latter signal an emergent group of global actors, whose social relevance within this specific production context is concrete only from this transnational perspective. The degree to which this production context can be perceived as truly transnational can be further investigated by comparing its communities to the national origin of each actor. Analysing the modularity of the network in terms of connections broadly consolidates the importance of the most central nodes noted above: the majority of actors fits into seven production “communities”, with weighty media companies at the core. These are Sky, Canal+, and Netflix in the centre; Amazon and Warner Bros. connecting few nodes across the network; Orange, Fox Channels/ La7, and NBC Universal serving as bridges to outer communities. The majority of these communities, with perhaps only the exceptions of Netflix and Amazon/ Warner Bros., can be clearly reconnected to a single nation’s production context: e.g., the NBC Universal “peninsula” collaborated on series released in Germany; Fox/ La7 community is the result of a handful of Italian products only. While the overall connectivity of the network can therefore be put down to a few key actors that that work internationally, visualizing the national provenance3 of each actor reveals a more complex picture (Figure  3.12). First, we see a clear division of British actors surrounding Sky and French ones around Canal+. Aside from a small Fox/ La7 community that is evidently Italian, however, the rest of the network is distinctly multi-national: companies from Germany, Italy, Spain, the US and other nations are scattered across the network, with the only perceivable pattern being that US actors are closely tied to British media companies, and more disconnected from French ones. The French side of the network is rather connected to a greater array of international agents. We can therefore conclude that the social make-up of this production context is heavily guided by the individual nationality of the target market; nevertheless, the production makeup of the same context is distinctly international in nature.

Conclusions The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the mapping out of European premium fiction presented here has sought to show the notable growth in European premium production as a “renaissance”, and to identify and

F ­ igure 3.12 T he (indicative) nationalit y of the players.

52  Dom Holdaway et al.

Mapping European p ­ remium-­scripted TV   53 illustrate some of its key characteristics. The conclusions that we might draw can be tentative at best, at a dynamic moment of this renaissance where  – as Figure  3.2 illustrates  – the major production markets of the UK and France have begun to plateau, while the secondary markets of Italy, Germany, and Spain continue to accelerate. Nevertheless, as we have sought to illustrate, there are some clear tendencies that appear to define this context. First, a small majority of the content produced in Europe are dramas. The “flagship” productions of the active media companies in these countries  – those which have the highest potential for marketing, profit, and international distribution – belong to this genre, which moreover prioritize series-length formats, and mimic the production models of US cable. Nevertheless, the various subgenres of comedies and dramas illustrate greater nuance, in their negotiations of nation-based tastes with international ambition (as in the cited cases of German thrillers, Spanish melodramas, or British comedies). A second key observation is that, while almost three quarters of these products are produced from original ideas, the remaining 25%  – which again contains some of the key, exportable flagship products – are adaptations of a colourful range of pre-existing IP. Though literature dominates the source content, certain reworkings of films, web series, and other TV programmes, as well as collective media matrices, signal other interesting negotiations, between creative adaptations techniques and a strategic push for content that might guarantee audiences more safely. In the final part of this chapter, we illustrated the social composition of the producers and distributors in this context through social network analysis. At a national level, this is very evidently dominated by constellations of major, central actors (media conglomerates) and a large range of small partners (production companies, regional funds, and distributors). The major players remain highly significant at an international level too, where, as we observed, single nation target markets continue to influence the vast majority of connections – even if groupings of producers are multi-national. Despite the unvarying weight of media companies like Canal+ and Sky in Europe, the international perspective also reveals the growing relevance of a handful of intermediate producers, distributors, and production companies – including OTTs and public service broadcasters. In the coming years, it will be interesting to monitor the roles of these intermediate agents, not least of all because ultimately the production strategies of these agents – fewer, high profile, flagship productions – differ from the higher output levels of the more traditional premium players. It remains to be seen what the long-term influences of this model will be.

Acknowledgements This chapter was conceived and planned by its three authors, in collaboration with the whole research team at Ce.R.T.A. Anna Sfardini was the

54  Dom Holdaway et al. author of the first section Cecilia Penati wrote the second and third sections, and Dom Holdaway the final two.

Notes 1 Given the multi-faceted nature of many media conglomerates, the networks do not represent these different professional roles. In view of the complexity of these issues, and the historical changes of the composition and ownership of many of the agents included, we represent nodes as individuals, as reported in the TV product’s credits, even if belonging officially to the same company (e.g., Wildside and Fremantle). Where products are produced/distributed/ broadcast by a single organization (e.g., Canal+) the node is represented only once on the network. 2 The analysis was undertaken first transforming the database of these series into ­ ­ ​­ a matrix of interrelationships using R, (https://www.r-project.org), and then its visual representation and analysis using Gephi (https://gephi.org). The networks are structured using Gephi’s “Force Atlas 2” algorithm for visualization ( Jacomy et al. 2014). 3 Here we refer to the nationality of the companies, no longer the premium products. Of course, when dealing with international conglomerates, this is a slippery concept (e.g., NBC Universal is a US parent company that works also prominently in Germany); while recognising that it is an imperfect system, we refer to location of the main headquarters or the founding country of international companies.

References Banet-Weiser, Sarah, Cynthia Chris, and Anthony Freitas (eds.). 2007. Cable Visions. Television beyond Broadcasting. New York: NYU Press. Bondebjerg, Ib, Eva Novrup Redvall, Rasmus Helles, Signe Sophus Lai, Henrik Søndergaard, and Cecilie Astrupgaard. 2017. Transnational European Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ellis, John. 2000. Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty. London: IB Tauris. Esser, Andrea, Miguel Á. Bernal-Merino, and Iain Robert Smith. 2016. “Introduction”. In Media across Borders: Localizing TV, Film and Video Games, edited by Andrea Esser, Miguel Á. Bernal-Merino and Iain Robert Smith, 1–18. New York: Routledge. Freeman, Linton. 1977. “A Set of Measures of Centrality Based on Betweenness”. Sociometry, 40(1): ­ 35–41. ­ ​­ Garofalo, Damiano. 2017. Black Mirror. Memorie dal futuro. Rome: Edizioni Estemporanee. Jacomy, Mathieu, Tommaso Venturini, Sebastien Heymann, and Mathieu Bastian. 2014. “ForceAtlas2, a Continuous Graph Layout Algorithm for Handy Network Visualization Designed for the Gephi Software”. PLoS ONE, 9(6): e98679. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor- Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lotz, Amanda. 2009. Beyond Prime Time: Television Programming in the Post­Network Era. New York and London: Routledge.

Mapping European p ­ remium-­scripted TV   55 Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: NYU Press. Newman, Mark E. J. 2006. “Modularity and Community Structure in Networks”. PNAS, 103(23): ­ 8577–8582. ­ ​­ Newman, Mark E. J., and Michelle Girvan. 2004. “Finding and Evaluating Community Structure in Networks”. Physical Review, 69(2 Pt 2): 026113. Scaglioni, Massimo and Luca Barra (eds.). 2013. Tutta un’altra fiction. La serialità pay in Italia e nel mondo. Il modello Sky. Rome: Carocci. Wasserman, Stanley, and Katherine Faust. 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ­Wells-Lassagne, ​­ Shannon. 2017. Television and Serial Adaptation. London: Routledge.

4

Transnational circulation of European TV series National models and industrial strategies for scripted pay imports/exports ­ Paolo Carelli and Damiano Garofalo

Producing and exporting European pay fiction Pay fiction experienced a production boom in Europe between 2008 and 2017. The output of original productions in Europe’s five main markets (France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the UK) leapt from 8 series in 2008 to 47 in 2017 – a rise of +490% (as shown in the previous chapter). This growth is based on a change in the national production paradigms, which are increasingly modelled on “quality TV” from the US (T hompson 1997). Unsurprisingly, most of the titles travel very well across borders, both within and outside Europe. These series are much more export-friendly than what the national public and private (free) TV producers traditionally used to produce (Scaglioni and Barra 2013). This renaissance of sorts in European scripted pay TV production is also bound up with major changes in the industry that affect how European fiction productions begin to circulate. Besides pay TV growth in all the main markets studied, it is also about the arrival of the global SVOD giants based in the US (Netflix and Amazon Prime Video), the explosion of European OTT platforms, and the ever-greater take-up of streaming technology by the more traditional networks (Lobato 2019). All these factors have led to both a certain uniformity in productions across Europe and an increased transnational circulation of these products. This chapter maps out the development of the transnational circulation of European series in the five sample countries from two distinct yet complementary standpoints. First, we explore the circulation of pay fiction in Europe from an export perspective; second, we focus on how those countries have gone about importing European scripted pay fiction in this context.

Trends in pay fiction: exports As Figure 4.1 shows, as scripted pay fiction production has grown in the five main European markets in the reference period 2008–2017, so have series’ exports. The production hike began back in 2008, when quality

Transnational circulation of European TV  57

­Figure 4.1 Exportability of scripted pay television. Number of international titles on air in the five European markets (by year), excluding repeats in the various markets.

European series started to be produced, but it was from 2009 that the products were first put to the test  – starting with their export potential. The sharp rise in exports, with as many as 31 series made in Europe in the preceding years doing the rounds, reflected a new production paradigm, one that affected some nations more than others. Countries like France and the UK undoubtedly drove the change, as their export volumes ramped up over the ten-year period. It is no coincidence, then, that of the 69 products exported by the five countries in that time, no less than 58 were French or British (23 and 35, respectively – see Figure 4.2). The UK remains Europe’s leading pay fiction exporter bar none. Not unexpectedly, besides being the top exporter, it is also the country that imports the least from Europe. A player with a crucial role in all this is Sky UK. It leads the way not only as a producer and exporter but also (as the paragraphs below will discuss) as an importer of European pay fiction. In a competitive arena where exportable products by the free networks (the BBC and also Channel 4) are important, original British productions by OTT platforms have been making a notable and growing impact (McElroy and Noonan 2019). With comedies like Crazyhead (2016) or Love Sick (2014), among other genres, Amazon and Netflix have led the way. In parallel, France is establishing itself as Europe’s second giant for producing and exporting pay series. Compared to its main European competitor, France’s increased export volumes depend above all

58  Paolo Carelli and Damiano Garofalo

­Figure 4.2 Export capability of the main markets. Number of titles exported per country (out of the total titles produced) and percentage of titles exported in the sampled markets.

on a closely regulated market where pay TV has a key role in export and import processes (Nikolinakos 2006). Canal+ and Netflix are the main producers of quality series with high export value, even if British fiction – in English – has greater export appeal. From Figure 4.2, we see that there is another model that is the opposite of that previously delineated. Indeed, the Spanish and German approach is a low-output model generating rising circulation volumes that should not be underestimated. Germany is very much a young, growing market with great potential; of the eight scripted pay series produced there in the last ten years, four have been exported. Although it actually only began producing in the last two years, Germany has proved an increasingly capable exporter. Its lively, diverse market has no dominant player in terms of product circulation abroad, but there is a good balance between the various operators. Its four exported titles come from as many producers: Sky Deutschland (Babylon ­ Berlin, 2017), Netflix (Dark, ­ 2017), NBC Universal (Cape ­ Town, 2016) and Amazon Prime Video ( You Are Wanted, 2017). That said, its original pay and VOD output still seems rather limited compared to the other four countries’, especially given the German PSB traditional vigour when it comes to producing and importing series (Bourdon 2011). The Spanish experience illustrates a similar pattern to Germany. Although traditionally dominated by domestic productions, Spain’s market is another showing signs of looking beyond its borders (Castillejo 2012).

Transnational circulation of European TV  59 The boom in SVOD services has incentivized imports of quality content, and this dynamic has strongly influenced the production of quality Spanish fiction and spurred the creation of export-friendly products. In this sense, Netflix’s arrival in Spain in 2015, bedding in alongside Movistar+ (formerly Canal+), heralded some short-term changes – evinced, for example, by the global success of La casa de papel (2017), a series initially made by Antena 3 and moved permanently to Netflix. These developments serve to increase the number of exports from the modest number recorded in the period Crematorio (2011), and Las chicas del cable (2017). A ­concerned – two: ​­ halfway house between these two trends, Italy is a bridge between two production and distribution models. First of all, it was one of Europe’s early exporters, like France and the UK. For with the 2008 production Romanzo criminale, which began to circulate in Europe in 2009, Sky Italia launched a quality TV model that openly distanced itself from the series offered hitherto by public-service or free commercial networks (Scaglioni and Barra 2013). Here too, the rise of quality domestic television went hand in hand with the arrival of quality US and European fiction imports. Sky’s new and different production regime also prompted more production partnerships and international co-productions, facilitating the international circulation of Italian series. A genuine Italian model became established, in particular with Gomorrah (2014) and with the new partnerships with international networks, e.g. for The Young Pope (2016), coproduced with HBO. From 2015, Netflix became the second player in the fray, producing original series – Suburra (2017) and Baby (2018) – and offering an extensive library ­ ​­ of quality international series. These two protagonists’ success obviously spurred the Italian public-service broadcaster to evolve its own production methods, albeit slowly. The Rai opened up to international co-productions and thus made its products more exportable, notably Medici. Masters of Florence (2016) and recent hit L’amica geniale (2018). ­ Italy is highly significant in volume terms, too. Figure 4.3 shows the ratio between the total instances of titles exported to the other four countries and the number of actual titles exported by that country. The resulting circulation index encapsulates the relationship between producing and exporting for each nation. Numerically, France and the UK are the top producers and exporters to Europe – but their respective circulation indices are just 2.73 and 2.42, less than Italy’s 4.0. So, although Italy produces and exports fewer titles, they gain more traction in the other sample countries. Italy’s five exports (four by Sky  – ​­Romanzo criminale, 1992, Gomorrah and The Young Pope – ​­plus Suburra by Netflix), account for 20 instances in France, Spain, Germany and the UK. This figure speaks volumes about Italy’s original production strategy (and Sky Italia’s, in particular) of investing more resources in fewer products, all geared to export success in the main European markets. Sky’s key role as an exporter of European fiction emerges in Figure 4.4. With a presence in three of the five sample countries (Germany, Italy, and

60  Paolo Carelli and Damiano Garofalo

­Figure 4.3 Circulation index. Circulation rating: the ratio between the total instances of titles exported for the other four countries and the number of titles exported from that country (e.g. Italy: 20 exports to GB, FR, DE, ES / 5 exported titles = 4).

­Figure 4.4 Exportability by publisher. Percentage of titles exported to one or more countries.

Transnational circulation of European TV  61 the UK), Sky produced 45% of the titles exported in Europe between 2008 and 2017. Canal+ (operating only in France, where it is the undisputed leader) came next with 30%, followed by OTT giants Netflix (12%) and Amazon Prime (6%), both with a significantly expanding share. Sky is also leading the way not only in producing and exporting foreign fiction but also in importing it – from US and, as we shall see below, Europe too.

Trends in pay fiction: imports A similar picture emerges if we consider imports of pay series in the individual national markets in the period studied. The more titles a country produced, the fewer it tended to import from abroad. As Figure 4.5 shows, import volumes were still low towards the start of the period but began to grow exponentially from 2011, when Germany and Italy in particular both opened up to British and, above all, French products. In 2015 and 2016, all countries imported more, thanks partly to the spread of global OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video; at the peak in 2016, Spain and Germany imported 19 and 17 European titles, respectively. In absolute terms, Germany imported the most pay TV series from the other countries (49), followed by Spain (42) and Italy (38). Naturally, the

­Figure 4.5 Import volumes for European pay products. Number of titles imported in the five European markets (by year).

62  Paolo Carelli and Damiano Garofalo major producing nations tend to dip into the other markets less often: France and the UK imported just 30 and 27 titles, respectively, between 2008 and 2017. An interesting angle from which to examine how pay series circulate and thus are imported is to consider their destination, i.e. which platform or broadcaster first aired them (regarding the concept of “destination”, we decided to consider only the series’ first screenings in the individual countries; in many cases, the circulation is more complex, as a title’s distribution pathway in a country may be quite intricate, with subsequent moves to different channels and platforms). This aspect is significant. It affects how audiovisual products are distributed, and it highlights the specific features of each national market, caught as they are between television practices persistently anchored to a local dimension and the natural transnational vocation of the pay TV operators making the series concerned. Thus we note how each country (and each television market) uses different strategies for acquiring and scheduling overseas pay series. There are three models: free-to-air television, pay TV and the OTT platforms, plus sporadic theatrical releases prior to screenings on the box. Pay TV is the favoured destination for scripted pay, as Figure 4.6 shows. Pay broadcasters in countries like Spain and Italy have an especially significant role in attracting and scheduling European series, at free-to-air’s expense. In Spain, it is primarily Movistar+ that buys in and broadcasts foreign pay series, although the channel Cosmopolitan TV has a not insignificant role of its own, having distributed some UK products like Bedlam

­Figure 4.6 Product destinations. Channel and platform destinations  – fi rst run. Overall percentage and number of titles imported per country.

Transnational circulation of European TV  63 ­­ ​­ (2011–2012), Hooten and the Lady (2016) and the comedy Threesome (2012). During the period, free-to-air debuted just a single product, albeit a high-profile one: the Italian series Gomorrah, acquired by Atresmedia and broadcast in 2014 on free-to-air channel La Sexta. Free-to-air is a more substantial segment in Germany, where as many as 14 foreign titles had their first run on public service or commercial television. These were mainly French and British titles of relatively marginal appeal, where a certain “cultural proximity” (Straubhaar 1991) and TV industry similarities come into play. The most active PSB channels were the Franco- German transnational channel Arte as well as ZDF, a curious first port of call for a European hit like the Franco- German series Borgia (three ­ seasons, from 2011 to 2014). But the most engaged of the free-to-air players was commercial broadcaster RTL. It aired five titles, including season one of British offering Chris Ryan’s Strike Back, whose subsequent seasons moved to the pay channels on Fox. In France, too, free-to-air T V  – the public service broadcaster in particular  – has played a strategic and culturally important part in importing scripted pay products. Largely British titles, they aired on channels like France 3 (Agatha Raisin, The Collection), ­ France 4 (A Touch of Cloth, Hooten and the Lady) and even France Ô, the channel for viewers overseas (Treasure Island). In the UK, the main ­ free-to-air importer was Channel 4, especially for French “niche” products (Kaboul Kitchen, Le vol des cicognes) as well as some bigger hits (Les ­ ­ revenants). Clearly, the number of releases on the OTT platforms is fairly similar across the five countries, with minor variations. This further illustrates their tendency to push simultaneous transnational distribution of their own titles (Lobato 2019). The subtle differences that did emerge are the fruit of specific co-production strategies and agreements between OTT services and national TV broadcasters. For a prime example, take The Collection, an Anglo-French collaboration between Amazon Prime Video and French production company Federation Entertainment supported by public-service broadcaster France Télévisions. It previewed in France on France 3 before being sold to Germany’s RTL and airing on pay channel RTL Passion. There are also a handful of products that had a theatrical release, in a radical upending of the traditional TV series circulation “windows” approach; the most significant was Carlos (2010 in France, and with a theatrical release in the UK the same year).

National acquisition and distribution models If we look closely at the individual series’ circulation life cycles and broaden our perspective to include the import and destination models in other geographical and cultural milieux, such as the US, the Nordics and Eastern Europe, then certain specific themes emerge. Some titles have become paradigms for the complex, endless journeys of European pay series, amid

64  Paolo Carelli and Damiano Garofalo global tendencies towards uniformity and local dynamics that reveal each national market’s rules and customs in terms of their cultures, policies, and audiences (Hills, Hilmes and Pearson 2019). For one such circulation model, consider Sky Europe. Their productions tend to be distributed in the same way in the three countries where the brand is active: Italy, Germany, and the UK. When the dedicated Sky Atlantic channel became available there between 2011 and 2014, this trend further consolidated into a simultaneous day-and-date release strategy across all markets in some cases, especially for major high-budget titles like the British Fortitude or Germany’s Babylon Berlin. When European pay series were in their infancy, there was a discernible attempt at national mediation in the Sky titles’ destinations – hence the British decision in 2011 to screen Italian title Romanzo criminale on Sky Arts, in implicit acknowledgement of the product’s artistic and cultural value. Latterly, however, there has been an abrupt change. Broadly speaking, Sky products tend to circulate on pay channels and platforms even in countries where the brand is absent, with a few specific exceptions in some Nordic or Eastern European countries. Among Sky’s most widely watched British titles, for example, Fortitude has circulated in France and Spain (on Canal+ and Movistar+, respectively) and on public service television in the Nordics. Riviera, meanwhile, has been distributed extensively on SVOD platforms in France (SFR) and Scandinavia (C More). The picture is even clearer with the Italian products. Romanzo criminale aired on Canal+ in France, Movistar+ in Spain and HBO in the Nordics; likewise 1992/1993 (OCS in France and Movistar+ ­ in Spain) and Gomorrah (besides screening on free-to-air in Spain, it was also distributed on Canal+ in France and on HBO in Eastern Europe and Sundance TV in the US). A second model can be seen with Canal+. The French broadcaster’s own productions are distributed in different ways depending on the products’ cultural traits and changing policy within the group. On one hand, Canal+’s presence in Spain until 2015 boosted exports of French series to the country. Latterly too, as Movistar+ was established after Telefónica took over Canal+, the links between the two markets and their pay broadcasters have remained solid and profitable. International- calibre titles, such as Les revenants or Le bureau des legendes, along with other ­lower-profile ​­ products like Section Zero or Spotless demonstrate this special relationship. And on the other hand, Canal+ products are distributed in the other national markets in less structured and controlled ways. In Germany, for instance, the public service broadcaster has a key role in attracting French pay titles  – like Engrenages (ARD), Borgia (ZDF) ­ or Carlos (on the Franco- German channel Arte). In Italy, Canal+ products have appealed not only to Sky but also to pay broadcasters like Fox ­ ­ (Braquo, Engrenages) and marginal free channels like LaEffe (Maison close), while Channel 4 has played a leading role in importing French products into the UK.

Transnational circulation of European TV  65 A third model entered the picture with the global OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Their strategy is to release the titles immediately and practically all at once in every territory, thus shattering the different national distribution windows. This model ramped up from 2015, in particular, as Netflix entered countries like Italy and Spain, and the year later, when Amazon Prime Video arrived in all five markets. All the products released from then on have been circulating simultaneously (from the Italian Suburra to the German Dark and from the Spanish Las chicas del cable to the French Marseille). But the OTT platform model is significant for one reason in particular, in a strategy that these players are increasingly pursuing: they are acquiring products that have already been broadcast on free-to-air channels, making them available to their own users, and producing new seasons at the same time. This is what happened, for example, with Black Mirror; after the first two seasons on Channel 4 in the UK, Netflix bought it and produced the subsequent seasons. Likewise Ripper Street, another British show, this time a period drama about Jack the Ripper, ran for two seasons on the BBC before Amazon Prime Video bought it and offered it on its own service before producing season three. This strategy was then honed in other markets in the years after our study period ended. In Germany, for instance, Amazon Prime Video produced Deutschland 86 (2018), a sequel to Deutschland 83, which had aired on RTL. And Netflix did the same in Spain with titles like Paquita Salas and especially La casa de papel (both bought from Atresmedia and released along with newly produced seasons).

Conclusions Faced with the recent international crisis in European art cinema and its traditional export value (Higson 2018), European-made pay TV series in the last ten years seem to have hit on a circulation model that works. As we have seen, carried along on quality US television’s long wave of success in Europe, two complementary developments occurred. First, the European networks began to make quality series, offering a middlebrow model of high export potential midway between art-house cinema and national television. This model has proved able to subvert the rules of traditional European television, which was often stunted by a focus on local production for local consumption only. Second, and as a result, many European countries have begun to import not only US series but also quality European series, creating a virtuous transnational circulation that has often prompted genuine international co-productions involving several European countries. In this scenario, the establishment of international networks like Sky or multinational platforms like Netflix and Amazon (which now produce their own original series in different European countries) has certainly contributed to the creation of products with strong transnational character, huge international circulation and strong export performance outside Europe.

66  Paolo Carelli and Damiano Garofalo In particular, some fascinating developments concerning circulation and distribution in individual national markets can now be observed. For national barriers have gradually eroded in those ten years, significantly increasing both the number of series circulating in and outside their country of origin and their longevity (number of seasons). Equally, some highly salient national-specific dynamics still persist. Take genres, for instance. Comedy series are inherently bound up with their home-nation culture, which prevents them from fully deploying across multiple foreign markets. Dramas, however, are increasingly conceived and made with international audiences in mind. Furthermore, the ways in which a series is acquired and made available vary according to the local players. Within the narrow field of pay operators, the distinction between linear and non-linear is reshaped and blurred ( Johnson 2019). This affects editorial decision-making, scheduling strategies and, clearly, how audiences are encouraged to consume the products. In this scenario, the future challenge for the European networks is to overcome the ambiguity in a production offering that is halfway between content with a strong national flavour and increasingly standardized industrial and consumption containers. That is, they will need to show that they can grasp the specific industrial, cultural, and identity features of an increasingly self-sufficient European scripted output.

Acknowledgements The two authors have devised, designed, and discussed the essay together. Sections titled “Producing and exporting European pay fiction” and “Trends in pay fiction: exports”were written by Damiano Garofalo and Sections titled “Trends in pay fiction: imports” and “National acquisition and distribution models”, by Paolo Carelli. The conclusions were written jointly by the authors. They carried out the research as part of the team at Ce.R.T.A.

References Bourdon, Jérôme. 2011. Du Service public à la télé- réalité. Une histoire culturelle des télévisions européennes, ­1950–2010. ​­ ­Bry-sur-Marne: ­​­ ​­ INA Éditions. Castillejo, Ángel García. 2012. Régimen jurídico y mercado de la televisión de pago en España. Barcelona: Editorial UOC. Higson, Andrew. 2018. “The Circulation of European Films within Europe”. Comunicazioni Sociali, 3: 306–323. ­ ​­ Hills, Matt, Michele Hilmes, and Roberta Pearson (eds.). 2019. Transatlantic Television Drama: Industries, Programs  & Fans. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnson, Catherine. 2019. Online TV. London: Routledge. Lobato, Ramon. 2019. Netflix Nations. The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York: NYU Press.

Transnational circulation of European TV  67 McElroy, Ruth, and Caitriona Noonan. 2019. Producing British Television Drama. Local Production in a Global Era. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Nikolinakos, Nikos T. 2006. EU Competition Law and Regulation in the Converging Telecommunications and IT Sectors. Alphen aan den Rijn: Kluwer. Scaglioni, Massimo and Luca Barra (eds.). 2013. Tutta un’altra fiction. La serialità pay in Italia e nel mondo. Il modello Sky. Rome: Carocci. Straubhaar, Joseph D. 1991. “Beyond Media Imperialism: Asymmetrical Interdependence and Cultural Proximity”. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 8(1): ­ ­39–59. ​­ Thompson, Robert T. 1997. Television’s Second Golden Age. From Hill Street Blues to ER. New York: Syracuse University Press.

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Part 2

United Kingdom

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5

A ­21st-century ​­ gold rush? Video on demand and the global competition for UK television Philip Drake

In March 2019 the United Kingdom’s House of Lords Select Committee on Communications (later renamed Communications and Digital) announced an inquiry into the “future of public service broadcasting in the context of the rising popularity of video on demand services” (House of Lords 2019). As it, and many others have noted, over recent years the linear television broadcast model has been challenged by streaming content from a range of “Over-the ­­ ​­ Top” (OTT) ­ platforms, both through linear channels’ “catch-up” ­­ ​­ television services and through video on demand (VOD) platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The inquiry drew on wide ranging testimony from across the broadcasting and streaming landscape, including traditional broadcasters such as the BBC, ITV, STV, Channel 4, Channel 5, cable provider Sky, VOD platforms, including Netflix and Amazon, and policy-makers and regulators. From March to July 2019, the committee held a large number of hearings about the impact of the OTT providers of television content on UK public service broadcasting. In this chapter I analyse the committee’s discussions with broadcasters, policy-advisors, VOD platforms and other interested parties, as well as foreground issues raised within the wider context of the production ecosystem of UK television drama. In doing so, I will demonstrate the ramifications for UK television beyond the specifics of public service broadcasting to consider key questions relating to the political economy of television production and television drama in a fast-evolving globalized production system.

The changing ecology of UK television and the emergence of the global “super-indies” ­­ ​­ Before turning to the current situation, it is important to outline the nature of the UK broadcasting sector and the significance of its regulatory framework. Until 1982, the BBC  – the UK’s public service broadcaster (PSB)  – had a duopoly in television broadcasting with ITV, a commercial channel with PSB obligations organized through regional franchises across the United Kingdom and producing programmes for both national and regional audiences. Channel 4, launched in 1982 as a public

72  Philip Drake service broadcaster funded by advertising and operating as a publisherbroadcaster, broadcast programmes entirely made by independent producers rather than in-house, unlike the other channels. The introduction of Channel 4 helped to forge a commissioning model of externally made productions that became more common in the multi- channel landscape, leading to the rise of a multitude of independent production companies, often specializing in particular genres of television production. Alongside and driving these industry changes were numerous amendments to media regulation and markets (Doyle 2002; Steemers 2004; Drake and Haynes 2010). The most significant regulatory changes for UK television broadcasters and producers were the 1990 and 1996 Broadcasting Acts and the 2003 Communications Act. The 1990 Act, following the 1986 Peacock Report, required the broadcasters to commission at least 25% of output from independent companies. The 1996 Act deregulated ownership of media, albeit with a ceiling on monomedia ownership of 15% of UK audience share, and regional obligations for ITV regions (Doyle 2002, 100–101). The deregulation of media ownership had the effect of vertically integrating the broadcasters, and encouraging cross-media expansion, but also continued to support and grow the independent television production sector. The 2003 Communications Act introduced a single UK media industry regulator, the Office for Communications (Ofcom) and lifted restrictions on cross-media ownership, subject to application of a “public interest” test. Although the BBC itself remained largely self-regulated during this period, in 2017 Ofcom assumed this role under the 2017 BBC Royal Charter. The 2003 Act significantly reorganized the television value chain, allowing producers/independent production companies to retain secondary and tertiary rights to content, and enabling licensing and exploitation in further distribution windows and markets (including global television markets, sell-through to physical media and, more recently, online). Thus, the economics of television in the UK were transformed and the independent sector expanded in the 1990s in a growing multi- channel environment, though production budgets gradually decreased due to greater competition both for commissions and for viewers, as channels fought for audience share. This growth was possible as the new intellectual property regime allowed independents to retain secondary and ancillary rights to content, and further exploit their ownership of programme rights in new and creative ways. A consequence was the shift from the traditional cost-plus financing production model – where the broadcaster paid for and owned the programme – to one of deficit-financing productions through rights licensing and sales across different distribution windows and territories. This was a significant change in the terms of trade between broadcasters and independent producers which, alongside relaxing of the ownership rules, led to a series of mergers and eventual consolidation in the market towards larger production companies, altering their relationships with broadcasters, including the PSBs (Chalaby 2010).

A 21st-century gold rush?  73 The BBC itself, under the leadership of John Birt in the 1990s, had introduced an internal market as a cost cutting measure, using the term “Producer Choice” (Born 2004), and from 2007, under Mark Thompson, the BBC introduced the “Window of Creative Competition” (WoCC). The WoCC increased the percentage of programmes open to commission from all suppliers to 25%, on top of the 25% already guaranteed to the qualifying independent sector as part of the Communications Act. In 2011, the BBC commissioned 42% of eligible hours from the independent sector (Bennett et  al. 2013, 109). The new Terms of Trade negotiated for this sector with the broadcasters were key to the growth of this sector, and its internationalization, redefining the relationship of the “indies” to the BBC and other PSBs. As James Bennett, Paul Kerr and Niki Strange have argued, “the role of the independent sector in creating much of what counts as public service is often overlooked” (Bennett et al. 2013, 109). By 2014, in preparation and under pressure for the upcoming BBC Royal Charter renewal negotiations, BBC Director General Tony Hall proposed to separate BBC production from broadcasting, removing the guarantee of production work from BBC. This process led to the launch of BBC Studios in 2017 which not only competes for BBC commissions but also produces programmes commercially for other broadcasters (a move mirrored by ITV with ITV Studios) and merged in 2018 with the BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, to create a renewed BBC Studios as a single commercially run media production and distribution company. As production and broadcasting was untethered for the UK’s main broadcaster, greater opportunities arrived for the larger independents (Lee 2018). Driven by the increasing globalization of television production and the rise of television format sales, the UK saw significant consolidation of and increased concentration in the independent production sector, with a number of key independent production companies bought up by emergent “super-indies”. Many of these started out as relatively small UK television companies and, following subsequent waves of mergers and takeovers, emerged as major production houses, often becoming subsidiaries of global media conglomerates. These large producer brands provided reassurance and confidence for commissioning editors because of their track record and ability to take greater risk on projects through risk-sharing across production slates, as well as ability to sell programmes globally and attract in-demand talent. By retaining rights they also exploited the rise in global trade for television formats. Indeed by 2008, the UK was the largest global exporter of television formats ( Jäger and Behrens 2009, 8). The emergence of “super-indies” and even larger “mega-indies” character­­ ​­ ­­ ​­ izes the last two decades of UK television production (Chalaby 2010, 2016; Esser 2016; Doyle 2018; Paterson 2018). For instance since being founded in 2003 by former ITV executives Steve Morrison and David Liddiment, All3Media has acquired Bentley Productions, North One, Cactus TV, Company Pictures (makers of dramas Wolf Hall and The Missing), Lion

74  Philip Drake Television, Lime Pictures, Maverick, Objective Productions, Zoo Productions, Studio Lambert, One Potato Two Potato, Optomen, John Stanley Productions, Little dot studios, Apollo 2 and Neal Street (Call the Midwife) amongst others before being taken over by the US Discovery group and Liberty Global, owner of Virgin Media for a reported £550 million. Similarly, Shine was set up in 2001 by Elisabeth Murdoch (daughter of Rupert Murdoch), after leaving Sky, and took over two indies, Kudos – maker of Spooks, Life on Mars, Broadchurch, and other dramas in 2006, as well as Firefly and Princess Productions. Shine was bought in 2011 by 21st Century Fox and was merged into Endemol Shine in a $2 billion venture with 21st Century Fox’s Shine and Core Media Group, producer of American Idol. In 2019 Disney bought 21st Century Fox and put Endemol Shine up for sale, and in 2020 the France-based Banijay Group bought the mega-indie conglomerate for a reported $2.2 billion. Trade journal Variety commented that “[t]he merged entity will be the largest non-U.S. player in the market, with a bigger catalogue than the main UK players, BBC Studios and ITV Studios” (Clarke and Keslassy 2019). Freemantle (formerly Freemantlemedia), one of the earliest super-indies, and Tinopolis, starting out as a Welsh language TV production company, are further examples of consolidated with multiple subsidiaries. ­super-indies ​­ In addition to the consolidation of the super and mega indies were acquisitions by US studios, as well as Studio Canal, a major European player. In 2010, Shed Media sold a majority stake to Warner Bros. and by 2014 it became a wholly-owned subsidiary, changing its name to Warner Bros. Television Production UK. Further examples include the television drama production companies Carnival, producers of Downton Abbey, acquired by NBC Universal, Left Bank Pictures, producers of The Crown and Outlander acquired by Sony Pictures Television, Wall to Wall acquired by Warner Bros. and RED Production Company, a Manchester based indie renowned for dramas including Queer as Folk, Clocking Off and Happy Valley acquired by Studio Canal (Meir 2016; Spicer and Presence 2016). In addition, in 2014 Viacom acquired the digital terrestrial broadcaster ­Channel 5. According to research for Ofcom by Mediatique (2015), the number of UK television production companies fell from 450 in 2006 to 250 by 2014, and the ten largest producers in 2014 accounted for an estimated 66% of UK producer revenue, up from 45% in 2003 and 19% in 1993. In addition, the sector saw an influx of international capital. This report also notes the different recognizable categories of indie production companies now existing in the sector – including vertically integrated (often foreign-owned) companies that do not qualify as “independent” under Ofcom regulations, large indies that do qualify as they do not have links to UK broadcasters, and a long tail of smaller indies, a few owned by broadcasters and nonqualifying and the rest qualifying as independent for broadcaster quotas (Mediatique 2015, 4).

A 21st-century gold rush?  75 By 2014, in his MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, the chief executive of Channel 4, David Abraham, warned of this trend: “Our independent sector, built up and nurtured over decades, is being snapped up almost wholesale and acquired by global networks and sold by private equity investors. It is estimated that soon the proportion of turnover of UK production that will qualify as “independent” will drop from 76% to around 50%. The term “super indie” has, in effect, become redundant” (2014). What is evident from the mergers and acquisitions described above, and the deregulation of the UK television industry, is that newly emerged big players can exercise significant market power, and – for reasons I shall explore in detail below – are able to circumvent the traditional broadcasters to make content to sell to the highest bidder. Richard Paterson argues this is especially so for television drama due to costs of high end production and talent, and that the global orientation of the super-indies also impacts on the content made, stating that “for drama production the fitness landscape remains less robust than for other genres, with a near oligopoly emerging among the consolidating super-indies, albeit with both ITV and the BBC still active, and the frequent establishment of new companies […] the cost pressures of production have encouraged a move to globally- rather than programming” (Paterson 2018, 26). ­locally-targeted ​­ ­ During the period 2013–2019, UK television production saw dramatic expansion, especially in terms of “High End Television” (HETV), dominated by television drama produced by the indies for a range of broadcasters and OTT services. The overall UK production spend for HETV in 2019 was £1,665 million, a 29% increase on 2018 (BFI 2020). Of this, the spend on co-productions and inward investment HETV was £1,294 million or 78% of the total spend, a 51% increase on 2018 and the highest HETV inward investment and co-production spend ever recorded. The vast majority were inward investments with very few co-productions, and most with US partners. Inward investment productions are substantially financed and controlled from outside the UK, and attracted to the UK because of production requirements, the UK’s infrastructure or UK tax reliefs, and count as UK HETV programmes through their UK cultural content and passing the cultural test (BFI 2020, 8). Part of the reason for the boom that can be seen in Table 5.1 has been the range of policy supports to stimulate HETV production, including the High End Television Tax Relief (HETR), introduced by the government in 2013 for scripted television of at least £1 million per hour (and therefore mostly used for drama). This offers producers a tax relief of 25% of qualifying expenditure (80% of total spend so 20% of overall budget) via a cultural test administered by the British Film Institute or through eligibility as a recognized co-production (Hammett-Jamart, Mitric and Redvall 2018; BFI 2019). The cultural test for high-end television is points-based, with sections relating to content, cultural contribution, location, and cast and crew, and projects need to achieve at least 18 from a possible 35 points.

76  Philip Drake ­Table 5.1  N  umber and production budget of HETV productions with final cultural test certifications, ­2013–​­2018 (­A production can be a single programme or a series) Year

Number of final certifications

Total budget (£ million)

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

44 58 83 103 99

326.9 464.7 911.5 935.1 1,406.30

Source: DCMS, BFI from BFI Yearbook Dataset 2019 (­2019).

The television production company for the project must be within the UK in terms of corporation tax but can be (­and often is) a UK “­­off-­​­the-​­shelf” company set up on behalf of an international parent company. According to the BFI in 2016, the UK awarded £163 million of HETV relief including for Netflix’s The Crown and Starz’s Outlander (­both made by Left Bank Pictures, a UK subsidiary of Sony Pictures Television) and HBO’s Game of Thrones. The UK currently also has a range of television ­co-​­production agreements with Europe, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, Occupied Palestinian Territories and South Africa as well as a recently signed treaty between the UK and China. As detailed in the BFI Statistical Yearbook 2019, UK production of qualifying UK HETV programmes has been increasing since the introduction of HETV tax relief. UK production spend was £1.29 billion in 2018, up 5% on 2017 and an increase of 87% on 2014. For all years except 2014, c­o-​­productions and inward investment projects generated the majority of UK production spend. In 2018, this represented 68% of total UK spend and £811 million in UK production value in 2018, up from £805 million in 2017, while domestic UK productions contributed £388 million, up from £338 million in 2017. Of 127 projects produced in 2018, 67 were ­co-​­production or inward investment projects and 60 were domestic UK projects (­BFI 2019). By 2019 total UK production spend was £1.67 million, a 29% increase from 2018, and the highest ever total (­BFI 2020). The rise in production costs, driven by OTT platforms and inward investment, whilst often seen as good news in terms of ­industry – ​­creating jobs and supporting skills and production ­facilities – ​­also raises concerns for the PSBs. The Director General of the BBC, Tony Hall, has noted how “­there is no doubt that there has been huge production inflation in ­high-​­end drama. We reckon the cost of ours has probably gone up by 60% over the last five years. Very t­ op-​­end drama now costs around about [$]10 million per hour” (­Hall 2019). This kind of production spend, for national broadcasters, makes commissioning ­high-​­end drama potentially very challenging, increasingly reliant on ­co-​­productions/­­cost-​­sharing with other partners.

A 21st-century gold rush?  77 In summary, the boom in the production of high end TV drama in the UK presents a “gold rush” driven by (a) consolidation of the independent sector through mergers and acquisitions of UK indies to create super-indies, (b) generous tax credits introduced by the government in 2013 to incentivize production spend, (c) the deregulation of the sector in terms of ownership, rights and increased requirement for the PSBs to commission productions from external providers, and (d) the increased demand for content driven by global inward investment into the super-indies and the OTT providers or “streamers”. I shall now turn to the latter – the impact of the OTT video on demand platforms on the production ecology of UK television drama.

The rise of the streamers: TV drama in the era of VOD, OTT, and aggregators Just a decade ago, as broadcasting platforms the VOD services Netflix and Amazon Prime were in their infancy. The UK was well-established with multi- channel television via digital terrestrial television (launched in 1998), satellite television (launched as a full digital multi- channel service in 1998) and cable television (also emerging in the mid-1990s with Telewest and NTL) but OTT platforms were in their emergent phase. Netflix, starting out as a US mail-order DVD service in 1997, only launched as a subscription VOD service in the UK in 2012 (alongside Ireland, as its first European markets). At the time the major players in VOD were the catch-up players of the major broadcasters – especially BBC iPlayer (launched at the end of 2007 as an on-demand seven-day archive of radio and TV programmes), ITV Player (launched 2008 – now ITV Hub), 4oD (launched 2006 – the first broadcaster in the world to launch a VOD service  – now called All 4). The main DVD rental service was LoveFilm, founded in 2002 and acquired by Amazon in 2011. Launched as a VOD service in the US in 2006 Amazon revamped the UK platform and in 2014 relaunched it as Amazon Prime Video, bundling in basic access to Prime members (those customers who paid for enhanced membership and free postage of Amazon products). The past decade has thus seen a major shift in the technological delivery of TV content, especially in secondary windows – moving away from physical media (with DVD and BluRay sales declining) towards OTT media content (McDonald and Smith-Rowsey 2016; Lotz 2017; Jenner 2018; Johnson 2019; Lobato 2019). As a PSB, the BBC innovated in rolling out the use of iPlayer which dovetailed with the wide-spread adoption of broadband internet in the UK ( Johnson and Grainge 2018). As it happened, the BBC originally proposed a collaborative VOD platform, called Project Kangaroo, in alliance with ITV and Channel 4, back in 2007. Kangaroo would have allowed users to have purchased content from the large back catalogue of those channels as well as watch catch-up television but was blocked by the UK’s Competition Commission. This was a key regulatory decision by the UK market regulator. The Competition Commission prevented an online

78  Philip Drake VOD platform that would have offered audiences the ability to access the OTT television services of all of the main broadcasters via one platform and instead regulators chose to open the market to global competition. There has been an especially rapid uptake of the major SVOD services in the UK, as the market matured and consolidated, with two market dominant VOD platforms Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. According to an industry report by Ampere, commissioned by Ofcom, by the first quarter of 2019 78% of UK households watched VOD services – including Broadcasting VOD (BVOD) and SVOD, far higher than in other European markets (Ampere 2019, 6). Claire Enders of Enders Analysis also points out the different economic models at play in the major SVOD businesses as compared to traditional broadcasters or independent production companies: [They] have, in British PSB terms, infinite resource, and each is heavily or entirely subsidising video activity. They are competing with each other for control of the global consumer future, which no PSB could ever dream of. […] None of the USA SVODs appear to have any intention of operating a conventionally profitable model. Netflix for instance operated on negative free cash flow of $3bn in its last results in contrast, ITV’s recent profit after tax was £600m (Enders 2019, 1). Whilst the contrast is stark, it is important not to overplay the significance of the OTT platforms in terms of current audiences. Reed Hastings (2019), founder of Netflix, has famously stated that the competition for Netflix is “sleep”. Linear television remains resilient and the most popular way to consume television for the majority of the UK audience, at more than two thirds of viewing (Ofcom 2019). However, this linear viewing is weighted heavily towards older viewers and the younger viewing audience is moving away from the long-established habit of traditional linear viewing and national broadcasters. Ofcom’s Media Nations: UK 2019 reports that ­16–34 ​­ year olds watch twice as much VOD content as the overall adult audience (52 minutes compared with 26 minutes) (Ofcom 2019, 18). For 16–34 year olds, SVOD watching did not exceed the watching of live television (at 83 minutes) or YouTube (64 minutes) but has been growing rapidly (Ofcom 2019, 4). Furthermore, this group spends only two minutes watching BBC iPlayer each day compared with 40 minutes on Netflix (House of Lords 2019, 3). This is mirrored by the growth in SVOD subscriptions. Ofcom analysis shows that the number of UK households with access to SVOD service doubled from 2015–2018 with 47% of UK households subscribing to a SVOD service (Ofcom 2019, 60). These are concentrated on the two major OTT platforms  – Netflix and Amazon Prime Video  – with 11.5 million households (40% of all households) subscribing to Netflix and 6 million subscribing to Amazon Prime Video. According to Netflix’s own figures, it has around 170 million subscribers globally, and is the largest SVOD service in the UK (Netflix 2019). It

A 21st-century gold rush?  79 dominates the UK VOD market  alongside Amazon (both part of the socalled FAANG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google). Due to the global reach and variety that streamers such as Netflix and Amazon are able to provide (alongside aggregators such as YouTube), there are significant challenges faced by PSBs in reaching younger and more diverse audiences – with viewings of BBC channels by 16–34 year olds halved since 2010 (House of Lords 2019, 3). The analysis of Ofcom predicted this by concluding in 2015 that “it may be increasingly difficult for PSB channels to maintain their current large audiences to their own platforms in the face of competition from global online platforms” (Ofcom 2015, 17). As global players, VOD platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are can create but also alter markets, potentially using bid­disruptors – they ​­ ding power to price out traditional nationally based public service broadcasters in the production of high-end television drama as well as segment audiences making particular demographics harder to reach. All of this has a spatial, political and cultural dimension too. In the UK, television production spend is still heavily weighted towards London and the South-East, notwithstanding important production centres in Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff, and Glasgow (Drake 2013; Lee 2018; McElroy and Noonan 2019). The requirement for PSBs to allocate a greater proportion of production spending in the nations and regions to fulfil their licence requirements is not shared by the OTT providers who are not substantially regulated by Ofcom. This places the OTT providers and independent sector at an advantage, able to manage inflated costs of large-scale productions such as returning series for SVOD through ownership of global rights, and to leverage national or regional incentives to move to any global production locale. Currently without its own UK studio, Netflix announced in 2019 that it planned to create a production hub at Shepperton studios near London, owned by Pinewood. The growth in, and competition for, prestige HETV productions, and production facilities to make them, has significant impact on both national and regional economies and cultural identity in the UK too. Notable examples include the long-run production of Game of Thrones in Belfast (2010 to 2018) and Outlander near Glasgow (2013-), both areas that have leveraged the shows to boost tourism. In a panel discussion, UK CEO of Studio Canal and Founder and CEO of RED Production Company, Nicola Shindler, argued that the streamers presented a challenge, reflecting not only on their impact on production budgets but also on the kinds of television that can get produced: Technology has developed streamers, and streamers are very profitable, and so much money has been pumped into television, that now television budgets have gone to ridiculous levels just for your basic TV programme, which means that where I was able to make local Manchester stories as well as bigger stories that were going to travel, for a reasonable amount of money that would go on the BBC or ITV… and

80  Philip Drake we’d make them for a certain amount of money and they didn’t have to sell internationally, and so I could tell small stories, I could tell brilliant stories, I could tell stories about people who weren’t getting on television or, you know, stories that just didn’t feel global. I can no longer do that because every budget in television has got to be over £1 million per hour, has got to be a certain level, so therefore people want less individual stories and much more…the call is for stories that are global. As soon as you do that you lose authenticity. So I think that for my industry in particular, technology has made it more difficult to tell small, personal, individual, local stories. Which is a shame (Shindler 2019). McElroy and Noonan make a similar distinction, between local production and local drama, and emphasize the cultural significance of television drama, arguing for a “renewed political approach to television drama production that re- centres questions of power in the analysis of whose stories are made and how they do, or do not arrive on our screens” (McElroy and Noonan 2019, 4). Alongside the reduction in relative market power of PSBs, and the rise in OTT platforms, there is also the rise of transnational TV broadcasterdistributors such as Sky and HBO, who are also competing for drama productions and talent, increasing demand for commissioned content. Netflix spent $15 billion on content in 2018 and was expected to spend $18 billion in 2019. This means that cost per hour exceeds that possible for regional or national broadcasters, reportedly spending as much as £15 million per hour on high end drama (House of Lords 2019, 9). In the UK, Netflix planned to spend over £400 million in 2019 on around 50 projects, one of its top three production countries globally (Netflix 2019). Whilst this does allow for co-productions with UK broadcasters, it also allows them to be outbid, and for SVOD platforms to retain global exclusive rights to exploit, cutting out national broadcasters completely. An example of this is the production costs of The Crown, commissioned by Netflix from a formerly independent production company, Left Bank Pictures, now owned by Sony, which was reported to have cost Netflix $100 million to make the first ten-part season  – a figure that a national broadcaster would have been unable to match. As a consequence, UK national broadcasters are in danger of being circumvented domestically by mega-indie production companies owned by conglomerates, with investment in production being commissioned or acquired directly by OTT providers, then operating as content aggregators through global rights acquisition. By cutting out the broadcasters and reconfiguring the television production value chain, the VOD platforms can negotiate directly with producers, and in this unregulated space can use their market dominance to commission TV shows with global rights, effectively squeezing out broadcasters and instead marketing programmes as their own original content – for example “Netflix originals” that have been acquired by Netflix via rights acquisition. An example of this was

A 21st-century gold rush?  81 Black Mirror, originally developed by Endemol Shine in 2011 for Channel 4, where it ran for two series. The rights to Black Mirror were acquired by Netflix in a reported $40 million deal – outbidding Channel 4 – and Netflix commissioned further seasons, leaving Channel 4 without the programme in which it had taken risks and developed into a success. As 2019 drew towards a close, Netflix appeared in the headlines of several UK national newspapers. “Netflix rakes in £700 million from UK subscribers and its hit shows are household names, so why doesn’t it pay any tax?”, asked David Parsley of the Independent, in a headline typical of the articles. These reported how Netflix had been given a £51,000 tax rebate by UK government in 2018. Despite the significant increase in subscribers year on year, the tax arrangements of Netflix, alongside Amazon (also much criticized for the low levels of tax paid in the UK) were calculated not by reference to the country where revenues were generated, but by their registered office – Netflix’s in the Netherlands and Amazon’s in Luxembourg – thereby not falling within the UK jurisdiction for tax or regulation.

Conclusions: UK TV drama production in an era of global aggregators The analysis has demonstrated how the OTT platforms, operating as content aggregators alongside the large “super-indies”, have significantly changed the production ecology of UK television drama. The so- called “warehousing” of television rights that was previously the domain of the national broadcasters in the pre-2003 era of cost-plus commissioning has now been assumed by the indies and OTT providers, but operating in a largely deregulated global market rather than within the UK’s nationally regulated broadcasting environment. This has meant that UK national broadcasters face increased competition not only for audiences but also for production: competing for ideas, talent, and production capacity. The consolidation of the independent television sector, alongside the globalization of UK television production, has led to greater concentration in the production sector and with it increased concerns about market power, regulation, and the protection of national PSBs. By 2014, seven of the ten largest UK television producers were owned by large foreign media corporations (Ofcom 2015, 2), and the top ten producers accounted for an estimated 66% of all UK producer revenue, up from 45% in 2003 (Mediatique 2015, 13). Tom O’Regan, writing 20 years ago, was optimistic: “it is hard not to see British television as a significant beneficiary (alongside the US of course) of the economic benefits stemming from the co-ordination and separation of distribution media that is implicit in the new release schedules for product. An increasingly integrated media ensemble of cinema, video rental, ­sell-through, ​­ ­pay-per-view, ­​­ ​­ premium pay, basic pay TV, free-to-air, ­ ­​­ ​­ and product spin-off in CD-ROMS, interactive games, and books should on balance benefit British producers in their international markets” (O’Regan

82  Philip Drake 2000, 321). Whilst UK production is indeed booming, and enjoys a linguistic advantage in terms of access to a large global market, the lack of a level playing field in terms of trade and regulation has the potential to undermine UK broadcasters, and, as Nicola Shindler outlined above, means that the UK industry is less able to make and therefore to tell “small, personal, individual, local stories” (Shindler 2019). In this chapter I have offered an analysis of the historical development of the television drama production sector, highlighting recent industrial disruption and a series of key changes which have accelerated in the past five years. I have explored the direct and indirect effects of the acquisition of UK indies by global conglomerates and the increased market concentration in television production. This raises a number of issues for further research. First, we need to research the longer-term consequences for UK television (both in terms of cultural output and as an industry) of the rise of the OTT platforms and their new function as television content intermediaries – superaggregators that can bypass the traditional UK broadcasting value-chain and regulatory ecosystem. Second, as OTT platforms operate within but from outside the nationally bounded broadcasting and regulatory environment, we need to consider if they also require appropriate regulatory frameworks, perhaps regarding market concentration or rights acquisition. Finally, in the context of a booming HETV production sector, further analysis is needed to examine the impact and appropriateness of UK tax subsidies that help finance high-end (£1 million per hour plus) television production for global OTT platforms, and avoiding a “zero-sum game” competition war of subsidies with other nations. Supporters of the UK’s HETV tax relief argue that the Gross Value Added (GVA) means that every £1 invested returns £6.1 in increasing jobs and spend in the industry (Olsberg SPI and Nordicity 2018, 22) However, in the absence of regulation of OTT providers, its critics argue the tax relief could be better targeted in terms of regional spend, addressing skills gaps and supporting smaller local productions. In addition, there are the wider, changing UK political contexts to be considered in relation to the television production ecology. The UK general election of December 2019 replaced a minority with a majority Conservative government which took the UK out of the European Union and into a transition period. This opened up a political space for attacks on the BBC (and, to a lesser degree, Channel 4) as PSBs. Alongside allegations of news bias and attacks on the BBC’s funding and licence fee – notably the decision forced on the BBC, driven by cuts, not to fund free television licences to all over 75s – the government indicated that BBC funding via the licence fee should be up for review, with some voices even advocating a subscription model using the SVOD OTT platforms as examples. Despite the wideranging House of Lords report, the newly elected government appears to be less committed to the future of public service broadcasting. This has led to a perfect storm for UK broadcasting: a rapidly changing television landscape, PSB under attack, political opportunism, rising costs and changing

A 21st-century gold rush?  83 viewer behaviour. Alongside this are potential changes to terms of trade for European co-productions that might take place in the event of a “no-deal” Brexit, the uncertainty around application of the revised AVMS Directive (requiring 30% of content on VOD platforms to be European), and the need to service a diverse range of audiences with younger viewers turning away from linear television channels. The BBC has scale and strong public support, and is expanding in VOD (with the roll-out of BritBox) however it also faces significant opposition, with the licence fee under threat of significant reform for when the Charter expires in 2027. It is hard to imagine the UK broadcasting ecosystem from 2020 to 2030 will not undergo even more dramatic changes than those that have taken place over the previous decade. The challenge, for the diverse global production ecology of UK television drama, will be to ensure retention of a relevant high quality public service broadcasting and plurality of media serving the UK public, supported to thrive and to be creatively ambitious, alongside enabling an appropriately regulated commercial sector and a regulatory and market framework that keeps pace with global competition and industrial, technological and consumer change. In debates about UK television production, the OTT platforms are not only technological and industrial disruptors, but also shift the discourse of what we understand – at the current time – as “the television industry” itself.

Coda (April 2020) Global shifts beyond television also impact the everyday business of television production. As this chapter goes to press, the UK is, like many countries across the world, experiencing the impact of the 2020 Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic and government measures to control the virus through measures to limit activities requiring human contact. Netflix and similar OTT platforms are likely to report significant growth in subscriptions and audiences, as measures to control the virus force people to spend more time at home and therefore likely to choose to consume more streamed content. However, the majority of the cultural sector, and TV production itself, has been significantly affected by closures, impacting on the precarious, often freelance work of many people that make up these industries and their businesses and lives - a reminder of the wider human impact of industrial and political actions.

References Abraham, David. 2014. “After the Gold Rush: Sustaining Creative Risk in UK Television for the Next Generation”. McTaggart Lecture, Edinburgh International Television Festival. Ampere. 2019. The UK VoD Market: Current Status and Future Developments. Ampere Analysis.

84  Philip Drake Bennett, James, Paul Kerr, and Niki Strange. 2013. “In Debate: Cowboys or Indies? 30 Years of the Television and Digital Independent Public Service Production Sector”. Critical Studies in Television, 8(1): ­ ­108–130. ​­ BFI. 2019. BFI Yearbook Dataset 2019. London: BFI. BFI Research and Statistics Unit. 2020. Film, High- End Television and Animation Programmes Production in the UK: Full- year 2019, 31 January 2020. London: BFI. Born, Georgina. 2004. Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC. London: Secker and Warburg. Chalaby, Jean. 2010. “The Rise of Britain’s Super-Indies: Policy-making in the Age of the Global Media Market”. International Communication Gazette, 72(8): ­ ­675–693. ​­ Chalaby, Jean. 2016. “Television and Globalization: The TV Content Global Value Chain”. Journal of Communication, 66(1): ­ ­35–59. ​­ Clarke, Stewart, and Elsa Keslassy. 2019. “Banijay Seals $2.2 Billion Deal for Endemol Shine, Paving Way for Huge New Global Player”, Variety. 26 October. Doyle, Gillian. 2002. Media Ownership. London: Sage. Doyle, Gillian. 2018. “Television Production: Configuring for Sustainability in the Digital Era”. Media, Culture & Society, 40(2): ­ ­285–295. ​­ Drake, Philip. 2013. “Policy and Practice: Deconstructing the Creative Industries”. In Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Cultures, edited by Petr Szczepanik and Patrick Vonderau, 221–236. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Drake, Philip, and Richard Haynes. 2010. “Television, Deregulation and the Reshaping of Leisure”. In The New Politics of Leisure and Pleasure, edited by Peter Bramham and Stephen Wagg, 63– 81. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Enders, Claire. 2019. “Public Service Broadcasting in the Age of Video on Demand”. Enders Analysis. Written Evidence ( PSB0059). House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee Inquiry. Esser, Andrea. 2016. “Challenging US Leadership in Entertainment Television? The Rise and Sale of Europe’s International TV Production Groups”. International Journal of Communication, 10: ­3585–3614. ​­ Hall, Tony. 2019. Corrected Oral Evidence: Public Service Broadcasting in the Age of Video on Demand. House of Lords Select Committee on Communications, 18 June. Hammett-Jamart, Julia, Petar Mitric, and Eva Novrup Redvall (eds.). 2018. European Film and Television Co- production: Policy and Practice. Basingstoke: ­Palgrave-Macmillan. ​­ Hastings, Reed. 2019. Netflix Q2 2019 Earnings Interview. Netflix. House of Lords. 2019. Public Service Broadcasting: As Vital As Ever. HL Paper 16. House of Lords Select Committee on Communications and Digital. Jäger, Elfi and Sonja Behrens. 2009. The FRAPA Report 2009: TV Formats to the World. Cologne: FRAPA. Jenner, Mareike. 2018. Netflix and the Re- Invention of Television. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Johnson, Catherine. 2019. Online TV. London and New York: Routledge. Johnson, Catherine, and Paul Grainge. 2018. “From Catch-Up TV to Online TV: Digital Broadcasting and the Case of BBC iPlayer”. Screen, 59(1): ­ ­21–40. ​­ Lee, David. 2018. Independent Television Production in the UK: From Cottage Industry to Big Business. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

A 21st-century gold rush?  85 Lobato, Ramon. 2019. Netflix Nations: the Geography of Digital Distribution. New York: NYU Press. Lotz, Amanda D. 2017. Portals: A Treatise on Internet- Distributed Television. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. McDonald, Kevin, and Daniel Smith-Rowsey (eds.). 2016. The Netflix Effect. New York: Bloomsbury. McElroy, Ruth, and Caitriona Noonan. 2019. Producing British Television Drama: Local Production in a Global Era. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mediatique. 2015. TV Production Sector Evolution and Impact on PSBs, December. London: Mediatique. Meir, Christopher. 2016. “Studiocanal and the Changing Industrial Landscape of ­ ­1–24. ​­ European Cinema and Television”. Media Industries Journal, 3(1): Netflix. 2019. “Public Service Broadcasting in the Age of Video on Demand”. Netflix Written Evidence ( PSB0041). House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee Inquiry. O’Regan, Tom. 2000. “The International Circulation of British Television”. In British Television: A Reader, edited by Edward Buscombe, 303–321. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ofcom. 2015. Review of the Operation of the Television Production Sector, 23 December. London: Ofcom. Ofcom. 2019. Media Nations: UK 2019. London: Ofcom. Olsberg SPI, and Nordicity. 2018. Screen Business: How Screen Sector Tax Reliefs Power Economic Growth across the UK. Summary report for the British Film Institute. London: British Film Institute. Paterson, Richard. 2018. “Modelling the Evolution of the TV Drama Production Sector in the UK”. CREATe Working Paper. 18 January. Shindler, Nicola. 2019. “Panel Discussion on the Future of Storytelling”. School of Digital Arts. HOME/ Manchester Metropolitan University. 23 September. Spicer, Andrew, and Steve Presence. 2016. “Autonomy and Dependency in Two Successful UK Film and Television Companies: an Analysis of RED Production and Warp Films”. Film Studies, 14: 5–31. ­ ​­ Steemers, Jeanette. 2004. Selling Television: British Television in the Global ­Marketplace. London: BFI.

6

“The biggest drama commission in British television history” Netflix, The Crown, and the UK television ecosystem Roberta Pearson

In his excellent book Netflix Nations Ramón Lobato says that Netflix exemplifies “what happens when a digital service enters national markets, coming in over the top of existing institutions and regulations. Netflix […] is a case study with larger relevance to ongoing debates in media studies about convergence, disruption, globalization, and cultural imperialism” (Lobato 2019, 12). The Crown, Netflix’s first UK original production, emblematizes the streaming company’s disruption of the UK television ecosystem. In 2015, the Chief Creative Officer at Sony Pictures Television, owners of The Crown’s UK production company Left Bank Pictures, told interviewer Gillian Doyle that: We have recently got the biggest drama commission in British television history which is a show called The Crown. It is going to be a very, very expensive show… Originally our intention was that we would make it for a British broadcaster and we would look for American coproduction money – the traditional model… [But] then Netflix came in and said we want all rights so we will fund this and we will fund it at a level that is unimaginably high (Doyle 2016, 88). The Sony executive’s quote points to Netflix’s disruption of established broadcasting norms on the production side. Until recently, as the Sony executive said, The Crown would have emerged from a transatlantic co-production involving the BBC or ITV teaming up with one of their established US partners such as PBS’s Masterpiece or HBO. But Netflix’s reported investment of 100 million pounds in The Crown’s first season surpassed the combined resources of any UK public service broadcaster (PSB) and any potential US partner. Netflix’s extremely deep pockets have enticed British talent away from the PSBs with whom they have traditionally worked whilst simultaneously driving up production costs beyond these broadcasters’ means. Netflix has also disrupted the distribution side of the ecosystem, its anytime, anywhere viewing model and

Netflix, The Crown and UK television  87 a seemingly infinite supply of the high- end content epitomized by The Crown luring viewers, particularly those in younger demographics, away from the PSBs. This chapter’s first part explores Netflix’s disruption of a television ecosystem which has since its inception been predicated on a basic principle of public service broadcasting: serving the nation through diverse UK content that collectively caters for all UK viewers. PSBs must speak to the nation, although this is a model of broadcasting that seems increasingly outdated in the convergence era that has given rise to the global streaming services. Netflix’s corporate growth is increasingly fuelled by non-US subscriptions; its globally sourced content, especially its high-end dramas such as Narcos and The Crown, caters for an international, rather than a national or regional audience. The chapter’s second part takes a close look at The Crown, used by Netflix to attract both UK and international subscribers, but discursively deployed by some in the United Kingdom as emblematic of the threat that the streaming service poses to public service principles and the television ecosystem.

Netflix: content and audiences Unlike the PSBs, the streaming services are not subject to national regulation. The lack of regulatory oversight is seen as a chief contributor to Netflix’s disruption of the television ecosystem, with the BBC’s Director General, Tony Hall, complaining that “In so many ways  – prominence, competition rules, advertising, taxation, content regulation, terms of trade, production quotas – one set of rules applies to UK companies, and barely any apply to the new giants” ( Waterson 2018). With regard to content regulation, PSBs must carry a majority percentage of nationally originated programming to meet their legal responsibility to address a national audience. But the streaming services offer programming calculated to retain old and attract new subscribers around the globe. A comparison between the content available on broadcaster video on demand services (BVOD), such as BBC iPlayer, and that on streaming video on demand services (SVOD), such as Netflix, illustrates the crucial differences between the UK PSBs and the commercial streaming giants. In its overview of the UK VoD market, Ampere Analysis reports that BVODs are “typically highly local (80% +) and are broadly split 50/50 between scripted and unscripted”. By contrast the SVODs are “majority international (with 10–20% local UK content) and highly focused around scripted content” (Ampere Analysis 2019, 2). Whilst public service broadcasters offer a wide variety of programming genres to a national community, Netflix offers high end dramas and other fictional content to global “taste communities” defined by cultural preferences rather than demographics or geography. A fundamental principle of public service is the mixed programme schedule; regulation obliges PSBs to

88  Roberta Pearson provide a diversity of programme genres. As Sylvia Harvey explains, the United Kingdom’s 2003 Communications Act mandates that a variety of programme genres – drama, comedy, music, feature films and visual and performing arts programmes  – should ensure that “cultural activity in the United Kingdom, and its diversity, are reflected, supported and stimulated”. There should also be a sufficient range of educational programmes and of programmes dealing with: “science, religion and other beliefs, social issues, matters of international significance or interest and matters of specialist interest”, and there is some recognition that children  … should be served by “a suitable quantity and range of high quality and original programmes” (Harvey 2006, 97). These PSB mandates are fundamentally at odds with Netflix’s commercially driven business model predicated upon constant expansion through signing up more and more subscribers around the globe. Initially Netflix recommended content to users based on their regional locations, but the company now rejects any connection between geography and programme preference. Netflix VP of Product Todd Yellin has said that “We find that to be greater and greater nonsense, and we are disproving it every day” (Roettgers 2017). The company also rejects a link between demographics and programme preferences. Said Cindy Holland, VP of Original Series, “We found that demographics are not a good indicator of what people like to watch”. Now Netflix ignores both geography and demographics, basing its recommendations on a division of subscribers into 2,000 “taste communities” defined by individuals’ past viewing behaviour and presumably derived from data provided by Netflix’s famous algorithm. Holland explained that Netflix programs to “suit their tastes, not mine”; Netflix commissions new shows that can aggregate a sufficient number of global taste communities to justify the production cost (Lynch 2018). To meet their remit of serving the nation, PSBs predicate their programming decisions on both geography and demographics, whilst to meet their stockholders’ remit of constant expansion, Netflix predicates its programming decisions upon the aggregated tastes of viewers scattered around the globe. Lobato notes that “Netflix’s internationalization has presented some fascinating content-related questions […]. The most contentious issue […] is the relative lack of local content within the platform compared to the abundance of U.S. programming”. According to Lobato, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos claimed that the streamer’s international catalogues contain around 15% to 20% local content with the rest made up of Hollywood or other international content (Lobato 2019, 135). But Netflix “makes no apologies” for this imbalance. On its investor relations website, the company explains that “local content represent[s] a minority of viewing in our markets”. It explains its

Netflix, The Crown and UK television  89 strategic and selective investment in original local content as “a way to onboard members and to introduce them to our global [i.e., U.S.] catalog”, adding that “our aim is not to replicate the programming of the local broadcaster or TV network in a given market but to complement our service with local content where appropriate” (Lobato 2019, 136). The European Audiovisual Observatory has broken down the 19,542 individual television episodes in the UK Netflix catalogue by geographic origin: 15% UK; 11% European; 35% US and 39% other international (Grece and Pumares 2017, 51). By this measure, the amount of UK television content is at the lower end of Sarandos’ estimation. But Ampere reports that whilst in the past two years the acquisition of global content has increased the number of films and television series available to UK viewers, during that same period the proportion of UK content has declined by 2% (Ampere Analysis 2019, 10). UK viewers don’t subscribe to access UK content if they have been paying attention to the streamer’s marketing. As Sam Ward argues, from its 2012 entry into the market “the value of the Netflix service has been presented to British viewers as a means of access to specific nonBritish television content”, making the streaming service comparable to broadcast channels like Sky Atlantic that also import foreign programmes (Ward 2016, 227). Potential Netflix subscribers turn to the service for US and international drama, not for more of Strictly Come Dancing. The lack of UK content is likely to increase rather than suppress the number of subscribers, whilst the high percentage of international TV drama is a major driver of new subscriptions. Ofcom reports that drama accounts for a majority of Netflix content; of the 32,000 hours of programming available, 59% is drama (this figure includes both films and television episodes). Collectively the PSBs offer content that is 19% factual, less than 2% drama and comedy, 7% entertainment, 2% children’s and 72% other which includes live broadcasts such as sports events and news. In addition to the 59% drama, Netflix offers 12% factual, less than 2% other, 16% comedy and 11% children’s (Ofcom 2019, 68). The disparity between the percentage of drama available on Netflix and that offered by the PSBs has negative implications for the latter’s future competitiveness. Ampere states that between 2015 and 2019 the growth in the volume of content across both BVOD and SVOD UK services was “particularly driven by TV series and seasons, which rose by over 200%”. Ampere’s interviewees identified boxset binge-watching, particularly of drama series, as their primary reason for streaming content; 62% of UK viewers and 71% of SVOD-only households binge-watch frequently. “The result of this is increased competition, both in terms of volume and quality of content. New services will need to launch with a far more competitive content offering than in the past; while existing services need a mix of flagship titles, to market the service, and exclusive content, to drive viewing” (Ampere Analysis 2019, 13). Ampere defines flagship titles as more expensive, high-profile dramatic

90  Roberta Pearson series (Ampere Analysis 2019, 14); high-end drama is the most costly of all television genres to produce. Netflix has vastly more funding available for the production of flagship titles than do the PSBs. Tony Hall said that the PSBs “have cut spending on content in real terms by around £1 billion since 2004” (Waterson 2018). Whilst the BBC spends around £1.5 billion to produce all its content for a year, said Hall, Netflix spent as much “as $13 billion on movies and shows” in 2018 (Waterson 2019). This may have been a rhetorically motivated overestimate. Ofcom reports that in 2018, Netflix and Amazon Prime together spent £12.7 billion on content, compared to a total spend of just under £2.9 billion for the PSBs (Ofcom 2019, 54). Nonetheless, the basic point remains – Netflix alone has greater spending power than the PSBs’ combined budgets. Between 2015 and 2019, Netflix increased its global investment in content by 116%, a significant proportion of which has been invested in original productions (Ampere Analysis 2019, 13). Catherine Johnson observes that “Netflix’s move into original content production has led to fears about rising production costs in the UK”. In 2017, the cost per hour across the PSB channels was £769,000; Netflix reportedly spent £100 million on The Crown’s first season or a little over £5 million per hour ( Johnson 2019). As a BBC Worldwide executive told Gillian Doyle, Netflix focus on “high end, high budget, big impact, highly marketable [drama]” is having a “huge impact” partly because the “the kind of eye-watering financial numbers that are involved leaves everyone else dwarfed” (Doyle 2016, 86). The PSBs simply can’t compete. But even if their funding were significantly increased, producing a high percentage of costly dramas at the expense of a diverse mix of other genres would be a fundamental abandonment of their public service remit. As the BBC’s famous motto has it, the broadcaster is meant to educate and inform as well as to entertain. Catalogue content, financial resources, and viewer preferences all combine to give Netflix a competitive advantage in the UK market, particularly versus the PSBs. Recent data confirm that the streaming service is performing well and luring viewers, especially younger ones, away from the PSBs. Between 2016 and 2018 Netflix increased its subscriber base from 7.4 to 10 million households (Ampere Analysis 2019, 8); by the third quarter of 2019, the number of subscriptions had risen to 11.8 million (BARB 2019) which constitutes roughly 40% of all households. These subscribers are “considerably younger than the average TV viewer”, with almost half of those regularly using the three biggest SVOD services (Netflix, Amazon, and Now TV) under the age of 34 (Ampere Analysis 2019, 8). Thirty eight percent of SVOD subscribers can imagine not watching broadcast television at all in five years’ time (Ofcom 2019, 3). As Netflix subscriptions increase, “traditional” television viewing decreases. Ofcom reports that broadcast television viewing has declined by 49 minutes per day between 2012 and 2018, with the fall amongst younger viewers “much steeper” (Ofcom 2019, 2) and “broadcast TV viewing as a whole” skewing “older than the

Netflix, The Crown and UK television  91 population” (Ofcom 2019, 31). Confirming Ofcom’s data, the BBC’s 2017/ 2018 annual report highlights the acute challenge of attracting younger viewers. “Our most recent estimates suggest that 16–34 year olds spent similar amounts of time with BBC One, ITV and Netflix a week – around two hours a week for each. 16–24 year olds spend more time with Netflix than all of BBC TV, including iPlayer” (BBC 2018, 28). Dan Cheesbrough, commercial director at Hartswood Films, the UK producer of Sherlock and Dracula, believes that the BBC is reaping the consequences of producing content that doesn’t appeal to younger viewers. “The way [British broadcasters] are failing to address young audiences is something I worry about greatly. That is something that the SVODs are an absolute master in control of. They are producing shows that young people own; young audiences might watch Bodyguard or Line of Duty, but it is not theirs. But they see Netflix as a hallmark of quality” (White 2019). However, Ofcom asserts that the PSBs remain an important resource for ­ ​­ ­ ​­ viewers wanting UK-produced and UK-specific content; according to their data Line of Duty and Bodyguard, specifically cited by Cheesbrough as not owned by younger viewers, attract audiences in the millions. However, Ofcom warns that a few popular drama and entertainment programmes are not enough on their own to stem the overall decline in broadcast television viewing. “To counteract the overall drop in broadcast viewing since 2017, about 34 additional series of Bodyguard would need to have been broadcast in 2018” (Ofcom 2019, 6). Ofcom acknowledges the importance of expensive, high-end dramas such as Bodyguard in attracting and retaining viewers. As I previously argued, such content now dominates industry discourse concerning the international market (Pearson 2019). Exclusive original content, frequently taking the form of serial drama, is key to an international streaming service’s success. As Amanda Lotz explains “Subscriber-funded portals increasingly rely on providing exclusive access to programs – especially those they develop […]. Portals […] seek to hold the exclusive license to content in perpetuity […]. Original portal content can remain exclusive to the portal indefinitely in a way that encourages some period of subscription” (Lotz 2016, 137). Netflix’s commissioning of its first two original series, House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, represented a significant step in the streaming service’s evolving global business model of original content and exclusive rights. Netflix certainly hoped that the biggest drama commission in British TV history would increase its subscriber base in the UK and internationally both in the short and long term.

Netflix as nemesis: The Crown Netflix’s faith in The Crown as a driver of new subscriptions caused it to make the first episode of series three freely available on a dedicated website in the hope that “giving British viewers a taste of its big-ticket […] drama,

92  Roberta Pearson [would] encourage them to sign-up to Netflix for the full series”. A Netflix ­ Crown has become a globally-renowned British sucspokesman said “The cess story since it first launched on Netflix three years ago. We want to give as many people as possible a flavour of the great content Netflix is creating here in the UK, by offering the first instalment of the new series without signing up” (Kanter 2019). By the third series Netflix’s expensive gamble was paying off handsomely. But why did the streaming service commission The Crown as its first original British production, and how did it engineer a global hit? And how has the UK television industry reacted to the programme? As is common in the screen industry, Netflix sought to reduce the risk of an expensive investment by exploiting a well-known brand. In speaking about obtaining the biggest drama commission in British television history, the Sony Pictures executive explained that Netflix viewed it as a strategic investment. “The British monarchy is one of those brands it is quite easy to sell. They can market it. It will be top quality. For them it is worth the premium” (Doyle 2016, 88). Netflix’s Holland believed that the programme would have “clear worldwide appeal” (Birnbaum 2016). The British monarchy is the world’s longest continually running soap opera, fascinating both the British and international public. At the time of writing, Harry, the Duke of Sussex, and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, were creating headlines in the British and foreign press as they sought to distance themselves from their royal family. Netflix’s Sarandos has already contemplated the royal pair working for his streaming service, saying “Who wouldn’t be interested [in working with them]? Yes, sure” (Davies 2019). Prior to this recent affirmation of the monarchy’s power to transfix public attention, Crown scriptwriter Peter Morgan’s previous projects had conclusively demonstrated the appeal of the royal brand. The 2006 film The Queen, dealing with the royal family’s response to the death of Princess Diana, was a critical and box office success, with Helen Mirren winning an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for the titular role. Morgan followed this project with the theatrical drama The Audience, with Mirren once again portraying Elizabeth II, this time in a series of scenes depicting her meetings, or audiences, with her many Prime Ministers. Directed by Stephen Daldry (who helmed four episodes of The Crown), the play won awards in both its West End and Broadway incarnations, with Mirren receiving a Tony. A previous hit show about the British upper classes, Downton Abbey, also spoke to the The Crown’s potential for international success. The ­Telegraph reported that Downton, shown on Netflix in the US after its initial broadcast on PBS, “proved to the company that British costume ­ drama could bring in the numbers”. Sarandos said that Downton “was our first sense that the big costume drama could have mainstream appeal on our platform” (Wilson 2016). Whilst Netflix undoubtedly thought that The Crown would aggregate enough global taste communities to justify the huge investment, it also intended the programme to appeal specifically

Netflix, The Crown and UK television  93 to the same older demographic that has traditionally watched costume dramas such as Downton. Although Netflix’s audience model excludes demographics, Sarandos seems to have believed that those taste communities don’t encompass enough older viewers. On the morning of the programme’s launch he told a reporter, “A lot of people think, ‘ Well, my parents would never use Netflix’. And I say, ‘ Well, you probably said your parents would never use Facebook, yet now they do’. They just need a reason. I think The Crown will be a reason that an older generation may get on the internet” (Wilson 2016). ­ US audience data demonstrated that Sarandos was right; the programme does seem to have enticed an older generation to his streaming service. Based on the first three days of the second season’s viewing figures, Nielsen reported that The Crown’s US viewers are “well-to-do, ­­ ­​­ ​­ older, highly educated and mostly female”. Half of the audience was over 50, 65% female and collectively viewers had a median income of nearly $90,000. Netflix famously disputes Nielsen data, but in this case the figures may have been music to Sarandos’ ears, since as the Adweek headline declared, this audience is “a valuable one” (Katz 2017). Sarandos has told analysts that The Crown is “very popular” in the United Kingdom, but as usual Netflix has provided no audience figures. However, data from GfK UK’s SVoD Content Tracker reveal that “across November and December 2016, 9% of Netflix users watched The Crown, putting it well ahead of proven US hits such as Breaking Bad, Narcos, Orange Is the New Black and Gilmore Girls” (Douglas, Torin 2017, 7). May some of those users have been new and older subscribers, who like their transatlantic counterparts, wanted access to The Crown? Since The Crown’s 2016 debut, Netflix subscriptions have increased from 7.4 to 11.8 million. Correlation is not causation, but it’s reasonable to assume that some of those additional 4.4 million subscriptions may have come from older viewers. If that is true, it’s bad news for the PSBs, for whom those older viewers form the core audience and who, as data in this chapter’s first part indicate, have so far been less likely to engage with streaming services. Netflix could potentially offer other high-end dramas that would appeal to that audience segment, weaning further viewers away from the terrestrial broadcasters and toward the streaming services. Attracting new subscribers, whether old or young, costs money; high end drama requires high end production values. Said Neftlix’s Holland, “We’re not afraid to invest in big production values because we think we’re competing for consumers’ time not just in how they watch television, but also the biggest movies of the day and other entertainment that they may choose to engage in. We’re unashamed in our support of lavish productions when we think those levels will do it justice” (Birnbaum 2016). The Crown is of necessity a particularly lavish production, requiring historically accurate costumes, stately sets, luxury automobiles and the restaging of royal spectacles such as the coronation and the Prince of Wales’ investiture. Producer Andrew Eaton said, “We tried to capture as much of the reality as possible.

94  Roberta Pearson And doing that means we have to get all the costumes right, all the uniforms, all the details. And I think the scale of it on screen proves the ambition of this show” (Netflix 2016). The PSBs would struggle to mount a similarly lavish production. Speaking of recent co-produced costume dramas that have combined “US dollars and British cultural capital”, James Chapman notes that Downton, “at ­ a cost of one million pounds per episode […] is surely in the upper cost bracket of British […] TV production” (Chapman 2014, 134). But each episode of The Crown’s first season cost roughly ten times more than an ­ episode of Downton. Even with US investment, British productions can seem amateurish by comparison to Netflix’s flagship programmes. Take for example the BBC’s recent adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, co-produced with Creasun Media American, a subsidiary of Shanghai Creasun Media Culture Corporation Ltd. Since the BBC programme aired at roughly the same time as Netflix dropped The Crown’s third season, The Daily Mail’s Deborah Ross assessed both in the same column. Speaking of The Crown, she said “The production values are still as mesmerizingly immaculate and, as a feast for the eyes, it’s terrific. The frocks, the hats, the furniture, the paintings, the Bentleys”. The War of the Worlds suffered by comparison. “Unlike The Crown, the production values are shabby. The thing that landed in Surrey looked like a giant coconut constructed from papier-mâché” (Ross 2019). A more relevant comparison with The Crown may be ITV’s Victoria, ­co-produced with Masterpiece, ​­ and reportedly costing ten million pounds for the first series’ eight episode (Douglas, Nicole 2016)  – a bit more than Downton but much less than the Netflix programme. Victoria also told the story of a young queen, in this case the 19th century one who ruled the British Empire, and like The Crown, featured royal spectacle and royal settings. But viewers found Victoria’s production values unimpressive, particularly the computer generated imagery, labelling it “jaw-droppingly bad”, “dodgy”, “awful”, and “terrible” (Douglas, Nicole 2016). The Crown’s top-flight production values once again portend bad news for the PSBs, which simply cannot match Netflix’s massive budgets. With The Crown, Netflix is beating the terrestrial broadcasters at their own game both at home and abroad. As Eva Redvall notes, Britain “has a long tradition of exporting costume drama” dating back to The Forsyte Saga (1967) ­ and Upstairs, Downstairs (1971–1975). British costume dramas have enjoyed great success in Europe. “In Denmark between 2005 and 2014, UK historical drama productions represented 53% of all historical drama broadcast […]. This was three times more than historical drama from the US (16%), while historical drama from the neighboring Nordic countries took up only 8% and the rest of Europe 18%” (Redvall 2019, 132). British costume drama has also historically performed well in the United States, the genre forming a mainstay of PBS’s Masterpiece (previously ­ Masterpiece Theatre), which aired Downton, The Forsyte Saga, and Upstairs,

Netflix, The Crown and UK television  95 Downstairs. But now Netflix has moved into a market niche which UK broadcasters have previously dominated, raising audience expectations with regard to production values. If The Crown’s status as global hit inspires Netflix to make yet more high-end British costume drama, the UK production sector may well benefit from more enormous investments like the one that persuaded Peter Morgan and Left Bank Pictures to produce the programme for the streaming service rather than for the BBC. The PSBs will then be further disadvantaged in the competition for both talent and audiences. As The Guardian’s Jim Waterson reports, The Crown “has been seen as indicative of a media environment where leading British television talent choose to work for streaming services on bigger budgets rather than produce material for domestic broadcasters” (Waterson 2019). And as we have seen above, Netflix has already contributed to the erosion of the PSBs’ audience. If ultimately the PSBs no longer have the finances and talent to produce or the audiences to justify the full slate of programming that speaks to the concerns of UK citizens, will audiences also be disadvantaged? The elites of British broadcasting argue that they will. Tony Hall asserts that the streaming services’ “UK-based productions tend to focus on material which has a global appeal rather than a distinctly British flavour” (Waterson 2018). The BBC’s 2017/ 18 Annual Report addressed this issue at length. In the UK, we like big global shows that are designed to travel widely and have international appeal, but we also want content that has something authentic and relevant to say about our society and can help us to understand ourselves as a country […]. Yet home grown, British content has never been more under threat. Today’s media environment is increasingly global, and more and more dominated by a small number of US-based giants with extraordinary creative and financial firepower. This has brought real benefits for audiences by driving quality and choice. But it has also driven up costs across the market. And it has done so at a time when the budget of the BBC […] has become increasingly squeezed, and our ability to fund original British content has diminished. What this adds up to is that the volume and breadth of British content that British audiences rely on is at real risk (BBC 2018, 14). Matt Hills has suggested that Netflix’s commissioning of The Crown “was ­ a direct attempt to occupy and challenge the BBC’s role as a source of nationally unifying stories and conversations” (Hills 2019, 219). Hills frames comments from BBC Controller of Drama Commissioning Piers Wenger as a calculated response to this incursion. Speaking at an industry event, Wenger told the audience that future BBC dramas will have a “strong streak of Britishness” and be “a celebration of British authorship, identity and life in all its most diverse forms”. This is the “antithesis” of “an algorithmic, data-driven approach to commissioning” and the “‘if you liked

96  Roberta Pearson that, watch this’ school of programming’ for which Netflix is famed”. He continued, “In a world where there is just so much content, and it can feel like your taste is being curated for you, it’s never been more important for BBC Drama to deliver the unexpected and for us to be clear and strong on what sets us apart” (Szalai 2017). Hills remarks that Wegner’s comments constituted the BBC “stridently set[ting] out its stall […] via an anti-Netflix positioning of expert- created ‘unexpectedness’ versus ‘data- driven’” (Hills 2019, 219). Wegner may have setting out an expertise stall, but he was also defending the most fundamental remit of public service broadcasting, that of presenting “British […] identity and life in all its most diverse forms”. It’s precisely that remit which sets BBC and other PSB originated dramas apart from Netflix content algorithmically designed to attract a global audience. Netflix bears no blame for not catering for a specific national audience; they are merely adhering to the business model that works so well for them. The Times’s Andrew Billen opined it “would be understandable if Netflix […] wanted British work only if, like Downton, it spoke to America” (Billen 2014). Both Downton and The Crown speak to Americans through a very specific version of Britishness, that focuses on and arguably celebrates the aristocracy and the monarchy, positioning them as central to national identity and historical continuity. As The New York Times’ Tina Brown observed in recapping The Crown, “As we saw from the success of Downton Abbey, the reassuring rigidities of the British class system can do wonders for angsty Americans” (Brown 2016). International viewers may take reassurance from The Crown’s depiction of a rigid class system, but in the UK some, including this chapter’s author, believe that the monarchy justifies invidious class divides and wields unwarranted constitutional power in a purported democracy. Such anti-monarchical or republican sentiments played a role in the programme’s UK reception. In writing up an interview with Peter Morgan, Trevor Johnston voiced his own republican opinions: “Every fibre of my ideological being is telling me these feudal relics should have been dispatched years ago, though possibly more humanely than the Romanov against-the-wall ­ ­​­ ​­ method” (Johnston ­ 2017). Most sceptical of all was Harry Leslie Smith, a World War II RAF veteran and social activist who was very critical of the current state of the British nation. Smith argued that the Netflix programme presented a version of the past that is biased towards the upper classes and excludes everyone else. The Crown, like Downton Abbey [and] Victoria […] depicts moments in history as a pageant in which the wealthy, the entitled and the nobility oversee the lives of millions with benevolence, wisdom and grace […]. Despite the vast wealth of 19th- century history a TV dramatist can draw upon, our nation’s rich heritage too often becomes an infomercial for monarchy and empire […]. The Crown is like an expensive painting in which the only subjects in focus are the rich and privileged. Everyone else, people like me or your grandparents if they came from the

Netflix, The Crown and UK television  97 working class and even the middle class, are considered no more than background scenery. We are the undefined face in the crowd waving religiously at our so- called betters (Smith 2016). Netflix is unlikely to make programmes about those faces in the crowd, bar the unlikely event that its algorithm indicates the global appeal of such stories. But the PSBs’ remit requires them to tell stories about the nation as a whole, including the working and middle classes as well as the rich and privileged. Given the many ways in which Netflix disrupts the UK television ecosystem, it is understandable that BBC executives and other UK industry personnel position the streaming service as the nemesis of the PSBs and discursively deploy The Crown as emblematic of the Netflix threat to public service values. The Telegraph reported that “Damian Keough, from the independent production company Lookout Point, which produced War And Peace, Ripper Street and To Walk Invisible for the BBC, said dramas such as The Crown […] had raised the stakes for other programme makers”. The article quoted Keough directly: “the threshold of quality when you’re making period [dramas] […] is set by shows like The Crown and you cannot make a show that looks like The Crown without spending a lot of money” (Sawyer 2017). Tony Hall mounted a direct attack on the programme, mocking “the size of Netflix’s viewing figures, claiming only seven million Britons watched The Crown despite the enormous media buzz around the big-budget show”. He said that the BBC’s high-end dramas such as Bodyguard had smaller budgets yet reached larger audiences. “I mentioned the Bodyguard finale reaching 17 million viewers. That was in one month. Our data suggests The Crown reached seven million users in 17 months” (Waterson 2019). It seems that Hall was articulating the BBC’s standard response to Netf­ lix competition and to The Crown more specifically. The BBC’s 2017/18 Annual Report includes a chart comparing BBC Drama’s and The Crown’s value for money. “BBC Drama produced 85 hours of content last year for £97 million – the same cost as two series of Netflix’s The Crown”. For that £97 million, the BBC produced 18 series with about 85 hours of content that was viewed by 74% of UK adults and achieved a viewer appreciation score of 8.7/10. By contrast, The Crown’s first two seasons comprise around 20 hours of content that was viewed by 14% of UK adults and achieved a viewer appreciation score of 8.2/10 (BBC 2018, 28). The BBC’s defensive stance attests to Netflix’s profound impact upon the UK broadcasting industry and the fear that it has engendered in that industry’s leaders.

Conclusion This chapter began by quoting Lobato’s observation that Netflix’s entry into national markets raises questions about “convergence, disruption, globalization, and cultural imperialism” (Lobato 2019, 12). The evidence

98  Roberta Pearson presented above demonstrates that Netflix has indeed disrupted the UK television ecosystem on both the production and distribution sides. PSBs’ limited funding disadvantages them versus the streaming giant’s massive investments which lure talent away from the terrestrial broadcasters and create programmes with high-end production values that the UK broadcasters can’t equal. Audiences, younger viewers in particular, have increasingly been deserting the PSBs in favour of Netflix’s global programming, as the streaming service’s subscriptions increase and the PSBs viewing hours decrease. Broadcasting elites have discursively employed The Crown as emblematic of such trends. It might seem strange to accuse Netflix of cultural imperialism with regard to a programme about the British monarchy. The Crown is indeed, as The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey put it, “a thoroughly British affair”, in that it centres on one of the most powerful symbols of British identity, the royal family (Loughrey 2016). Furthermore, it’s produced by a British production company with British talent. However, adhering to their successful global business model, its US financial backers invested in the programme primarily to cater for a global not a British audience. As Tony Hall and the BBC constantly remind us, only the UK PSBs produce drama primarily intended to address the specific interests and concerns of British citizens. From this perspective, The Crown’s contribution to the erosion of a vibrant national broadcasting system predicated upon public service values does constitute a variety of cultural imperialism; programmes financed with US money must of necessity differ from programmes financed with British license fee money. And US media giants such as Netflix have a lot more money than the British license-fee payers and the British PSBs. With a Tory government in power that celebrates the free market and has expressed hostility to public service broadcasting in general and the BBC in particular, things can only get worse for UK PSBs and perhaps for UK audiences who may in the future be entertained at the expense of being informed and educated.

References Ampere Analysis. 2019. The UK VoD Market: Current Status and Future Development. London. BARB. 2019. The UK Television Landscape Report. 27 November. BBC. 2018. BBC Annual Report and Accounts 2017/ 18. Billen, Andrew. 2014. “Netflix or Amazon: Which TV Streaming Service Do You Need?”. The Times, 16 July. Birnbaum, Debra. 2016. “Taking The Crown: Behind the Royal Treatment of Netflix’s New Series”. Variety, 26 October. Brown, Tina. 2016. “The ­ Crown Episodes 1 and 2: Stiff Lips, Warm Hearts”. The New York Times, 4 November. Chapman, James. 2014. “Downton ­ Abbey: Reinventing the British Costume Drama”. In British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future, edited by Jonathan Bignell and Stephen Lacey, 131–142. London: Palgrave.

Netflix, The Crown and UK television  99 Davies, Caroline. 2019. “Prince Harry: We Had ‘No Other Option’ Than to Stand Down as Royals”. The Guardian, 19 January. Douglas, Nicole. 2016. “Victoria ­ Viewers Blast ‘Terrible’ CGI Scenes and Compare It To ‘Cardboard’ on the ITV Period Drama Opening Episode”. OK TV, 28 August. Douglas, Torin. 2017. “Streaming Facts from Fiction”. Television, February: ­6–8. ​­ Doyle, Gillian. 2016. “Television Production, Funding Models and Exploitation of Content”. Icono, 14(2): ­ 75–96. ­ ​­ Grece, Christian, and Marta Jiménez Pumares. 2017. The Origin of TV Content in VOD Catalogues. Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory. Harvey, Sylvia. 2006. “Ofcom’s First Year and Neoliberalism’s Blind Spot”. Screen, 47(1): ­ ­91–105. ​­ Hills, Matt. 2019. “Black ­ Mirror as a Netflix Original: Program Based ‘Overflow’ and the Multidiscursive Forms of Transatlantic TV Fandom”. In Transatlantic Television Drama, edited by Michele Hilmes, Matt Hills and Roberta Pearson, 213–236. New York: Oxford University Press. Johnson, Catherine. 2019. “United Kingdom”. Global Internet TV Consortium. January. Johnston, Trevor. 2017. “The Crown: Peter Morgan’s Majestic Windsor Saga”. Sight and Sound, 6 April. Kanter, Jake. 2019. “The Crown: Netflix Makes Premiere of Season Three Availa­ ble for Free In the UK”. Deadline, 13 November. ­ Katz, A. J. 2017. “The Crown’s Ratings Don’t Measure Up to Stranger Things, but the Audience Is a Valuable One”. Adweek, 15 December. Lobato, Ramon. 2019. Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York: NYU Press. Lotz, Amanda D. 2016. “The Paradigmatic Evolution of US Television and the Emergence of Internet-Distributed ­ ​­ Television”. Icono, 14(2): ­ ­122–142. ​­ Loughrey, Clarisse. 2016. “The ­ Crown: The Netflix Show Is the Most Expensive TV Series Ever”. The Independent, 2 November. Lynch, Jason. 2018. “Netflix Thrives By Programming to ‘Taste Communities’, Not Demographics”. Adweek, 29 July. Netflix. 2016. “Featurette: The Weight of The Crown”. YouTube. Ofcom. 2019. Media Nations: UK 2019. Ofcom. Pearson, Roberta. 2019. “Sherlock ­ and Elementary: The Cultural and Temporal Value of High- end and Routine Transatlantic Television Drama”. In Transatlantic Television Drama, edited by Michele Hilmes, Matt Hills and Roberta Pearson, 109–130. New York: Oxford University Press. Redvall, Eva N. 2019. “Mainstream Trends and Masterpiece Traditions: ITV’s Downton Abbey as a Hit Heritage Drama for Masterpiece in the United States”. In Transatlantic Television Drama, edited by Michele Hilmes, Matt Hills and Roberta Pearson, 131–146. New York: Oxford University Press. Roettgers, Janko. 2017. “How Netflix Wants to Rule the World: A Behind-theScenes Look at a Global TV Network”. Variety, 18 March. Ross, Deborah. 2019. “Olivia Colman Is Not Claire Foy. Off with Her Head!”. Daily Mail, 23 November. Sawyer, Patrick. 2017. “BBC Fears for Quality Drama in Face of Amazon and Netflix”. The Telegraph, 28 October. Smith, Harry Leslie. 2016. “The ­ Crown’s Portrayal of History Is an Insult to My Generation’s Struggles”. The Guardian, 8 November.

100  Roberta Pearson Szalai, Georg. 2017. “BBC Drama Chief Vows to Back Britishness and the ‘Unexpected’ Over Algorithms”. Hollywood Reporter, 5 May. Ward, Sam. 2016. “Streaming Transatlantic: Importation and Integration in the Promotion of Video on Demand in the UK”. In The Netflix Effect: Techology and Entertainment in the 21st Century, edited by Kevin McDonald and Daniel ­Smith-Rowsey, ​­ ­219–234. ​­ London: Bloomsbury. Waterson, Jim. 2018. “Tony Hall: Regulate Video Streaming Services or Risk ‘Killing off’ UK Content”. The Guardian, 16 September. Waterson, Jim. 2019. “BBC Boss Mocks Netflix’s The Crown Viewing Figures”. The Guardian, 7 March. White, Peter. 2019. “The ­ Crown’ Producer Andy Harries: ‘Power of British Television Has Moved to LA’”. Deadline, 21 May. Wilson, Benji. 2016. “How Netflix Changed the Way We Watch”. The Telegraph, 21 November.

Part 3

France

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com

7

Video on demand platforms, editorial strategies, and logics of production The case of Netflix France Christel Taillibert and Bruno Cailler

Introduction In just a few years, the audiovisual landscape has been deeply remodelled by the emergence of new key players: video on demand platforms. Now acting as new gateways for distribution, exclusive or additional to more traditional gateways like movie theatres, television channels, or DVDs, they tend to extensively modify the entire value chain of audiovisual products (Benghozi 2012). Coincidentally, and working towards the adoption of renewed consumerism based on the ATAWAD concept (Any Time, Any Where, Any Device), they based their development on two major technological advances, made possible by the digital era: the possibility to consume media on the go, getting rid of a double constraint specific to “old medias” (Jenkins 2006): the first constraint being geophysical (the television screen) and the second one being time-related (television listings and their fixed schedules). Among these key players are those who historically embody the film industry (Disney), members of the new digital driving force, the Big Five, as well as pure players like Netflix, which we will tackle here. With maybe even more ease than their competitors, and thanks to a specialization in the audiovisual field, coupled to their recent appearance on the market, Netflix managed to build an innovative economic model (Perticoz 2019) based on the broadcasting of premium content, available to subscribers paying a monthly fee. This new prevalence of the informational brokerage system (Moeglin 2007) over the private club system (Tremblay and Lacroix 1991), inherent to this business model, led French distributors to partially reorient their multichannel strategy towards a strategy of extended availability, preferring the role of super distributors (Cassini 2019) of content, much like the modem routers provided by telecommunication operators. The aim is to gather a maximum of platforms in a bulk offer in order to provide convenient access. The reciprocal “distribution agreements” play a major role in reaching this goal: routers, as well as French broadcasters, trade their mastery of French audiences for the attractiveness of the US platforms. However, the intensification of competition provoked by the multiplication

104  Christel Taillibert and Bruno Cailler of players on the pitch could explain why they resorted to another older strategy, the editorial model, precisely due to Netflix strongly promoting the production of original content (Miège 2017). In 2012, five years after the launch of their streaming service, Netflix offered their American subscribers a Norwegian series announced as “the first time Netflix offered exclusive content” (Barthes 2018, 3). Thus, while purchasing the rights of traditional televisual content to establish their catalogue, they started to develop a new strategy, aiming to differentiate themselves from their competitors in the VOD sector, offering what they called “Netflix Originals”. Yet, this term deserves to be more precisely defined, as it covers a variety of realities. What is considered “Netflix Original” can range from movies or series of which Netflix has bought the exclusive rights for one or more territories (without benefiting from these rights for other global territories), to content coproduced by Netflix, in partnership with one or more producers on a specific territory (in this case, the distribution rights for the country of production are retained by the producers, while Netflix retains exclusive rights for the rest of the world), and lastly to content directly or indirectly produced by Netflix and for which they benefit from an actual worldwide exclusivity. This specific characteristic of Netflix’s development policy will be further discussed in this article, specifically targeting the case of France, a country where the platform launched the development of original content in 2016 with the show Marseille, coproduced with the Federation Entertainment society, ran by Pascal Breton. Despite the relative failure of this first show, cancelled after the second season, the grand opening of a new office in Paris, France (the fourth office inaugurated by Netflix in Europe, along with the mainland headquarters located in Amsterdam, an office in London and production studios in Spain, within the Ciudad de la Tele in Tres Cantos, in the Northern Madrid area) – announced in September 2018 and inaugurated on 17 January 2020 – validates this production policy in the country, as well as a growing ambition for a people considered as the most attached to cinema in the world. “I know you want to give me a hard time with Marseille. But Netflix is investing and wants to become a safe space in France, where creators know they can produce original content”, Netflix CEO Reed Hasting proclaimed at that time (Piquard 2018). The 3.5 million of subscribers advertised by Netflix France may justify the decision to invest in a country which specific regulation do not, at first sight, present high levels of attractiveness for foreign operators. In the following months, several television films ( Paris est à nous, La Grande classe, Banlieusards, Mortel), fictional series (Plan Coeur, Osmosis, Family ­ ­Business, Marianne), and documentaries (Grégory) ­ are released, in a context of the drafting of a bill on the audiovisual by the French government, yet to be revealed but said to “reaffirm our cultural sovereignty. And to give the French aces enough tools to compete with European, American, and soon, Chinese aces” (Piquard 2019).

Video on demand platforms: Netflix France  105 In this chapter, we will attempt to give an analysis of the peculiar context of this confluence, basing our line of work on a reflection on Netflix strategic choices in France. Our research will be based on several working hypothesis. The first hypothesis involves assessing the outstandingly structuring nature of the French legislation. If Netflix appeared to have given proof of their involvement in French production –via advertising – the US company has initiated a real power struggle with French authorities to gain more flexibility regarding their obligations. Risking implosion, the French legislator has been led to force the evolution of a legislative framework deemed inadequate for the new horizons of the global audiovisual market. We will put forward the hypothesis that Netflix must constantly work against a conflict between their local ambition and their desire to homogenize their international production. Our second hypothesis is based on the assumption that Netflix’s original production’s rollout can only be fully understood in the light of the new ways to consume media, which the platform largely contributed to popularize: on the one hand, binge watching and hyper consumption, which leads to a response based on hyper offer and constant renewal; on the other, their recommendation policy based on algorithms aiming to mould their users (Drumond, Coutant and Millerand 2018; Dessinges and Perticoz 2019; Pilipets 2019), shaping the concept of levels of expectation. Our analysis will take an essentially socio-economic approach, developed within a theoretical framework shaped by several research works concerning cultural companies in the digital field and their business models (Tremblay and Lacroix 1991; Benghozi and Paris 2014; Miège 2017; Perticoz 2019). In the same time, we will strive to analyse the words of Netflix’s supervisors and associates, adapted over time by French and A nglo-American media. Lastly, we will finish off our investigation with a semi-guided phone interview with Jean-Michel Ciszewski, head of the International Department at ­ Federation Entertainment (Marseille, Marianne), on 18 December 2019. We will first analyse the different strategic axis of development used by Netflix’s French production, then we will see how they fit in the global frame of Netflix’s development, in regard to France’s legislative framework.

Netflix France: what strategic axis? Netflix’s international production policy is the result of a series of strategic choices developed since the early 2010s. The major turning point occurs in 2011, when the company obtains the distribution rights of the House of Cards series. Their differentiation strategy based on a search for exclusivity grants them a certain uniqueness on the SVOD market, reinforced in 2015 when, to expand their catalogue of exclusivities, the company makes the decision to invest substantially in the production of exclusive content – movies or TV shows. The gradual disappearance of part of the content for which the original rights holders claimed exclusivity – initiated by Disney productions  – strongly encouraged Netflix to adopt this method, even

106  Christel Taillibert and Bruno Cailler though their direct competitors owned a significant and profitable array of rights. Aware that “content always represent the ‘initial bet’ of audiovisual media in their attempt to conquer their audience” (Perticoz 2019, 341), Netflix is ready – as it is estimated – to invest 15 billion dollars in original content in 2019 (Forrester 2019). This “premium” catalogue now stands as the main point of appeal of their marketing strategy, building their policy on the basis of a business model that Benghozi and Paris (2014, 185–186) identify as falling within “distribution” territory. This differentiation strategy relying on the labelled production of part of their content allows them to manage the renewal and supply of content, giving them full control over “program timing” for the platform, along with an optimum compatibility with the audience’s expectations. However, the massive debt caused by this policy forces Netflix to establish as a global leader in the audiovisual business to convince its creditors that its investments are justified, judging by their economic growth. Combining local and global National productions and especially those labelled by Netflix as “NonEnglish Programming” represent a central strategic element in this global plan, destined to flourish in the years to come, according to the company’s officials (Netflix’s Head of International Original Productions claimed on 5 December 2019 that Netflix was only “scratching the surface of what it plans to do in non-English-language programming”; Clarke 2019). Since the release of the first production of this type (the Mexican show Club de Cuervos, released in August 2015), in 2018, no less than 35 “Non-English Programming” were produced, an amount that the international originals vice-president Erik Barmack intends to increase up to 100 per year as of 2020. The end goal is “the creation of global television where any country that has great writing and acting can create a global franchise” (Hopewell and Lang 2018). The assessment of Netflix’s strategy in France – where Reed Hastings envisions the production of 10–12 movies per year (Piquard 2018) – is based on this observation; at the end of 2017, French users represent a mere 3% of the platform’s total count of subscribers, and yet the platform announces a significant augmentation in production investments in the country. This choice is justified by two correlated ambitions. On the one hand, showcasing French stories, landscapes and actors and creating products likely to rally or retain customers from this area (“We want to provide something for every subscriber that resonates with them”, said Barmack). On the other hand, spreading these productions globally in order to increase its potential audience and broaden their sphere of influence. As Jean-Michel Ciszewski declared in an interview (18 December 2019) about the show Marseille: We offered them an appealing package: a best-selling author with an interesting background in the French and global scene, a good story,

Video on demand platforms: Netflix France  107 and Depardieu. We had plenty of elements which went in the “glocal” direction (global and local) which was essential for Netflix. There was a local side to it, because this story could have been the true backstory of Marseille, and there was something exotic, because of the actor’s presence, and because we had the tools to tell a story which is, ultimately, universal. The audience likely to be targeted for a unitary or serial project will mathematically determine the budget to be granted. Diego Buñuel, Netflix commissioner, clearly explained the terms and conditions of this equation: “We submit a given project to people who will analyze the value of the IP on a global level and on a local level […]. They will give us a report that will help us understand what’s the best budget for each series, depending on the value of the IP, depending on the story and depending on the kind of audience that it may hit” (Keslassy 2019). This mode of analysis is undoubtedly linked to the Hollywoodian pattern of A/ B Series, and immediately leads to an industrial approach of the different ways to produce, at odds with the French cinematographic and audiovisual sector which, by its financial aids system, seeks to counterbalance the consequences of marketing with asserted artistic voluntarism. Thus, instead of a glocalization strategy, it would seem more appropriate to speak of localization, which establishes, based on at least two different methods, local production as the foundation of global consumerism. This strategy would be at the crossroads of the clusterization strategy for part of Netflix’s European production and their studio in Madrid, and of their direct contribution in local productions. The first of these strategies highlights a federalist vision of Europe, just like the show Criminal: France, while the other encompasses the nation states and their respective cultural policy. Genre as a tool for content globalization However, this desire to minimize the financial risks inherent to the uncertainty associated with the commercialization of these immeasurable goods that are audiovisual productions (Karpik 2007) forces Netflix to conduct quantitative as well as qualitative market research. Aiming for globalization forces us to think about these products in terms of universal frames of references, resulting in the systemic use of the genre spectrum to define each audiovisual production. When in France, productions classified as “de ­ genre” are a minority (especially in the film industry, where horror films, for example, have long been snubbed by reviewers and audiences, thus difficult to invest in), this classification tool is more and more relevant in the French panorama of audiovisual creation. It acts as a response to the expectations of an audience already accustomed to US productions. Yet, in September 2018, when a press release announces the launch of three new French shows, Family Business, Marianne and Vampires, they are

108  Christel Taillibert and Bruno Cailler presented by Barnack as “a subtle comedy about friendship, family and coffee shops, a psychological horror show and a new take on the vampire show, playing out in Paris”. This adherence to genre, out of touch with the sort of projects funded and prioritized by other French distributors (the advance on cinematographic revenue being at the forefront), tends to reinforce the rift effect intended by Netflix, in the way we envision local creation. This disruption in production is experienced as such by some creators, like Christophe Botti – author, screenwriter, and director – who declared: They’re coming to a territory judged as unprofitable by authors, as our distributors’ expectations tend to go one way but not the other. You’re an author, you’ve been dreaming to create a vampire show for twenty years and suddenly, you can (Baldacchino 2019, 120). It is undeniable that Netflix managed to rally strong and vital players locally, despite a cultural background judged as inflexible, using the concept of genre as a Trojan horse. By choosing its production companies and supporting renowned figures such as Gad Elmaleh, the company relied on partners who had already adopted a global approach, willing to gain recognition or reinforce their own status within their own field. It is not a surprise that two types of players can be identified within their bosom: newcomers hoping to gain recognition (SRAB Film was founded in 2015, Empreinte digitale in 2007, Mandarin Télévision in 2009); veteran players, experienced in collaborative shows like Canal+’s prestige TV shows as Capa Drama, founded in 1993, or Federation Entertainment, founded in 2014. The latter has the added benefit of having an office in Los Angeles and several European branches, including one in Madrid. They are, along with Banijay Group (owned by Vivendi/Canal+), among the players who settled in, and had been firmly oriented towards the global market for decades. Revisiting the concept of level of expectations This fondness towards genre, serving as a basis for Netflix’s production policy, forces the platform’s supervisors to address the question of level of expectations, a concept which we will discuss with the help of Robert Jauss’ research on reception theory (1978). The company builds its policy on precise attendance ratings, classified in terms of time slots, territories, and products, allowing them to postulate on the presumed expectations of their users. On 23 May 2017, a press release gives an overview of a selection program for users “freed from programming schedules” depending on their location. Some of these specificities seem to be associated to the French audience: French touch! The numbers reveal a surprising habit among French users: as true nocturnal bingers, night-time is anime fans’ preferred

Video on demand platforms: Netflix France  109 playground. From Monday to Sunday, without exception, there is a noticeable viewing peak between 3 and 5am. As for French families, they like to start their weekend with a dose of transgenerational entertainment. On Saturdays and Sundays, around 9am, young and old alike choose entertaining programs. Shows like A Series of Unfortunate Events or Beat Bugs are two times more likely to be watched at that time of the day. These systems of characterization, identifying “French users” as a single, monolithic, targeted audience, are opposed to the multiplicity of preferences and aspirations valued by the concept of cultural pluralism structuring French cultural policies. They also contradict the heterogenous and inquisitive profile usually associated with movie-lovers, shaping a value system deeply rooted in France’s cinematographic and audiovisual landscape. On the opposite, the system of recommendation promoted by the platform, based on algorithmic logic, tends to condition users’ expectation, unavoidably restricted because based on the available supply  – which is very limited, whatever may be said – hyper relevance and the repetition of past experiences, in the pursuit of a “continuous joyful experience freed from endless possibilities” (Drumond et  al. 2018, 39). This control over the browsing process, opposed to the fundamental values of France’s cinematographic policies, becomes a source of worry when Netflix announces that their main targeted audience is younger generations who have not yet been educated about this very cultural approach to cinematographic creation. Sarah May, a Netflix commissioner, declared: “There is a big chunk of our viewers in France that don’t necessarily, especially younger audiences, go to theaters that often or don’t watch TV that often and it feels important to make content also for them and answer that need in the market” (Keslassy 2019). ­ This “consumer- centric” approach, advocated by Xavier Albert during his time as marketing director for Netflix France ( Vincent 2015), requires a reduction of the offer range, which will be shaped by the level of expectation of the platform’s main targeted audience, in a process that will ultimately manipulate – and narrow – the level of expectation of the other users (“Customer centricity means that you’re going to be friendly, provide good service and develop new products and services for the special focal customers – the ones who provide a lot of value for you – but not necessarily for the other ones. You need to pick and choose. Some customers deserve the special treatment, and if others want to buy from you, that’s great, but they are not going to be treated the same”; Fader 2011; 2012). In France, these users benefiting from a “special treatment” are clearly identified as the “early US TV content adopter”, mostly “young and connected city- dwellers, big consumers of TV shows” ( Vincent 2015).

110  Christel Taillibert and Bruno Cailler A constant renewal of content This technique of user targeting, closely related to the production business, also needs to be linked with another strategy of constant renewal to retain the subscribed audience: large consumers of television shows had the tendency to unsubscribe when the SVOD offer was less abundant, waiting for more new available releases to subscribe again (Fraissard 2019). Therefore, as Baldacchino (2019, 120) reminded: “Netflix prioritizes quantity, with hectic production rates and many new purchases”. The cordcutting risk is one of the reasons behind Netflix’s production strategy, but this choice can also be justified by the company’s top priority which is to attract new subscribers. Their growth is vital for their survival in a period of multiplication of platforms and services, these platforms reclaiming the rights of their own content, which was available on Netflix until recently. Moreover, a recent market research proves that new users are mostly attracted by relatively short serial stories, as longer shows tend to put them off. Production business is, in that case, guided by a set of clearly identified marketing or strategic choices which have a direct influence on the nature of ongoing productions. These requirements are the reason why the shows produced by Netflix rarely get more than two seasons. Moreover, producers are not allowed to extend these “aborted” shows on any other medium or channel, as observed by a research conducted by the Ampere Analysis Institute (Fraissard 2019). In France, this tendency is proven correct with the show Marseille and its two seasons, the other French shows being too recent to assess of their longevity. Based on the same judgement, Netflix will prioritize short seasons of 8 to 10 episodes over very long seasons, typical of certain successful shows. Because of this urgency to offer new content, producers are encouraged to work fast. Netflix’s French original production director aims to produce his shows 12 to 18 months after their basic pitch has been approved – namely two or three times faster than what is usual for French TV channels (Keslassy 2019). What is made apparent by these new methods of operation imposed by Netflix to their French partners is the industrialization of production. The producer’s creative role is completely evicted in this structure where, in order to work faster, Netflix’s supervisors prefer to deal with writers directly (Baldacchino 2019, 120). The producer is demoted to an executive role, a mere manufacturer. The same fate awaits directors who, far from the author theory characterizing the French model of creation, are demoted to a status of staging technician. According to this model of production, the writers are the ones managing the team, transforming France’s production framework. As put forward by Damien Couvreur, director of international originals for France: “It’s a transition. The writer’s job is no longer to just deliver a script; he [or] she becomes a creator who has creative control and input over all the process of the series” (Keslassy 2019). Netflix still has the final say for the final cut and is not afraid of replacing their partners if

Video on demand platforms: Netflix France  111 necessary (that’s why for example Osmosis’ showrunner and Plan Coeur’s producer were replaced after the first season). This whole process adds to the “internationalist” factor of the show promoted by Netflix, and French producers are actively encouraged to adopt this model.

The coherence of this model with France’s ­film-loving ​­ system These observations naturally lead to wonder about the place of this production model in France’s cinematographic and audiovisual landscape, whose participants are deeply rooted in a national cinephile system. As put forward by Yann Darré in his research works on cinema sociology (2006, 125), French “craftsmen as well as French artists have one thing in common: they started as cinephiles, a trait that Godard associated with the New Wave movement in comparison to filmmaking as a profession”. Even though some may assume that the generational gap is beyond repair and that cultural education is flawed, a special connection between the film or audiovisual piece of work and the audience remains, a relationship the French system takes pride in and wishes to pass on to viewers, regardless of which services they use to discover these movies and shows. This cultural stance proper to the cinephile culture – a love for cinema characterized by the recognition of the artistic value of the director’s work – lives on. The fundamental incompatibility of this model with Netflix’s general identity in France is highlighted by the SVOD platform’s pursuit of a long-term strategy called love brand which Xavier Albert defined in these terms: “We must not think in terms of purchase, but above all in terms of commitment, of creativity, to establish a certain notoriety and interest for the brand” (Vincent 2015). However, aiming for the company’s growth via a “love for the brand” is fundamentally at odds with the core of French cinephile culture which relies upon a “love for the works”. Indeed, the love brand system is not concerned with the products. What is showcased by advertisement, marketing, and social networks is the global image of an industry which present itself as disruptive in the overall panorama of French cinematographic and audiovisual production. When linking these observations to the realization that Netflix’s targeted audience is largely composed of younger generations, we can foretell the dawn of a global project aiming to destroy the French system and logically relying on the renewal of its audience, as French viewers’ fondness for animated works is undeniably boosting the platform’s growth on this territory. Elsa Keslassy (2019) stated that “French market has now become one of the fastest-growing for the streaming service, which currently boasts more than 5 million subscribers locally”. If Netflix is raising a new generation of creators and hiring directors whose filmography only consists of one or few movies, we can assume that this project will reach a global scale in France’s film industry.

112  Christel Taillibert and Bruno Cailler Of course, not all home-grown professionals deem themselves ready to offer their services to Netflix; many of them are opposed to it, condemning them for not respecting European laws or collective agreements and denouncing their “obscure contracts” and “illegal terms and conditions for the pre-emptive rights to exploit their works” (Vulser 2019). While admitting that collaborating with Netflix was beneficial, Jean-Michel Ciszewski (in the 18 December 2019 interview) insisted on the necessity to remain independent and to focus on agreements that allowed his society to remain the right holder. This is what he stated about this peculiar partner and the ambivalence of their relationship: “They’re a very powerful contributor, and as any other powerful contributor, they possess strength. We must keep this in mind and be clever in our judgment to remain independent, which we are happy to be”. The grip of a fundamental right This ambivalent situation isn’t new in French history. In 1990, Jacques W. Oppenheim already observed similar conflicts concerning Canal+’s strategy for international production: Since Autumn 1988, our financing plan is only available for Europe, starting by Italy and Germany. This globalization of production stops at North America’s doorstep. Indeed, even though the Americans are interested in Europe’s various financing sources, they prove themselves to be unyielding and unenthusiastic towards the projects that they cannot control from start to finish. English language only, international but mostly American celebrities, fast pace, screenplays rewriting, technical teams almost exclusively under their leadership, these are the terms and conditions to consider even before you start negotiating (Oppenheim 1990, 45). Thirty years later, have the terms of these types of partnerships truly evolved? Even if Netflix managed to fit without difficulty within French households, the fact remains that their establishment caused a lot of trouble to French legislators from the very beginning. Indeed, cinema and television are both relying on a subtle equilibrium between producing, distributing and broadcasting, a stability that SVOD’s ace came to disrupt. The country of cultural exception has adopted – since World War II – an audiovisual legislation defining the limits of supportive economy, characterized by a number of aids, automatic or selective, and a strict separation and classification of the different markets, especially via a chronology of media for the film industry. Even though the latter is now mostly shaped by interprofessional agreements, the CNC promoted and often helped the revision of the legislation framework. CNC’s goal was mainly to promote a number of principles likely to build a powerful industry of creative cinematography, and to

Video on demand platforms: Netflix France  113 launch an ambitious plan of television commissioning. Just like a legislative habitus, it was adapted to a closed perimeter first, the French hexagon, then progressively opened geographically to Europe and preferred partners (bilateral agreements on cinematographic and TV coproduction notably), always making sure to refine it in regards to technological advances and to the different means of distribution and broadcast (internet, satellite). Many of these structuring principles are directly confronted to the issue raised by Netflix’s expansion in France. The first of these principles is the recognition of the author as the source of both creation and manufacturing process. French law designates the author as right holder of his work, whereas US copyright designates the company. The author divests his rights to the delegate producer on a contractual basis, a producer who has the legal obligation to produce the audiovisual work, signing a performance guarantee with all beneficiaries. This strategy to win authors over by reinforcing their status, which is at the core of Netflix productions, can be understood in this light and can serve as a first step to re-assess the delegate producers’ role within French production’s process. Indeed, the author-producer relationship is regulated by a negotiation which includes, traditionally, both the artistic side and the economic constraints. Another of these characteristics is related to the fact that the protection of a truly independent production – embodied by the delegate producer and representing most French creations – is a matter of law. Independence is economical: societies linked to or collaborating with audiovisual groups are a minority. Thus, television channels (and the groups owning them) must for the most part work with independent companies to comply with their financing obligations for the audiovisual. The decree 90- 67, dated 1990 and amended many times since then, forces television channels to invest 3.2% of their total revenue for the previous year in cinematographic production (around 75% in independent companies) and 15% in televisual production. To preserve creation, it is essential to restrain the influence of those funding the products and to diminish the control of production companies’ capital financialization. But above all else, it is crucial to maintain enough rights for independent producers for them to make a living out of their work, and for them to fully take on a role of artistic and economic mediator, as independence must also apply to art. From there, the perpetuation of secure working conditions for those employed in these sectors was at the core of the French audiovisual and televisual cultural policy. As we’ve observed, to avoid any debt, frequent among producers, the legislator saw fit to encourage consumers to join in the investment effort. This is how television, the main consumer of film rights, became the main source of funds for French cinema. However, when potential market opportunities occur, the French legislator knows when to make changes to the law. To anticipate Netflix’s entry on the market, it created favourable market conditions, open to the globalization of part of the French production. Following the Plancade report in May 2013, the access

114  Christel Taillibert and Bruno Cailler to part of the shows’ reinforced property rights has been eased in 2015, benefiting both private and public sponsors and broadcasters, and making investment in notorious shows more appealing for all beneficiaries. As a result, many French independent production companies reinforced or created their own division of televisual production. This restructuration was extended, strengthening the market via the concentration of groups willing to become leaders in the production of international shows in France and Europe: Gaumont, Lagardère, Newen Studios (owned by TF1), RTL Group, Altice Content France, Mediawan, Banijay (mainly owned par Canal+), Endemol Shine France… The take-over of the most promising independent societies was one of the consequences of this evolution, another being the fusion of big production groups (Banijay and Zodiak in 2015, Endemol France and Shine France in 2017). CNC’s “TV Show Project” supported this initiative in 2019, in order to “allow French creation to gain in popularity internationally” (Delahaye 2019). This flexibility can be understood as a will to set the scene for a new production ecosystem dominated by the availability of audiovisual content introduced by on-demand audiovisual media services. Netflix has turned to in-house production as well as independent production. If these initial principles give us a better understanding of the power struggle between French legislators and Netflix, it has been circumscribed by three legislative texts up until now. The SMAD decree and ASM directive: terms and conditions of a negotiation We must first consider the structuring role of the 2010/13/ UE AVSM directive redacted on 10 March 2010, and of its French implementing legislation, the SMAD decree n. 2010-1379 redacted on 12 November 2010, concerning the on-demand audiovisual and media services. For the most part, aligning itself on the televisual and cinematographic sectors, this decree described and specified – for television’s catch-up service, subscription services and one-time offers – the legal obligations for the production and distribution of original French and European audiovisual creations. As for subscription services, they had to allocate “part of their annual net revenue from the past year to expenses contributing to the development of the production of audio-visual and cinematographic works”, European and original French-language films; at least 26% and 22% when they offer at least ten feature films annually in less than 22 months after their theatrical release in French; 21% and 17% when they offer at least ten feature films annually in less than 36 months and equal or more than 22 months after their release in French theatres; 15% and 12% in other cases. Netflix’s response upon their arrival on French territory was immediate: the relocation of their headquarters in Amsterdam to slip through the French financing system and benefit from a more profitable legislation; the alignment of their French programming on movies than took more than three years

Video on demand platforms: Netflix France  115 to produce. The revision of the European directive became a key issue for French legislators and is made in October 2018. From then on, Netflix had to include 30% of European works in their catalogue and above all comply with the targeted country’s rules concerning financial contributions for the production of European works. Coincidentally, on 10 February 2019, the CNC and representative bodies agreed on a new chronology of media for cinema. Distribution delay was shortened and the accountability of SVOD platforms was made clearer. Three new SVOD systems were created: for platforms approved by the CSA, like Canal+, a “secondary window of non-free television” of 15 or 17 months depending on the total of entries; for those only falling under the SMAD decree, a window of 28 or 30 months; the rest maintains a window of 34 or 36 months. However, in the face of this systemic strategy and its set quotas of production and distribution, Netflix appeared to have retaliated with a localization strategy, with an ecosystem constructed on a “nihilo-liberal” global baseline, avoiding most legal constraints.

Conclusion At the beginning of 2020, Netflix should invest a little more than 100 million euros in French production throughout the year, an amount of money that should increase the following year (Piquard 2020). Beyond the struggle between the most cost-effective bid and the lowest bid and the issue of content standardization, the core of the debate is the countries’ share of this booming windfall. The Minister for Culture, Frank Riester, announced on 14 January 2020 that he aimed to include – in a future bill on the audiovisual sector  – an obligation for SVOD services to allocate 25% of their revenue to local production. In France, the result is unforgiving: Netflix will have to invest more than 200 million euros in the territory. The loss of viewers recorded by traditional groups (TF1, France Télévision, Canal+) is restricting their ability to invest in production, their obligation to produce being proportional to their revenue or number of subscribers. French legislation seeks to find a balance and to demand financial contribution from all SVOD services, in order to prevent the collapse of a cycle of investment, quite virtuous up until now as based on the pre-financing and MTO (madeto-order) system. Transitioning from a non-exclusive model to a model relying on exclusivity and originality, SVOD’s key players, especially those with an international reach, can endorse this standpoint to a certain extent. Netflix pledged their good will by significantly increasing their production in 2020, but they’re adopting a production strategy which may become disruptive in the long run. But the regulatory struggle is not over yet… As Piquard (2020) reminds us, “a negotiation between distributors and producers is to be expected by next summer, with the presence of state mediators. Netflix might try to lower the rate by 25%”. This battle is also decisive in terms of rights, since

116  Christel Taillibert and Bruno Cailler the French Government wants to impose a minimum of 50% of “associate production” on Netflix, allowing the associate production company to retain a number of rights; an initiative rejected by Netflix, strongly committed to their “executive production” principle, which allows them to purchase all rights over a long period. The tale of Netflix’s establishment on French territory is thus far from over. Plus, the arrival of their – equally powerful – direct competitors on the market can only reinforce this enduring tension.

References Baldacchino, Julien. 2019. “Netflix, l’usine à séries que le cinéma déteste adorer”. Nectart, 9: ­116–125. ​­ Barthes, Séverine. 2018. “De quoi la série originale Netflix (Netflix Original) estelle le nom? Quelques jalons sur l’histoire de Netflix”. Paper presented at the conference Numérisation généralisée de la société, May, CRICIS, Montréal. Benghozi, ­Pierre-Jean. 2012. Entreprises culturelles et Internet: contenus numéri​­ ques et modèles d’affaires innovants. Paris: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. Benghozi, Pierre-Jean and Thomas Paris. 2014. “L’économie culturelle à l’heure du numérique: une révolution de l’intermédiation”. In La culture et ses intermédiaires. Dans les arts, le numérique et les industries créatives, edited by Laurent Jeanpierre and Olivier Roueff, 175–188. Paris: Editions des Archives Contemporaines. Cassini, Sandrine. 2019. “Apple, Netflix, Amazon: la concurrence des géants américains rebat les cartes de la télévision française”. Le Monde, 31 October. Clarke, Stewart. 2019. “This Is Just the Beginning, Netflix Exec Says of Non­English Programming”. Variety, 5 December. Darré, Yann. 2006. “Esquisse d’une sociologie du cinéma”. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, ­161–162: ​­ ­122–136. ​­ Delahaye, Martine. 2019. “Plan séries du CNC: Nous allons recentrer nos aides sur la création originale”. Le Monde, 29 March. Dessinges, Catherine and Lucien Perticoz. 2019. “Les Consommations de séries télévisées des publics étudiants face à Netflix: une autonomie en question”. Enjeux de l’information et de la communication, 20: ­5–23. ​­ Drumond, Gabrielle Silva Mota, Alexandre Coutant and Florence Millerand. 2018. “La Production de l’usager par les algorithmes de Netflix”. Les enjeux de ​­ la communication, 19: ­29–44. Fader, Peter. 2011. “Peter Fader on Customer Centricity and Why It’s Matters”. Wharton University, 18 November. Fader, Peter. 2012. Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic. Philadelphia, PA: Wharton School Press. Forrester, Chris. 2019. “Netflix to Boost Spend in 2019”. ­Advanced-television. ​­ com, 13 February. Fraissard, Guillaume. 2019. “Chez Netflix, heureuses sont les séries assez fortes pour passer le cap des deux saison”. Le Monde, 17 April. Hopewell, John and Jamie Lang. 2018. “Netflix’s Erik Barmack on Ramping up International Production, Creating Global TV”. Variety, 11 October.

Video on demand platforms: Netflix France  117 Jauss, Hans Robert. 1978. Pour une esthétique de la réception. Paris: Gallimard. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press. Karpik, Lucien. 2007. L’économie des singularités. Paris: Gallimard. Keslassy, Elsa. 2019. “Netflix Lays out French Originals Strategy, Including Hookups with Local Industry”. Variety, 1 April. Miège, Bernard. 2017. Les Industries culturelles et créatives face à l’ordre de l’information et de la communication. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble. Moeglin, Pierre. 2007. “Des Modèles socio-économiques en mutation”. In Les industries de la culture et de la communication en mutation, edited by Philippe Bouquillion and Yolande Combes, 151–162. Paris: L’Harmattan. Oppenheim, Jacques W. 1990. “A la recherche de solutions originales : la fiction télévisée à Canal Plus”. CinémAction, 57. Perticoz, Lucien. 2019. “Filière de l’audiovisuel et plateformes SVOD: une analyse croisée des stratégies de Disney et Netflix”. Tic & société, 13(1–2): ­­ ​­ ­323–353. ​­ Pilipets, Elena. 2019. “From Netflix Streaming to Netflix and Chill: The (Dis)Connected ­ ­ Body of Serial ­Binge-Viewer”. ​­ Social Media + Society, 5(4): ­ ­online first. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119883426. ­ ­ ­ Piquard, Alexandre. 2018. “Netflix ouvre un bureau à Paris, un geste symbolique”. Le Monde, 27 September. Piquard, Alexandre. 2019. “Comment la France veut forcer Netflix et Amazon à financer la création française”. Le Monde, 4 September. Piquard, Alexandre. 2020. “La Petit revanche de la France sur Netflix”. Le Monde, 17 January. Tremblay, Gaëtan and Jean- Guy Lacroix. 1991. Télévision, deuxième dynastie. Montréal: Presses Universitaires de Montréal. Vincent, Maud. 2015. “Xavier Albert, Netflix France: ‘Notre mot d’ordre: sortir des sentiers battus’”. Emarketing.fr, 30 June. Vulser, Nicole. 2019. “Netflix, ce trublion américain que le cinéma français adore détester”. Le Monde, 31 October.

8

The strategy of “quality TV” Branding, creating, and producing at Canal+ Hélène ­Monnet-Cantagrel ​­

It is common in France to read or hear that there are no French series or that they are worthless, that France is behind, so on and so forth. Yet, as the daily Le Parisien reported in 2018, “in recent years, the French series is experiencing a real revival”, and statistics confirm this. “In 2017, France was the third largest exporter of series (after the United States and Great Britain), but [it was] the only one to increase [its exportation]: +27.8% compared to 2016”. This boom concerns both series created by the public service (France Télévisions or Arte) and the private sector, but Canal+ played an important role in this renaissance. This chapter looks at that role as well as the creative and critical stakes.

Films, football, and irreverence: a brief history of Canal+ When he began his presidency in 1981, François Mitterrand sparked a major reform of the audiovisual sector. The first step was to liberate the sector and guarantee its independence from the state monopoly. The second was to balance the relationship between film and television. The growing demand for television films posed a problem for the cinema whose production was rather limited at the time; television was, then, to contribute to the financing of cinema. Finally, the third step aimed to open the sector to private groups. It was in this context that, in 1984, Canal+ was created. It is the first private French television channel and was headed by André Rousselet, president of the Havas Group. It was inspired by HBO’s economic model; subscribers were given a decoder to access the channel’s scrambled contents. Subscriptions were quite expensive because they partially funded the CNC (National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image), which supports cinematographic creation. Canal+ mainly offered films, which had been recently released in the cinema and were viewable through multicast services. Besides cinema, the channel specialized in sports broadcasts that were either important or invisible on other channels. From the outset, it was considered elitist because of its price and marketing, which targeted privileged and urban areas. However, it was its audacity that really made the channel stand out, and its “Canal ­ spirit”, namely, its free-to-air ­ ­​­ ​­ broadcasts

Strategy of “quality TV” at Canal+  119 ­ at noon and at the end of the day. This “Canal spirit” was defined above all by the talk show Nulle Part Ailleurs. The show’s humorous sequences (such as Les Guignols de l’info and Le Journal Télévisé Nul) were irreverent satires of political and cultural news. As then director of programs Alain de Greef said, it was “reflexive TV, television that always says the opposite of what it has just said” (Spies 2014, 158). Consequently, Canal+ enjoyed growing success, which lasted until the 2000s. As of that date, following Canal+’s merger and acquisition with Vivendi and Universal, Canal+ experienced dark hours, littered with conflicts with Jean-Marie Messier’s management, and then that of Vincent Bolloré. Subscribers fled, and the channel’s shows and founding figures gradually disappeared from its schedule, making way for an overtly commercial turning point. The channel’s loss of identity culminated in Bolloré’s 2016 decision ­ to put an end to “Canal spirit”. It was however around that time, in 2003, that the Création Originale (Original Creation) unit was created to develop an ambitious programming and series production policy. The Original Creation label was more than just clever marketing, as some have said. It marks a true transformation of the production and design of the French series, and its impact goes far beyond Canal+ as the context of its emergence and the French television serial drama.

The French television series French television does not have a serial culture, or, at least, not one that is comparable to that of US television, a paragon in this field. This is due to several reasons that are both historical and institutional. Historically, French television has, since its beginnings in the 1950s, been a testing laboratory for televisual devices. However, fiction programming has long consisted mainly in literary adaptations, or what were called “dramas”, unitary 90-minute television films that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. This tradition lasted until the beginning of the 2000s and includes what could be considered as procedural dramas, but which are much more a collection of 90-minute television films, the recurring element of which is a unique hero. Each annual volume counted between four and eight episodes ­ ­ (Julie Lescaut, TF1, 1992–2014), and some of these series counted multiple ­volumes (Maigret, ­ Antenna 2, 1967–1990, then 1991–2005). It would not be right to call these “seasons”, in the American sense. In France there is no calendar setting dates or periods, from the proposal of the concept to the production of a pilot. In addition, the French system is based on the cinematic model where the auteur is more the director than the scriptwriter. As a result, the scriptwriter-auteur ​­ does not enjoy the same consideration as the director, and is absent from the shoot. In addition, accounting for only 3% of the total budget of the production, economically, the script is rather insignificant. The screenwriter is paid royalties, has no contract and it was not until 2013 that a decree put an end to this situation

120  Hélène ­Monnet- ­C antagrel by defining a memorandum of understanding intended to improve contractual practices between writers and producers. Finally, since the 1980s, French production and distribution have been governed by strict obligations “in order to preserve cultural diversity and support the audiovisual industry” (CSA n.d.). Its offer is 60% European works and 40% original French works. While this is not an exhaustive inventory of the constraints of the development of television serial drama in France in the early 2000s, it highlights the specificities of French television, explaining, on the one hand, the so- called delay mentioned at the beginning and, on the other hand, the profound changes that involve a sort of “catching up” through an upgrade with international actors. As Fabrice de la Patellière, director of fiction at Canal+, explains, “the challenge, for us, is to gain ground as much as possible and make series that leave their mark” (Psenny and Delahaye 2015; emphasis added by the author). As was said, since its inception, Canal+ has had a close relationship with HBO, which partly serves as a model in terms of financing and programming as well as strategy and image. This image, for HBO, is illustrated by its 1997–2006 slogan, “It’s not TV. It’s HBO”. It was at this time that Chris Albrecht, HBO’s president since 1995, developed and intensified ­ the production of original series (Oz, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and The Wire, to name only a few), inaugurating a so- called golden age of series and galvanizing other channels’ interest in this type of production. In an era marked by the deregulation of the media, from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the multiplication of media and programs, HBO showed, in fact, that series allow TV channels to establish or maintain a major role in the entertainment industry sector. A few years later, the same movement appeared in France, with an increase in the production of series of which Canal+ was a forerunner. However, like HBO, Canal+ has earned this status through a quality strategy. The issue of quality is not new in television and has been the subject of much research. Yet, as Akass and McCabe (2007), Edgerton (2008) and Johnson (2007) have shown, it took a particular turn when HBO made it a value of promotion and distinction. “The phrase HBO an ‘HBO-style-series’ has, in fact, now trumped ‘quality TV’ as a description of huge artistic achievement in the medium” (Thompson 2007, xviii). This is the same type of strategy that motivates Canal+’s Original Creation series.

Original creation Canal+’s production of series began in the 1990s with short comedies in the “Canal ­ spirit” vein with the likes of Éric and Ramzy, Jamel Debbouze, or Bruno Gaccio. These series tended to be very localized, sometimes embedded in entertainment programs like the shortcom Bref., a segment of the talk show Le Grand Journal, from 2011 to 2012. Again, “Canal ­ spirit”,

Strategy of “quality TV” at Canal+  121 as offbeat and corrosive as it may have been, helped define Canal+’s image whereas its programming and its original target was built, more generally, on a distinction. In a way, this can be found in the Original Creation series which amplified and sublimated this image, which, from then on, became a brand. From 2003 to 2018, Original Creation produced about 20 largely drama series (­52 minutes) but also comedies (­30 minutes) and ­mini-​­series at an ­ever-​­increasing rate (­­Table 8.1). This first panorama shows that drama series dominate production. And, it is primarily these series which have an international scope. Spiral was broadcast on BBC Four as early as 2006, and it was a winner at the International Emmy Awards in 2015. In 2016, The Bureau was praised by the New York Times. And, in 2018, Versailles was the most successful French series in the world. Generally speaking, at the international level,

­Table 8.1  C  anal+’s original productions by format and genre Dramatic series Engrenages (­Spiral), seven seasons, ­2005-​­ongoing Mafiosa, five seasons, ­2006–​­2014 Sécurité intérieure, one season, 2007 La Commune, one season, 2007 Reporters, two seasons, ­2007 – ​­2009 Scalp, one season, 2008 Braquo, four seasons ­2009–­2016 Pigalle, la nuit, one season, 2009 Maison Close, two seasons ­2010–​­2013 XIII, la série (­X III: The Series), two seasons, ­2011–​­2012 Borgia, three seasons, ­2011–­2014 Les Revenants (­The Returned), two seasons, 2 ­ 012–­2015 Tunnel (­Thre Tunnel), three seasons, 2 ­ 013–​­2017 Versailles, three seasons, 2 ­ 015–​­2018 Le Bureau des légendes (­The Bureau), four seasons, ­2015-​­ongoing Section Zéro, one season, 2016 Baron noir, two seasons, ­2016-​­ongoing Jour polaire (­M idgnight Sun), one season, ­2016-​­ongoing(?) The Young Pope, one season, 2 ­ 016-​­ongoing Guyane, two seasons 2 ­ 017-​­ongoing Hippocrate, one season, ­2018-​­ongoing ­M ini-​­series Nox, one season, 2018 Vernon Subutex, one season (­30 ­minute-​­episodes), 2019 Comedies Hard, three seasons, ­2008–­2015 Platane, two seasons, 2 ­ 011-​­ongoing(?) Kaboul Kitchen, three seasons, ­2012–​­2017 Paris etc., 2017

122  Hélène ­Monnet- ­C antagrel dramas are highly anticipated and discussed by the public, critics, and academia because of their narrative complexity and innovation. Dramas that are similar to those of HBO initiated the series’ current success. In addition to this, however, it should be noted that Canal+ maintained production of short fictions that embody certain elements of the Original ­Creation brand. Let’s start with a semantic analysis of the label. The term “creation” has a religious meaning and refers to the divine activity of giving existence from nothingness. By extension, the word commonly refers to conceiving, inventing, or elaborating. From the religious meaning, the word retains the idea of what is first and innovative, but in the sense of conceptualization – an invention where imagination has an important role. As for the adjective “original”, it has several meanings in French. It designates what came first, origination and, by extension, what is authentic. Semantically, the word can mean several things. The first meaning refers to “the origin and the first source of the reproductions made from it” (Robert 2005); it refers to authenticity, but it can also serve as a model for future imitations. The second clarifies this meaning by adding the idea of innovation and uniqueness; original is that “which seems to derive from nothing prior and constitutes a beginning”. “Bold” and “special” are among the synonyms in the dictionary. Thus, it goes on to explain that semantic derivatives include “bizarre”, “curious”, “unusual”, or “whimsical” (Robert 2005). This sense may have a negative connotation, but it can also be seen as a cry for eccentricity, which is a form of dandyism (Kempf 1977). Finally, the expression “original creation” is itself in the dictionary, and is defined as a “find” (Robert 2005). It is also found in law where originality is a condition of protection and openness for the author, to his/ her rights, and is part of the definition of a work. It is an intellectual creation where “original” is the legal expression of the author’s creativity as the administration defines copyright, which could refer to a remake of a preexisting work so long as the author makes a new contribution. Several distinctive features appear that organize the values of the brand. Authenticity and innovation are the founding values to which the concept of model is linked both in the sense of being modelled and being a model. In order to understand how the brand participates in the creative process, this article considers some of the series that were created between 2003 and 2018, and takes Versailles as a point of departure for a discussion of the stakes of the brand’s logic.

Audacious series Canal+ has historically distinguished itself by its daring, that of its free-toair programs as well as its scrambled programs. In addition to recent films, in 1985, it aired a pornographic film the first Saturday of each month. Starting in 1991, the Journal du Hard provided news coverage of pornographic

Strategy of “quality TV” at Canal+  123 cinema. The comedy series Hard is a nod to this feature. After her husband’s brutal death, a young prudish woman, learns that her spouse was the head of an X-rated film production company, which she inherits and discovers a world that was unbeknownst to her. On a more serious note, it can be argued ­ that Maison Close or Borgia follow the same tradition, as both series are based on transgressive subjects (i.e., prostitution in 19th century Paris, and the reign of the nefarious Borgias in the Italian Renaissance). Audacity, then, is an unprecedented tone and never-before-seen-on­ ­​­ ­​­ ­​­ ​ television subjects. Beyond Maison Close or Borgia, this is how Fabrice de la Patellière defines the “positioning” of the Original Creation series, which “propose characters that we have not seen on television in France, in a very cinematic fashion” (Sitbon 2016). This is particularly noticeable in Spiral or The Returned. The former is a crime series with a vision of the police and the justice system that is as much documentary as it is dark realism. The characters are exhausted by their work and are not heroes in the romantic sense that holds them as the depositories of good, of truth and of bravery. They make mistakes, their personal lives are wrought with failure, they are tempted to cross boundaries, or else they are abused by the errors and corruptions of the system. Despite cases being solved at the end of the season, the characters and the vision of justice do not emerge as glorious, nor are victories without collateral damage. The latter is a supernatural series based on the film of the same name (directed by Robin Campillo in 2004). For some mysterious reason, in a mountain village, the dead come back to life. Starting from this premise, the series explores the personal and collective as well as the psychological and philosophical consequences of this return of the dead. Without any special effects or resort to some diabolical force, the series constructs a strange, intimate, dreamlike and agonizing atmosphere. This series, along with Maison Close and Borgia, renews historical French TV genres such as fantasy fiction, the detective story and, most importantly, historical fiction, a public service “mission” to educate and to entertain. Fantasy fiction and detective stories often resorted to literary models, pledges of legitimacy, or a consensual or watered down vision of reality. In this way, these adaptations obeyed codes, norms, or constraints which these Canal+ series did not, and these series demolished them, offering an unprecedented experiment of sorts. In the words of Hans Robert Jauss, these genres had a pre-formative or norm-giving function in the aesthetic experience when the Original Creation’s propose a motivating or norm-formative and even a transformative or norm-breaking one ( Jauss 1990, 286). This is also the case of Hippocrate, which was created by Thomas Lilti, a former doctor. Lilti authored a film of the same name in 2014. The series relates the daily life of young interns confronted with different clinical cases and situations in an internal medicine service. Although French television has not really developed the medical drama genre, it broadcasts US series such as ER and Grey’s Anatomy. Hippocrate, thus, proposes a

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certain imaginary and vision of the medical field – a more local version, as it were – that resonate with the French health system, which, in contrast to the US one is a public service. Moreover, the series was released in 2018 during a period of deep unease and challenges to France’s precarious health system. By anchoring itself in a contemporary French reality with its own codes, this series set a new standard for television drama. Similarly, Mafiosa, Guyane and The Bureau gave a new visibility to certain regions and subjects. The Corsican mafia, the world of gold miners in Guyana, and the French Secret Service were hitherto rarely seen on television outside of the news (and at the mercy of the news). Be that as it may, this local anchoring and this renewal of genres also have a universal vocation, as they perpetuate themes and genres of both American and international fiction, that is, the mafia and the gold rush, adventure and espionage, crime and medical science. Finally, not only does the creation of a standard concern genres, but it also concerns the invention of devices like those used in Calls. In each season, the series offers ten episodes of approximately ten minutes which tell ten independent horror stories. What the episodes have in common is that they use coloured squares to identify and pinpoint voices on a black background. The action is exclusively sonorous (old cassette recordings, a switchboard, a radio program, a black box, so on and so forth) and alludes to a tragic aggression or predator. Broadcast on Canal+ Décalé channel, the series launched a new label named Création Décalée (Out-of-phase Creation), which “aims to produce unidentified audiovisual objects. The proposed content is intended not only for analog and digital television” (Eschemann 2017). While this series is not an Original Creation, it extends its will to innovate in order to “gain ground”. Calls is the brainchild of Timothée Hochet, a young YouTube film buff. Calls is an example of increasingly popular new narrative practices, somewhere between a web series and a podcast. Apple purchased the rights in view of adapting Calls in co-production with Canal+, thereby enriching its offer of original content.

Auteur series Original Creation is not just about innovating; it also aims at authenticity which is achieved through the auteur. This is one of the main quality TV strategies that HBO developed, and, yet in 1996, Robert J. Thompson includes it in the 12 criteria for the quality of a series: “Quality TV usually has a quality pedigree. Shows made by artists whose reputations were made in other media, like film, are prime candidates” (Thompson 1996, 14). As Pierre Bourdieu has shown, the legitimacy of the production of symbolic goods is an allodoxia (Bourdieu 1971). With a “pedigree” derived from cinema, quality television proceeds from a transfer of legitimacy of a technical art (audiovisual) that is recognized as legitimate because of a historical process where the concept of author, especially in France, played a determining

Strategy of “quality TV” at Canal+  125 role in the distinction of cinema as art. This notion is also a claim to a form of purity of creation that would be freed from economic and industrial constraints, in the name of an ideology of genius, itself inherited from literature. In 2019, Virginie Despentes’ successful novel, Vernon Subutex, was adapted in this spirit  – without her participation. Finally, according to Michel Foucault, the author is both a discursive function of description and grouping of certain texts as well as a mode of reception endowed with a certain status: “The author function is thus characteristic of the mode of existence, of the circulation and the functioning of certain discourses within a society” (Foucault 1969). In strategic terms, the concept of author is primarily concerned with reception. From this point of view, however, the Original Creation series is a departure. Even though Braquo was created by Olivier Marchal, a well-known television and film director and screenwriter, it was not until Tom Fontana created Borgia that the auteur seal was recognized. He wrote and produced St. Elsewhere and Homicide and, is, in particular, the creator of Oz, and then Borgia. While public reception of Borgia was quite good, counting 26% of subscribers on average, the critical reception was rather negative, going so far as to qualify the series as “a product that was too over-marketed to win over the imaginary” ( Jarry 2011). This relative failure can be explained by the fact that it was commissioned by producers Takis Candilis and Rodolphe Belmer so that Original Creation would be internationally identifiable with major and recognized actors and quality production of television series similar to HBO and Showtime (which had just completed The Tudors) of public and critical acclaim. Tom Fontana was then not so much an author as he was an executor of this strategy. This is obvious given the ostentatious imitation of The Tudors’ spectacular aesthetics rooted in explicit scenes of sex and violence that had previously defined the style of HBO’s historical series like Deadwood and Rome. As early as The Sopranos, “courting controversy has been institusionalized by HBO, embedded in and through its original as a distinctive feature of its cultural cachet, its quality brand label and (until recently) its leading market position” (Akass and McCabe 2007, 63). It should be noted that this was already the case in Maison Close of which it has been said “that it claims to be original without assuming what originality really is” (Sérisier 2013). This is perhaps why, from The Returned onwards, this authorial strategy of originality privileged more singular projects – especially those of creators like Fabien Nury (Guyane), Éric Rochant (The Bureau) and ­ ­ Thomas Lilti (Hippocrate). In audiovisual and serial form, they explore ­ personal universes: materialism and money, the secret service and personal investment, and medicine, respectively. All of these themes were central to these author’s previous works, be it Nury’s comics, or Rochant’s or Lilti’s films. From an aesthetic point of view, this translates into a form of realism that comes not from the explicit demonstration of raw scenes, but by a desire to grasp the specificity of relationships and environments, which

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is particularly evident in the writing of dialogues and in an aesthetic governed by the ethics of what is given to see. The Bureau is an example when several scenes, in season 3, staging terrorist executions, are seen by the protagonists but not by the viewers. Similarly, in Hippocrate, in potentially repulsive clinical cases, the focus is on the reaction of the unprepared intern rather than on the injury or the wound. As Rochant says, “The point of a series is that it always comes back to the same place. That is to say, it goes in circles. But in going in circles, we dig deeper and deeper into something like the truth” (France Culture 2019). The author would then seem to be a guarantee of originality and authenticity; the author is also a paradigm shift whose ambition is to serve as a model for French production.

The series, a brand? In developing and producing these creator- centric projects, Canal+ initiated changes in the design of French series. The Berger Report on A New Organization of Serial Fiction in France, commissioned by the CNC and published in 2018 was the first manifestation of this. Its author, Alex Berger, is, in fact, the producer of the The Bureau which, at four seasons in four years, has been more continuously produced and broadcast than other French series (even on Canal+). As has already been observed, French production of television fiction is not comparable with US production, as it is neither industrial, nor does it give the same roles to writers, directors, and producers. Some series like The Returned or Maison Close, whose second seasons took several years to complete, ended in failure. However, the success of a series is, in part, thanks to its recurrence and familiarity: it is an appointment of sorts. At present, nearly 500 series are produced and broadcast per year, and all channels – even specialized ones such as sports or history channels – produce fictional series. Additionally, this age of Peak TV has seen the rise of online platforms like Netflix and Amazon and, in France, suppliers like Orange, and one must know how to survive this hyper- competition. On that note, the Berger Report concludes with this remark, “We are condemned to constantly changing our laws, our rules, our processes, [and] our pedagogy. […] But the bottom line remains the same: people like stories and we must give ourselves the means to tell them in the best possible way” (Berger 2018). He suggests a complete overhaul of the production system, from financing to marketing and design. Original Creation’s authorial strategy promoted the function of showrunner. And Rochant works in this way. When it comes to his series, he is not so much the director (as he is in film) as he is the creator who supervises and directs a team of ten directors and a writing room of about 15 writers. By adopting this US model, Original Creation’s organizing principle has earned certain series international and national credit, making it somewhat of an institutional paradigm. However, is this the only condition guaranteeing a series’ influence?

Strategy of “quality TV” at Canal+  127 Berger’s production model is inspired by the American model and marketing. This term is used several times in the report to designate the process that governs the production process, and the series itself is regularly likened to a brand: “It is a brand with emotional commitment” (Berger ­ 2018, 39). This model may seem to have been successful at Canal+, but it is not without consequences, especially in terms of creativity. Versailles is an example of this. The series portrays Louis XIV when he moved to the small residence of Versailles and transformed it into the Palace we know today, a historic symbol of his absolute power becoming the main residence of the French court; the series looks at life in the court. Besides the young king, different characters embody the different aspects of this environment, power struggles, plots, and magnificence. The historian and scientific director of the Research Center of the Palace of Versailles, Matthieu Da Vinha, offered his advice. However, the question arises if Versailles is actually indicative of the unique mentality of 17th century France and Louis XIV? This is not to defend the idea that fiction must submit to historical truth. Fiction is an invention, a vision, an interpretation. Yet, fiction can move its reader or spectator, transporting him or her to something, as Rochant says, of the order of a human, cultural or even historical truth. But, Versailles, as Florence Dupont wrote about Rome, is based on the myth of the eternal man (Dupont 2007). The production team conceived of Louis XIV as the “young, fragile, hero of the modern series” (Delahaye 2015). The whole of court relations are codified by contemporary, moral and stylistic conventions, the historical truth resides in details surrounding the different stages of the palace’s construction, or how the king was shaved. The result is, as was already the case of Borgia or Maison Close, a sort of international standard, where only the scenery changes but whose style and audacity boils down to “sex or violence every 15 minutes” as Versailles’ production team explained to da Vinha (Laurent 2015). This is an effect of the international co-production which provides important funds and accelerates the process of seasonal renewal, but whose downside is to submit creativity to targeting marketing strategies (of a young audience, in particular) and of quality that is reduced to spectacular splendor and the politically incorrect à la HBO. However, as Tom Fontana remarks, “Every culture, every country sees television series in a different way”; there are “other artistic languages, other grammars […] and each one has its own rhythm” (Langlais 2014). For instance, in an interview with Fabrice de la Patellière, Olivier Wotling, Arte’s director of fiction, defines the channel’s editorial line by “a singularity of its projects [which] is translated through its subjects, strong authorial points, angles, [and] very different visual worlds” (Delahaye 2015). As for Original Creation, there is a concern for audacity and the author, but this is less a strategy than “narrative and fictional pleasure” and, in coproduction, an “attachment to the language and the natural culture of the project” (Delahaye 2015). With other constraints and very inferior means,

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​­ (The ­ ­­ ​­ Arte’s series, Ainsi ­soient-ils Churchmen) (2012–2015), Cannabis ­ or Jeux d’influence (2019) have, nonetheless, prevailed in France (2016), as well as abroad. Occupied (TV2, ­ Arte, ­2015-ongoing), ​­ a ­co-production ​­ with a Norwegian television channel, has been successful internationally. Although its budget is three times smaller than that of Versailles or Midnight Sun, it strives to preserve “local identity” (Delahaye 2015), and the public and critics have lauded the experimental character of its postulate, thus, proving that other more “artisanal” models like Arte’s can also “gain ground”. To conclude, the example of the Original Creation series shows that the production and design of a series is, like any original creation, a complex process whose modeling can be a double-edged sword, particularly in terms of marketing. On the one hand, this allows for innovation and renewal of forms, genres and even institutional roles. Very early on, in 2005, Canal+ demonstrated its ambition to make France shine on the international scene. But, on the other hand, there is also a risk of standardization, as strategies become systematized and creativity a recipe. This risk becomes greater in co-production ­ ​­ with ­so-called ​­ ­euro-puddings, ​­ which satisfy market players but have no aesthetic identity. As marketing guru Jean-Noël Kapferer points out, it is difficult to have both “rigorous management processes and, at the same time, launch unorthodox brands” (Kapferer 2013, 66). Innovation is not only technical or formal, but must also have added value, especially cultural value (Kapferer 2013, 171).

References Akass, Kim, and Janet McCabe. 2007. “Sex, Swearing and Respectability”. In Quality TV. Contemporary American Television and Beyond, edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, 62–76. London and New York: IB Tauris. Berger, Alex. 2018. Rapport Berger sur une nouvelle organisation de la fiction sérielle en France. Paris: CNC. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971. “Le marché des biens symboliques”. L’Année sociologique, ­ ​­ 22: 49–126. CSA. n.d. “Les obligations de diffusion d’œuvres audiovisuelles”. Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel. Delahaye, Martine. 2015. “Versailles, ­ intrigue sans audace”. Le Monde, 12 November. Dupont, Florence. 2007. “Rome ­ ton univers impitoyable”. Le Monde Diplomatique, Avril. Edgerton, Gary. 2008. “Introduction: A Brief History of HBO”. In The Essential HBO Reader, edited by Gary Edgerton and Jeffrey P. Jones, 1–20. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Eschemann, Eléonore. 2017. “L. Benedetti (Canal+): Nous lançons le label Création Décalée pour produire des objets audiovisuels non identifiés”. Média+, 23 November. Foucault, Michel. 1969. “Qu’est- ce qu’un auteur?”. Conference. In Dits et écrits, Tome I: 1954–1975. ­ ​­ Paris: Gallimard, 2001.

Strategy of “quality TV” at Canal+  129 France Culture. 2019. Masterclasses. 18 May. Jarry, Marjolaine. 2011. “Borgia, série sans âme”. NouvelObs, 10 October. Jauss, ­Hans-Robert. ​­ 1990. Pour une esthétique de la reception. Paris: Gallimard. Johnson, Catherine. 2007. “Tele-Branding in TVIII: The Network as Brand and the Programme as Brand”. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 5(1): ­ ­5–24. ​­ ​­ ​­ Kapferer, ­Jean-Noël. 2013. ­Ré-inventer les marques. Paris: Eyrolles. Kempf, Roger. 1977. Dandies. Paris: Seuil. Langlais, Pierre. 2014. “Tom Fontana: Avec Borgia, j’ai compris que chaque culture voit les séries différemment”. Télérama, 15 September. Laurent, Annabelle. 2015. “Versailles: ­ La série de Canal+ à l’épreuve des faits historiques”. 20 minutes, 16 November. Psenny, Daniel, and Martine Delahaye. 2015. “Succès français en série”. Le Monde, 16 November. Robert. 2005. Grand Robert de la Langue Française. Electronic edition. Sérisier, Pierre. 2013. “Maison ­ ­close – l’histoire au dehors”. Le Monde, 2 February. Sitbon, Priscilla. 2016. “Fabrice de la Patellière (Canal+): On souhaite revisiter le western spaghetti et la science-fiction en série”. Média+, 9 May. Spies, Virginie. 2014. “Entretien avec Alain de Greef”. Télévision, 5: ­146–162. ​­ Thompson, Robert. 1996. Television’s Second Golden Age. New York: Continuum. Thompson, Robert. 2007. “Preface”. In Quality TV, Contemporary American Television and Beyond, edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, X VII–XX. London and New York: IB Tauris.

9

What is a quality French series? Reflections on The Bureau François Jost

Even if the idea of quality television differs on either side of the Atlantic, there is at least one point on which everyone agrees, which is that the concept of author plays a major role in program evaluation. Be it devaluing TV like French producer Yves Laumet (who was very active in the 1980s) did, confiding to Cahiers du cinéma: “Television, in 30 years, has not produced a single author, although it took over for the cinema by becoming a popular medium […]. And, what is striking is that there are no quality, popular works of art on television” (Le Peron and Philippon 1982). Or be it, on the contrary, giving meaning to the expression “quality TV” in the US. For years, series were attributed to a name that actually referred to a plurality of authors, which I have called an “alias” ( Jost 2003), but since the advent of HBO, an author’s name has increased the standing of some series, which were also broadcast on AMC or Showtime such as Alan Ball ( Six Feet Under and True Blood), Tom Fontana (Oz), or David Simon (The Wire). It is undeniable that the figure of the ­ ­ author is a meeting point between the French and US conceptions of quality fiction, but does this figure have the same meaning in the French cultural sphere, where the politics of authorship (la politique des auteurs) have flourished? Has it created a different conception of quality? These are questions that can be asked in particular of a TV series like The Bureau (Le Bureau des Légendes, ­2015-present, ​­ Canal+ – i n French, the term légende refers to an agent’s cover story) for several reasons. First, as is evidenced by the many awards it received and the accolades of the US press, it is considered a quality work both by French and foreign critics. The New York Times calls the series “intelligent and subtle.” And, Broadwayworld has also sung its praises: “A captivating story of espionage, told with sophistication and filmed with cinematic ease”. Secondly, it is the French series that has generated the most revenue abroad. And, thirdly, it is the work of Éric Rochant, who made a name for himself in cinema, an artistic field that plays a crucial role in the definition of quality TV.

What is a quality French series?  131

What is quality television? The traits that have been put forward to define Quality Television are very numerous and sometimes very difficult to identify because of their subjectivity and their meager descriptive value. In no apparent order, these include “high production values, naturalistic performance styles, recognize and esteemed actors, a sense of visual style created through careful, even innovative, camerawork and editing and a sense of aural style […] ‘a glossiness of the style’, […] the programs are likely to explore ‘serious’ themes rather than representing the superficial events of life […]. American quality television also tends to focus on the present; other aspects encourage an intense level of audience appreciation and engagement” (Cardwell 2007, 26). For Sarah Cardwell, the series that meet these criteria are essentially The West Wing and Six Feet Under. Time has passed since she made this proposal, and it seems difficult to regard a series like Breaking Bad, considered one of the best series ever produced, as “naturalistic” in style or “serious” in the themes it takes up. Does one not see iterative sequences of breakfasts, meals by the pool or household scenes? Not only are these Quality TV criteria subjective, but they are normative and so vague that one could easily find counterexamples or add other criteria to the list. Let us focus on two issues previously neglected: the author, and the artistic status of the series. For a very long time, one could watch a series without knowing who the author or the director was. Who knew who wrote or directed Starsky and Hutch or even Columbo? The arrival of what Jane Feuer calls “the HBO not TV series” (2007, 150), by its very name, impels to reopen the case. It presupposes, in fact, that the channel itself is at the origin of a new genre, which has turned its back on television. At the very same time, the names of several creators of serial fiction became known: Tom Fontana for Oz; David Milch for Deadwood; Alan Ball for Six Feet Under; David Simon for The Wire; so on and so forth. Creation is therefore tied to a channel that is the essential condition of its possibility as well as to an author’s name and creative responsibility. This is all very paradoxical considering that the literature that is devoted to this golden age insists that these series have been elaborated in a writer’s room and not by a romantic figure of the almighty and inspired author. However, the publication of Difficult Men, in French translated as Tormented Men (Martin 2014) gives this figure a new vitality. It is clear that these HBO series constitute a kind of revenge of the writers on the directors, which Truffaut denounced in his attack on the “tradition of quality” in the French cinema of the 1950s (Truffaut 1954). Another point on which many researchers agree is that these series are not television, they are cinema. More precisely, European cinema, as Jane Feuer argues of Six Feet Under (Feuer 2007, 145), evoking Fellini in her discussion of the dream sequences in this series. Feuer takes European cinematography as a reference for judging US series, which she defines as art,

132  François Jost in opposition to the previous period when formatting reigned supreme and alluded to an industrial production rather than a creation. There is one last point that has not been directly addressed in the analyses of Quality Television, but which nevertheless is related to it and is highlighted by Jason Mittell (2006), which is the complexity of the story. While cinematographic complexity has a long history, which I have already explored in Robbe- Grillet’s films (Chateau sans accent and Jost 1979), it takes on a particular dimension in the series because of the fact that these fictions span weeks and sometimes years, or, if we consume them at once, seasons. Consequently, certain shots or situations may not make sense until much later and require the spectator to be attentive, much like the reader of In Search of Lost Time, whose cathedral structure is only apparent to those readers with a good memory and who have paid close attention to details. Writing this, I think of the second season of Breaking Bad, which opens on a series of enigmatic close-ups – a drip pipe, a storm lamp in among broken branches, a snail on a wall, a half-empty glass on a table, another lamp, a pool and a perfectly spherical eye floating on its surface, and finally, a pink teddy bear floating on the water – which only makes sense after four subsequent appearances (Episodes 1, 4, 10, and 13) which give them context, before finally explaining, at the very end of the season, that these visual fragments make reference to a plane crash. Or the first episode of Damages, where the scene of a young female lawyer who seems to shoot at her mentor, Patty, reappears three times in the season (2x04, 2x08, 2x09) and takes on a whole new meaning – completely different from the spectator’s inferences – in the final episode. These examples are all the more interesting because we know that Breaking Bad is a series that Rochant loves and that, moreover, it was in going on the set of this series that he “understood that the US system does not detract from the artistic ambition of a project but puts it in the context of industrialization” (Lacarrière avec è 2018). Rochant also visited the Damages studio (TéléObs 2015). This method of a progressive focus on an event, which gives structure to Damages and Breaking Bad is also at work in the first season of The Bureau. One recurrent scene throughout the season mixes the enigma of the shots in Breaking Bad and the revolver, which ended up being a false lead, in Damages. Rather than in four occurrences, it takes 14 for the scene to make sense, with each episode adding to the construction of the semantic edifice. I will not detail the effect of each of these recurrences here, but content myself to an outline of the major phases by revealing the inferences they provoke in the spectator. The voice of Malotru, the main character played by Mathieu Kassovitz, is first heard as he leaves the Maison du monde (“House of the world”) where he had gone to search for Nadia, at the very end of the second episode of the first season: That’s why there are rules. So that you never have to say to yourself: “It’ll be okay”. They are there to protect you, your sources and the

What is a quality French series?  133 DGSE. When we hope it’s going to be okay, it’s already too late. You have broken the rule and you have lost all protection, you submit to the law of fear of suspicion, of doubt (1x03). As the audience watches the character walking in slow motion, it seems that what is heard is an inner voice that corresponds to the present time of the sequence. Especially since slow motion stops abruptly when Malotru is nearly run over by a cyclist. It is as if, lost in his world, he suddenly comes back to reality. But, a few seconds later, this impression is thwarted by a close-up of a mouth – not unlike the beginning of Citizen ­Kane – ​­which continues the monologue onscreen: “I could have gone back to the office and said to my boss, Henri Duflot, ‘I messed up’”. Then, the text continues at the same time as the spectator sees a sensor on his chest, which is connected to a measuring device drawing curves: I was subject to another law that was only known to those who have lived in hiding for a long time, the law of the all-powerful… the one that makes you say “It’s going to be okay because I can do anything”. That’s why there are rules… This shift of the voice from the image of Malotru walking in the street to the onscreen voice produces a temporal break. What we thought was an internal monologue is spoken word. Because the two are syntactically linked, what appeared to be the present becomes the past. These shots of Kassovitz have an ambiguous status that I already analyzed elsewhere about Damages (Jost ­ 2016). They put us in medias res while creating a kind of temporal paradox: indeed, they send us towards the future of the narrative, which alone will explain the situation, while turning ipso facto everything that relates to the voice into past events, even if they seem to unfold in the present. This effect is reinforced by the actor’s voice, at 11 minutes into the next episode (1x03), this time in a voice-over configuration, while we see the Syrian government negotiating in secret with its opponents: Voice-over: ​­ You did not know at that time? …that Bachar was negotiating with the opposition in exile? It was impossible to guess. [New image of the measuring device that again anchors the voice]. Voice-over: He’d never done it and swore it never would, even under ​­ Russian pressure. ­ [offscreen]: What could he be talking about? MALOTRU [onscreen voice]: About Syria… MALOTRU:

As the dialogue ends, three seated people appear in silhouette, listening to and interrogating him. The voice-over becomes an onscreen voice, and for all intents and purposes, the character is in a perilous situation. He is sitting

134  François Jost with a device on his chest, answering questions. But who is the “you” that he addresses? Is it the Directorate- General of External Security (DGSE) who employs him and whom he mentioned? The “diagnosis” (Baroni 2007) is very difficult to establish. At any rate, the expectation of a bad ending is accentuated at the end of the same episode when Malotru concludes: “When you see someone, you never know what is to come. It could be a wonderful world or a nightmare… Then, it’s a nightmare” (1x03). The fifth and sixth occurrences follow the same principle that the images seem to illustrate the ­voice-over. ​­ However, they add a new element, which is what we could call ­ the theory of cover stories (légendes): “I could no longer take any risk for Nadia, [I had to] be more vigilant, let no one know who I was really… In order to protect her, I had to put a screen between me and the DGSE [He enters the Porte Dorée Hotel]… a screen named Paul Lefebvre (1x04). As if by chance, the next occurrence of this scene in progress shows two men from behind, watching Malotru’s confession on a screen, as he explains: “Put screens everywhere, inside and out. And I have to admit feeling my heart beating fast and […] not showing any sign of this, I’m starting to like it” (1x05). Now, a line in English (“This asshole comes to us believing he’s really our man”) and, later, the presence of two men taking notes in front of the screen makes the spectator wonder about the meaning of this interrogation. This linguistic clue suggests that he is not speaking with his colleagues at the DGSE and that this is not a trial for treason. The context will progressively become more clear, but it is not until the last episode of the season that we learn that Malotru is in the hands of the CIA, to whom he has offered his services. This will be done by an analepsis, a flashback, which breaks completely with the logic of progressive and chronological revelations which have provided the spectator information hitherto, as it takes the spectator back to the very beginning of the interrogation where he explains that he is willing to do anything to save Nadia. For the occasion, he, as the audience, discovers that Doctor Balmes who interrogated him at the DGSE is already a member of the CIA. I will end this analysis here, although it could be furthered in order to convince the reader, if needed, of the complexity of the narrative. In this respect, The Bureau is comparable to the US series I mentioned above. On the other hand, it differs strongly in its ethics and its aesthetics.

Can one lie to oneself? That the way The Bureau creates suspense is akin to some US series is undeniable. On the other hand, from an axiological point of view, Rochant’s series is completely dissimilar. This becomes very apparent in comparing the way that lying is treated. In many US series, lies are basically the alpha and the omega of fiction. The alpha of scripting because the lie is the machine that fabricates the story. Whatever the narrative process used, it creates differences in knowledge between the character and the spectator. Think of

What is a quality French series?  135 Walter White, in Breaking Bad, who makes drugs without his wife’s knowledge and makes up crazy stories to make his behavior seem reasonable. Or of Frank Underwood, in House of Cards, who, thanks to his frequent addresses to the camera, bears witness to the gap between his actions and his thoughts. Or Nicholas Brody, a Marine who was detained in Iraq for years and is planning an attack on the US President without the knowledge ­ of not only his wife, but especially the CIA (Homeland). The first narrative advantage of the lie is to create a narrative tension by revealing the characters’ secrets to the spectator. This spectatorial focalization, which gives the spectator a cognitive advantage and is linked to suspense, has another function which is to immediately place the liar in the bad guy category. The lie, in all US series, is indeed marked by the country’s original Puritanism. Let us not forget that perjury is punishable by seven years in prison. The very fact of lying, whatever the reason, is in itself a sin, as we see in Breaking Bad, when Skyler says to her husband, “All I asked of you was that you tell me the truth”, or in Homeland, where Jessica, Brody’s wife reproaches her: “What matters is that you lied… Every time you came here, you were lying to me. You know how bad that hurt me”. It is not difficult to find similar lines in many other American series. What is ethically wrong is less the content of the lie than the act of lying in itself. President Clinton made the painful experience during the Lewinsky scandal. The lie in these series is therefore both a psychological trait – summarized in Homeland by Dana, who says of her father “He’s a liar” – and a distinctive character trait of the villain. In The Bureau, it works very differently. Lies are a given, a diegetic postulate, constitutive of the environment and without moral connotation, as in this dialogue in Episode 2x02 when Malotru talks with a new recruit: Learn not to betray your affect. That’s what puts everyone in the shit! CÉLINE: Do you ever feel like a piece of shit? MALOTRU: I have been a shit, but I have never thought it… No, I’m kidding… Of course I’ve felt like that… Why are you a shit? CÉLINE: Yes… I do not know how to lie. MALOTRU: That’s a problem. We are in the land of lies here. CÉLINE: You, you’re very good at it. MALOTRU: You want to know if I’m a complete bastard? Yes, I know. CÉLINE: How do you do it? MALOTRU: Do you really want to know? CÉLINE: Otherwise, I have no business here. MALOTRU:

In the next episode, the Colonel confirms that if Céline does not know how to lie, she will never be sent to the field. But what is lying? The answer lies not in the formulation of this act in terms of the philosophy of language, according to which the lie goes against the rule of sincerity condition which holds that the speaker of a piece of information believes what he asserts

136  François Jost (Searle 1979). The first rule for the agents of the DGSE is not the being of the lie but in its appearance, which is the Non. felicity condition. This is the second lesson Malotru gives to Céline during a chance encounter (2x03). Following an aggressive question from Malotru, Céline is very put off and leaves the table. He grabs her by the wrist, restraining her and tells her the secret of lying: Neutral. Neutral. I can’t know if it’s true or not. Look at me without moving. Face me with a mask. That tells me nothing. Nothing at all. Not hot or cold. Smile slightly [she smiles]. That’s too much. I should be wondering “She’s smiling, but I’m not sure”. Find an answer as neutral as your face. Did someone ask you to interrogate me? And if they did? Would you tell me? CÉLINE: No. MALOTRU: Very good. MALOTRU:

Therefore, lying means, above all, blocking any emotional release. To put oneself in the position of the one who looks outside for clues and sincerity and not, as the philosophy of language does, on the side of the speaker. Malotru’s lesson to Céline, which the new recruit very quickly learns, is definitely a postulate of diegetic verisimilitude, but it is above all an aesthetic principle that affects the entire series. Kassovitz’s acting is completely neutral, even though the emotions he experiences are intense. His emotions are not communicated through his expressions, his tone or the charged reaction shots. They are communicated through the construction of the spectator’s empathic posture. This posture is made possible by the spectator’s previous experience of similar feelings or of being in love, which allows the spectator to get in Malotru’s head (“It didn’t occur to you that I was in love”, he says in the last episode of the second season). One of the only moments he abandons his inexpressivity is at the end of 3x08 when, only after being held hostage in very harsh conditions, after surviving in a desert, after terrible physical hardships, he takes the hand of the psychologist, Dr. Balmes, and cries. This very restrained sequence, accompanied by Malotru’s excuse – “I’m sorry” – lasts 15 seconds. In this regard, the French series, whose structural complexity is very close to certain US series, is a complete departure. Think of Carrie, a CIA agent in Homeland, who is something of a Malotru. She is bipolar and can only live a normal life when she takes her medication, but to forget her worries, she gets drunk on white wine, and even gives herself to the first man she meets in a bar and sleeps with a terrorist. Very regularly, the pretty spy blows a fuse to the point that, from the first season, she is suspended. This very stereotyped image was very uncomfortable, and the Agency was pleased when Carrie stopped working and moved to Germany in season 5. To be fair, the heroine’s angry outbursts and the transparent expressions that allow the

What is a quality French series?  137 spectator to read her like an open book are much more Hollywood codes than those of the world of intelligence. The second rule of lies in The Bureau is even more a contradiction of the non: sincerity condition. Malotru’s first lesson to Céline is that “to lie, one must know how to lie to oneself”. From Searle’s perspective, this maxim is almost incomprehensible. Insofar as an assertion is based on the non: sincerity condition which is for the speaker to believe what he/she is saying, lies are defined by not believing in what one says. To lie to oneself presupposes an externality that is difficult to conceive: it would mean, on the one hand, that the speaker is capable of dissociating and placing him/ herself in the position of receptor of the utterance, and, on the other hand, that this speaker is no longer capable of judging the truth of the assertion he utters. How can this cleaved subject be on both sides at the same time and himself be made to believe what he knows to be false? This is obviously an aporia from which it is possible to grasp without assuming a certain mental confusion or a refusal to seriously consider a thought that has been formulated to oneself. This paradoxical state is perfectly expressed in an interrogation scene. “One would think that in a situation like this one becomes confused, one is mistaken, one does not know who one is”, says Malotru on a superimposed image of Nadia caressing his face. “But, I-I was not confused. I knew who I was. I knew I was Paul Lefebvre” (1x07). At the very moment he asserts he was not confused, he knew who he was, he identifies himself by his code name and not his real name, which is Guillaume Debailly. It is as if the “screen” which is his cover story actually masks his own personality. To this extent, it can be said that he lies to himself. In terms of the script, this is very well demonstrated by the double agent psychologist, working for the CIA, who presents herself as the “true lie detector”. If the polygraph is able to detect when the speaker intentionally disguises the truth – the characteristic of the lie – it cannot detect when the speaker is fooled by his/ her own inventions. Hence, her mission: “They made me come here for one reason only: to tell them when you lie to yourself” (1x07). Admittedly, as the CIA observer tells him, his “story holds”, he seems to be telling the truth, which is the essential condition, as we have seen, of the credibility of the lie, but he deceives himself when it comes to his true motives. To lie to oneself is not exactly to lie, as, strictly speaking, it is impossible given the definition of a lie; it is to deceive oneself. And this is what happens to Malotru, obsessed with mastery, according to Doctor Balmes: “I have always been fascinated by the power of denial. You think it’s out of love… You tell yourself a beautiful story. No, you’re here to go on another mission, to wear a mask. You need duplicity, you need to be a facade. That’s why you’re dangerous this need is insatiable”. Ultimately, what we might call the intelligence officer’s habitus is linked to his psychology. He has invented a love story to continue to do his job. This hesitation between the habitus and the character’s personality, which

138  François Jost makes it more difficult for the spectator to call Malotru “bipolar” than describe Carrie, clearly places The Bureau in the tradition of the antihero. Not in the widely-held sense that the villain is sometimes opposed to the inevitably nice hero, like Walter White, but rather in the sense given by modern literature of an ordinary man confronted with extraordinary events (K. in The Castle or Joseph K. in Kafka’s The Trial, or Musil’s The Man without Quality, or Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks).

An author of French tradition? Quality TV is unmistakably linked to the author’s name, as noted by Michele Hilmes (2002) referring to Steven Bochco, the creator of Hill Street Blues: “His name had begun to mean more in terms of genre, quality, style and audience than did the name of the network his show appeared on”. Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, who quote Hilmes in their introductory text to quality TV, add that the functions of the “writer-producer” are to be the “protector, guarantor and organiser of quality in the post-network, post-1996 television age” (2007, 9). To give a rough summary, the writing of a US series involves a “creator”, the person who has the original idea, a team of writers who, under the direction of a showrunner (who is not necessarily the creator of the series), develop the writing of the episodes, some directors who films them, a studio that produces them, a channel or, today, a platform that broadcasts them. Rochant’s position in relation to this scheme is original. His merit is to have imported a largely American inspired model (after visiting the Damages studio). This was done in part in adopting the writer’s room, thereby breaking with the solitary practice of French filmmakers, as well as by uniting all stages of production, juxtaposing writing, filming and post-production in one place, Luc Besson’s Cité du Cinéma. But it could almost be said that he went even further. This authordirector of film donned the showrunner’s costume, eliminating anything that bothered him: At some point […] I understood that between the director, the producer and the broadcaster, there was one too many intermediaries. This time, I had a direct line with Canal+, who wanted to collaborate with me. I concentrated my energy on the discussion with the channel since, in the end, it is they who decides. They need convincing? Better to go there directly (TéléObs 2015). Moving from the writing room to the stage in the same day, then to the editing room, himself producing delicate episodes or sequences, he retains control over all stages of production, which is not always the case in the US, where, as we know, filmmakers rarely have the “final cut”. As we have seen, Quality TV is magnified by its references to European cinema. In this respect, while Rochant may resemble US showrunners in the way he imagines

What is a quality French series?  139 his series, he differs from them in being a film director. Admittedly, this is not an exceptional case. Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom (original title: Riget), David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick are all other examples. It should be noted that these series are deemed works of arts because of their cinematographic authorship. Éric Rochant became known for a film – ​­Love Without Pity (1989) – which won both public and critical success and was awarded several important prizes (the Louis Delluc Prize and the Caesar for First Film). Some have seen in him the pioneer of a “new New Wave” (Vasse 2008, 26), calling him an artist and likening him to his forefathers, Truffaut or Godard. In 1994, he directed The Patriots, which is set in the world of Israeli secret services, and, in 2013, Möbius, a spy film. From the very start, The Bureau is situated in the cinematographic field by the fact that it is written by a filmmaker (according to Warhol’s reasoning that a film [Chelsey Girl] is a work of art “first [if] it was made by an artist and, secondly, if [it] is presented as art” (Warhol 2005, 143). Beyond this somewhat brutal argument, it must be noted that The Bureau’s script is very similar to that of The Patriots, both from a thematic and a stylistic point of view, which shows a continuity of concern that is constitutive of what is traditionally considered as an author. If Rochant assumes the functions of showrunner insofar as he oversees the coherence of the show, he is also an author in the aesthetic sense, inherited from Truffaut. In his well-known article, “A certain trend of French cinema” (original title: “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français”), the Nouvelle Vague’s pope suggests that an author is someone who maintains the same relationship with his work that Flaubert has to his character when he writes “Madame Bovary, is me!”. No doubt that Rochant could say: “Malotru, is me!”. Does he not confess “There is a lot of me in Kassovitz’s character, as in that of Yvan Attal (The ­ Patriots) and Dujardin (Möbius). ­ They are all obsessed with mastery and suddenly master nothing” (TéléObs 2015)? Obviously, when he writes Malotru, he knows what he is talking about. But, beyond this resemblance between the character and its creator, The Bureau is marked by stylistic continuity which is an even stronger argument for authorship. Rochant declares: “I guarantee style”. This style can be characterized by the following features. Earlier I showed how, in The Bureau, suspense is born from a kind of progressive focus on a scene whose meaning is not immediately clear. This process makes use of the voice-over, which I consider as a stylistic trait specific to Rochant insofar, as it is also in his films. In The Patriots, the hero Ariel says to his sister: “The news I’m sending you is false. Like all countries, Israel has a hidden face… It’s time to say that I’m concerned”. This voice is both what drives the enigma and a way of explaining an intelligence agent’s work (“Manipulation is our job”, “No hierarchy here”, and so on). In the second season of The Bureau, Malotru addresses his daughter first in voice-over, then in a journal he writes for him and that we discover in the sixth episode. It is still a question of explaining his work as clandestine,

140  François Jost but it is primarily a process that reinforces the spectator’s questioning, and which, therefore, holds him/ her in suspense. “If someone tells you I committed suicide, it’s a lie”; “If you’re told that I fled, don’t believe it either” (2x01); “I could not say at that moment that I had no choice” (2x02). Little by little, this address to his daughter creates an emotional connection that culminates in the ninth episode when she discovers his notebook. A second trait is the acting. If the main actor in The ­Patriots – Attal – ­​­ is ​­ not the same as in The ­Bureau – Kassovitz – it does not mean that the acting is not exactly the same, that is the same neutrality of voice and face. Of course, both works are about the same milieu, but this realistic justification does not interdict the same desire to build “scenes where they [the actors] were not supposed to show their emotions”. In this respect, Malotru is obviously the opposite of his Homeland counterpart, Carrie Mathison, whose episodes shine through her tears and nervous breakdowns. For Rochant, psychology and aesthetics merge in the same litote. The third point, which is probably rooted in Rochant’s very first film, Love Without Pity, is to show ordinary people, even when it comes to extraordinary events. The Bureau, like The Patriots, stages human characters, who contrast, of course, with spy movie superheroes. And, in this sense they “demystify” the genre. If the term “French quality” referred to a “daddy’s cinema” conspired by Truffaut and his friends because it represented the very opposite of auteur cinema, the revival of the US series is accompanied by a very close expression, “quality television”. There is a paradox. While the Nouvelle Vague refused the writers of this academic cinema the status of author, quality TV series highlight them. The Bureau’s tour de force is to have imported into France a conception of television fiction that is based on an US studio conception of a plural author, while preserving the French concept of the author as creator of a world and an aesthetic. Is this the new “French quality”? No doubt, but on the condition of washing the expression of its cinematic significance. In television, the quest for quality will always be a fight.

References Baroni, Raphaël. 2007. La tension narrative. Paris: Seuil. Cardwell, Sarah. 2007. “Is Quality Television Any Good?”. In Quality TV. Contemporary American Television and Beyond, edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, 19–34. London: IB Tauris. Chateau sans accent, Dominique, and François Jost. 1979. Nouveau cinéma, nouvelle sémiologie, Essai d’analyse des films d’Alain Robbe-Grillet. Paris: UGE. Feuer, Jane. 2007. “HBO and the Concept of Quality TV”. In Quality TV. Contemporary American Television and Beyond, edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, 145–157. London: IB Tauris. Hilmes, Michele. 2002. Only Connect: A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the United States. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Jost, François. 2003. Realtà/ finzione. L’impero del falso. Milan: Castoro.

What is a quality French series?  141 Jost, François. 2016. “Repenser le futur avec les séries. Essai de narratologie ­Lacarrière”. Télévision, Paris, CNRS Éditions 7: 13–29. Lacarriére, Cyril. 2018. “Le Bureau des légendes, un phénomène industriel unique”. L’Opinion, 19 October. Le Peron, Serge, and Alain Philippon. 1982. “Entretien avec Yves Laumet”. Les Cahiers du cinéma, 336. Martin, Brett. 2014. Difficult Men. Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution. London: Penguin Books. McCabe, Janet and Kim Akass. 2007. “Introduction: Debating Quality”. In Quality TV. Contemporary American Television and Beyond, edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, 1–12. London and New York: IB Tauris. Mittell, Jason. 2006. “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Televi​­ sion”. The Velvet Light Trap, 58: ­29–40. Searle, John R. 1979. Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. TéléObs. 2015. “Eric Rochant: ‘Dans une bonne série, tout part de l’écriture’”. TéléObs, 13 January. Truffaut, François. 1954. “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français”. Cahiers du cinéma, 31. Vasse, David. 2008. Le Nouvel âge du cinéma d’auteur français. Paris: Klincksieck. ­ Warhol, Andy. 2005. Entretiens 1962/1987. Paris: Grasset.

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Part 4

Italy

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10 Towards a new model for Italian TV fiction Sky Italia originals and the struggle for difference Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni The genesis of a new model: Italian fiction goes pay An important factor has emerged in the last 12 years that has changed the Italian television and media scenario in several ways. The effects have been felt in the audience engagement, the content and narratives, the production routines and professional roles, and the relationships between broadcasting and the world of national cinema. A strand of domestically produced original fiction has now emerged in Italy, too, made for the “walled garden” of pay television rather than for the relatively amorphous generalist and mainstream audience. The initial experimentation has now led to an established template. This phenomenon is not new in the wider world. US cable channels have progressively revolutionized the nature of seriality, by venturing into the production of an alternative kind of television fiction with different themes, languages and target audiences from the networks’ offerings (Leverette, Ott and Buckley 2008; Lotz 2014, 2018; Mittell 2015). Similar developments are afoot in all the major European markets, some having advanced further than others. The traditional players have also been joined by on-demand platforms, which are producing original fiction of their own. The situation differs from country to country. In Italy, pay TV has established itself in two waves. First, after an “analogue prehistory”, Sky Italia then from the multinational conglomerate NewsCorp became the dominant player between 2003 and 2007, reaching a critical mass of 4.5 million subscribers (Barca 2012), largely through the premium genres par excellence: film and sport (football especially). Then, in 2008, original pay TV productions began to emerge in a wider range of genres, with original scripted and unscripted content, from entertainment formats (X ­ Factor, Masterchef) to self-produced fiction. Fiction is a strategic genre for television. It is a key area of investment for networks that has brought in significant and growing revenue since the 1990s, and it is extremely popular, a place for stories that reflect and are rooted in the nation’s culture and imagination, for Italian fiction exhibits long-established models and themes (Buonanno 2012; Barra and Scaglioni 2015). Yet it is also costly and risky – the ratings can be measured

146  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni only after the entire production chain is complete, production is finished often many months before the actual airing, and a flop is especially critical for a long series. Moreover, producing original TV fiction was a whole new departure for Sky Italia, which has gradually established a model of its own, by trial and error. Aware of the long-standing marriage between fiction and mainstream TV, the pay operator began to develop its own approach in 2008. It differs from the generalist model in several ways. First, in purely quantitative terms: Sky Italia’s schedules have limited (albeit growing) room for fiction. In 2008, when pay fiction debuted, there were a total of 13 primetime slots (with 18 episodes in total, some scheduled in the traditional backto-back formula), occupied by two titles – ​­Quo vadis, baby? and Romanzo criminale. In the first five years, Sky developed, produced and broadcast another ten productions in various formats: the TV movies Un Natale per due and Un Natale coi fiocchi, the miniseries Nel nome del male, Moana and Faccia d’angelo, the longer series Romanzo criminale 2 and In Treatment, and three shows produced by the Fox Italia subsidiary (Boris, Non ­ pensarci and Il mostro di Firenze). Over the subsequent five years, the series and seasons grew longer (with Gomorrah, I delitti del BarLume, other seasons of In Treatment, 1992/1993/1994, The Young Pope/ The New Pope ­ ­ and Il miracolo, plus experimental comedies such as Dov’è Mario? and The Generi), although the general scale was still a world away from what the mainstream networks are used to. Another important difference is the target audience, a subscriber pool of circa five million households comprising just over 20% of the national television viewers, a group with a characteristic profile, being much younger than the network average. As a paying audience, they expect higher quality, accustomed as they are to consuming US-produced series even more than “traditional” Italian fiction. A final difference is the production context. Mainstream fiction is conceived almost entirely for the Italian market. Only exceptional products are distributed overseas, such as Inspector Montalbano (not to mention the direct and indirect fruits of the Sky model, which have found their way into the schedules at the Rai public-service broadcaster, especially since 2017). But pay fiction, almost inevitably, has a different ambition: to maintain the (expensive) high production values to satisfy a more demanding audience. And that naturally opens the way to international-distribution and ­co-production ​­ opportunities. Fewer projects to progress, an audience of subscribers and not just viewers, and the chance to make products with international ambition: these are the characteristics that have shaped Italian premium fiction from the outset. They have gradually translated into a more sharply defined editorial project that has marked out Sky Italia fiction as a highly original departure, a step change in the history of the genre. The model has various key features. First, premium fiction has explored several formats, from TV movies to miniseries and to longer series. The

Towards a new model for Italian TV fiction  147 latter, comprising ten or twelve episodes lasting a full 50 minutes, is particularly fertile ground for pay television, and the broadcaster has increasingly invested in it, with Gomorrah. The Series, 1992/1992/1993 and the “limited ­ series” The Young Pope/The New Pope and Il miracolo. The shorter formats serve to create events that add sizzle to the schedule in a given month (as did Faccia d’angelo, which prompted weeks of heated media debate when it aired in March 2012) or at a special time of year (e.g. the two Christmas movies, Un Natale per due and Un Natale coi fiocchi). But they are less effective at generating strong, recognizable product brands that build loyal, devoted audiences over several months and then several seasons (as both the series version of Romanzo criminale and then Gomorrah did). Second, pay fiction has departed from everyday mainstream fiction in its content and style. It needs to differentiate itself as a highly recognizable and communicable product. The projects have been based on subjects or topics with immediate impact: media brands already established in other texts (bestsellers made into hit feature films, as in Romanzo criminale and Gomorrah; ­director-brands ​­ like Paolo Sorrentino and storyteller-brands ­ ​­ like Niccolò Ammaniti) or major, high-profile nationwide phenomena and stories as yet untold elsewhere (such as the characters of Moana Pozzi, gangster Felice Maniero in Faccia d’angelo, or the political scandal of the Tangentopoli corruption crisis and the Mani Pulite inquests for 1992/1993/1994). ­ ­ The recognizable theme must be expressed in an equally characteristic style that resonates through all the creative features of the product and permeates its brand: the aesthetic and visual look, the logo, the overall tone of voice, the cast, the writing, and the communication and marketing tools. Romanzo criminale and Gomorrah have been the most successful brands from this perspective, too, having been developed in a convergent, “extended” manner, while allowing the grassroots and fandom cultures to further expand them. Moving away from the commonplaces of mainstream network fiction also means adopting a view of reality that is less Manichaean and edifying. For, by tapping into the established canons of various genres (in particular, the gangster movie for Romanzo criminale, Faccia d’angelo and Gomorrah), stories overturn the representative tenets of traditional fiction. Similarly, biopics may be dedicated to characters who are much more controversial in the collective imagination, like a porn star or serial criminal. Representations of crime and evil are unleavened by happy endings and guardian angels. Third, the Sky model is built on excellent writing (Scrosati 2013). Both in the development of the outline and the scripts and later during production and post-production, the frame of reference is more the cinema than classic Italian TV fiction. The products are scheduled in a package of channels normally dedicated to cinema or top-notch major US-made series; the subscribers expect great things, hence the drive for quality. Thus, the desire to involve professionals and talent from the Italian film industry, albeit in an industrial television-production scenario (preferably

148  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni involving series), is another of Sky Italia fiction’s hallmarks. An interesting case from this perspective was the making of the Italian edition of the series In Treatment. It was an original marriage of a project from the world of television (the Israeli format Be Tipul) and artists from the world of film (director Saverio Costanzo and many Italian cinema actors). This process was fully embraced also on The Young Pope and its sequel The New Pope, a direct collaboration with HBO (and Canal+). Clearly, fiction’s arrival on national pay television has brought numerous innovations, from the nature of the texts (their content, styles and formats) to aspects of the production machinery. The rest of this chapter highlights three crucial strands of innovation: conceiving, developing and producing fiction projects in collaboration with production companies; the changes in the broadcaster’s production routines; and the vital importance of communication and promotion in the Sky Italia fiction model.

Scouting and storytelling: the origins and development of Sky Italia fiction Selecting the projects to develop into fully fledged productions is a crucial part of Sky Italia’s fiction model. The annual output is limited, with many fewer titles than for the networks. The need both to focus on ideas that can be adapted to meet the prerequisites of the editorial model and to create events highly marketable to subscribers and prospects alike makes pre-production a somewhat delicate stage. In 2008, Sky Italia embarked on a major effort to scout projects and recruit experts, with a keen eye for those best suited to premium fiction. When Sky Italia began producing series, it lacked know-how. But it did have long-standing ­ ​­ connections with ­film-production ​­ companies – ­ and ​­ they hold the rights to the feature films destined for pay programming. It started to produce fiction with two of them. Colorado Film, run by Maurizio Totti, and Cattleya, led by Riccardo Tozzi, Giovanni Stabilini, Marco Chimenz and Maurizio Tini, made Quo vadis, baby? and Romanzo criminale, respectively, thus underlining a link with the cinema production world. When Sky announced its intention to start producing TV fiction, too, they naturally approached two film companies, Cattleya and Colorado, which had both produced series based on feature films, with a carefully considered request to involve the films’ directors… As Sky’s first two series projects were film adaptations, the three companies were on the same wavelength. This brought an element of big-screen continuity to Sky’s arrival on the small screen, emphasising the product’s cinematic origin, character, quality and narrative density (Tini 2013). Fox Italia’s fiction debut, on the other hand, had more of a television feel to it. Boris, a bitesize meta-television sitcom, began as an “interstitial piece

Towards a new model for Italian TV fiction  149 of content to reinforce the network brand”, made for pay television by Lorenzo Mieli’s Wilder (now Wildside, part of Fremantle): Boris was originally supposed to be three minutes long; then we made the pilot, and three minutes somehow became ten. We thought, “it lasts ten minutes, actually more: 13–14 minutes when edited. We could make two 13-minute back-to-back episodes. In the end, we made a 24-minute episode – a classic sitcom format, essentially” (Mieli 2013). Sky Italia’s and Fox Italia’s premium fiction debuts were shaped by critical branding needs. Producing original series was a whole new arena that involved developing striking texts to spotlight and strengthen the network brands and the platforms’ overall offerings. Initially, the projects chosen reflected this imprinting. They involved bringing in a celebrated film director, the Oscar-winning Gabriele Salvatores (for Quo vadis, baby), serializing Giancarlo De Cataldo’s novel and Michele Placido’s film (for Romanzo criminale), and developing a cult sitcom to enrich a roster of US-made series (for ­ Boris). And all these ventures were well worth talking about and would make great marketing collateral for a pay offering. The demand for a kind of fiction that contrasted, as we have seen, with the mainstream offering in its content, style, expressive language and target audiences prompted several shifts in the relationships between broadcasters and production companies and in the associated production routines. Projects to pursue are selected based on pay TV’s specific marketing requirements (especially the need to cut through the background noise and build newsworthy products) and on more-or-less new “rules of engagement” clearly set out by the broadcaster. Meanwhile, the actual production stages and the types of professional involved reveal an innovative side of their own, too. A production practice ideally suited to producing long fiction series is emerging with increasing clarity, inspired by US industrial models – albeit inevitably on a different scale in terms of investment, budgets and output volumes. This US-style production approach had already figured on mainstream television over the last 15 years. Indeed, some series have featured multi-strand plots, interwoven horizontal and vertical storylines, planned multiple seasons, and a complex, “ready-furnished” narrative ecosystem to which viewers may enter, travel and return (Grasso and Scaglioni 2009; Bisoni and Innocenti 2013; Pescatore 2018). Important precedents include the “Italian soap opera” tradition (Un posto al sole, Vivere, Centovetrine), also in police-drama guise (La ­ squadra), along with much of the output from Pietro Valsecchi’s Taodue factory for Mediaset’s free commercial channels ( Distretto di polizia, RIS and Squadra antimafia, which fill the rigid framework inspired by the US crime series with Italian characters, content and stories). The task, then, was to re-adapt and re-launch similar experiences specifically to the Sky editorial model (Scaglioni and Barra 2013; Barra and Scaglioni 2015).

150  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni The production of season one of Romanzo criminale is the most striking example. On paper, serializing Romanzo seemed to tick all the boxes to fit the Sky model, yet it also presented certain problems, which emerged as soon as the project was approved. The reference to successful existing models (such as De Cataldo’s book and Placido’s film) put the communications on a firm footing, although some risks were apparent, especially regarding continuity or discontinuity with the earlier works. Cattleya, the company that produced the series in association with Babe Film, Warner Bros. and Aquarius Film, had some crucial decisions to make. Although altering little from a technical standpoint – the set, costumes and all the technical and artistic elements that help maintain a cinematic visual quality – it grasped the need for radical change in other areas. The most evident discontinuities concerned the cast and directing. The film’s young movie stars gave way to an excellent group of unknown actors in the series, while an established director with his own recognizable brand, Michele Placido, was replaced by the younger and then little-known Stefano Sollima. Equally significant changes in the transition from Romanzo criminale the film to Romanzo criminale the series also affected the production routines of the team that developed the product from writing through to production and post-production. Serializing the story and adopting the narrative techniques of US series and of the ­generalist-fiction experiences mentioned above (multi-strand narration, ​­ ­­ ​­ episode- and season-based storylines, continuity across multiple seasons, and building a rich, multi-level narrative universe) demanded practices that departed from those typical of cinema or of the more traditional and classic flavours of mainstream national fiction. Those practices primarily regarded the writing. The scriptwriting team hired for Romanzo (Daniele Cesarano, Barbara Petronio, Leonardo Valenti, and Paolo Marchesini) were all from the “school” of Taodue, which cut its teeth between 2003 and 2008 on writing “American-style” scripts, especially dramas like Distretto di polizia and RIS. And it is precisely in a series like Distretto that the story editors developed their main skills. Using their background, they “write the outlines, work with the writers on all the lineups and storylines, and basically construct the series” (Cesarano 2013). An analogous production model was then adopted for Romanzo, with a few additional innovations thrown in. A second characteristic feature is the actual production phase. In adapting the US-style model to pay TV fiction’s needs, they invested in a unique personality that, more even than the story editor, could oversee and steer each stage of the work according to the requirements negotiated with the broadcaster, from coordinating the scriptwriters to working on set with the director and actors, and from post-production to editing. Thus a kind of “showrunner” emerged, a production professional who coordinates and ensures consistency across all the steps in the complex business of making a long series. For Romanzo criminale, Cattleya put Gina Gardini in charge of the production process. Gardini has a wealth of international experience, having

Towards a new model for Italian TV fiction  151 headed up Miramax International in London, and she introduced working practices typical of the English-speaking world: My role did not yet exist in Italy, in the sense that I am an A mericanstyle producer: I develop the material; I oversee the project from start to finish and “package” it up, from writing with the scriptwriters to shooting and then during post-production. There was no such role in Italy; the producers here are mainly financiers, but in the US being a producer is a creative job (Gardini 2013). Gardini, then, was the glue that linked the work and coordinated its separate stages. The first stage, the writing, involved the scriptwriting team supported by De Cataldo. First, they developed an “ideas board”, a raw overarching treatment to “show what is not in the film” (Cesarano 2013). This material was partly to be sourced from the novel and partly to be written from scratch. The treatment was then shared with and approved by the production company and the broadcaster: The treatment won them [Sky] over, because it brought to life something that they did not have a clear idea of. That’s when Sky Italia began to ask us for the missing files: material that wasn’t there in the book… Actually, there was no secret stash of material; it was all made up, based partly on the book and partly on how the characters developed. After obtaining this outline, we worked closely with Gina Gardini, as she oversaw the script from beginning to end (Cesarano 2013). Once the writing was finished, and director Stefano Sollima had been recruited, attention shifted to the set. Cattleya and Gina Gardini discussed with him how the series would take shape. It would focus, on one hand, on the cinematographic quality of the product and, on the other, on constructing a rich text that the marketers could work with – t wo key needs for the nascent Sky Italia model. The director was fully onside with the direction, casting and staging, as Gardini recalls: Sollima immediately had a crystal- clear vision about the Romanzo criminale material from our very first meeting: it needed a younger vibe; it needed to be a “straight” genre production, stripped of melodrama. I knew straight away that Stefano was the one. It took a while to convince everyone, as his CV was quite short at the time  – four episodes of a series, one episode of Crimini with certain limits, and some shorts that were great but rather bewildering. He was entirely untried as a director. In the first season, as we had already done much of the writing, Stefano wasn’t closely involved in the development. It seemed like an American series production, with a director who comes in later, although he immediately became vital for the cast, as Stefano is

152  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni one of those directors who has to screen-test people ten times… But in season two, he was much more involved in the writing from the outset (Gardini ­ 2013). The marketing, meanwhile, is a top priority for Sky Italia, and it was planned as the product was being developed. As Gardini (2013) notes, “The key for Sky was promotion. Before filming even began, they were already working on the promotion set-up, recreating an existing brand in an innovative way”. The showrunner also oversaw the post-production, working alongside the director and liaising between the production company and the broadcaster. Every episode was edited by Patrizio Marone and Stefano Sollima with Gina Gardini, and then presented to Sky for any tweaks. The entire production process thus became a template for future series: the same team from season one made season two of Romanzo criminale, in 2009–2010; Cattleya, in harness with Fandango, has later produced Gomorrah. The Series since 2013, replicating many aspects of the successful Romanzo model. Another innovative feature in this case was the push for internationalization from the outset. While Romanzo season one was bought in 50  countries, Romanzo 2 was co-produced with the German distributor Beta Film. The experience was repeated also with Gomorrah, a brand with immediate international appeal: Gomorrah is a special case, as the rights and the film belonged to Fandango; at Cattleya, meanwhile, we had built a direct relationship with Roberto Saviano, and we were negotiating with him about adapting one of his books for television… The idea was to see if Fandango wanted to do it with us and if they would let us use Gomorrah. We dashed off an initial idea, including Saviano’s involvement, to get things moving. We had seen it as a Sky project right from the start. Having Saviano on board and a title with such media power certainly made it a lot easier to bring partners in. Sky Italia agreed immediately, as did our German production partners. There were another 20 international parties to the initial negotiations, but we chose Beta Film from Germany, who had a dual involvement on the finance side, acting as co-producer and underwriting the guaranteed minimum on overseas sales. That gave us the resources that a project like this needed. We were shooting outside Rome for 25–27 weeks. The action and effects are much more prominent than usual, which also ramps up the costs. We redid the treatment several times – we wrote and binned and rewrote, and that obviously raises the cost, too (Tini 2013). Gomorrah deploys the key elements of the Sky Italia model to even fuller effect, with a strong brand, actors in their first major roles, and an investment in people with strong ideas as directors (Sollima and later Francesca Comencini and Claudio Cupellini) and writers (Stefano Bises, Leonardo

Towards a new model for Italian TV fiction  153 Fasoli and Ludovica Rampoldi). After its 2014 debut (Renga 2016), the project has had another three seasons (2016, 2017 and 2019). The Wildside production company (now part of Fremantle group), on the other hand, has been involved in several other productions: In Treatment, an Italian adaptation of the Israeli scripted format Be’Tipul, aired in three seasons from 2013 to 2017; 1992, the series about the Tangentopoli political- corruption scandal, with further seasons 1993 and 1994, broadcast from 2015 to 2019; The Young Pope (2016), with its sequel The New Pope (2020); and Il miracolo (2018). ­ Producing the Italian edition of In Treatment was a tremendously complex affair. The project had originally been conceived and developed for another network, which did not have the budget to shoot it. Sky Italia eventually decided that the series could meet its requirements, so production began. Working with a globally successful scripted format like Be Tipul enabled Sky to rewrite, adapt and remake it to create a highly sophisticated narrative structure and a hugely innovative format. From a production standpoint, In Treatment had to get to grips with the model, which required the professionals involved to follow what in Italy were unusual practices. The transition from Be’Tipul to the Italian production In Treatment provided a kind of apprenticeship, as producer Lorenzo Mieli emphasizes: In Treatment was a real lesson for me. We met with the headwriters, Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi and Stefano Sardo, and with the supervisor, Nicola Lusuardi, and we decided to use the model as a template to copy and start adapting… It’s a great way to learn: having such a great thing and then seeing what you need to do to reshape it, at least without losing too much. Thinking about how to work with the actors and the director, trying to make them see that we had to follow the format’s rules, that the rules were more important than they were. It might sound trite, but it was a school for us, a school of editorial, production and conceptual method, of how you approach your work. In Treatment is like a text by a mediaeval scribe  – they had to copy other people’s works to learn how to write works of their own, little by little (Mieli 2013). The In Treatment production team was also hired to make 1992. The school of adapting a global scripted format was put to use for the first time on a completely original series with no existing brands or scenarios to prop it up. It was a new challenge for the Sky model – and it worked, at least in part. And Wildside’s subsequent productions for Sky Italia (among others) raised the bar once again, by bringing in major international players (starting with HBO and Canal+ for The Young Pope), Hollywood actors and first-rate directors and scriptwriters to work directly on the production. The aim, then, after Italy’s first foray into premium fiction, was to power ahead also in the international markets.

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Power and control: production from the broadcaster’s standpoint New models and forms of fiction premium production have become established not only because of the fresh stimuli and additions to the sector’s traditional production routines. Sky Italia’s particular ways of organizing itself to commission and produce original television series and of entertaining constant dealings with producers, writers, artistic and technical professionals have also been key. From this perspective, one of the broadcaster’s historical advantages has been its positioning as a largely new player in a still-developing and expanding market: When we began, we were like a blank sheet of paper: we gave ourselves carte blanche. None of us had dealt with production companies or worked in the television fiction sector before. The only previous links were with some distribution companies, although they followed different procedures and were run by different kinds of professional. To compensate for this lack of a tradition – and the possible risks born of inexperience – we brought in a consultant, who liaised constantly with the production world in the first few years, and we cultivated an openness to international ideas, models and best practices, courtesy of (and indeed encouraged by) the global nature of the media group (Hartmann ­ 2013). The lack of prior experience made for a bumpy yet exciting journey, proceeding by varying degrees of trial and error, U -turns and changes to the editorial guidelines: “You get there by trying and failing, by experimenting and building an experience” (Scrosati 2013 – even though some cardinal points did become established early on, like the informal slogan-brief given to producers and writers, “If it works for Mediaset and Rai, it ain’t good for Sky”, and therefore the need to stand out from all the other Italian mainstream products). This explains why the Sky Italia model vacillated for some time between miniseries and long-form series, before settling on a series production concept that could be extended up to several seasons, or at least had a replicable, marketable brand. The importance of original fiction productions for Sky Italia and for building its brand can be seen in the way the company operates throughout the production process: “We produce fiction not to fill space but to leave a mark […]. We don’t want to be the broadcaster that just sits there and gives orders; we want to work with our partners as a team” (Scrosati 2013). So the commissioner’s task is to steer the producers and act as a sounding board in what is akin to a co-production role, given Sky Italia’s commitment to explaining what it wants and to overseeing the fictions very closely at every stage.

Towards a new model for Italian TV fiction  155 The in-house team handling fiction and entertainment productions is a small, tight-knit hub of professionals who form a lean, efficient editorial group that manages the projects meticulously and deals essentially directly with scriptwriters and production companies. It takes the decisions and drives a title forward from the initial idea through to airing, reporting to the productions director and creative director. The “quality of the human relationships” that develop, with the numerous opportunities for dialogue, discussion and engagement, provides the external professionals with much to ponder. The resulting relationship differs somewhat from that with the corresponding larger, less flexible departments (with their longer roster of projects and much bigger budgets) at traditional broadcasters Rai and Mediaset. Higher up, original-fiction production strategy is set by the company’s top management, especially the programming department, which oversees the entire content offering (except sport), including news, entertainment and fiction. Management has a dual role. On one hand, it “builds economic models that enable the creative team to do its job better” (Scrosati 2013), thus making fiction productions financially viable, by entering into pre-purchase agreements and finding production and distribution partners in Italy and abroad. On the other, it “harmonises the production structure with the company’s other departments, so that marketing, the press office, promotions and the on-air programming work effectively, allocating the various responsibilities and fostering teamwork wherever possible” (Scrosati 2013). From a strictly editorial standpoint, management exists to make strategic decisions and maintain a broad systemic vision, without eschewing direct contact with the production partners: “I often put in my two penn’orth about the product, too, but that’s more a personal passion of mine” (Scrosati 2013). Over the years, Sky Italia has developed an original technical and production model, introducing the Italian audiovisual sector to an approach more akin (in its aspirations) to that in the English-speaking world, the US in particular. Key to this, as noted, is the showrunner, appointed directly by Sky to handle the entire creative and production process for a given title, abetted by producers, scriptwriters and directors: “This person starts in the writers’ room, monitors all the scriptwriting and direction, supervises the team, and has a hand in the final edit” (Hartmann 2013). In short, they oversee the entire working group. They may be a scriptwriter, producer or director, depending on the situation and prevailing needs. They champion a single vision of the series, juggling creative, production and commissioning requests (Barra and Guarnaccia 2018). Above all, though, their handiwork can be seen in the make-up of a production chain (which may differ from stage to stage) and in the clarity and transparency of the process of writing and then production. It all starts with the pitch, when production companies and other professionals propose ideas for projects that could be made into a fiction. The Sky

156  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni Italia team operates here as a funnel and a filter: “We look at and examine the pitches, and we always reply – at least a yes or a no” (Scrosati 2013). It is a laborious time, as the broadcaster considers every pitch, focusing on those that best meet the platform brief. Some are sketchy or too similar to others already made to the free-to-air networks, Rai or Mediaset. On other occasions, though, Sky Italia’s requirements change as the work progresses: “A brief that applies one year might not work the next. The company is an animal in perpetual motion, and the right projects come up only occasionally – an inspired, affordable idea at the right time, editorially speaking, that persuades you to go for it” (Hartmann 2013). For successful briefs, a crucial second stage is the “mini-kick-off”. Here, Sky Italia part-finances a few projects, commissioning a longer outline to explore whether (or not) it has potential to be developed. A one-page brief is often insufficient to convey what the end product would look like, but a full treatment would take too much time, effort and money for a team with as lean a structure (and budget) as Sky’s. Hence the policy of investing a little in several projects to explore their potential properly. Only then – this is phase three – can the actual writing begin, from the outline to the treatment to the script, as is customary, for each episode. The fiction receives a budget, and Sky checks and edits the work of the scriptwriters (and supervisors and coordinators with authorial role) line by line. At various intermediate steps, the edit becomes even more meticulous, in a kind of “editorial surveillance” (Lusuardi 2013) of the series’ overall quality, while leaving room for creative independence. In any event, only limited changes are requested – for example, with Romanzo criminale, to beef up the political dimension in the scripts (Cesarano 2013). Meanwhile, pre-production begins, and the commissioner takes a keen interest here, too. This is Sky Italia’s way of ensuring that the right decisions are made on issues that impact directly on the quality of the project and its possible success: selecting the director and key technical personnel; casting actors with the right faces and voices; establishing a visual style. Optimizing the production value demands a constant dialogue with the producers, taking the decisions and making the choices that steer the work in the right direction. Having the commissioner there throughout the production chain also makes it possible to assess the impact of each decision not only on the finished product but also on how it is marketed and aired. This task is also facilitated, in the producers’ eyes, “by how quick and easy it is to analyse the projects, to really act in unison and very pragmatically on complex projects, free from bureaucratic strictures” (Tini 2013). The broadcaster and commissioner is the kingpin that keeps various elements in order in the production machine routine, in the interest of the series. During work on Romanzo criminale, for example, We oversaw all the pre-production work very closely. Right from the word go, the teamwork between us as the commissioning network

Towards a new model for Italian TV fiction  157 and the production company, Cattleya, was excellent  – all hands to the pump for a great product. This was another key innovation, with discussions first with De Cataldo and then Cesarano’s team, the long calls with Sollima to examine the scripts, the casting, the costumes, the sets and every other aspect of the production, step by step (Hartmann 2011, 7). This frenetic effort before shooting starts is followed by further, albeit less interventionist, activity once the set is ready and production has begun. The classic production- coordinator role becomes a little different in this set-up. Usually a means of monitoring the work done and the producers’ investment, with Sky Italia it is a less bureaucratic job, designed to oversee the progress of a machine whose course has already essentially been set. Further discussion takes place during the many conference calls with the production team. In particular, there is a check a month after shooting begins, to address any problems that may have come up, e.g. having not enough or too much footage. The final phase, post-production, sees the commissioner engaged across several fronts. Sky Italia gets deeply involved in various editorial issues concerning the series’ language, style and packaging, such as the music, graphic design and, especially, the editing. They carefully examine the partial edit and request any changes. On occasion, Sky has even sought to take over this stage itself, by showing the production team an “experimental edit” lasting a few minutes, based on the footage shot, to steer the next stage of the work in the desired direction. “This caused a little consternation at the outset, understandably, but it’s clear that we are working in everyone’s interest, including theirs, to enhance their product, so the initial angst has given way to collaboration” (Hartmann 2013). The communication effort begins in parallel with that, and everyone synchronizes on the countdown to broadcast. Once the episodes are finished, the fiction is ready to air on the group’s Italian channels and for distribution elsewhere. It is, clearly, a theoretical process that is implemented in different ways for each project, in a fiction-making approach that is becoming industrialized, where timescales, the creative and production people involved, and the best practices developed by the production companies are also vital. On one hand, though, the establishment of new different customs and methods has brought changes throughout Italy’s audiovisual arena. Free-to-air competitors like Rai and Mediaset have also been prompted to (gradually) rethink at least partially their own approach to devising and producing fiction and their role in the production processes. And on the other, the establishment of different production methods in Italy, often inspired by the US, has then stimulated commissioners and production companies to think of their new projects from the outset as co-productions with major global partners and as texts whose value will largely come also from their international circulation in multiple markets.

158  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni

The other side of the TV fiction coin: communication Alongside the reinvention and restructuring of the production routines, another peculiarity of Sky Italia’s premium fiction has been its unprecedented emphasis on marketing the products. In most cases, promotion is afforded the same importance as actually making the episodes. With its early forays into producing and programming series via satellite, especially with Boris, Fox Italia had already shown how original titles could become tools for spicing up the schedules and boosting their brand by showcasing the entire offering. Sky Italia has gone further. It has powerfully underlined how production and communication are inextricably linked as two sides of the same coin: “I am convinced that 50% of a production’s value lies in how you market it and how you bring it to life – before, during and after broadcast” (Scrosati 2013). Romanzo criminale, In Treatment, Gomorrah, The Young Pope and Il miracolo are just some fiction examples of an approach that also applies to shows as X Factor and Masterchef. This strategy has long been unparalleled in the Italian fiction universe, and the professionals who have worked for Sky Italia confirm how original and effective it is. They note how much care, attention and money is invested in promoting and marketing the series. The constant quest for angles that “can create massive buzz” (Mieli 2013), the ceaseless effort on marketing, the “painstakingly made decisions with the target in mind” (Tini 2013) are a major asset. And having only a limited number of titles in production each year certainly makes this task way easier. Fiction is thus becoming primarily a brand (Grasso and Scaglioni 2010; Johnson 2012; Grainge and Johnson 2015): “Sky fictions must have the power of a brand – or rather, they must be a brand” (Amoroso 2013). Just as each of the platform’s channels has its own tone of voice and preferred kinds of promotion, which enable it to stand out in the bouquet, each original product must present a complete, consistent image that adds value for the broadcaster, regardless of the actual content, prior even to airing. The US cable networks’ original productions enjoy a disproportionate level of visibility compared to the small part of the schedules they represent, adding to the channels’ appeal and prestige. Following this example, the pay platform makes an in-depth effort to exploit every creative detail of every fiction to create anticipation and brand awareness – not only among subscribers. Sky’s strategy is “to sell the brand before the product” (Cesarano 2013): the editorial policy for the fictions is to generate original new brands based on very familiar elements that are often already in place. They build the series’ packaging and the cornerstones of the communication, from the logo to the style and from the lettering to the key visual and the whole marketing toolset. The Sky Italia fiction’s defining features are expressed here through communication and graphic design: what sets it apart from other

Towards a new model for Italian TV fiction  159 Italian fiction titles, the concepts and complex characters, and the audiovisual industry talents involved. This painstaking effort, which continues throughout the product’s development, is the work of a large, close-knit team. Creatives lead the way, joining with the production team to drive and coordinate every stage of the project. Many departments are involved, in their respective ways: the area handling on-air promotion on the satellite and digital platforms (Barra and Scaglioni 2017), the marketing office to subscribers and the general public, the web and social-media sector, the product press office (which markets individual titles) and its corporate counterpart (which monitors their impact on the brand and the overall offering). There is a flat organizational structure with a single management unit, and the areas operate independently: “About 50 people are involved in all, a significant cross-section of the business” (De Michele 2013). The communication and promotion work starts early with a kick-off meeting, where the fiction under development is presented and its positioning is clearly established. It is a crucial step. The positioning is “the idea, the angle, the perspective that makes the product unique and original, ready to exploit across all touchpoints from the teaser – the first thing about a fiction to go on air – until the very last piece of content, and from the logo and the voiceover for the promos to the dvd packaging” (Amoroso 2013) and the banner used in the on-demand catalogues. The positioning identifies the series. It is chosen in the round to optimize the appeal to audiences and opinion leaders, the broadcaster hopes. It is not easy to pinpoint a single criterion informing Sky Italia’s choice of positioning for its fiction. Many factors are at play: “On one hand, each fiction is unique unto itself and inevitably different from the others, so the editorial needs are different. On the other, the company is a living thing that changes over time, so its priorities and resources will change too” (Amoroso 2013). Romanzo criminale, launched with a detailed media plan, is an interesting case. The kick-off had to build on some elements from the existing models, the novel and the film, while constructing a brand-new personality to the project. The communication plan had three pillars. First, the tag-line “Il crimine paga” (“Crime pays”) provocatively turned common sense and accepted wisdom on its head. Second, the characters boasted of their “sins” in a perverse reclamation of the Ten Commandments: We were working on a knife edge: breaking away from the rules a little without falling into the temptation to make a ruckus just for the sake of it […]. The characters are shown against a black background to bring their faces into sharp relief. Over every head is a caption: “I have killed”, says the Lebanese; “I have stolen”, says Freddo. Is it a proud overturning of the Ten Commandments, the arrogant affirmation of a criminal creed, a confession? The viewer, inevitably, is ensnared in the implications (Amoroso 2011, 171).

160  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni And third, the image of 100,000 lire banknotes: What drove Libano, Dandi and Freddo to form what would be one of the most powerful and cutthroat gangs in modern Roman history? The answer was as simple as it was caustic: money. Not money in an abstract sense, but hard lire, light years away from the euro […]. ‘Piotta’ ­ (100,000 lire) notes thus became the series’ brand – from the signature tune to the key visual, the corporate brochure and the hundreds of wads of fake banknotes that we doled out in the bars of central Rome (Amoroso 2011, 171). In other cases, the strategy is less complex, less layered. It is hard to create a brand for a miniseries, as it is over in just a few days, so the promotion must push the event as something exclusive and unmissable. Faccia d’angelo ­ focused exclusively on the star, Elio Germano, a high-profile face from the world of film borrowed for a television fiction: from the posters to the promos, everything revolved around him. A series with a rather different structure, like In Treatment, meanwhile, positioned itself using the slogan “Cinque storie, cinque segreti” (“Five stories, five secrets”) throughout the marketing campaign. Originally, the idea was “Cinque pazienti, cinque segreti” (“Five patients, five secrets”), but they then opted to drop the medical reference, since the show centred not on sick people as such but on stories with a wider human resonance (Amoroso 2013). Gomorrah revamped the communication used for Romanzo criminale and made it darker, while 1992 and Il miracolo played on the historical and political dimension and on all the actors involved. For The Young Pope and then The New Pope, it was big-name director Paolo Sorrentino and the faces of Jude Law, Diane Keaton, John Malkovich and Silvio Orlando who provided the calling card for a production that was exceptional in every way. Work on the production and post-production of the series begins right from the kick-off and choice of positioning, while all departments start to shape the marketing. The process, therefore, is a long one, depending on the product and the context. The communication effort generally begins four months before broadcast, sometimes even sooner for the elements that must follow the production timescales. There are many reasons why it has to take so long. First, the need to do a good job, to bring the whole company together in a common promotion push: “The lead time is necessary to coordinate the various areas, so that the budgets and workloads can be shared out in timely fashion” (De Michele 2013). Some tasks take as long as they take: the promos on the platform’s channels must be planned well in advance, while work on the cover for the Sky Life monthly magazine needs to begin two months in advance. The communication and promotional work done for (and based on) the original fiction produced by Sky falls more or less into five broad categories. First: communication to the subscribers or “subs”. Besides Sky Life,

Towards a new model for Italian TV fiction  161 this also includes the promos and other forms of promotion – the EPG, for example. The main challenge here is to reach viewers who are spread out across many channels: the result is a plan to saturate the various networks’ schedules with promos, to achieve a high enough GRP to make 70% of Gomorrah aware of the fiction’s existence. For In Treatment, ­on-air ​­ promotion began over a month before episode one – fi rst with a teaser, then with more detailed promos about the series in general and its individual characters. Once the series began, the promotion focuses both on emphasizing that the fiction is available on demand and on maintaining the brand and product profile. These traditional activities are complemented by high visibility in the EPG, a pre-episode countdown on the Sky Cinema channels, and a further boost from a short preview clip at the end of each broadcast. The second category is promotion to potential subscribers (prospects) and in general to the wider Italian television and media audience. The classic media plan now comes into the foreground, operating across various media with targeted or more wide-ranging activities, from posters and outdoor promotion to press, radio and television advertising, online and viral social campaigns. An initial challenge here is the problem, “as the Americans say, of cutting the clutter, of breaking through the background noise and actually talking to people” (Amoroso 2013). The task is made all the harder by a complex call-to-action, since users have to be persuaded not just to turn on the TV but also to take out a subscription first. The second challenge is the legal bar on promoting individual Sky products on mainstream freeto-air networks: advertising must be limited to the overall offering. The marketing campaign for In Treatment involved posters and other outdoor tools (e.g. ads on buses in Rome), press content (with full-page adverts in national monthly and weekly magazines and daily newspapers around the start of the series) and advertising in cinemas, on television (only on the channel) and online (through display ­advertising –​ ­free-to-air ­​­ ​­ ­Sky-operated ​­ ­ banners and videos – and search, with sponsored links among the results for plenty of search strings on Google). A third promotional lever is the press office, both at corporate level and for the single products. This involves press releases sent to journalists and a constant PR effort with opinion leaders and industrial partners through events and gift gadgets. The releases for Sky Italia fiction productions play on several positioning factors: the big-name director, the actors, the idea behind the event, the wow factor of novelty or a previous hit (as with season two of Romanzo criminale or seasons two, three and four of Gomorrah), a meticulous historical reconstruction, the evocation of a setting, music, the frisson of “transgression” and “hot topical issues” (as in some excerpts from the press releases for Moana and Nel nome del male). For In Treatment, there was a major PR and publicity effort, through contact with journalists and press agencies, press conferences, private screenings and a launch event in Rome. And every title offers a standard programme of previews, events and launch parties for journalists.

162  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni A fourth type of promotion plays out online. The web is no longer just another space to advertise in but a place for discussion and for fans and viewers to get involved. Social media for Sky Italia shows takes account of the product’s scripted nature, which demands closer concentration from audiences than most programmes on television. Facebook and Twitter are used to create buzz and attract attention to the product, before and after the broadcast. With Romanzo criminale, dedicated apps for smartphone and tablet were also developed. The social-media professionals followed and stimulated the discussions online, and a crisis-management protocol was put in place, just in case. In Treatment had a dedicated website, supplemented over time with textual and other content (photos, videos, polls, etc.). The main social sites targeted were Facebook, with constant teasing and additional content, and Twitter, with a dedicated hashtag and regular daily postings. For the other titles, Instagram has since joined the portfolio (after some initial experimentation, it is now an important pillar); here, too, online and digital communication follows what is now-standard practice for the website and social media. The fifth and final category is the most evanescent of all, operating often at the fringe of the others. It entails the ancillary activities to exploit the convergent media arena to further enrich the ways of engaging the audience and coming into contact with the fiction product. “This involves devising spaces for talking about the product creatively and in detail, the chance to bolster the media plan with a series of contributions that reach not only the target market but also a wider audience, with particular forms of crosspromotion” (De Michele 2013). The approach here is series- centred. It depends on the hooks and opportunities offered by the individual product’s storylines and textual features. Romanzo criminale, a familiar brand that needed repositioning, provided the pretext for a spot of guerrilla marketing – with the banknotes in Roman bars, the cardboard cut-outs of the characters arrayed at the Pantheon, and other edgy, high-profile ventures. The series’ success prompted various commercial partnerships and merchandising tie-ins, such as the t-shirt lines with famous fashion brands. Once again, the model was followed to the letter through Gomorrah’s several seasons, with the communication fully restarting at every instalment, although it is harder to apply for shorter-lived “event” titles like Il miracolo. On other occasions, the marketing was upped with a photographic volume with images and outtakes from the set, or even the “making of”-diary- cumscript-dialogues book published by Einaudi for The Young Pope. While marketing and promotion are as important as the production work, so the same guidelines apply. The aim is to affirm the originality that sets Sky Italia apart from free mainstream TV and to establish an iconic image that turns each title into an immediately recognizable brand. The Sky Italia model is a carefully constructed, coherent, integrated plan of action that runs from the concept right through to airing (and beyond, with global circulation). Until the next original production, and the next brand.

Towards a new model for Italian TV fiction  163

Acknowledgements The two authors have conceived and devised the article and the research jointly. Sections titled “The genesis of a new model: Italian fiction goes pay” and “Scouting and storytelling: the origins and development of Sky Italia fiction” are written by Massimo Scaglioni and Sections titled “Power and control: production from the broadcaster’s standpoint” and “The other side of the TV fiction coin: communication” are written by Luca.

References Amoroso, Roberto. 2011. “Il crimine paga”. In Romanzo criminale, edited by Roberto Pisoni. Milan: Mondadori. Amoroso, Roberto. 2013. Personal Interview to the Then Sky Italia Creative Director. 17 May. Barca, Flavia (ed.). 2012. Effetto Sky. L’impatto della piattaforma satellitare sul sistema televisivo in Italia. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. Barra, Luca, and Fabio Guarnaccia (eds.). 2018. “Autori seriali”. Link. Idee per la televisione, 23: 1–190. Barra, Luca, and Massimo Scaglioni. 2015. “Saints, Cops and Camorristi. Editorial Policies and Production Models of Italian TV Fiction”. Series, 1(1): 65–76. Barra, Luca, and Massimo Scaglioni. 2017. “Paratexts, Italian Style: The Promotional Cultures of Italian Commercial and Pay Television Broadcasters”. Critical Studies in Television, 12(2): 156–173. Bisoni, Claudio, and Veronica Innocenti (eds.). 2013. Media Mutations. Modena: Mucchi. Buonanno, Milly. 2012. Italian TV Drama and Beyond. Stories from the Soil, Stories from the Sea. Boston, MA: Intellect. Cesarano, Daniele. 2013. Personal Interview to the Romanzo criminale Headwriter. 17 April. De Michele, Francesca. 2013. Personal Interview to a Creative Professional Then Working at the Sky Italia Original Productions Department. 17 May. Gardini, Gina. 2013. Personal Interview to the Producer at Cattleya. 17 April. Grainge, Paul, and Catherine Johnson. 2015. Promotional Screen Industries. London: Routledge. Grasso, Aldo, and Massimo Scaglioni (eds.). 2009. Arredo di serie. I mondi possibili della serialità televisiva americana. Milan: Vita e Pensiero. Grasso, Aldo, and Massimo Scaglioni (eds.). 2010. Televisione convergente. La tv oltre il piccolo schermo. Milan: Link Ricerca/RTI. Hartmann, Nils. 2011. “Noi stavamo col Libanese”. In Romanzo criminale, edited by Roberto Pisoni. Milan: Mondadori. Hartmann, Nils. 2013. Personal Interview to the Director of Original Productions at Sky Italia. 30 May. Johnson, Catherine. 2012. Branding Television. London: Routledge. Leverette, Marc, Brian L. Ott, and Louise Buckley. 2008. It’s Not TV. Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era. New York: Routledge. Lotz, Amanda D. 2014. The Television Will Be Revolutionized. New York: NYU Press.

164  Luca Barra and Massimo Scaglioni Lotz, Amanda D. 2018. We Now Disrupt This Broadcast. Boston, MA: MIT Press. Lusuardi, Nicola. 2013. Personal Interview to the Scriptwriter and Story Editor. 27 March. Mieli, Lorenzo. 2013. Personal Interview to the Founder and Then President of Wildside. 17 April. Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV. The Poetics of Contemporary Television. New York: NYU Press. Pescatore, Guglielmo (ed.). 2018. Ecosistemi narrativi. Dal fumetto alle serie tv. Rome: Carocci. Renga, Dana (ed.). 2016. “Gomorra. La serie. Beyond Realism”. The Italianist, 36(2): 287–354. Scaglioni, Massimo, and Luca Barra (eds.). 2013. Tutta un’altra fiction. La serialità pay in Italia e nel mondo. Il modello Sky. Rome: Carocci. Scrosati, Andrea. 2013. Personal Interview to the Then Executive Vice President Programming at Sky Italia. 30 May. Tini, Maurizio. 2013. Personal Interview to the Then Cattleya Executive Producer. 27 March.

11 The Holy See(ing) Splendors and miseries of The Young Pope Giancarlo Lombardi

Several elements concur in making The Young Pope (Sky/HBO/Canal+, ­ ­ ­ 2016) a telling example of the limitless possibilities of the current serial media landscape, which is the result of increasing border- crossing of series once destined to a local audience, and cross-pollination of formats and creative industries. Helmed by Paolo Sorrentino, a film auteur turned showrunner who wrote its ten episodes as a ten-hour film and not as a television series, The Young Pope poses a unique challenge to the television analyst for its treatment of narrative pace and character development1. And that challenge is actually mirrored symbolically in the very contradiction of its title, in the image of a venerated figure of authority questioned and potentially destabilizing for his very youth. The Young Pope is indeed a visual hapax for the revolutionary naiveté with which it seems to reinvent a genre, visionary yet conservative like Jude Law’s Pope Pius XIII, in its attempt to fuse television with cinema. An Italian-French-American ­ ­​­ ​­ co-production, ­ ​­ the series ran the risk of being considered too European in pace and scheduling requirements to be branded as an HBO series, and too American to be placed alongside previous Sky Italia productions such as Romanzo criminale and Gomorrah, which shied away from employing a star-studded cast. Its mixed reception, particularly in the US, speaks to obstacles facing the industry at a time in which its increased glocalization calls for a rethinking of formats and languages able to attract, at different levels but with equal power, an ever-increasing audience. Its revered status as “instant classic”, in the immediate retrospection afforded by the brief time elapsed since its original airdate, speaks instead to its original take on televisual storytelling, making it a necessary case study for a proper understanding of the current state of transnational television.

Contradictions Following the international success of La grande bellezza (2013), for which Sorrentino was awarded an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, and the release of Youth (2015), his most international film for location and star­studded cast, The Young Pope continues the director’s exploration with

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The Holy See(ing): splendors and miseries  167 features of its interpreter Jude Law, the body of the Pope acts as a powerful indicator of corporeality as a key signifying element in this series. The Young Pope grounds its narrative on the newly-elected pontiff’s rebellion against a system he now dominates by calling for renewed ascetic reflection. The crisis of belief experienced by the Catholic Church is tied, according to Lenny, to its societal oversaturated presence: excessive visibility here bespeaks the Church’s essential vulnerability. Thus, Pope Pius XIII surprises his followers, that he accuses of a lapse in faith, by refusing to show them his face and body, whose traits could only be revealed through their eventual renewal of faith: religion is hard work, he reminds an increasingly thinning crowd of faithful on numerous occasions, and it’s never meant for mass- consumption. His refusal to lend his image to religious paraphernalia aimed at proselytizing and filling the Vatican coffers is parallel to his distant approach to diplomatic relations with those political leaders to whom, instead of sending a hand-painted plate with his personal effigy, he proposes to send a plain porcelain dish. And most sequences portraying diplomatic meetings with prime ministers, heads of state, or representatives from other churches foreground his obstinate intention to remain silent or, at times, openly hostile. Since his inaugural homily, he informs the faithful of his intention to be closer to God than to them, and his intention is visually reiterated through the peculiar staging of the miracles he is later shown performing. Down on his knees, arms wide open, Lenny forcefully summons God into a conversation that is always ushered by the informal modal phrase God, we must talk about _, his loud voice betraying frustration and impatience, but hardly ever submission: Lenny converses with God as a peer, and as God’s peer he maintains his aloofness with the faithful.

Father figures Pius’s pontificate stands in stark contrast with that of John Paul II, who breached the auratic distance of his predecessors by overexposing himself in images and actions. Against the shadow of the pontiff who most embodied Jesus’s close proximity to children, inspiring the formation of groups known as Papa boys, stands a young prelate who accidentally drops an infant he does not know how to hold, and later terrifies a crowd of elementary-school children by instilling in them fear for a resentful God. Bearing this in mind, we should interpret as allegorical the final shot of the opening credits, where Sorrentino inserts a replica in motion of Maurizio Cattelan’s La nona ora (1999), a wax statue that portrays Pope Woytila on the ground, hit by a meteor. Recently described by the sculptor as “a very religious work: one that lays the Pope bare, showing his human side” (Cariello ­ 2016), La nona ora concludes the opening credits of the series, with the key addition of a cloud of smoke emanating from the fallen meteor. And smoke appears throughout the series each time Pius is portrayed with a cigarette inside the Vatican, his hand often stretched out to reaffirm

168  Giancarlo Lombardi the distance necessary to restore the symbolic power of the papal figure3. Once we connect it to Cattelan’s statement that in La nona ora he drew from his difficult relationship with his own father, whom he had attempted to strangle at age 17 (Cariello 2016), Pius XIII’s smoking refers back to a primal loss, since a half-pipe was the only object he has left of his father, who gave it to him shortly before abandoning him in an orphanage. By affirming his right to smoke in the Vatican, Pius XIII not only dismantles a prohibition established by a previous church father, John Paul II, but also reconnects metaphorically with his own father, whose departure he still fails to comprehend. Lenny’s half-pipe assumes complex connotations worth exploring in this specific context when, halfway through the narrative, it is conjoined with its missing part in what is soon revealed to be a staged reunion with two impostors who pretend to be his parents. Upon receipt of the missing half in an anonymous envelope, Lenny pieces the pipe together and lays it on Vatican stationery, as Sorrentino’s camera frames it in a closeup that immediately activates an important cultural referent for the viewer, who is now seeing an almost precise replica of Magritte’s La trahison des images (1929). Originally accompanied by the caption “This is not a pipe”, Magritte’s painting evokes, in the context of The Young Pope, not only mere deception, but also Lenny’s defiance of iconographic representations and, given the post-structuralist and psychoanalytic reappropriation of Magritte’s painting, Lenny’s problematic positioning between what Lacan defined as the Imaginary and the Symbolic, respectively dominated by children’s stronger connection with their mother and father4. The half-pipe evokes a psychoanalytic lack, the Lacanian manque filled through fetishes that cannot ever restore a sense of fullness: the Venetian lighter and the kangaroo, both received as gifts from the adoring faithful, evoke a secondary recomposition of his family unit. Given the iterative return to oneiric memories of abandonment, and the frequent reassertion of his inability to move past his orphan status, Lenny appears to be stuck between the two Lacanian realms as he struggles before the mirror to find the right words for his homilies, and thus to abandon the Imaginary in order to access the Symbolic. Such peculiar placement shines a light on his inability to part with Sister Mary, the maternal figure represented by the nun who once welcomed him to the orphanage and now serves as his personal secretary, and on his open contrast with Cardinal Spencer, the paternal figure who was once his teacher and superior, and whose aspirations to the pontificate were thwarted upon Lenny’s election. The very concept of the Order of the Father, which the Symbolic represents in psychoanalytic terms, is further complicated by the very nature of Lenny’s institutional position, and by his destabilizing admission, within the secret of Confession, that he does not believe in the existence of God. By the season end, the pontiff whose iconoclasm was manifested through his resistance to be the object of mass-reproduced images, appears to have made the necessary steps to leave behind the Lacanian Imaginary and step firmly

The Holy See(ing): splendors and miseries  169 into the Symbolic: by the time he gives his final address in Venice, he has parted company with both Sister Mary and Cardinal Spencer, the former sent to Africa to extend her maternal presence to countless orphan children, and the latter succumbed to a fatal disease, finally at peace with his pupil upon learning the details of his very first miracle and receiving proof of his actual sanctity. However, Lenny’s very first speech in the sunlight, facing the faithful in the city where his parents escaped after abandoning him, and where he is hoping to reconnect with them, is also his very last, as the direct encounter with the adoring crowd (and the potential realization that his aged parents, upon hearing him speak, have once again abandoned him, leaving the square) causes him to collapse on the ground.

An “event” series By choosing to portray Lenny rehearsing his first homily in front of a mirror, holding a cigarette in his hand, Sorrentino invites us to add another metaphorical layer to the protagonist’s compulsion to smoke, one that reaches out of the diegetic universe and that affords us a critical reflection on the series per se. Following a terse conversation with the Italian Prime Minister, where the two exchange threats of mutual extinction, Pius accuses the adversary, guilty of supporting common-law marriages, euthanasia, and the discontinuation of a tax benefitting the Catholic Church, of selling “smoke and mirrors” to millions of Italians. Earlier in his conversation with the PM, he literally holds up a small mirror and asks his guest what he sees, only to assert that he should see “two media events, one already taken place (that’s you), the other about to happen”. The event that has already happened, the electoral surge of the Centre-Left parties at an unprecedented 41% (and here Sorrentino is borrowing from real life, referring to the short-lived success of Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party at the European elections in 2014) is thus juxtaposed to a coming event, to the first public foray of a young pope whose uncommon beauty might convince adoring populations of the “second coming” of Christ. Claiming that such a statement (and that looking in that mirror) has proven to the PM the very existence of God, Lenny dismisses him, only to retreat to an obscurity he has now threatened to break through out of mere political need. Let us take a step back, or better, out of the diegesis to reflect in metanarrative terms on Lenny’s earlier statement that the two men in a smokefree mirror are indeed two media events. An “event series” or, in Italian, a serie evento, is certainly how The Young Pope has been anticipated and reviewed in the press and in promotional materials: an event because of its topic, its cast, and most importantly, because it was conceived, written, and directed by Oscar winner Paolo Sorrentino. The premiere of its first two episodes at the Venice Film Festival almost two months before its initial airdate further reinforced its “event” status: The Young Pope was the first series ever teased at the Venice Film Festival. In the coming years,

170  Giancarlo Lombardi Netflix and Rai would follow suit with Suburra. La serie and with the longanticipated HBO coproduction of the adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend (L’amica ­ geniale), and Sorrentino himself recently returned with The New Pope (Sky/ HBO/Canal+, 2019). The choice of a different title, The New Pope, which still bears a clear referent to The Young Pope, further strengthens the case I make here: on one hand, by separating the two series with different titles, their “event” status is maintained; on the other, by that same choice, Sorrentino reasserts his dismissal of “pure” seriality even in the presence of a product that is clearly anticipated not as an anthology series, but as a mere continuation of The Young Pope, since the diegesis is expected to pick up in the immediate aftermath of the events that closed the previous series. While The Young Pope delivered on its promises in Italy, where it dominated the headlines throughout its five-week release, the reception in the US was lukewarm and somewhat distracted5. On Il Fatto Quotidiano, Naso draws a contrast between the Italian and the US reception of Sorrentino’s series, defining the latter as “chiaroscuro ­ critique” (Naso 2017) for the mixed feelings it expressed. Placing particular emphasis on the reaction of The New York Times columnist James Poniewozik, Naso reads the American interpretation of the series within the increasing conservative shift of the global political context, which sees Lenny Belardo as a not-so-distant relative of Donald Trump and of the promoters of Brexit. Truth be told, not all Italian reports on the US reception of The Young Pope seem particularly accurate, if only because their analysis lacks significant pieces of a complex puzzle: for example, when on La Stampa, Caprara (2016) claims that The Young Pope was such a ratings success in the US that it surpassed Homeland on Showtime, it fails to record that such disparity in audience is also due to the fact that Showtime has a significantly lower volume of subscribers than HBO, making ratings comparison completely irrelevant. Three venues of reception should be analysed in order to get a full picture of the role played by cultural mediators prior to or shortly after the release of The Young Pope in the US: (a) the national press, and magazines, journals and blogs specifically dedicated to (b) cinema and (c) television. The mixed reaction of the TV critic of The New York Times discussed earlier matched that of USA Today, which called the series “an odd, eccentric, substance-free fever dream” (Anon. 2017) but differed from the triumphal reception of the Wall Street Journal, which found its originality and iconoclastic spirit to be the hallmark of a new wave of Italian television drama (Grey 2016). While The New Yorker called it “a Cecil B. DeMille-style costume drama” (Friend 2017) noting the subordination of spectacle to character, Cineaste and American Cinematographer, instead, rushed to inscribe The Young Pope in a cinematic genealogy against which it stood out for a portrayal of the Vatican that elicited from its viewers “an ambivalent mixture of awe, skepticism, and laughter”(McGrath 2017, 66): references to earlier works by Sorrentino, and to the same films by Federico Fellini

The Holy See(ing): splendors and miseries  171 already invoked upon the release of La grande bellezza conceded depth to the only apparent shallow surface of Sorrentino’s stylized production. Large attention was paid, in particular, to the important contribution of Luca Bigazzi, the most esteemed Italian cinematographer (Thomson 2017, 24–26). On the television side, the reception of Sorrentino’s series was considerably colder. In a piercing review featured in TVLine, one of the most accredited TV blogs in the US, Dave Nemetz defines The Young Pope as “one of the strangest TV shows I’ve seen in years” stressing its cinematic quality when he remarks that “little quirks that might seem charming in a 90-minute movie can begin to grate across several episodes” (Nemetz 2017). What is most important, here, however are Nemetz’s concluding remarks, where the reviewer walks back on his initial panning while also addressing the peculiar scheduling of the series: Fittingly, a strange show like The Young Pope has a strange airing schedule: it’ll air twice a week, Sundays and Mondays, for five weeks, for a total of ten episodes. That has the feel of an old-fashioned network miniseries, which works in the show’s favor, considering Sorrentino’ cinematic flair. So since it’s only here a short while, instead of focusing on the (many) parts that don’t work, maybe we should celebrate The Young Pope for at least trying something different. In this era of Peak TV and risk-averse network fare, can we ask for anything more? (Nemetz 2017). Similar emphasis on the “unusual Sunday/ Monday configuration” conclude Mitch Salem’s more positive review on ShowBuzzDaily, which affirms that The Young Pope is “another example of television embracing the kind of filmmaking that not long ago would never have been found near a small screen. It’s a miracle that may not be quite water into wine, but is remarkable nonetheless” (Salem 2017). I firmly believe that the scheduling requirements of The Young Pope played a role in the way in which the series failed to capture the attention of viewers en masse, unlike other HBO productions which shared the same celevisual components (Manzato and Mascio 2019). Indeed, The Young Pope charted new territory for HBO in airing on two consecutive days: Sunday, which is the day traditionally reserved for all HBO series, and Monday, a day which was never reserved for original programming. Two years later, L’amica geniale followed the same scheduling pattern, essentially because Italian television series broadcast by networks or pay TV always air two consecutive one-hour episodes, to reflect the peculiar institutional organization of prime time in Italy. To this day, HBO series follow a pattern that was once associated to network television, traditionally gaining traction over time, as water- cooler conversations and the work of cultural mediators factor in their exponential viewer growth over a number of weeks: running against NFL playoffs and season finales of Homeland and The Affair, the concentrated run of The Young Pope fell

172  Giancarlo Lombardi consistently below HBO’s average viewership on Sundays, ranking among the 50 highest-rated cable originals only on the day of the premiere, and attracting even lower audience figures on Mondays. In spite of its critical acclaim and of Elena Ferrante’s cult following in North America, L’amica geniale did not fare any better6.

Highlighting and reducing a distance “God is hard work”, says Lenny as he proclaims his profoundly conservative theology, and so, in the eyes of the anglophone viewer, is television with subtitles. In spite of the presence of many well-known English-speaking actors, this is particularly true of The Young Pope, which takes to extreme a mandate to produce television meant for narrowcasting rather than broadcasting, aiming at a specific niche target of viewers who expect to be actively stimulated either through narrative complexity or through auteurial composite imagery. Paolo Sorrentino qua showrunner emulates his protagonist in asking his viewers to make a concerted interpretative effort, and he does it by privileging those stylistic tropes most frequently appreciated by cinephiles largely accustomed to shun television. He approaches television from the same distance assumed by Lenny, making no concession to his viewers. The small golden door presented by Pius XIII to his cardinals during his speech in the Sistine Chapel as a symbol of the new inaccessibility of the Catholic church reflects, on a metadiegetic level, Sorrentino’s approach to television: it is small because it requires effort and discomfort to pass through, and as an intradiegetic metaphor it speaks to a church that needs to become “prohibited, inaccessible and mysterious so as to become desirable”. Like Pius XIII, Sorrentino disinvites the casual viewer, mirror image of what his protagonist defines as “part-time believer”, against whom Lenny calls forth those “fanatics for God” whose dedication will be the “only form of love” he desires7. We could call it “television for the happy few”, unapproachable because of its terse plot development and its multilinguism, and likely to alienate viewers just as Lenny’s mandate to recite Mass in Latin seemed to have emptied churches all over Italy (on multilinguism, see Parini 2019). Creator, screenwriter and director of the entire series, Sorrentino is far more than a showrunner imposing what Eva Novrup Redvall called, in reference to the Danish television model, the one vision dogma (Redvall 2013). In The Young Pope, his organic control of each single aspect of production places him in the same position of complete control that Lenny expects to assume once he is elected Pope: viewers familiar with his cinematic production will notice that his presence, although corporeally absent unlike that of a director like Alfred Hitchcock, is literally everywhere, and just like in La grande bellezza, it is felt through camera movements that emphasize the perception of a very specific point of view. Distant yet  allknowing, absent yet constantly present – this is how Lenny sets out to rule

The Holy See(ing): splendors and miseries  173 the Vatican, seeking to capture its secrets by asking his own confessor to report on the Cardinals in conversations that always occur in the highest possible location of St. Peter’s basilica, its dome, which turns into the panoptical structure powerfully evoked by the title of the opening credit song, “All Along the Watchtower”. From there, the exchanges between Pius XIII and his confessor follow two different vectors: while the Pope seeks to obtain information on the earthliest concerns and idiosyncratic behaviours of his own clergy, the confessor routinely asks the Pope information about the current location of God, indicated by Lenny as residing up above, in domestic settings placed along different constellations of stars. Sorrentino’s camera remains on countless occasions at eye level with Lenny, granting symbolic meaning to the vertical axis along which shots and countershots are filmed, stressing through the frequent use of high-angle shots his superiority and distance. However, when such distance is finally reduced, in the very last sequence of the series where Lenny is speaking to the crowd only from a slightly higher level, that of the front steps of St. Mark’s Basilica, the camera eventually zooms out from the human perspective. It does so to portray the aftermath of Lenny’s possible death from what, diegetically, could be understood as the perspective of God, moving further away from Venice and culminating in the liminal space between diegesis and extradiegesis marked by the superimposition of the caption “The End” on the terrestrial globe. Trading Lenny’s elitarist position with God’s omniscience, Sorrentino closes his narrative in most cinematic fashion, reiterating a sense of closure alien to television serial narratives, and engraving the very last shot with the ultimate marker of tradition, a caption long associated with the cinema of yesteryear.

Notes 1 Sorrentino discussed his “cinematic” approach to The Young Pope in an interview with Paola Zanuttini, drawing a comparison between the freedom afforded by serial drama intended as long-form cinema and that intrinsic to the novel (Zanuttini 2016). 2 Monica Jansen and Maria Bonaria Urban believe that Sorrentino follows an “open and experimental narrative model” (2017, 73) that connects television and cinema through what Daniela Cardini has termed grande serialità televisiva attracting spectators that she defines as “tele- cinefiles” (2016, 49). 3 It should be added that the distance marked by Lenny’s stretched hand, to the common American, also signifies the “arm’s length” that American culture generally considers “personal space” not to be invaded by those nearby. 4 Among other theorists, Jos De Mul (1996) connects Magritte’s painting to the psychoanalytic tradition, departing from Michel Foucault’s seminal essay (1973) named after the very sentence engraved in the painting, in order to retrace the centrality of disavowal and fetishism, which constitute key concepts in a psychoanalytic interpretation of The Young Pope. 5 For a comparative analysis of the reception of The Young Pope and Daniele Luchetti’s Call Me Francis by the Italian Catholic press, Jansen and Urban

174  Giancarlo Lombardi 2017, 76– 80. Manzato and Mascio (2019) provide a thorough analysis of the Italian reception. 6 All ratings discussed here were reported by ShowbuzzDaily. 7 If we followed Damiano Garofalo’s inspired Lenny’s speech is “a declaration of war to ecumenism and evangelization”, how would we define Sorrentino’s parallel extradiegetic statement on serial drama?

References Anon. 2017. “Young ­ Pope is an Odd, Eccentric, Substance-Free Fever Dream”. USA Today, 13 January. Caprara, Fulvia. 2016. “ The Young Pope di Sorrentino da record. Ecco perché ci è piaciuto il primo episodio”. La Stampa, 22 October. Cardini, Daniela. 2016. “Serial Contradictions: The Italian Debate on TV Series”. Series, 2(1): ­ ­47–54. ​­ Cariello, Stefano. 2016. “La nona ora di Cattelan, dieci anni dopo”. Artecracy.eu. de Mul, Jos. 1996. “Disavowal and Representation in Magritte’s La trahison des images”. Filozofski vestnik, 17(2): ­ ­107–126. ​­ Foucault, Michel. 1973. Ceci n’est pas une pipe. Saint Clement: Fata Morgana. Friend, Tad. 2017. “Pope in a Soap”. New Yorker, 23 January. Grasso, Aldo. 2016. “ The Young Pope un’antiserie che parla di un antipapa”. Corriere della Sera, 21 October. Grey, Tobias. 2016. “ The Young Pope Breaks Italian TV Traditions”. The Wall Street Journal, 5 October. Jansen, Monica, and Maria Bonaria Urban. 2017. “ The Young Pope: Un’antiserie ­ 71–90. ­ ​­ allegorica”. Storia e problemi contemporanei, 76(3): Manzato, Anna, and Antonella Mascio. 2019. “The Young Pope: An Italian ‘Celevision’ Case Study”. Journal of Italian Cinema  & Media Studies, 7(3): ­ ­411–424. ​­ ­ ­64–66. ​­ McGrath, Declan. 2017. “ The Young Pope”. Cineaste, 42(4): Naso, Domenico. 2017. “ The Young Pope debutta negli USA. Critiche in chiaroscuro”. Il Fatto Quotidiano, 16 January. Nemetz, Dave. 2017. “ The Young Pope Review: Strangely Hypnotic, and Yet Utterly Ridiculous”. TVLine, 9 January. Parini, Ilaria. 2019. “‘Inizia oggi il papato di Pio XII’. Multilinguismo nella serie TV The Young Pope e nella versione italiana”. Altre Modernità, 21(5): ­ ­189–202. ​­ Redvall, Eva Novrup.  2013. Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark: From The Kingdom to The Killing. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Salem, Mitch. 2017. “Review: The Young Pope”. ShowBuzzDaily, 17 January. ­ Thomson, Patricia. 2017. “A New Pope”. American Cinematographer, 98(5): ­24–26. ​­ Zanuttini, Paola. 2016. “Papale papale: intervista a Paolo Sorrentino su The Young Pope”. Il Venerdì di Repubblica, 30 September.

Part 5

Germany

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfrancis.com

12 TV drama series production in Germany and the digital television landscape Lothar Mikos

Introduction With 83.2 million inhabitants, Germany is the largest television market in Europe. If you include the German-speaking inhabitants of Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, you reach a market of 97.18 million customers. German television produces mainly for Germans, but also for the German-speaking neighbours. Therefore, in terms of licensing there’s the DACH region which includes Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. So, it’s no wonder that Germany produces the most television fiction titles in Europe, in numbers 307 titles in 2017, followed by the UK (147 titles) and France (133 titles) (Fontaine and Pumares 2019, 19). Most fiction productions in Germany are made for TV movies. Only one third of the titles are drama series, but in terms of hours of production, these series make nearly 80% of the total production volume (Fontaine and Pumares 2019, 22). Germany has a long history of TV drama production. Very early public service broadcasters started to commission external productions and founded subsidiaries as production companies which produced the majority of made for TV movies and drama series. The advent of commercial broadcasters in the late 1980s caused by deregulation of the television market in most of the European countries (Iosifidis, Steemers and Wheeler 2005, 54) created an increased need for content. The volume of fiction production grew. At the turn of the millennium, the four production companies with the highest turnover were subsidiaries of PSBs or subsidiaries of large conglomerates (Hachmeister et al. 2001, 102–190). Digitalization changed the market again, the number of channels in Europe increased massively. According to a study of the European Audiovisual Observatory in 2018, there are 11,123 television channels of which 5,039 are local channels and 2,917 on-demand platforms in Europe. Germany counts 369 television channels and 49 on-demand services (Schneeberger 2019). The demand of content increases. This situation changed the production landscape for television drama production. Here I will first discuss the history of fiction production in Germany, before I describe the changes in the 21st century. Three case studies, which

178  Lothar Mikos symbolize in different ways the modifications in German television fiction production, will close the chapter.

Brief history of German fiction production On the one hand, the German television system is very simple in terms of fiction production. There are only a few channels producing made for TV movies and comedy and drama series, the two public broadcasters ARD and ZDF, the two channels of the ProSieben.Sat1 conglomerate, ProSieben and Sat1, as well as the two stations RTL and VOX of the RTL conglomerate, although VOX does not increasingly offer series produced in Germany until the second decade of the 21st century. On the other hand, it is complicated, at least with ARD, by the fact that the channel’s programming is made up of the supplies of the nine federal broadcasting corporations as well as jointly produced programmes. This works due to the federal system in which broadcasting in Germany was restructured after the World War II (Hickethier 1998). Radio and television were divided into broadcasting corporations in every federal state. In East- Germany, the GDR, there was a special system as television fiction was produced by the DEFA studios in Babelsberg. After (re-)unification public service broadcasting consists of nine federal broadcasting corporations which have to deliver a certain quantity of shows to the joint programme of the ARD, between 1.7% of the smallest federal broadcasters up to 14.2% of the largest one. In addition to the contribution to ARD, every federal broadcaster airs a regional programme. In contrast, ZDF is a channel that only works on a national level. The volume of programmes of ARD increased since 1958/1959 from 104,399 minutes (ARD 1969, 310) to 525,600 minutes in 2018 (Krüger 2019, 186), the volume of programmes of ZDF increased from 79,365 minutes in 1963 (ZDF 1969, 81) to 525,600 minutes in 2018 (Krüger 2019, 186). In 2018, 35.3% of the ARD programme and 36.2% of ZDF programme was fiction, 14.1% of ARD and 22.3% of ZDF programmes were drama series (Krüger 2019, 186). The fiction contingent of the commercial channels differs. Whereas about 20% to 25% of RTL, VOX and Sat.1 programmes are fiction, two third of the shows of the channel ProSieben is fiction (Die Medienanstalten 2019, 55), but the majority of these fiction are licensed programmes, and the minority are own productions. In Germany, none of the channels produce fictional programmes as inhouse production. Most of the productions are externally produced by production companies. Additionally, there are co-productions. FernándezQuijada (2013, 106) distinguishes five forms of programme acquisition: (1)  in-house productions which are produced by the broadcaster itself of a production company that is owned by a broadcaster, (2) co-productions which are produced by several production companies with or without a broadcaster, (3) external productions which are made by a production company and “funded, in part or in whole, by a broadcaster that usually

TV drama series production in Germany  179 commissions it in advance, irrespective of whether the programme initiative comes from the producer or the broadcaster”, (4) independent productions which are produced by independent producers  – according to the definition of the legislation of the territory in question, and (5) acquired productions which a broadcaster buys on the programme market. For the fiction production in the German market it is important to distinguish between external productions and co-productions. External productions could be produced by independent producers or production companies which are subsidiaries of broadcasters. This way of producing fiction started back in the 1960s when ZDF was introduced. The first chairman of ZDF, Karl Holzamer, cited the promotion of free competition in favour of higher programme quality as the reason for commissioning TV fiction (Hachmeister 2003, 23). In the following period, large production companies were given quotas for fiction orders. Large production companies were mainly the subsidiaries of PSBs and companies which were owned by media conglomerates such as Bertelsmann. Small production companies were independent and owned by authors, directors or producers (Hickethier 1998, 121). From 1959 on all federal public service broadcasters that were part of ARD became partners of a joint subsidiary, ARD Degeto. The company is responsible for the acquisition and production of fictional programmes for the joint programme ARD and for the own programmes of the federal broadcasters. Degeto programs were produced for the time slots on Friday evening and since October 1973 also on Thursday evening (Wack 1973, 125). Nowadays, there are clear rules in the ARD, who delivers the programmes for which fiction time slot. This occupation plan states that on Tuesday evening there is a joint programme in the responsibility of the joint editorial office. On Wednesday evening the federal broadcasters must deliver shows, and still on Thursday and Friday evening the shows commissioned by Degeto will fill the primetime fiction slots. There is a specific financial plan and budget for each time slot. Joint programmes account for approximately 55% of ARD’s overall programming (ARD 2007, 409). The contribution of federal broadcasters to ARD programme can be seen, for example, on the popular crime series Tatort (Göbel-Stolz 2016; Eichner 2018). Each federal broadcaster contributes with a certain number of episodes to this procedural, from one or two episodes from small broadcasters up till eight or nine episodes by the largest broadcaster from Northrine-Westfalia, the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). In 1993 ZDF founded a subsidiary, ZDF Enterprises. The company is responsible for ZDF co-productions, programme acquisition and distribution. For instance, ZDF Enterprises had a distribution deal with Danish ­­ ​­ public service television DR. In this way, series like The Bridge (2011–2018) and The Killing (2007–2012) conquered the screens in Europe (Eichner and Mikos 2016). All fictional productions were realized as external productions or co-productions. The fictional shows were created on the basis of a contract between the broadcaster and the production company. “Usually

180  Lothar Mikos this was a total buy-out of the rights in return for the overall financing of the production” (Stürmer 2000, 108). Generally, the broadcaster can be granted all copyrights and exploitation rights. This was the case since the 1960s in Germany. It changed in the 21st century when production companies could keep some rights, for example for the online exploitation. It also became a possibility that production companies contributed up to 20% of the production budget.

Fiction production: past and future The traditional way of fiction production was characterized by the fact that broadcasters commissioned made for TV movies and drama series for specific time slots from production companies. Whereas commercial channels could produce fiction for a global television market, the task of the public service broadcasters is to produce primarily for the national market. Only the commercial subsidiaries such as ARD Degeto and ZDF also have an eye on the international market. Traditionally, mainly family series and crime series were produced. ZDF was very successful with procedurals of which Derrick (1974–1998) is the most prominent one, also because it was sold to 93 countries (Hampel 1998, 162). The longest running procedural of ARD is the already mentioned Tatort. This show also introduced a kind of flexinarrative (Nelson 2007), by introducing a minimum horizontal serial development of police officers. Also, since the 1980s daily soaps and telenovelas are part of the programme schedule. Only very few series corresponded to complex TV (Mittell 2015), such as Der König von St. Pauli ( The King of St. Pauli; 1998) on the commercial channel Sat.1 or Im Angesicht des Verbrechens (In the Face of Crime; 2010) on public service broadcaster ARD. This situation changed in the second decade of the 21st century. In reaction to the global success of HBO drama series and of crime series from the Nordic countries which were labelled as Nordic Noir (Redvall 2013; Gamula and Mikos 2014; Hansen and Waade 2017; Hochscherf and Philipsen 2017), German broadcasters step by step started to commission complex television drama series. In 2010 ARD commissioned Weissensee (2010–2018). All four seasons were produced by Ziegler Film, one of the main independent production companies that worked for German public service broadcasters. A few years later ZDF gained international attention ­ and success with its series Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter (Generation War, 2013) produced by TeamWorx, a subsidiary of the production company UFA which belongs to the Fremantle Group as part of the Bertelsmann conglomerate. The year 2015 marked a significant change in the production of television drama series in Germany. The small pay TV channel TNT Serie owned by Turner Broadcasting commissioned local content. The mystery series Weinberg (Vineyard; ­ 2015) with a budget of 3.5 million euro for six episodes of roughly 55 minutes by the companies Bantry Bay, a subsidiary of

TV drama series production in Germany  181 Beta Film, and Twenty Four 9 Films, was successful with audiences and television critics. After a long break, commercial channel RTL began to commission television series again. As a result, Deutschland 83 (2015) achieved international success and was sold to the US but failed with German audiences. Therefore, the second season, Deutschland 86 (2018), was produced by the production company UFA for Amazon Prime Video. To mention this streaming platform demonstrates another change in the German television market. Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, which started its service in autumn 2014 in Germany, became important players. In 2017 the first German television drama series were produced for Amazon Prime Video, You Are Wanted (2017–2018), and Netflix, Dark (2017–2020). The ­­ ​­ ­­ ​­ advent of streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix in Germany changed the nature of TV drama production. The production of TV fiction was hitherto dominated by PSBs (Fontaine 2017). Meanwhile new players in the market entered the scene, and new coalitions forged like the one of public service broadcaster ARD and commercial pay TV Sky to produce Babylon Berlin (2017-). The new players who started to commission original content brought a new dynamic to the local German television market. Also, because – as the titles of this new series already indicates – these series are produced for a global market and a transnational television culture (Mikos 2020). Because these companies are active in the global market, they produce transnational drama series to appeal to a global audience: “Where, traditionally, texts were produced for domestic markets and, then, altered for broadcasts as imports, Netflix’s in-house productions are produced with a desired transnational appeal in mind” ( Jenner 2018, 237). Even if Netflix is working on a global level with global reach (exceptions are China, Iran, and North Korea), “it is highly territorial because of its licensing model” (Lobato 2019, 70). Since 2015 Netflix localizes its content by hiring local production companies to produce local original content in several countries – and Amazon Prime Video followed and applied the same strategy. The appearance of the new players changed the production culture of television drama series in Germany. Whereas traditionally procedurals were produced for public service broadcasters and commercial channels, the new players in the market asked for mini-series with horizontal storytelling, complex series (Mittell 2015). Also, new ways of production were introduced to German authors, producers, and directors, e.g. writers’ room, showrunner, appreciation of authors, tight timeframes for shooting and picture lock, and post-production. The year 2015 also marks the beginning of public funding for television series. Until then, the funding institutions had only supported films. The first was Medienboard B erlin-Brandenburg started to fund drama series production. The idea behind was to expand the region as a production site for series production. Veronika Grob, at Medienboard responsible for High End Drama Series, saw back in 2015 a shift to TV drama series, starting in the US. So, Medienboard decided to ­­ support the production of the fifth season of Homeland (2011-):

182  Lothar Mikos The main reason, of course, is that, in our opinion, a lot of audiovisual content has shifted in the direction of series, that exciting stories are told there, not only in the cinema – as perhaps a few years ago – but also in the serial realm, especially with the new complex drama series. Series have been around in Germany for a very long time, but they have now acquired a different status in terms of content, aesthetics, visuals and finances in recent years  – which of course began in the US and hopefully continues here now […]. When we started production funding, the first one was Homeland, an international series (Grob 2017). One year later in 2016 the German ministry of economy established the German Motion Picture Fund (GMPF) to make Germany a more competitive and innovative production location for films and drama series. In its first year GMPF funded five drama series, i.e. Babylon Berlin, You Are Wanted, Dark, the public service ZDF series Bad Banks (2018-), and the international production Berlin Station (2016–2019), ­­ ​­ a ­co-production ​­ of Anonymous Content, Paramount Television, and Studio Babelsberg for the US cable channel Epix. The four local series also got funding from Medienboard ­Berlin-Brandenburg. ​­ When Netflix and Amazon Prime Video started to commission local productions in Germany, they increased the budgets. The budget of Dark was 18 million euros for ten episodes, while the six episodes of You Are Wanted were shot on ten million euro in total. The average budget for an ordinary ­90-minute ​­ Tatort episode is 1.2 to 1.5 million euro. To compete with these global players, German productions aimed at an international audience had to increase their budgets. Bad Banks collected a budget of 8.1 million euro for six episodes of 52 minutes. Producer Lisa Blumenberg of Letterbox Filmproduction explains the composition of the budget: We have a budget of 8.1 million Euros in total. About 52% came from the broadcasters. Then we have the Film Fund Luxembourg from the co-producer to the tune of 2 million Euros. The Luxembourg funding body has already contributed a certain amount to the development, and that was very early on. There is funding from the regional film fund in Hessen, a minimum guarantee of the global distributor, and we have GMPF as a new financing instrument, which was handily launched last year, and that we were able to use. The GMPF is an economic development scheme especially designed for high end series productions. You have to meet certain requirements, i.e. a budget of more than 1.2 million Euros per episode, less than 60% of the broadcaster’s share in the financing. And, of course, there are our own contributions as producers (Blumenberg ­ 2017). For the second season the budget increased to ten million euro, which also includes funding from GMPF and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. Even

TV drama series production in Germany  183 if public funding was important for these transnational drama productions there was another important aspect. Baran Bo Odar and Jantje Friese, creators of Dark, stated that the production for Netflix has an aspect of professionalization for German film and television professionals, mainly because of the tight timeframes and Netflix’s demand that they want to see six edited versions (Bo Odar and Friese 2019). They got the Netflix contract because both had an international track record. After the production of the first season both got a four year overall deal with Netflix with the commitment to create a new series season every year. The role of the showrunner as a kind of executive producer was new for them. Before the transnational drama productions, a director was the person who had the vision of a project because he or she realized their ideas. With the shift to an American way of drama production, the role of the showrunner became more prominent, a development that took place in the production of Nordic Noir drama series some years before (Redvall 2013). Quirin Berg (2017), producer of Dark and 4 Blocks (2017–2019), ­­ ​­ explained how the vision of a drama series shifted from director to showrunner, because it’s important to have on creative vision for horizontal, complex television drama series. Therefore, in the production of Dark “we ­ rather lived the showrunner principle”. This is different from productions for public service broadcasters, in which the director-as-auteur principle is common. The production of Deutschland 83 and Deutschland 86 followed the showrunner concept. Anna Winger (author) and Jörg Winger (producer), an American- German couple, were both active as showrunners for the show, as Jörg Winger (2017) stated, “we basically ran all the creative decisionmaking processes, so we made the creative decisions. We chose the director, we cast the actors”. As in Scandinavia, the concept of showrunner was not adapted one to one. The German system of production was combined with the American system. In Germany the executive producer is still important. In the writers’ rooms of television drama productions in Germany, the role of the showrunner is adjusted to a head author or an executive producer. The most astonishing aspect was the creative freedom and the appreciation of authors. Hanno Hackfort, Bob Konrad and Richard Kropf, who always work together as an author collective, e.g. for 4 Blocks and You Are Wanted, are pleased that in these production cultures “authors are, first of all, much more valued” (Hackfort et al. 2017). Creative freedom as a principle of these transnational productions is highly appreciated by the German creative professionals. Amazon Prime Video gave much creative freedom as Bernhard Jasper (2017), of You Are Wanted, indicates that it is ­ ­co-director ​­ possible to produce with “relative freedom” and creative possibilities which authors, directors and producers are not used to when producing for PSBs. Traditionally authors fear the intervention by broadcasting editors and executives in the script. That’s the reason why they enjoy the creative freedom that the new players offered.

184  Lothar Mikos Jenner (2016) and Wayne (2017) have pointed out that Netflix follows HBO’s example of creating a brand identity with the notion of creative freedom for authors and producers – indeed based on an economic model to hold licensing rights for future distributions as unlimited or limited exclusive rights or for second exploitation. It is strongly connected to quality TV as a brand. In contrast, traditionally in Germany most of TV drama series productions were commissioned by public service broadcasters. Due to the federal structure of Germany’s broadcasting system, decisions on productions take a lot of time, often three or more years from the idea to screen. Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Sky, and TNT increased the production volume of local drama series. ARD and ZDF adapted this new production culture, but also stick to the traditional way of production. Three case studies will highlight some patterns of the new German production culture for drama series. Babylon Berlin was a co-production of X Filme Creative Pool, ARD Degeto, Sky and the distribution company Beta Film. For the first time in German TV history a PSB and a pay TV ­co-produced ​­ a drama series. You Are Wanted, the first German Amazon Prime series was produced by Pantaleon, a company owned by famous German actor and director Matthias Schweighöfer: this example shows how the new streaming platforms rely on talent and producers with a track record. Finally, the small pay TV channel TNT commissioned 4 Blocks and achieved great success with this drama series.

Babylon Berlin Babylon Berlin was the most expensive German drama series. A total budget of 40 million euro for the first two seasons was collected, with contributions of GMPF, Medienboard B erlin-Brandenburg, Creative Media Europe, and another regional German funding body, Filmstiftung NRW, the regional funding institution of North-Rhine Westphalia. For the first time a PSB, ARD through its subsidiary ARD Degeto, co-produced a drama series with a commercial pay TV, Sky. Also, the distribution company Beta Film was involved, acquiring the world rights, and the production company X-Filme Creative Pool. Michael Polle, head of TV Production at X-Filme, highlights: It is exciting to see how the quality and complexity of projects in Germany has changed […]. For production companies like ours, it’s an exciting time because, like Babylon Berlin, we can think about new financing possibilities and the coalition of pay TV and free TV. This model was a pilot project and has become an absolute success story for all those involved, which is why a decision was made early on about a third season. At the same time, German series are more in demand internationally than ever before, allowing us to think about completely

TV drama series production in Germany  185 different sizes of budgets. Babylon Berlin, for example, was sold to over 100 countries (Rebhandl 2018, 29f.). The story takes place in the 1920s, the so- called “Roaring Twenties” in Berlin. When producer Stefan Arndt of X-Filme Creative Pool and author/ director Tom Tykwer presented the concept of the series to Marcus Ammon, Senior Vice President Film and Entertainment at Sky Germany, they presented an aesthetic and visual concept, “in which the city of Berlin in 1929 was the leading actor in this series” (Ammon 2017). The series tells with tremendous visual power the story of Gereon Rath, who was sent from Cologne to Berlin to work as police officer, where he met Charlotte Richter, a young working- class girl who dreams of a career at the police headquarter. The story of their investigations in organized crime and political complots is interwoven with the political story of the rising National Socialism and the cultural life of the roaring twenties. The series was the first production shot at the “Neue Berliner Straße”, the new built exterior set at Studio Babelsberg, and at original locations in Berlin. The set designer of the series, Uli Hanisch, participated in the creation and development of this 16 million euro set (Conrad 2016). The set designer of Babylon Berlin constructed a historic Berlin that corresponds to the mediatized image of the city (Eichner and Mikos 2017). Beside the involvement of distribution company Beta Film, the replication of the mediated image of Berlin might one of the reasons for the international success. The production of the series introduced the idea of “think big” into the German production landscape for television drama series.

You Are Wanted You Are Wanted is a thriller with one of the most popular German actors, Matthias Schweighöfer, as the main character, who also co-directed all episodes. The first season has six episodes, produced by Amazon Studios, Warner Bros. International Television, and Pantaleon Film, a production company owned by Schweighöfer. The story unfolds around the main character Lukas Franke, a young hotel manager and father, whose life changes abruptly when someone hacks his personal data and begins to manipulate Lukas’ life story. He is confronted with mysterious messages. His digital identity is changed, and the Federal Criminal Police Office suspects him of being a member of a terrorist organization. When even his wife doesn’t trust him anymore and cybercriminals threaten his child, Lukas decides to launch a counterattack. On the search for the criminals he comes across a young woman, whose life is also manipulated by the hackers. They join forces to take joint action against the conspirators. The first season was released on 17 March 2017 on Amazon Prime Video. A second and last season – also with six episodes – was released in May 2018. The budget amounts to 10 million euro per season, with six episodes

186  Lothar Mikos of about 48 minutes each season. Amazon Studios wanted to produce a German series together with Warner Bros. Television. So, they asked them for an idea. They had a series with Schweighöfer in mind, because he could serve as a kind of pre-sold property to secure a certain success. At the same time, the author collective of Hanno Hackfort, Bob Konrad and Richard Kropf negotiated with Warner Bros. Television about several ideas. At a given time Warner Bros. asked the authors if they could develop a drama series for Schweighöfer. They pitched several ideas, but Warner Bros. liked the one of You Are Wanted most (Hackfort et al. 2017), and so the authors started to develop the scripts. According to Bernhard Jasper (2017), cinematographer and together with Matthias Schweighöfer director of the series, the competition between Netflix and Amazon Prime Video was responsible for the immediate realization of the series. The accelerator was that Schweighöfer was part of the series and that at that time Netflix announced to commission its first local German production. Traditionally in German writers’ rooms of TV drama the role of the showrunner is ascribed to a head author or an executive producer. Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf always work together as an author collective or as they name it “a natural born writers’ room” (Hackfort et al. 2017). Whereas there was creative freedom with Amazon Studios, the main cast and director Schweighöfer intervened in the writing process. Kropf noted that there were always debates about the story and the scripts, but when you have to work with a famous actor and director, then “he forms the series according to his own vision” (Staun 2017). Creative freedom as a principle of these transnational productions is highly appreciated by the German creative professionals. Amazon Prime Video opted for a famous German actor and director as a kind of presold property that should guarantee a certain success. Moreover, streaming platforms are looking for local stories with international appeal. They approach local creative talent and local production companies. In doing so, they influenced the German production culture of television drama series.

4 Blocks 4 Blocks was produced by the production company Wiedemann  & Berg Television which belonged to the Endemol Shine Group (meanwhile Banijay Group). The company was founded in 2003 and also produced the first German Netflix series Dark. In comparison to the other series, the budget was small, four million euro for the six one-hour long episodes. This meant some restrictions for the shooting on original locations. Nevertheless, the series is praised for its authenticity in presenting Neukölln, an urban quarter of Berlin, and its Arabian and Turkish inhabitants. The series tells the story of Tony “Ali” Hamady, leader of a Lebanese clan involved in organized crime such as drug dealing, gambling, and racketeering, and the story of collaborations and competition of several clans and a biker gang. The

TV drama series production in Germany  187 authors wanted to create a local story, as Richard Kropf (Hackfort et al. 2017) explained, but I believe that there are things in Germany right now – and we have made an effort to go in exactly this direction with 4 ­Blocks – ​­which at first glance are very regional, but which, because of a deeper universal topic, could target a global audience. In this case, all this takes place in Neukölln, but there is a family history and a conflict underlying it, which hopefully many people can relate to. And Hanno Hackfort added: “It’s about authenticity. It is important to us that we are authentic in our narrative and presentation” (Rebhandl 2018, 33). The stress on the word “authenticity” indicates that the authors wanted to create an image of the urban quarter that they perceive as close to social reality. Thus, it is their authenticity which they ascribe to Neukölln. Authenticity is not an inherent character of places or cultural products but is ascribed to them in the discursive process of making meaning (Michael 2015), and it is an important criterion for the evaluation of cultural products as TV dramas. It serves as distinction marker, that discriminates between authentic and artificial series. 4 Blocks shows that small channels can be successful with commissioned drama series with a small budget. Also, it reached a global audience as Amazon Prime Video acquired the worldwide streaming rights. Therefore, the example also shows how new players in the German television market cooperates in production and distribution of locally produced and globally distributed transnational drama series.

Conclusion With the new players in the market producing local series, a new dynamic has emerged in the German production landscape. Even though the majority of series for linear TV are still procedural crime and family series, complex series have become increasingly important, not only for pay TV and streaming platforms, but also for PSBs. Increased number of drama series has led to a professionalization of production. It has also led to a great demand for local talent and a need for local production companies able to handle the kind of budgets that most new series deal with. The competition of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video for locally produced drama series gave a boost to the production of high concept German dramas. Until the beginning of 2020 Netflix has produced six local series in Germany, most of them with only one season. Dark experienced three seasons. Amazon Prime Video has released four German series with a total seven seasons, two more series are in production and released in 2020. Amazon Prime Video and Netflix are game changers in the production of high-end television drama series in Germany. The narrative structure

188  Lothar Mikos shifted from procedurals to more and more drama series which meet the criteria of “complex TV” (Mittell 2015). Besides the transformation of local production culture concerning writers’ room, showrunner, appreciation of authors, tight timeframes for shooting, picture lock, post-production, and creative freedom, the main change is the shift from locally produced drama series for a national audience to the production of transnational drama series (Weissmann 2012; Bondebjerg et al. 2017). It is now possible for German authors to tell local stories with a global appeal, as long as they focus on specific genres such as mystery, thriller, sci-fi or spy stories. Local stories travel well when they meet well-known genre conventions. That seems to be the recipe of Amazon Prime Video and Netflix for production of local original, and not only in Germany. Nevertheless, streaming services and other new players in the market strengthen local production cultures because they are essentially responsible for an increasing demand of TV drama series. Step by step, this is also changing the production cultures of PSBs. Whereas the conditions of productions changed from a total buy-out system of the public channels to a system in which production companies participate with 20% of the budget and keep some license rights, the streaming platforms acquire independent productions but keep all the rights for global distribution. Therefore, the system hasn’t changed so much, because the way streaming platforms exploit license rights is another form of total buy-out of rights. In the end, the German production landscape for fictional made for TV movies and television drama series is now diverse. Besides the complex high-end series, many procedurals and TV movies are still being produced. Furthermore, different models of contract arrangements exist side by side. This diverse production culture manages 1,823 hours of fictional programmes per year (Fontaine and Pumares 2019, 20), more than any other country in Europe. Due to the new players in the market, the German production landscape of fictional programmes faces dynamic changes which enable local drama series to compete more and more with international productions.

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13 Selling location, selling history New German series and changing market logic Susanne Eichner Introduction When domestic audience ratings of RTL’s quality serial experiment1 Deutschland 83 did not live up to expectations in late 2015, the national television business was shell-shocked. The serial, which has been enthusiastically praised by critics and creatives, failed to stimulate the audience’s interest. This came as a surprise to many – especially after performing particularly well, first at the US SundanceTV channel, where the show premiered, and later on the British VOD platform Walter Presents. Despite its moderate ratings, Deutschland 83 marked the beginning of a new era of high-end quality drama in Germany, a market that has for a long time been accused of being risk-averse, uninnovative, and lacking international appeal. The serial is considered as a true “game changer” by producer Nico Hofmann 2 (Scheer 2017). German producers and channels kept following the path that was opened up by the serial’s foreign success, and a number of internationally recognized and successful TV drama projects – produced for domestic oriented flow and pay TV, as well as for international oriented streaming and subscription services  – have been produced since3. This chapter will address the question if, in fact, 2015 is a pivot point for German television drama and will trace the major shifts, trajectories, and players involved in these changes at this particular time and within this particular TV market. The late emergence of German high-end quality serials has followed a general increase in quality drama production from mainland Europe. Formerly earmarket by imports from the US and the UK, new policy and tax incentive schemes, as well as the emergence of new players on the market in need of more content, have transformed the European television marketplace considerably and have strengthened European productions and co-productions ­ ​­ (Hammett-Jamart, ­­ ​­ Mitric and Redvall 2018). Much of this development is due to the effects of digitalization, namely the diversification of channels, increasing platformization, and the appearance of new agents and players within the field, which increased the demand for quality content and thus fostered the production of European

192  Susanne Eichner quality content. Media regulations, particularly the Audiovisual and Media Services directives from 2010 and 2018 (AVMS 2010, 2018), which responded to these developments, pushed this development further by favoring European productions over third-country imports (Bondebjerg et al. 2017, 60 et seq.). At the same time, conglomeratization and concentration of ownership (Esser 2017) seem to run counter to the diversification of players, platforms, and formats. Clearly, the continuing development of television markets is neither linear nor even across regions and countries, but is influenced and guided by different regional developments, national regulations, transnational economic interests, specific market logic, and viewing habits. For instance, due to specific circumstances of national market structure and production culture, Denmark has experienced a phase of innovation in its production of television drama series in the last decade that propelled this small country ahead of other European countries in terms of international recognition and successful drama production (Redvall 2013; Nielsen 2016; Hansen and Waade 2017). Danish series such as The Killing (DR, ­ ­2007–​ 2012), The Bridge (DR/SVT, and Borgen (DR, ­ ­ ­ ­2011–2018), ​­ ­ ­2010–2013) ​­ gained international recognition and served as templates for the European way of doing quality drama. Other European markets also joined this wave of quality production, thus creating a cultural counterflow to the domination from the US and UK ( Jensen 2016). Germany, on the other hand, tried to stay in touch with these developments. As a markedly import-oriented market (Mikos 2016) with its stable dual broadcast system4 and strong, public broadcast channels financed by the license fee, German producers were more interested in buying into European co-productions than in the licensing of their own canned programs abroad (Bondebjerg et al. 2017, 86). But public discourse regarding the national television market increasingly emphasized the poor quality of German TV productions, blaming the fossilized structures of public broadcast television of preventing innovation, ­ ­​­ ​­ commercial television of being risk-averse ­ ​­ ­ and free-to-air (Eichner 2016). By the time The Killing was released in the UK in 2011 (on BBC Four), paving the way for the export of other European drama shows, the German television market was not ready to provide similar content aimed at attracting international audiences. It was not until Deutschland 83 that contemporary drama serials with international appeal were produced. Due to particular circumstances5, the show premiered on a niche US channel, SundanceTV. It was promoted as the first German-subtitled TV drama and gained remarkable domestic, and international attention. By the time of its release, Babylon Berlin was already hyped by the media and would turn out to be the first German high-end quality drama in the new era of quality output to meet high expectations in the domestic market as well as abroad. The contribution of the present chapter is to identify the specific conditions that prevented the German television market from producing highend quality drama serials earlier; it also describes the specific trajectories

Selling location, selling history   193 that enabled and attracted different players and agents in the German television market to follow the European trend of producing appealing highend quality serials. As a matter of fact, high-end quality drama that depicts interesting characters, gripping plots, flexi-narratives, authenticity, and distinctive aesthetics have been produced in Germany since much longer, though without the same international recognition. In the Face of Crime (ARD, 2010), produced five years earlier, shares many characteristics of today’s high-end quality serials. I will explain this development by drawing on three distinct drama serials (In the Face of Crime, Deutschland 83, and Babylon Berlin) and illustrate the logic of the German television landscape and its major shifts and trajectories of the last ten years. I will furthermore argue that the German high-end quality serials share some distinctive characteristics, namely the use of a particular time and place in German history as their unique selling point and as a means of audience engagement and global appeal. While sharing specific characteristics, the conditions of production, distribution, and reception of the three cases differ considerably. The German television landscape has experienced some major developments from the production of In the Face of Crime to the international success of Babylon Berlin. In the Face of Crime portrays the Russian mafia scene in Berlin the 1990s, and will serve as early example and precursor to the era of traditional flow TV logic. A second example will be the Cold War spy drama Deutschland 83, which was produced in an era of change and the arrival of new powerful players. Babylon Berlin and its portrayal of Berlin in the roaring 1920s will be considered as advanced example of the new market logic that followed the entry of new players into and restructuring of the market. Each of the three serials thus stages a key point in the development of the German television market, on which basis the televisual landscape of the last decade can be mapped out.

Quality TV as ­meta-genre ​­ In the UK and US, high-end quality TV is often associated with specific channel identities, most influentially that of HBO. Taking Thompson’s (1996) seminal work on quality television as starting point, television scholars widely acknowledged the idea of quality television as a genre or metagenre (Mikos et  al. 2007). For instance, Daniela Schlütz describes serial quality television as: complex in terms of storytelling, cast, narrative ambiguity, and intertextuality. Due to realistic execution, controversial subjects, and ambiguous characters quality series appear authentic. Moreover, they stand out because of a signature style composed of high production values, distinctive visual style, and techniques fostering reflexivity. Quality TV

194  Susanne Eichner addresses a special, highly autonomous audience segment. As a metagenre it supports selection, frames comprehension, and channels interpretation (Schlütz 2016, 101). Dunleavy explains the innovative potential of high-end quality drama as a “response to the unprecedented pressures and opportunities that increasing multi- channel competition, technological convergence, and market fragmentation have combined” (2009, 199). This emphasizes the mechanisms and dynamics of television products as cultural commodities, which work simultaneously along the lines of artistic expression, audience empowerment, and of economic value (Fiske 1989, 59). In the Face of Crime, Deutschland 83, and particularly Babylon Berlin share many of the quality criteria: each serial was highly cost intensive, with formerly unthinkable production budgets for TV products; all depict their distinct signature style including renowned film directors and scriptwriters and renowned actors; they have continuing and complex storylines; they make multiple intertextual references to pop culture and television; they depict edgy topics; they have ambivalent main characters, and they all were enthusiastically praised by critics before their release. All serials have received numerous awards, most notably the Grimme Award, Germany’s most prestigious television award (in 2011, 2016, and 2018 respectively) as well as international awards (e.g., the 2019 EFA Fiction Series Award for Babylon Berlin or the 2018 International Emmy Award for Deutschland 83). In the following, I will look at each serial and elaborate their affiliation to the meta genre of high-end quality serials, situate them within the market logic and market trajectories of the German television landscape during the last decade, and bring forth their unique selling point – an articulation of location and history.

The logic of traditional flow TV: In the Face of Crime When In the Face of Crime was released in 2010, the logic of flow television seemed unchallenged in Germany. The time spent watching flow TV was still increasing in all age groups and reached a new record with an average of 223 minutes per viewer per week (Zubayr and Gerhard 2011, 126). IPTV television and streaming platforms were still a niche phenomenon and despite the public attention and the increasing popularity of online media content, flow television remained the uncontested main media format in German households (Krüger 2012, 221). Most popular programs of 2010 were live sports events (the men’s Football World Cup ­semi-final, ​­ Germany vs. Spain) with up to 31.1 million viewers (83% market share), the live entertainment show Eurovision Song Contest with 14.73 million viewers (49% market share), and the popular crime series Tatort (Crime ­ Scene, ARD, 1970-), which attracted up to 10.6 million (29.4% market share).

Selling location, selling history   195 In Germany’s dual broadcasting system, public service broadcast channels and commercial channels divide the market fairly equally, with only a minor share going to pay TV. There are, however, differences in the program offer: as networks primarily financed by the license fee (which returned 7.54 billion euro in 2010 and 8.1 billion in 2018), ARD and ZDF defrayed more than two thirds of their fiction content in 2010 with in-house productions, commissioned productions, and European co-productions6. The commercial channels RTL and Sat1 commissioned approximately half of their fiction programming themselves, while ProSieben, in contrast, imported the majority of its fiction portfolio (87%) from the US (Krüger 2012, 235). In 2010, flow TV and the dynamics of the dual broadcasting system were, in other words, uncontested. Major changes and reactions towards the changing global framework requirements due to digitalization, new technologies, and new players were not evident in the German television market. This, however, stands in contrast to a parallel development in the German media landscape, noticeable since 2005: the boom in online video content, VOD platforms, and other streaming portals, though still predominantly associated with movies. In 2010, the German streaming market was evenly divided between Maxdome, Videoload, Lovefilm, and iTunes, with YouTube already on the rise. Within only a few years, revenues grew to 124 million Euros – still only reaching a small segment of 2.5 million users in 2010 (Martens and Herfert 2013, 108). The turn to online viewing proved to be significant: still widely ignored by established players in the television industry, young viewers started to migrate to online offers. Two reasons can be considered responsible for the failure to recognize these trajectories: first, time spent with flow television was still increasing in 2010 across all age groups. This concealed the fact that the absolute number of viewers aged 14 to 19 was paradoxically decreasing – with fewer viewers still viewing more hours (Woldt 2013, 117). Second, the dual broadcast system ensured the continuing dominance of free-to-air television with pay TV unable to gain ground in Germany. With five free full programs and numerous regional and niche channels available, audiences in Germany were used to a rich television portfolio without having to accept additional expenses. These specific conditions and circumstances decelerated considerably the global tendencies and effects of digitization in Germany. In the Face of Crime was produced and released in these market conditions. The police drama is set against the background of rival Russian gangs and organized crime in ­Berlin-Charlottenburg – ­​­ known ​­ as “Charlottengrad” – ­ ​ in the 1990s. The protagonist of the serial, inspector Marek Gorsky (played by Max Riemelt), the son of Jewish-Russian immigrants in Berlin, investigates a Russian mafia clan and explores the tangled webs of organized crime and human trafficking. The serial depicts a parallel Berlin where organized crime happens out of sight of an unsuspecting society. Marek wanders between these two worlds, struggling with his loyalties, which are

196  Susanne Eichner split between law and order and his family of origin, who are involved in the mafia milieu. By the time In the Face of Crime was released in 2010, channel executives did not usually trust audiences with complex horizontal narrations and rather banked on closed narrations or soap opera structures. Accordingly, critics struggled to find a label for the genre. “Mafia saga”, “monumental work”, and “epic movie” are auxiliary genre designations that were used by critics to satisfy the complexity and multilayeredness of the story and its ambivalent characters that draw the audiences into the unfolding story. The serial was co-produced by the ARD together with ARD Degeto and Austrian ORF. In 2010 it marked – as ABC’s Lost did in the US in 2004 – breaking with previous conventions of TV production: with one million euros for each episode it was Germany’s most expensive serial television project and it was also considered as a project of high quality and value. Comparisons to former milestones of German television history – such as Berlin ­Alexanderplatz – were frequently made by critics and creatives alike. The film critic Sterneborg lauds: “You needn’t shy away from comparing the serial with Coppola’s Godfather­ trilogy or with great American television series such as The Sopranos and The Wire” (Sterneborg 2010). Pricewinning screenwriter Rolf Basedow recounts the genesis of the project: originally an idea by producer Marc Conrad, by then CEO of the production company Typhoon AG that would become bankrupt over the realization of the project in 2009, Basedow was commissioned by Conrad to write the script for the serial. Basedow teamed up with former colleague and renowned film director Dominik Graf and despite the financial difficulties the project faced, ten episodes were produced (Basedow in Junkelwitz 2010). Director Graf insists on the proximity to the auteur film (Graf in Nicodemus and Siemes 2010), and the serial has been repeatedly described as an “epic movie of 500 minutes” (Sterneborg 2010). In the Face of Crime provides a script that allows for time and openness and dramaturgical branchings, numerous sub-plots that follow a tree and map pattern (Rothemund 2015, 54), a rich character ensemble, and character-driven narration. The serial premiered on the French- German public broadcast niche channel ARTE in late April 2010, scheduled at 10 pm in double episodes. ARD released the serial six months later on the Friday night slot at 9.45  pm. When audience ratings remained below expectations, ARD program director Volker Herres decided to phase out the serial sooner than originally intended. The serial’s final was broadcast at 11:25 pm and attracted only 1.34 million viewers. After praising the serial enthusiastically as “the best that television has yielded recently” (Keil 2010), as a “miracle production” (Buß 2010), and as “one of the big television events of the last years” (Nicodemus and Siemes 2010), critics and creatives expressed some indignation about Herres’s decision. As would be the case with Deutschland 83 five years later, the serial was treated as a “failure” by those responsible because it did not live up to the expected audience numbers and also

Selling location, selling history   197 failed to draw in younger audiences – a hope that the increasingly aging audience structure of German broadcast television has struggled with for years. Arguably, In the Face of Crime faced adverse conditions from the outset. It was scheduled on a channel with very little culture of complex horizontal narration – HBO series were broadcasted primarily by the commercial competitors – and an increasingly aging audience. The serial was preceded by a “Heimat” kitsch movie and had to fill the well-established repetition slot of Tatort, Germany’s best loved crime series. With Friday night representing a weak slot for young audiences in general, who, moreover, had already migrated to younger channels and online offers in 2010, strong audience ratings were no doubt hard to achieve in the first place. Notwithstanding, In the Face of Crime remained one of the most celebrated German television projects mentioned in the same breath as Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980, by Rainer Werner Fassbinder) or Heimat (1984, by Edgar Reitz) and received Germany’s most important television award, the Grimme award for being “a monumental epos of 500 minutes, a German mafia epos that bears its own hallmarks, a fevered, galvanizing portrayal of modern Berlin” (Grimme Award 2011). The perception of the serial as “failure” is a remnant of a system where audience ratings were considered the primary indicator for success. Public broadcasters were (and still are) at conflict with living up to their public service remits of public value (such as minority audience television) on the one hand, and with justifying their spendings by reaching large audiences on the other (Hasebrink 2014).

Changing market conditions: Deutschland 83 Germany’s TV industry was slow to respond to the global developments of ongoing digitalization, market fragmentation, and platformization. By 2014 only minor concessions had been made to allow for strategies of keeping younger audiences, such as public broadcasters introducing online libraries (ZDF since 2001, ARD since 2008), and these were severely restricted by competition regulations. Other measures such as the online youth offer Funk by the public broadcasters would only be launched in 2016 (Feierabend, Philippi and Pust-Petters 2018). Despite the fact that Netflix and Amazon Prime both entered the German market in 2014, public broadcasters and commercial channels saw no immediate reason to react. Weekly viewing for broadcast television still amounted to 221 minutes – only two minutes less than in 2010. A generational shift in viewing habits and a migration of younger viewers to online offers was noted at the time (Zubayr and Gerhard 2015, 114), and Koch and Liebholz (2014, 398) point out that the 14- to 19-year-old users are particularly rapid early adopters of online videos. But the stable dual broadcasting system with no noteworthy pay TV due decelerated the decline of flow TV audiences, who were used to free-toair-offers. The German TV system was secured by mandatory license fees

198  Susanne Eichner for public broadcasters and a low budget production culture with a focus on scripted reality formats in commercial television. Despite the fact that the trajectory was clearly evident in 2014, channels and broadcasters were still doing relatively well. Nonetheless, the production of fictional series was declining. According to the FORMATT study on the production volume of German TV and film genres, considerably fewer series were commissioned in 2013 and 2014, reducing the amount of domestically produced serial fiction from 126,000 minutes in 2011 to 90,000 minutes in 2013 (Röper 2016, 518). There are, however, considerable differences between public broadcasters and commercial channels: ARD and ZDF increased their domestic fiction productions and only imported 10% and 13% respectively, of their fictional formats from the US. In contrast, the commercial channels were even more import-oriented than before: in 2013 ProSieben imported 93% of its fiction portfolio from the US, Sat1 followed with 79%, and RTL with 51% US imports (Krüger 2015, ­161–162). Deutschland 83 was produced in this sce­ ​­ nario, which was marked by obvious changes on one hand, and the maintenance of existing structures on the other. The spy drama is set in the GDR and West Germany during the Cold War and its intensification in the early 1980s. Newcomer actor Jonas Nay performs as the young East- German spy, Martin Rauch alias Moritz Stamm. Maria Schrader plays his manipulative aunt Lenora, a high ranking agent of the HVA (“Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung”), the foreign intelligence service of the GDR. Martin finds himself in the middle of Cold War escalation, which threatens to intiate the third world war. He is sent to a West- German military base in the former capital, Bonn, in order to discover if operation “Able Archer” is, as claimed, only a military exercise or the start of an actual strike against the GDR and the UDSSR. The show has been labeled “nostalgia television” (Bandirali 2016), “event serial” (Posener 2015), and “historical drama” (Bayman 2016). It offers its audiences entry in the fictional world via two strategies: either through the situated, nostalgic perspective from within, or as a remote observer entering a hitherto unknown world, best summarized by General Edel (Ulrich Noethen) when he elaborates for his American colleague: “For you, a nuclear war in Europe is 5,000 km away. But we are here”. Deutschland 83 is based on an idea by the American- German scriptwriter couple Anne Winger and Jörg Winger and was offered to Frank Hoffmann, by then the new CEO of RTL Television. Anna Winger and Jörg Winger were appointed as showrunners by the UFA Fiction CEO Nico Hofmann (2013–2017), who put them in charge of the show’s vision, which is an unusual production principle in Germany. (Winger and Winger 2015). Due to the English-language script, FremantleMedia was able to sell the show to SundanceTV, where it was advertised as the first German-subtitled show in the US. The US pre-release gave Deutschland 83 a cultural mark-up and accolade that was eagerly picked up by the German media and critics.

Selling location, selling history   199 As Anna Winger (2015) and Nico Hofmann (Bauer and Hofmann 2016) elaborate, the team adapted a production model that was a mixture between the American writer’s room, the Danish model and the UFA Fiction experience with its own soap development. While Hofmann had produced an impressive number of series, miniseries, and TV movies previously, long quality serials was new terrain. As Germany’s biggest commercial channel and with a market share of 10%, RTL is renowned for its scripted reality shows (e.g., Verdachtsfälle, since 2009), action series (e.g., Cobra 11, since 1996), format adaptations (e.g., Let’s Dance, since 2006 or I’m a ­Celebrity…, since 2004), and TV event movies (e.g., Storm Tide, 2004; Hindenburg, 2011) but not for high-end quality serials. Despite initial doubts concerning the format’s suitability for the channel’s profile and its audience needs, RTL CEO Frank Hoffmann hoped particularly to attract the younger audience with the serial (Hoffmann 2015). With an average age of 48, RTL’s audience is markedly younger that the aging audiences of the public broadcast channels (ZDF viewers are, on average, 62), thus opening up the potential for Deutschland 83 also to reach these “younger” viewers. When Deutschland 83 aired in Germany, expectations were high that the show would exceed usual audience ratings. The pilot of Deutschland 83 was screened at the Berlinale Special Series section in February 2015 and was enthusiastically praised by critics. RTL broadcasted the serial from November to December in 2015, half a year after its premier at SundanceTV. The serial was scheduled as double feature on Thursday prime time (8:15 pm), the regular slot for RTL’s most successful export hit Cobra 11. As a matter of fact, with 3.2 million viewers (14.6% market share) watching the first episode, audience ratings were slightly above average of the normal ratings within that slot. Within the group of 14- to 49-year-old viewers the share reached even 15.2%. Yet audience ratings dropped sharply to 9% for the second instalment at 9:15 pm and subsequent episodes attracted only an average of 2.1 million viewers. The serial ended with 1.63 million viewers and a market share of 8.1% for the season finale (Der Spiegel 2015). As was the case for In the Face of Crime, Deutschland 83 faced strong competition. Nearly five million viewers watched the Heimat series Die Bergretter on ZDF concurrently, 4.2 million tuned into ARD’s crime series Mordkommission Istanbul, and 2.8 million viewers watched The Voice of Germany on ProSieben (Müller 2015a). The moderate audience ratings were quickly interpreted as failure by critics. Despite Die Welt praising the serial in November 2015 and telling their readers that “from now, television entertainment will work differently” (Posener 2015), the same paper blamed a lack of audience interest for the program’s “failure” just a month later (Meier 2015). Arguably, as with its precursor In the Face of Crime five years earlier, Deutschland 83 suffered from incongruous program strategies ( Junkelwitz 2015) and, marketing campaigns, and miscalculated audience expectations. The serial was scheduled for the Thursday evening action slot, the regular slot for RTL’s in-house prestige production Cobra  11. It

200  Susanne Eichner was  screened  in  double episodes and interrupted by ads. The marketing campaign was traditional and limited to offline campaigns such as posters and on-air promotion. All in all, the serial did not align with the channel image and its audience expectations and viewing habits. However, the core problem can be identified elsewhere. Neither the producers nor the channel truly considered the changing market logic, according to which broadcast television is just one of many access points for quality content and high-end quality drama. The changing market logic did not threaten the existence of the German dual broadcasting system as such, but affected the system in less obtrusive ways, one of them being to render audience ratings as TV’s sole indicator of success outdated. In fact, Deutschland 83 was streamed nearly one million times from RTL’s online platform RTL Now by December 2015, constituting a considerable streaming success, which was, however, not considered significant by RTL itself. In the US market and in the UK, on the other hand, Deutschland 83 was perceived as a triumph in the tradition of other successful foreign TV drama such as The Returned (France) or Gran Hotel (Spain). Drew Pisarra, vice president of digital media and marketing SundanceTV, highlights the influence of a tailored digital marketing campaign for Deutschland 83 for the audience success. Promotional activities such as interactive sliders showing places in Berlin in the 1920s and now, weekly tweets from showrunner Anna Winger, propaganda-style art from the GDR and weekly playlists of the 1980s music have engaged audiences online: “the buzz has been incredibly good – not only has the serial received glowing reviews in the press, but the show appears to already be establishing a hardcore fanbase online” (Pisarra, in Edelsburg 2015). In the UK, 2.5 million watched the first episode on Channel 4 and on its partner VOD platform Walter Presents. According to Piers Wenger, by then head of drama at Channel 4, the program constituted the best start ever for a foreign-language drama on British television (Kloo 2016). In fact, the serial has been sold to 180 countries at the time of writing, and it presents, together with Babylon Berlin, one of Germany’s biggest recent export successes. Deutschland 83 thus represents the new double logic of television production: meeting the demands of a national system and traditional viewing habits and, at the same time, orienting towards an international market with critical attention rather than audience rating as new currency of measuring success. Consequently, and despite its “failure” to reach expected audience ratings, Deutschland 83 was commissioned for a second (and later a third) season – however, not by RTL but by Amazon Prime.

New market logic: Babylon Berlin By the time Babylon Berlin was released, changes in the German television landscape were fully tangible. Revenues of the pay TV segment (including SVOD) had grew from 124 million euros in 2010 to 3.1 billion in 2018

Selling location, selling history   201 (VAUNET 2018). By 2018, the German market had over 8 million pay TV subscribers, 10 million SVoD subscribers, and an estimated viewership of over 20 million. Arguably, the long lasting dual broadcasting system came to be superseded by a triple broadcasting system (Eichner and Esser 2020). From its beginning, the serial project Babylon Berlin established a successful marriage between established broadcast system and the logic of the new market: by securing the adaptation rights for Volker Kutscher’s novel, Stefan Arndt, CEO of X Filme Creative Pool7, initiated the project with a view to expanding into the international TV business already in 2012 (Heine 2013). This not only demanded careful cooperation to secure a competitive budget but also provided partners fit to serve the changing market conditions and logic. Arndt’s efforts resulted in the partnership of Germany’s public broadcaster ARD and pay TV provider Sky Germany. Based on Volker Kutscher’s crime novel series, the Gereon Rath Mystery Series portrays the vibrant culture of Berlin’s Weimar period in the 1920s. Characterized by economic growth and prosperity between the wars, B erlin was a fertile ground for arts, architecture, and intellectuals, and was also famous for prostitution, petty crime, and drugs. The protagonist of the series is inspector Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) from Cologne, a scarred war veteran, addicted to morphine and whose mission is to secure a sex film that compromises a high-ranking politician. With his streetwise partner inspector Bruno Wolter (Peer Kurth) and the ambitious stenotypist Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries), Gereon is caught up into the city’s maelstrom of drugs, prostitution, and crime. Babylon Berlin is a “Weimar- era German police drama” ( Wollaston 2017), an “epic crime drama” (Dowling 2017), a “political-tinged detective thriller” (Daub 2018), and “a big, staggering social panorama” (Buß 2017). Most of all, it is repeatedly referred to as the most expensive Germanlanguage TV show ever produced (Dowling 2017) and a “mega serie” (Buß 2017) with an estimated final budget of 40 million euro for two seasons and an average cost of 2.5 million euros per episode. By the time Deutschland 83 aired in Germany in 2015, Babylon Berlin was already gaining considerable attention due to its distinctive profile as a signature and flagship production. In October 2013, X Filme announced the production of the serial with a budget of 25 million Euros with a team consisting of director Tom Tykwer ­ ​­ (known for Run Lola Run, 1998, Cloud Atlas, 2012, Sense8, ­2015–2018) and writing duo Achim von Borries and Hendrik Handloegten who wrote the historical youth drama Love in Thoughts (2004). In 2014 X Filme attracted the ARD subsidiary Degeto Film as main partner and together with Sky Germany they created a first-time collaboration between a PSB and a pay TV channel in Germany. Beta Film partnered in for the worldwide distribution (Müller 2014) and accumulated a considerable amount from presales into 106 countries (Strobel in Denk 2018). From the very beginning, the serial was hyped by the involved parties as well as by critics. Managing Director Content at Sky, Gary Davey, called it “a milestone for Germany”,

202  Susanne Eichner Beta Film CEO Jan Mojto predicted an “internationally fully competitive” project, and novel author Kutscher expected an adaption comparable to The Wire, Mad Men, or Breaking Bad (Kloo 2014). Two years after the initial announcement, however, the financing was still not secured and while two prestigious serial projects, Deutschland 83 and Blochin, premiered at the newly established “Berlinale Special Series” section, Babylon Berlin was presented at the film market still in search for financing partners (Müller 2015b). It took until spring 2016 for the serial finally to go into production. With a hitherto unthinkable production budget and the attention of the national as well as international media, Babylon Berlin was under even more pressure to perform well than Deutschland 83 had been a few years earlier. Babylon Berlin was able to fulfil its promise: it was released on October 2017 as one of Sky Germany’s most successful series. After a phase of circulation through Sky’s special channels it aired on ARD with a specially adjusted release pattern: it was premiered on ARD in September 2018 as a triple feature on the most popular prime time slot, Sunday 8:15 pm, which is usually reserved for the crime series Tatort. Another triple feature followed on the subsequent Thursday, starting at prime time, and the rest of both seasons was broadcast as double feature on the five following Thursdays. The aims of this release pattern were to satisfy traditional crime fans and draw in young online audiences. The release was accompanied by a cinema event in 150 German cities showing both seasons on two subsequent days (Strobel 2018). This strategy paid off: Babylon Berlin attracted an average of 7.83 million domestic viewers per episode (24.5% market ­ share) (Der Spiegel 2018). With 3.39 million streams within the first nine days of its release, it became the most popular media content of all times on ARD’s streaming portal (Niemeier 2018). The much-disputed strategy of premiering content that had been largely financed with license fees on a pay TV channel before its free-to-air release was proven to work. Babylon Berlin used the tactics of cult television (Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson 2004), of brand identities (San Martin 2003), and of event television (Grainge 2009). It followed promotional strategies of must-see TV ( Jancovich and Lyons 2003, 2) and elaborate marketing campaigns and public attention achieved through extensive media coverage, turning the serial into a blockbuster event while at the same time using textual patterns and aesthetic style from the high-end quality television. With its huge production budget, Babylon Berlin was designed as a high- concept product with Berlin as a “hypermediated space” (Eichner and Waade 2015 and having the roaring 1920s as a selling point helped make the product highly marketable beyond Germany.

History and location as selling point The three series presented here share characteristics with the meta genre of high-end quality serials as described in the beginning of this chapter.

Selling location, selling history   203 What distinguishes them from other European quality serials is their particular articulation of place and history. As outlined above, particular circumstances on the level of market dynamics had either thwarted or fostered the successful circulation of the three serials. In fact, it is no coincidence that Berlin serves all serials as a point of departure being a filmic and televisual cityscape in which the entire history of the 20th century is part of the contemporary mediated imaginary city. The different historical sediments have condensed into brand images of Berlin – as a vibrant city of the 1920s, as a symbol of Nazi Germany and World War II, as a memorial of a partitioned country and the Cold War, as a center for organized crime, as “a subcultural punk and drug swamp of the 1980s” (Eichner and Mikos 2017, 43), and as one of the worlds’ most attractive cities for a young and creative scene that it has become in the post-wall era. The multilayered brand images of Berlin that have been retold over and over again in film and TV have thus turned into a brand value. The city turns into a protagonist in In the Face of Crime where Marek’s “inbetweenness” of two parallel worlds allows for a voyeuristic view and the attraction of the exotic within a familiar and authentic setting. At the same time, it corresponds to a dream of a multicultural Berlin: “Instead of the fictional American dream of economic power, In the Face of Crime symbolizes the ‘Berlin dream’ of pluralism, of identities and transculturality by surpassing media, genre, narrative and cultural borders” explains Renger (2017, 104). In this setting, Berlin acts as an authentificator, locating the action in a concrete space with recognizable and authentic places, integrated by the serial’s many total and establishing shots and depiction of concrete and iconic and recognizable Berlin buildings and locations (Sterneborg 2010). The city is thus an important element in the act of world building that allows the fictional story to unfold against a fictional, yet authentic, background: organized crime, Russian milieu and red-light district, Berlin dialect and subtitled Russian conversations. Not only authentic locations, also authentic traditions shown en passant and as a natural part of the characters everyday life contribute to the sense of authenticity of the serial. Deutschland 83 is not focusing on Berlin primarily, but the show integrates the city in its effort to revive the 1980 and the cold war. In Deutschland 83 the detailed decoration and fascination for details elicits a sense of authenticity and nostalgia. For instance, Martin storms into a West German supermarket and is seemingly overwhelmed by the sheer multitude of products while the 1980s New German Wave hit “Major Tom” by Peter Schilling tootles from the loudspeakers. The carefully composed details serve as triggers of local colour  – not only on terms of location, but in terms of local memories, local history or local insignia. “Ostalgia”8 evoked by the famous East German car brand Trabant, the worn-down houses, out-dated technology, or manifold depictions of an idyllic nature and a life free of existential worries in the former GDR (Bayman 2016, 86). Berlin is not a protagonist in the serial – in fact, much of the first season is

204  Susanne Eichner set in West Germany’s former capital Bonn – but with its recognizable and iconic places it functions as the symbol of the partitioned country and the Cold War. It holds nostalgic memories of a less complex (and less global) world of the 1980s and its promise of never- ending economic growth. Both worlds combined add up to create from a distance perspective an exotic historical space, where the threat of a nuclear war materializes. In Babylon Berlin the city becomes a central protagonist in the unfolding of events and story. As with In the Face of Crime and Deutschland 83 before, Babylon Berlin combines horizontal storytelling with the carefully furnished and composed scenography, which evokes a time long past. The temporal distance of the narrated events is a difference from the two other serials, however, investing the reference point of Babylon Berlin with a sense of historical authenticity that is neither an indexical representation (as ­ in In the Face of Crime), nor is it the still-remembered past of Germany in the 1980s (as in Deutschland 83). Instead, the circulation of meaning unfolds on three levels: first, the physical place of contemporary Berlin that corresponds to the first-hand memories of local audiences; second, the imagined place of the Weimar Republic and the Roaring Twenties, which stems from our cultural and historical knowledge; and third, the mediated place shaped by popular films. At the heart of Babylon Berlin’s imaginary work lies the open-air film set, the “Metropolitan Backlot” (“Neue Berliner Strasse”). Originally built for the German movie Sonnenallee (by Leander Haußmann 1999) in 1998, it has served as a film set for hundreds of movies and series since, amongst others Inglorious Bastards (by Quentin Tarantino 2009) and Generation War (ZDF 2013). The set had to give way to housing development in 2013 and plans to rebuild the set were made, but it yet needed a bigger project with financial means to be realized. When in 2015 the financing of Babylon Berlin was finally secured, the new set went into production with four streets depicting different quarters of Berlin, several backyards, an iconic department store, the “Kaufhaus Adam,” and the façade of the dance bar and brothel “Moka Efti”. The recreation of Moka Efti as a historically authentic, multifunctional space with a café, a night club, a billiard hall, a barber’s, and a pastry shop can be considered as the serial’s central means of evoking Berlin’s past (Hanisch 2018). A multitude of additional shooting locations in and around Berlin creates a sense of location and authenticity that absorbs viewers into a mediated place and space that is loaded with images and popular narratives and myths. The different historical layers of the city conflate and manifest particularly in the party scenes at Moka Efti, which not only portray a particular image of the Roaring Twenties but also create a lucid link to Berlin’s current party scene with its techno history and its world famous nightclubs such as the Kit Kat Club and Berghain. Thus, for distant audiences the narrative becomes meaningful and accessible as a mediated place where the historical images of the 1920s overlap and mesh with images of Nazi Berlin as well as with the current image of Berlin as a subcultural party space. For local

Selling location, selling history   205 audiences these layers confront the actual cityscape of Berlin. It is the process of hypermediatization by which “knowledge and imaginations of places through media influence the way in which people experience and act in certain places” (Eichner and Waade 2015, 6).

Conclusion By tracing the specific conditions and trajectories of the German TV market since 2010, this chapter has addressed the question whether 2015 can be considered as pivot point for quality drama for German television. Indeed, there is a large increase in high-end quality serials since 2015. As explained, this development was propelled by changing market conditions and by new EU market regulations and policy making that favoured European productions over third- country productions as an answer to the new “multi- channel” dynamics (D’Arma 2010). Yet rather than considering Deutschland 83 itself as a “game changer”, this paper has argued that particular dynamics and trajectories of the German TV landscape, including the relative stability of traditional broadcast logic, are responsible for the long absence of high-end serial drama and has described the trajectories that facilitated their emergence around 2015. By focusing on these three cases, it becomes clear why In the Face of ­Crime – while sharing many of the high-end quality serials’ characteristics – failed within a media system that still followed traditional market principles. The serial did not prove successful on the international market either. The present chapter’s suggestion is that In the Face of Crime did not sell into the global market due to a lack of expectations regarding German high-quality drama productions on the part of global commissioners and traders. Until then, successful German television exports were either classic crime series in the tradition of Derrick (ZDF 1974–1998), action series such as Cobra 11, or comedy series such as Turkish for Beginners (ARD 2012). With the new market developments and an increasing competition for quality drama content, paired with a new regulatory framework favoring European content, buyers had to widen their portfolio and search for new quality content sources. Deutschland 83 came to the market at the right time and received international attention when it became the showpiece for the new Channel 4 VOD service Walter Presents. In this sense, the serial can be considered as a door opener for German series on the international market. It also paved the way for more high-end quality serials to be produced in Germany, also for new, hitherto unthinkable, partnerships between public broadcasters, private channels, and new players in the market. As outlined, particular market logic are structuring the possibilities for cultural products, their production, and their circulation. Following the three serials In the Face of Crime, Deutschland 83, and Babylon Berlin allowed to trace the particularities of the structuring market principles. It also allowed for a better understanding of the driving forces of a local

206  Susanne Eichner market within a global media landscape. Looking at the ways the three serials integrate and use the particular location and the particular historical setting further elucidates the complex interrelation between market players, audience preferences, and social commodities. The reasons for the late emergence of high-end quality serials from Germany then must be traced – as this contribution has argued – in the particular conditions of the national media system within a global landscape, including market logic, players, audience preferences, and social commodities.

Notes 1 For a further discussion of the characteristics of high- end serial drama see Dunleavy 2009, 2018. The terms “quality serial” or “high- end quality drama” refer to the meta genre of long TV drama series that are grounded in the serial form, usually marked by horizontal narration with overarching dramaturgical arcs and flexi-narratives, which show a diversity of locations, settings and milieus, which unfold around conflict-driven, often transgressive or ambivalent main characters, and which depict controversial topics (Dunleavy 2018, 5), usually with a big production budgets and critically acclaimed and prizewinning credentials (see Thompson 1996; Schlütz 2016). 2 Producer Nico Hofmann founded Teamworx in 1998 together with Ariane Krampe, Doris Zander, Bettina Reiz, and Wolf Bauer (CEO UFA) as a subsidiary of UFA. In 2013 Teamworx merged with UFA Fiction and Nico Hofmann became CEO of UFA Fiction (2013 to 2017). Since 2017 he has been CEO of the UFA group. 3 For instance Charité (ARD, 2017–2019), The Same Sky (ZDF, 2017), Babylon Berlin (ARD/Sky ­ ­ Germany, 2017), Bad Banks (ZDF and ARTE, 2018), 4 Blocks (TNT, ­ 2017), 8 Days (Sky Germany, 2018), Das Boot (Sky Germany, 2018-); ­ You Are Wanted (Amazon, 2017), Dark (Netflix, 2017-) or How to Sell Drugs Online ( Fast) (Netflix, 2019), to name only a few. 4 The German television market is characterized by its free-to- air dualbroadcasting system: in 2010 about half of the market were served by public service broadcast channels, the other half by commercial television (consisting mostly of the two channel families ProSieben.Sat1 Group and the RTL Group). Pay TV (including teleshopping channels) had only a small share (10%). In the recent years pay TV gained ground, principally with Sky Germany, which took over Germany’s former sole pay TV channel Premiere in 2009. Other pay TV platforms are Unity Media and Telekom. Since the introduction of Amazon Prime and Netflix in 2014, which complemented existing streaming services such as Maxdome and iTunes, the dual system turned into a triple system. 5 American- German screenwriter Anna Winger wrote the initial script in English, which enabled the producers to sell the international distribution rights upfront. 6 Commissioned productions in Germany are usually project-based network productions that allow the channels to work with different creatives and companies, and production companies to work with different channels (Windeler and Sydow 2001). One of the most active production companies with regards to serialized drama content is UFA Fiction, a subsidiary of the RTL Group division Fremantle. Until 2013 UFA had eight subsidiaries, among them Nico Hoffmann’s Teamworx. After 2013 the eight subsidiaries were restructured into UFA Fiction, UFA Serial Drama and UFA Show & Factual.

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Part 6

Spain

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfrancis.com

14 The origins of premium television fiction in Spain Canal+ and its evolution towards new ways of production and distribution as Movistar+ Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano Introduction: Movistar+ in the current context of digital change The transformations that the Spanish audiovisual market has experienced in recent decades find in Canal+ España an example that, given the growth of the company, illustrates two of the most significant changes to have occurred in the Spanish TV panorama. The first concerns television technology; the second refers to the increase in the production of original fiction, referred to as the “boom” of Spanish productions, serving up ­notable ­examples including La casa de papel (Money ­ Heist) and Las chicas del cable (Cable ­ Girls), worldwide hits thanks to streaming platforms such as Netflix. Both events are deeply embedded in the logic of the transformation of the industry into an international business during the first two decades of this century, where the globalization of national productions is commonplace, and where pay television (in its multiple forms) is gaining ground on the consumption of content broadcast by traditional freeto-view television operators. As mentioned, Canal+ España illustrates these two changes (technology breakthroughs and the increase in the production of original Spanish television fiction). This evolution also exposes the changes introduced in the actual concept of the production of television fiction: from being a practically non-existent activity, to now doing all of the heavy lifting in enticing its telecommunications users to subscribe to audiovisual content. Tech and corporate changes have, unquestionably, shaped the context that has made this transformation possible. Canal+ España, the first Spanish state pay television operator, initiated its operations in 1990 and now, 30 years down the line and rebranded as Movistar+, it has become the leading player on the pay television landscape. From the 1990s until today, Canal+ has transitioned from being the first Spanish state pay television channel, broadcasting content by satellite, into what is now a new wellknown brand. This

214  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano operator, owned by a telecom company with a huge subscriber base, is the leading pay-to-view service in Spain as well as the most popular among Spanish viewers, thanks to the strong penetration of fibre optics (broadband Internet). In 2019, all the pay TV options available in Spain have broken the record for television consumption in Spanish households. Pay television is watched in 6.7 million households, while the total number of potential viewers is 18 million. Broken down by the type of distribution of pay television, IPTV represents 67%, cable television 19%, satellite television 9%, and subscriptions to online television represents 4% (Barlovento Comunicación 2019, 29–31). In terms of overall television consumption in 2019, pay TV obtained 25.7% audience share opposed to 74% for free digital terrestrial television channels. It is important to note that these paid-for services also include free channels, which still pull in the greatest number of viewers, even within the offer of platforms. ­subscription-based ​­ Be that as it may, Movistar+ is the undeniable leader on the pay television market, since it reaches some 4,100,000 Spanish households, representing a 60% penetration in the pay television market (Barlovento Comunicación 2019, 30). To a great extent, the upswing in the consumption of pay television in Spain since 2016 has been triggered by offers that combine audiovisual and telecommunication services delivered by Telefónica-owned Movistar+. It is also important to note how OTT subscription-based platforms have soared. Official data for 2018 provided by García-Leiva, for example, reveal that 12.5% of Spanish households subscribed to Netflix to watch online content, whereas on-device consumption of Movistar+ (not IPTV-based viewing) represented 13.4%, while Amazon Prime represented 4% and HBO 2.9% (García-Leiva 2019, 78–79). Fiercer competition over the last five years has accelerated the shift to pay TV and on demand. Netflix started operating in Spain in October 2015, HBO España rolled out its services in November 2016, Amazon Prime Video entered the market in December 2016, Sky España in September 2017 (until September 2020), Apple TV in November 2019 and Disney+, launched in early 2020. Given the growing number of competitors, operators have focused on producing original and exclusive television fiction. This is in addition to the fact that platforms such as Netflix have decided to set up production hubs in Spain, alongside the first slate of original productions for HBO and other operators, including Movistar+, which together have fuelled the increase in Spanish productions of TV fiction. Consequently, whereas 38 original Spanish shows premiered in 2015, this figure rose to 50 in 2018. The predictions for 2019 ramp the total up to 78 original Spanish fictions (57 new shows and 21 new seasons), with Netflix, HBO and Amazon accounting for 22 of the totals (García-Leiva 2019, 91). It is worth noting that Canal+/ Movistar+ has experienced the ebb and flow of the production of scripted series in Spain (Lacalle and Sánchez-Ares 2019). Before the contemporary model of diversification, between 1990 and 2017, the production of series in Spain, primarily for broadcast television

Origins of premium television fiction: Spain  215 channels (RTVE, Atresmedia, Mediaset España), focused on comedy and drama as prevailing genres, with drama taking the lead in 2010. Furthermore, genres involving intrigue (police dramas and thrillers) also saw a significant increase over the latter period. In addition, the evolution over these three decades revealed a tendency to gradually reduce the number of episodes per series and the running time of the episodes on both pay TV and free-to-view channels. These two aspects have also characterized the current environment, generated by the competition from digital platforms. It comes as no surprise that, as authors have already noted (Cascajosa 2018a), the recent prominence of the Movistar+ brand linked to the production of “prestige” television fiction has followed the path of already familiar strategies. As a result, the interest in creating or consolidating a brand associated with these “premium” productions, as opposed to content produced by traditional channels, emulates the approach implemented by HBO. Furthermore, by adapting the strategy used to roll out series, with gradual premieres and releasing all the episodes in one block for non-linear consumption, it replicates the game plan implemented successfully by Netflix around the globe.

From Canal+ to Movistar+: a long technological and corporate evolution On launch, following in the footsteps of the French channel of the same name (created in 1984), Canal+ was introduced as a subscription-based satellite television, owned by Spanish media group PRISA. Canal+ España was launched in 1990 and focused mainly on broadcasting film content, sports (mostly football), bullfighting and talk shows. Canal+ started out as a single channel network that required a set-top box and a monthly subscription, which later gave way to Canal Satélite Digital (1997), a platform that tapped into new digital technology to offer a wider catalogue of channels, competing with another similar pay box, Vía Digital, owned by the leading telecom company in Spain, Telefónica. Both brands merged in 2003, giving rise to the platform “Digital+”, which included the former Canal+ as one of the channels in its catalogue. In 2011, this multichannel platform (which did not involve the merger of both companies, since Telefónica continued to develop other telecom products) was once again renamed Canal+. Thanks to the advances in digital technology and the widespread availability of internet connections in households, this new iteration of Canal+ launched a new service included in the traditional multichannel package: Yomvi. This was the first on demand online video service, that was made available online and which could also be accessed using the platform’s revamped set-top boxes. Over time, the development of television technology based on broadband internet (IPTV) led Telefónica to introduce, in parallel, a major competitor, which it rolled out under the brand Movistar TV, i.e. their own multichannel

216  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano television platform. December 2014 saw the launch of the channel Movistar Series, which focused on content created in the US. Finally, in 2015 Telefónica acquired the original platform Canal+ (satellite), which alongside Movistar TV (IPTV), gave way to the current Movistar+, launched in July 2015. In 2016, the platform rebranded as Movistar+, a denomination used to refer to all the services the platform provided, both for watching online (internet) and via television (IPTV). The former brand and the channel Canal+, whose rights belong to the French group Vivendi, disappeared as such. In its place, the platform launched another television network called #0, which premiered in February 2016. That same year, Yomvi services were rebranded as Movistar+. In terms of original fiction content, during the period from 1990 to 2005, neither Canal+ nor its subsequent rebrandings as a multiplatform focused on the production of series as a strategic line of business. It pioneered many technological changes and certain broadcasting formats but did not innovate in the production of fiction. Even Canal+ Series, a channel for fiction that the platform introduced in 2013, did not broadcast Spanish shows, programming mostly US productions. Nevertheless, Canal+ España did produce a couple of examples of original content for television, which made waves among specialists and garnered critical recognition. One was the mini-series ¿Qué fue de Jorge Sanz? (2010), a comedy about the trials and tribulations of a former child star now pushing 40 years old. The show consisted of six 35-minute episodes and it had two added specials which broadcast in 2016 and 2017. However, the show that most stands out from that lean period of Canal+ is undoubtedly Crematorio (2011), ­ directed by José Sánchez- Cabezudo. One of the most-acclaimed productions in the history of Spanish fiction, and based on a novel by Rafael Chirbes, the series was the first to address the issue of political corruption. Canal+ also participated in some European co-productions, such as Falcon, and occasional mini-series, but original fiction was very scarce, even after merging with its main competitor. These experiences, alongside minor productions from the platform’s secondary channels (including the art house series Todas las mujeres on TNT), served as a foretaste to the initiative to embrace prestige Spanish fiction, launched halfway through the last decade.

The first step to actively focus on producing premium fiction series The entry of new competitors onto the pay television market in Spain triggered the commission of new original fiction, which Telefónica subsequently branded as “Originales Movistar+”. Furthermore, since 2015 the mission of Movistar+ has been, on the one hand, to tap into their ability to provide video on demand via the services of the fibre optics carrier and, on the other, to add audiovisual production value to the Movistar+

Origins of premium television fiction: Spain  217 brand, which did not have a name in that field, unlike the former Canal+ brand (Cascajosa 2018a, 58). As a result, a determined effort was made to increase the loyalty of Spanish subscribers based on exclusive television fiction content. The first announcement of Movistar TV focusing on series dates to early 2015, just before merging with Canal+. Executives announced then the production of a big budget period piece called La Peste (The ­ Plague), directed by the renowned filmmaker Alberto Rodríguez, who helmed the acclaimed film La Isla Mínima (Marshland). ­ The production of this period thriller set in 16th century Seville was pushed back, and the first season finally premiered in 2018, followed by a second season in 2019. Cascajosa compares Movistar+’s strategy of embracing fiction production and the worldwide journey embarked upon by both HBO and Netflix. Namely, it focuses on a different distribution and operating model (the goal is not exclusiveness, in contrast with the approach used in the 1990s with Canal+), as well as on brand positioning based on the concept of quality productions as the differentiating factor to compete with broadcast networks. The initial effort was backed by an investment of 70 million euros. The head of fiction for Movistar+, Domingo Corral, who formerly worked at Canal+ and the Turner Group, advanced that “original productions and quality content creation is an essential part of Movistar strategy moving forward and of our focus on value and quality” (Fórmula TV 2015). This decision started to bear fruits, mainly, as of the ­ 2017–2018 season. The 2017–2018 season: the focus on Spanish fiction starts to produce solid results So, what happened when the new platform flexed its muscles and promoted the Originales Movistar+ brand to produce quality content and flaunt their ambition in the face of the growing threat from international platforms? We can draw several conclusions from Cascajosa’s detailed analysis (2018) on the number of premieres in the first season (2017–2018) of television series created under the new Movistar+ production banner. First, a solid focus on productions co- created with production companies that did not always have a background in television fiction, since projects were chosen based on the originality of the stories. Therefore, there was a notable presence of film production companies or companies with no experience in television during the initial stages. Second, from the creative point of view, the executive producer for fiction at Movistar+, Domingo Corral, became the common link between the productions based largely on the “screenwriter-director” approach. “The biggest challenge is being different from the rest and making something relevant. That is the hardest part. And to do so, it will become increasingly important to spend time developing the story”, Domingo Corral said about this point (Zárate 2019a). It was not about adapting “the model of the creator-writer-producer in the manner of the US showrunner”,

218  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano despite the emphasis placed on the authors (Casajosa 2018, 63). Third, no new ground was broken in terms of genres, where drama was favoured over comedy and suspense was also an element common to many productions. But there was some creative innovation, at least in the treatment of issues and locations, with a depiction of Spain which, as opposed to the representation on broadcast TV networks, ventured “beyond Madrid” to film in other Spanish cities (which had already happened with Crematorio). And forth, as regards the number of episodes and the running time of each episode, Movistar+ decided to “abandon the standard 70-minute episode time for television fiction (for drama and comedy)” (Cascajosa 2018a, 65). This shift was particularly notable for comedies, which cut running times drastically (down to 25 minutes per episode), three times shorter than comedies on broadcast networks, while maximum running times of 55– 60 minutes were allotted to dramas and thrillers. The first season of premieres of original productions saw Movistar+ roll out eight fiction series, two comedies and six offerings in the genres of drama (four) and suspense (two). Both comedies were a critical and commercial success and, although there are no audience ratings available, the operator lists them among the most watched shows. The first comedy Vergüenza (Shame; ­ 2017) is a dramedy about the romantic, family, and work relationships of an unhinged male character. Directed and created by Álvaro Fernández-Armero and Juan Cavestany, the show presents an absurd take on the challenges faced by a middle-aged man that sees his job and his relationship fall apart. Equally successful was the comedy Mira lo que has hecho (2018), created by and starring Berto Romero, a stand-up comic who got his big break on late-night shows aired on Spanish networks. Presented in the manner of a sitcom, the comedy focuses on a 30-something couple confronting parenthood for the first time and assessing how the new arrival will affect their relationship and their life together. Filmed in and around Barcelona, the platform stated that Mira lo que has hecho is also one of the most-watched shows on Movistar+. ­ ​­ As regards dramas, this study will not focus on the special experiment Velvet Colección, a “spin-off” of a series that aired previously on a broadcast network (Antena 3), and was picked up by Movistar+ for a sequel. The audience of the show (produced by Bambú Producciones) on free-to-air television followed the show over to the pay TV channel, making Velvet Collección one of the best-received series (according to the platform). The other three dramas launched during the 2017–2018 season were La Zona (2018), an unusual combination of science fiction and suspense surrounding a nuclear disaster, filmed in the north of Spain as a limited 8-episode series; Matar al padre (2018), a four-episode drama filmed in Barcelona with a tongue-in- cheek take on family relationships; and El día de mañana ( What the Future Holds) (2018), possibly the most traditional one, similar to the shows created for free-to-air channels. Directed by filmmaker Mariano Barroso, who had created Todas las mujeres back in the days of

Origins of premium television fiction: Spain  219 ­ ​­ Canal+, before the merger of the platforms, El día de mañana is a six-parter about a man who moved from the countryside to Barcelona hoping to make it big, spanning the period from the 1960s until the mid-70s. Based on a novel, the critics applauded it as “almost” network-like, “which doesn’t mean that it is entirely mainstream. The show is still arty but it is not weird or for minority viewing” (Marín 2018). With rave reviews for the acting and the setting, and one newspaper claiming that “El día de mañana is a Movistar series for normal people”, the show contextualized the image that Movistar+ wanted to convey with its first foray into the production of fiction: “Free-to-view channels try to appeal to every age bracket, from the grandparents to the kids. HBO focuses on adults. Netflix claims not to have a target audience. Movistar seems to favour quality over ratings. That is neither good nor bad, but its catalogue seems more like a luxury showcase than a display of a channel hoping to break ratings records. The trend becomes evident upon studying the selection of creators, most of whom are filmmakers” (Marín Bellón 2018). Finally, rounding off the list of premieres, are two suspense stories or thrillers, which are also quite unusual. The most relevant series launched during the first season was what was announced as the platform’s flagship premium production: La Peste (2018). According to data from the operator, the series had a 10 million euros budget for the first season, averaging a 1.6 million euros budget per episode (Fernández 2019). La Peste is set in 16th century Seville, during one of the worst epidemics of bubonic plague to hit the city, one of the wealthiest and largest in Spain at the time. According to the platform, the premiere of the first season broke several records: in the first four days after launch, the average ratings for the first episode exceeded the previous record by 40%, held by the launch of the seventh season of Game of Thrones. In addition, 90% of viewers watched on- demand, which proved that airing the shows on the platform’s general pay channel #0 barely attracted viewers, and that they benefited from on demand availability (Movistar 2018). The show’s success led to it securing a second season order almost right away (released in 2019), and international distribution, with the broadcast rights being acquired by the BBC for the UK and by Sky for Germany. The second unusual thriller was called Félix (2018), ­ a ­50-minute ​­ ­six-episode ​­ ­mini-series ​­ filmed in the Principality of Andorra, directed by filmmaker Cesc Gay, combining romantic storylines with comedy and suspense. The series was the only Spanish production to participate in the 2018 Canneseries Festival. In fact, being selected for a range of national and international festivals, and picking up professional awards, has endorsed the quality policy embraced by Movistar+ in their venture into premium fiction. Nevertheless, this first period also stands out for the lack of female directors or women involved in projects in other creative capacities (only one of the productions, Matar al padre, was helmed by a female director, Marta Coll).

220  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano Subsequent productions have aimed to correct these statistics and they have also opened their slate of projects to attract younger viewers, whilst remaining true to their core goals.

Movistar+’s TV fiction slate for the 2018–2019 season: new nods to young audiences and a wider range of topics The 2018–2019 season greeted subscribers with a new slate of original fiction, available on demand and for linear scheduling on #0, replicating the trends embraced in previous productions, albeit introducing some notable innovations. In some cases, the operator branched out into new genres in an attempt to broaden their catalogue and also, to target audiences that had been overlooked by the Originales Movistar+ brand, setting their sights specifically on younger audiences and female viewers. As for original fiction, Movistar+ released 11 productions during the 2018–2019 season. The head of production has explained that their goal was to maintain the “slowly but surely” policy for releasing content at a steady rate, so as not to overwhelm viewers and keep up the quality: “We are not about volume. Each platform has its strategy, and we have our own values” (Zárate 2019a). In the 11 fictions that premiered in 2018–2019 (seven dramas or thrillers and four comedies) once again more relevance was given to drama or suspense series, but diversifying original nuances, improving storylines to make the plots more dynamic, bringing in new perspectives and topics or appealing to new viewers. New dramas for all audiences, with a focus on young viewers Dramas and thrillers covered a wider assortment of genres than the content released during the first season analysed. The most ground-breaking idea was a Spanish adaptation of an international hit series. The first season (12 episodes) of the Spanish remake of Norwegian Skam was released in September 2018. The scripts for Skam España were adapted to Spanish reality, while maintaining the essence of the original and the core story. “Scripts were not simply translated literally, since that would have crippled the show. The life of youths in Spain is not the same as in Norway, and we wanted to find authenticity. The plots are very much adapted to Spain, although both shows share the same DNA”, explains the head of fiction for Movistar+ (Onieva 2018a). The show  – the first foray into the world of young adult viewers – was so successful that a second season premiered in 2019 and picked up orders for two more seasons. The second season made the show a fixture on the platform and became a hot topic on social media (particularly on Instagram). The profiles of the lead characters in the Spanish remake have the most followers among all international adaptations. Skam España does seem to “mirror the growth and coming-of-age process experienced by a generation of young women” (Cascajosa 2018b).

Origins of premium television fiction: Spain  221 In addition, women also played an important role as writers and directors (Estíbaliz Burgaleta and Begoña Álvarez). Moving on to the thrillers, after a long production process, October 2018 saw the release of Gigantes (Giants), ­ a ­two-season ​­ series (12 ­ 60-minute ­ ​­ episodes) from action film director Enrique Urbizu and Jorge Dorado. In this case the fiction followed in the footsteps of an urban show focusing on drug trafficking in Madrid, adding a rush of adrenalin (Montoya 2019a). That frenzied pace was possibly the main innovation, since according to a critic, “Series as notable as Movistar+’s La Peste and La Zona had a clear weak spot in that, despite creating bold fictional universes, they were unable to move the plot along at the pace needed to keep the viewers’ attention. In other words, they were a bit boring. Compared to sister shows, Gigantes hits the ground running and makes for very enjoyable viewing” (Onieva 2018b). Another of the platform’s big bets, the suspense show Hierro, which proved to be a big winner, barely got any bad press in specialized media. Part thriller, part drama, the show was released in June 2019. As a co-production with French- German channel ARTE and French company Atlantique Productions, the show garnered rave reviews, among other reasons, for repeating the platform’s common practice of filming on site in locations that are not usually featured in fiction produced by broadcast networks: “One of the best Spanish series this season for several reasons: the script works, the exterior locations are extraordinary and the acting by the cast is equally good” (Harguindey 2019a). Filmed on the island of the same name in the Canaries, leading actors Candela Peña and Darío Gran-di-ne-tti received critical praise and recognitions at award shows. According to information from Movistar+, the show became the secondmost viewed of its original productions and it has ordered a second season, currently in production. In the words of a Spanish critic, this “thriller is not breaking new ground, but it does have everything you can ask of good television fiction” (Zárate 2019b). Back in January 2019, the platform released El embarcadero (The ­ Pier), an eight- episode drama about intrigue and personal relationships. Álex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato, creators of the worldwide success La casa de papel (Money ­ Heist) were in charge of the show, filmed in Valencia. Whilst Movistar+ had increased the platform’s international co­productions with Hierro, El embarcadero was co-produced with Spain’s Atresmedia Studios (which created very successful fiction productions for networks, as the aforementioned La casa de papel, the first seasons of Velvet and Vis a Vis). The collaboration agreement went a step further after the announcement of the establishment, in September 2019, of a joint creative venture between Atresmedia Studios and Movistar+ to co-produce Spanish fiction productions for the international market. The cooperation between the two production companies produced solid results, and El ­embarcadero was picked up for a second season, released in 2020. On this occasion, the reviews applauded the introduction of a storyline that could

222  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano have aired on network television. “Pay television operators can learn a lot from network televisions, who bring decades of experience to the table and work with creators who are now highly sought after by the main international platforms. Movistar+ should not limit productions to high-brow content for discerning viewers, since the platform can reach a much wider audience with products such as El embarcadero and El día de mañana” (Cortés ­ 2019). Movistar+ once again joined forces with Spanish production powerhouses with a solid background in free-to-air fiction on the co-production of ­mini-series En el corredor de la muerte (On Death Row) (released in ​­ September 2019), about Pablo Ibar, sentenced to death in the US, trying to prove his innocence. Starring Miguel Ángel Silvestre (Sense 8), the ­ fiction was co-produced again with Bambú Producciones (Velvet Colec­ ción for Movistar+ and Las chicas del cable for Netflix). Those four episodes were very well received, unlike the erotic thriller Instinto (2019), ­ also produced with the company. Reviews were mostly negative: “The show is nuts, mixing thriller, family drama and psychology and hypnosis manuals. All wrapped up with a ribbon-shaped S&M whip” (FernándezSantos 2019). Nevertheless, the head of fiction for Movistar+ refutes the bad reviews and states that the show was created for a niche audience and does not see it as a mistake (García 2020). Movistar+’s last release in 2019 also focused on younger viewers. It was an innovative spin- off of the show Merlí, which became a hit on a regional channel (TV3, public network of Catalonia) and then on Netflix. In this case, the Movistar+ iteration was called Merlí: Sapere Aude and, whereas the original was set in a high school, the spin off saw the characters heading off to university. Once again, the plot combines philosophical concepts and sentimental relationships. The production, the first show in Catalan produced by the platform, appeals to younger viewers, as noted by critics reviewing the show (Harguindey 2019b). New and successful comedies Recent academic research carried out in Spain has proven that some shows broadcast on Movistar+’s network channel #0 have a big fanbase among young Spanish viewers. One such programme is the late-night show La Resistencia, which also has a channel on YouTube with over one million subscribers. Whilst the linear consumption of fiction television on #0 should not be considered in absolute terms to estimate ratings, these entertainment and comedy programmes showcase the platform’s productions and attract younger audiences. In this trend, and in terms of the classic comedy genre, the most notable example is the show Justo antes de Cristo, set in times of the Roman Empire. This absurd comedy, directed by Borja Cobeaga and Pepón Montero, is inspired by the storylines of Asterix and Obelix, Monty Python and classical Roman authors. Besides the series of sketches

Origins of premium television fiction: Spain  223 or gags called Capítulo 0, and albeit they are not top-tier productions, these offerings do continue the trend to branch out to other audiences, which started back in 2016 when Movistar+ produced a remake of the sitcom Web Therapy (2016). In this genre, however, during 2018–2019 two of the best-received series (apart from new seasons of Vergüenza and Mira lo que has hecho) were comedies. Arde Madrid is one of the biggest bets in this genre and the Spanish production most viewed of the platform. Released in November 2018, the show was unique in that it delivered eight 25-minute episodes filmed in black and white and set during the end of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, using a comedic approach to portray the years when Ava Gardner filmed movies in Spain. The director and male lead, Paco León, is a well-known Spanish actor and director who for many years starred in one of the most popular sitcoms broadcast recently on Spanish network ­ television (Aída on Telecinco, Mediaset). However, Arde Madrid was the complete opposite to that traditional sitcom. The experiment garnered rave reviews for its high-end production values, and for the historical approach to Spanish society during Franco’s regime, casting an ironic view over the star system of that time to address the hardships among the lower classes and the strict moral values that the dictatorship applied to relationships and the role of women. The series premiered at the 2018 San Sebastián Film Festival and received awards as the Rose d’Or for Best Drama Comedy 2019, the Platino Prize for best 2019 Ibero-American mini-series, and the Feroz Prize (Spanish film and TV critics) for best male actor. However, the creators decided to limit the series to one season, despite having announced ­ a second run. The sitcom Vida perfecta (Perfect Life) was equally or even more successful. Movistar+’s latest production is a bittersweet mini-series, with a limited number of episodes (8) and running time (30 minutes). The director and creator, actress Leticia Dolera, puts a spin on the dramatic situations of a woman who is 40 years “young” and has romantic and family issues. The series was named best comedy by the Spanish critics, picking up best series and best cast at 2019 Canneseries, and it has already secured broadcasting in other countries including France and Germany (Montoya 2019b). The good results of this series also helped Movistar+ gain ground regarding an issue where it was still lagging promoting women as creators and directors of their productions.

Conclusions: future creative and production challenges in a highly competitive context By providing an overview of the changes implemented as Canal+ became Movistar+, this chapter has looked into how the production of premium fiction in Spain has evolved from an asset exclusive to free-to-air channels to being embraced in recent years by premium television. Based on the experience of networks, Movistar+ has bet on large- and small-scale productions, keeping their sight on bringing an original take to stories,

224  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano approaches and perspectives. Movistar+ has clearly achieved the goals it set out: on the one hand, continuing to venture into uncharted creative territory, increasing the comedy slate and diversifying plots and genres in the drama/thriller offerings. Furthermore, the company has explored new paths to connect with audiences that may not have related to their initial productions. These new paths focus mainly on local or absurd humour, comedies set in different historical periods, thrillers or female- centric stories with strong women protagonists. Also commendable is the limited number of seasons, even in the case of hugely successful shows. The productions that have been renewed for more seasons have implemented changes and adaptations to improve audience reception. For instance, in late 2019 Movistar+ released the second season of their most symbolic, challenging and upscale bet: La Peste, which garnered even better reviews than the first season. Movistar+ claims they will uphold their double mission of attracting larger audiences and offering original shows, despite the growing competition from international platforms. Among their plans, the platform will continue to support local productions, with an eye on internationalization beyond Latin America, where Movistar+ brand already has a strong presence. At the same time, it has launched a new OTT called Movistar Lite, targeted to younger audiences and that competes in price with platforms as Netflix or HBO, giving limited access to its contents. There is plenty of other ambitious original series. Alongside new seasons of Skam, Vergüenza, or El Embarcadero, new productions will address issues that have not featured frequently in Spanish fiction productions, such as terrorism. The creators of El día de mañana have released in 2020 La línea invisible about the origin of the terrorist group ETA in the late 1960s (Zárate 2019a). 2020 will also see the premiere of Dime quién soy ( Tell me who I am), the first big production created for an international audience. Based on Julia Navarro’s bestselling novel, the series follows a female character experiencing key events of the 20th century that take place in different European countries. Among other recent releases, one of Movistar’s biggest bets for 2020 has been La Unidad, an anti-terrorist police thriller. The company hopes their first foray into the police genre will fulfil the audience requests revealed by rating studies (Zárate 2019a), also with Antidisturbios, another expected police thriller directed by Rodrigo Sorogoyen. Quite possibly, the success of the fiction productions from Movistar+, alongside other content in its catalogue and other factors relating to the offer of their telecom services (landline, mobile phone and Internet) keep Movistar+ at the top of the list of subscription audio-visual services in Spain. Nevertheless, the platform will continue to support high-quality original productions to keep ahead of the competition. “We don’t see Netflix and similar platforms as competition. In fact, Netflix has been integrated as a service that we offer our clients. We are not going to stop producing the content that gives us our edge” (G. Palencia 2019). Only time will tell if the fierce competition

Origins of premium television fiction: Spain  225 between all the pay television offers will lead to a continuation of this focus on quality Spanish fiction, which has taken production values to another level in Spain, and has contributed to improving the prestige and creative aspirations of Spanish series.

Acknowledgements This article is part of the results of the National Research Project CSO201785483-R “JUVEN-TV: New Consumption versus Old Stereotypes: Analysis of the Reception by Spanish Youth of Their Current Television Representations”, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain.

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226  Juan Francisco Gutiérrez Lozano Onieva, Álvaro. 2018a. “Movistar+ ya graba Skam, una serie para adolescentes con formato innovador que estrenará en septiembre”. Fotogramas, 7 May. Onieva, Álvaro. 2018b. “Gigantes no solo es muy Urbizu, es la serie original de Movistar+ más entretenida”. Fotogramas, 4 October. Zárate, Pedro. 2019a. “Entrevista a Domingo Corral, jefe de ficción de Movistar: ‘O estás en el negocio de la calidad o en el de la cantidad’”. Vertele, 27 April. Zárate, Pedro. 2019b. “Hierro convierte una historia convencional en un ejercicio ejemplar de buena televisión”. Vertele, 7 June.

15 Bambú Producciones and the transformation of Spanish television fiction production Concepción Cascajosa Virino

Introduction In barely a decade, Bambú Producciones has become the most important fiction production company in the Spanish television industry, with 15 series premiering between 2010 and 2017 (Lacalle and Sánchez-A res 2019, 6). Even amid the increased production of television dramas in Spain, such production is an outstanding outcome for a company which has operated independently from the major Spanish media conglomerates since its founding in 2007 by two young professionals, screenwriter Ramón Campos and producer Teresa Fernández-Valdés. The company’s beginnings, however, were not encouraging. Bambú’s first series, the thriller Guante Blanco (White ­ Glove, TVE1, 2008), was cancelled due to low ratings after just a few episodes. The importance of this initial setback, and the decisions taken after analysing it, led Teresa Fernández-Valdés to state that “Bambú is a production company that has been built from failure” (quoted in Romero 2017a). At the time, Spain was entering an economic crisis that hit the Spanish television industry the hardest in 2011, particularly weakening fiction production. But Bambú survived and thrived by targeting female viewers and supplying the international marketplace with dramas that reformulated traditional genres and showed reinforced production values and sophisticated ­mise-en-scène. ­​­ ​­ The year 2016 was particularly noteworthy: the French conglomerate Studio Canal invested as a shareholder, and Bambú received a commission to make Netflix’s first original series in Spain, Las chicas del cable (Cable ­ Girls, 2017–). Ever since, Bambú Producciones has transitioned from producing for broadcast channels to the new video on demand platforms while spreading its efforts between dramas, true crime series, and films. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse Bambú Producciones’ production history to understand the growth of series production in Spain and its emergence in the global marketplace, while media industries have been shaped by the consequences of digitization on business models, production practices, and distribution strategies (Holt and Perren 2019, 33). The research hypothesis is that Bambú’s success results from having developed

228  Concepción Cascajosa Virino a production model that overcame the main weaknesses of the local television industry, especially those which restricted its internationalization. I will start this analysis with an overview of television production in Spain and in the region of Galicia prior to the creation of Bambú, to identify the window of opportunity that Ramón Campos and Teresa FernándezValdés took advantage of with their new company. Then, three distinct aspects of Bambú’s history will be explored. First, I will trace the creation of “Bambú’s formula” between 2008 and 2014 as the company gradually redefined its production model, story-telling techniques, and aesthetic features. Next, I will examine Bambú’s internationalization strategies and the different alliances established by Campos and Fernández-Valdés, and their level of success. Finally, I will focus on the relationship between Bambú and Netflix, whose arrival in Spain has been a key disruptive factor and exemplifies the emergence of video on demand platforms as dominant forces in drama production. This chapter draws on media industry research and production studies. I will particularly focus on questioning the role that the Spanish television  production environment can play within various determining forces within contemporary media industries, such as the functioning of global television markets (Havens 2006; Chalaby 2016); the strengthen​­ ­­ ​­ ing of ­pan-European production strategies (Hammett-Jamart, Mitric and Redvall 2019); the relevance of micro-, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) (Bakøy, Puijk, and Spicer 2017); and the arrival of Netflix and other video on demand platforms as transnational broadcasters and distribution systems ( Jenner 2018, 185–197; Lobato 2019). The chapter is also based on in-depth interviews with Ramón Campos, co-founder and executive producer, and Gema R. Neira, director of development. These “exclusive informants” (Bruun 2016, 134–135) will provide direct insight into the company’s working dynamics.

Producing TV fiction in Spain This section is dedicated to outlining the main characteristics of the production industry in Spain prior to the creation of Bambú Producciones in 2007, as well as highlighting the importance of audiovisual production in the region of Galicia, where Ramón Campos and Teresa Fernández-Valdés come from. In the 1990s, television fiction in Spain experienced a great expansion with the arrival of commercial television channels. This new era was inaugurated by Farmacia de guardia (On-call ­­ ​­ Pharmacy, Antena 3, 1991–1995), a family comedy whose enormous rating success not only proved the viability of Spanish fiction as an alternative to North American series and Latin American soap operas, but also established the canon for subsequent fiction (Palacio 2001, 181–182). According to Mario García de Castro, “The sector in charge of carrying out this industrial reconversion would be that of small independent production companies, which since then

Bambú Producciones Spanish TV fiction  229 have played a substantial role in revitalizing the sector” (2008, 151). The most important of these production companies was Globomedia, whose ­series Médico de familia (Family ­ Doctor, Telecinco, 1995–1999) ­ ​­ established both the formula for the intergenerational dramedy and a new production standard aimed at reducing costs: 70-minute episodes (sometimes 90-minute) to accommodate a fourth advertising break, video recording using the Betacam system, two 13-episode seasons per year, and a limited use of outdoor locations (20%–30%) (Herrero Subías and Diego González 2009, 241). Developing this model, Globomedia led the market for more than a decade, producing 27 of the 107 titles that premiered between 2000 and 2009 (Lacalle and Sánchez-Ares 2019, 5). Another characteristic element of this period was the concentration of production for national channels by companies based in Madrid, while a parallel circuit was being created for the content made for regional public channels. Channels from regions with their own languages  – such as Catalonia, Galicia, and the Basque Country – “served as a platform for the creation of homegrown products which exalt the cultural idiosyncrasies of their specific audience”, opposing the idea a unique Spanish culture and “fostering the recognition of their autonomous history, language, culture and their own share of political power” (Chicharro Merayo 2013, 215). Fiction, although made with few resources, gave a great boost to the development of the different regional media industries. In the case of the northern region of Galicia, known for both its traditional poverty and its thriving textile industry, the channel TVG (Televisión de Galicia, founded in 1985) helped consolidate several production companies, such as Voz Audiovisual, part of the conglomerate that also owns the main newspaper in the region, La Voz de Galicia. Voz Audiovisual made two strategic decisions in the early 2000s. On the one hand, it implemented programmes such as the Master in Audiovisual Production with the University of A Coruña to train qualified professionals and familiarize them with its work dynamics. And on the other hand, the company decided to explore the production of more ambitious series. For instance, each episode of the period thriller As leis of Celavella (TVG, 2004–2006) would be remembered by director Jorge Coira as “a small movie in which we had different narrative and aesthetic challenges” (Gil Poisa 2018, 206). Meanwhile, A vida por diante (TVG, ­ 2006–2008) stood out for its production values, joining an international trend of “much more sophisticated products (outdoor locations, character design, photography and textures…) to the detriment of traditional situation comedies” (Nogueira 2006, 170). In these productions, a group of young Galician professionals – such as screenwriters Pepe Coira and Ramón Campos, directors Carlos Sedes and Jorge Coira, and producers Alfonso Blanco and David Martínez—began to stand out. Born in 1976, Ramón Campos studied psychology in Galicia and communication at the prestigious University of Navarra before returning to his home region to work, first as screenwriter and then as producer, for

230  Concepción Cascajosa Virino Voz Audiovisual and Filmanova. During this period, Campos established strong ties to other upcoming professionals working for Voz Audiovisual, such as Sedes and the young screenwriter Gema R. Neira. In addition, he met Teresa Fernández-Valdés, who had studied for a Master in Audiovisual Production; he would also later marry Fernández-Valdés and create Bambú with her. Ultimately, Campos’ time in Galicia was not just a training period but also the basis for a cost- effective production system. In the next section, I will analyse the creation of Bambú and the development of the “Bambú formula” during a period when Spanish fiction production was almost paralysed by the economic crisis.

The birth and rise of Bambú Producciones During his time at Filmanova, Ramón Campos had managed to work in some projects for national TV, such as the TV-movie based on real events Secuestrados en Georgia ( Kidnapped in Georgia, Telecinco, 2003), which increased his interest in taking the leap from Galicia to Madrid. The opportunity came in 2007 with the appointment of David Martínez as the fiction director for Televisión Española (the main public channel); Martínez was an executive with whom Ramón Campos had worked for at both Filmanova and Voz Audiovisual. Martínez quickly bought the thriller Desaparecida (Missing, ­ TVE, 2007–2008), created by Campos and Gema R. Neira. But they had to work with a Madrid-based production company, Grupo Ganga, which was responsible for the long-running success Cuéntame cómo pasó ( Tell Me How It Happened, TVE, 2001–). However, Campos was able to hire Neira as screenwriter, Fernández-Valdés as associate producer, and Carlos Sedes as director. Notably, Desaparecida presented what would become one of Bambú’s main features: sophisticated aesthetics. To achieve this, the young directors of photography Jacobo Martínez and Migue Amoedo used fixed optics that gave greater visual quality to the high-definition video recording, achieving the “naturalistic” look Campos was looking for to fit the main storyline of the series, the investigation into the kidnapping and murder of a teenage girl (Campos 2019). However, the experience with Ganga was so troubled that Campos and Fernández-Valdés decided to create their own production company. Campos wanted a “boutique” model, working on just one series at a time to reproduce the Galician model: it was “a very controlled process. Production was very hand-in-hand with screenwriting” (Campos 2019). In fact, this model involved combining the figures of the executive producer and the main screenwriter, which were increasingly separated in most of the series made for national channels by independent producers, such as Globomedia. Campos and Fernández-Valdés secured the money to establish Bambú from a mutual guarantee company as they had achieved another commission from David Martínez for Televisión Española: the complex family suspense drama Guante Blanco, which tanked with viewers and was taken off the

Bambú Producciones Spanish TV fiction  231 air after just three episodes. Another feature for the new company was introduced during those early days: working sessions to study in detail the weak aspects of every new series. Development director Gema R. Neira attributes this regular effort to a character trait she shares with Campos and Fernández-Valdés: “We’re never totally happy with what we do. We can say, yes it’s good, but there’s always something I think could have been better…” (R. Neira 2017). For Neira, their mistake with Guante Blanco was twofold: “not having thought at all about Spanish television or the people who watch Televisión Española” and keeping too much information from viewers to sustain the main narrative arcs (R. Neira 2017). Their second chance, Gran Reserva (Grand Reserve, TVE: 2010–2013), was built on a ­ very different basis: appealing to an older audience with a main storyline about a family but using a quicker suspense structure. Accordingly, “a very fast way of constructing history with many twists emerged. We wanted to have the feeling that the viewer couldn’t even get up to pee” (R. Neira 2017). The family setting also allowed veteran and respected actors, such as Emilio Gutiérrez Caba and Ángela Molina, to join younger ones, such as Tristán Ulloa and Paula Echevarría. Many of these actors would move from one Bambú series to another, fashioning a “star-system”. Children, however, were never main characters. In the words of R. Neira, “We are not going to do traumas for children and young people, so if there are children, there are very few of them and it has to be very lateral and be useful for the main plot” (R. Neira 2017). It was another way to separate Bambú’s series from the Globomedia inter-generational dramedies. Drawing on the experience of working with the low budgets of regional TVG, Campos and Fernández-Valdés imposed a model that would be characteristic for the sets of the Bambú series: with the use of rotating panels, each space could be easily reconverted into two different locations. The production also took advantage of real locations in La Rioja, the region with the most important wine industry, after attracting some public support for shooting there. A cost-effective production became essential for survival when the economic crisis affected the Spanish TV industry. The decrease between 2009 and 2010 was particularly steep, going from 1,123  hours of fiction to just 657 (Vassallo de Lopes and Orozco Gómez 2011, 27). While large companies like Globomedia had numerous employees and expensive facilities, Bambú had its headquarters in a small chalet and only four permanent employees: Campos, Fernández-Valdes, Neira, and finance director Sergio Cimadevila. At that time, Carlos Fernández, head of programming for Televisión Española, was hired as the content director for the commercial broadcaster Atresmedia, opening a new door that would be fruitful: between 2010 and 2019, the channel premiered 11 Bambú series on the Atresmedia channels Antena 3 and La Sexta. Hispania, la ­leyenda (Hispania, ­ Antena 3, 2010–2012), an action and adventure drama set during the Roman Empire, and the mystery Gran Hotel (Grand ­ Hotel, Antena  3, 2011–2013) were ordered in rapid succession. With the later

232  Concepción Cascajosa Virino series, partly shot in the northern region of Cantabria, Bambú started to show great specialization in the mystery genre and narratives set in a distinct space, as development director Neira explained: “The concept behind Gran Hotel, and later Velvet, was chosen because we think it’s a space where people sleep and live, so they can see people come and go in a natural way. And they have a lot of different spaces, such as kitchens, rooms, corridors… and we came up with a lot of different stories to tell in that same space” (R. Neira 2017). While the series above were important, Bambú Producciones won its most symbolic battle on 17 February 2014. That night was the premiere of the romantic drama Velvet (2014–2016), a project which Ramón Campos considers the distillation of the formula on which Bambú had worked since ­ the creation of the company: “Gran Reserva was the grand soap opera and had the big bad guys. Grand Hotel has the great love story. We didn’t get it from Gran Reserva: nobody remembers the relationship between Tristán Ulloa and Paula Echevarría. For Velvet, we spent a year to find the melodrama” (Campos 2019). On the night of Velvet’s premiere on Antena 3, its commercial television rival was B&b (Telecinco, 2014–2015), an effort by Globomedia to recapture its laurels by using a plot and setting similar to that of the smash success Periodistas (Journalists, ­ Telecinco, 1998–2002). ­ ​­ But what 15 years earlier was considered a modernization of Spanish fiction (Smith 2000) was now an outdated formula. The first episode of Velvet drew 4.8 million viewers, compared to B&b’s 2.8 million (La ­ Vanguardia 2014). Velvet’s success meant the consolidation of Bambú Producciones and, together with Gran Hotel, was the key to its internationalization (Table 15.1). ­­

From Indie producer to global player In this section, I will analyse Bambú’s gradual internationalization after the success of Gran Hotel and Velvet, peaking with the alliance with international conglomerate Studio Canal and the start of a fruitful relationship with Netflix. The launching platform was the healthy international sales of Gran Hotel and Velvet, which were acquired by the powerful German distributor Beta Film, which offered both series in a triple mode: the format for remakes, the original version broadcast in Spain, and a re-edited version with the episodes adapted to the international standard length. According to the Beta Film website, the 39 episodes (70 minutes each) of Grand Hotel became 66 with the new length (Beta Film n.d.), getting over one of the main problems for internationalization. According to Neira, having so many plot twists in every episode made it easier to re-edit for the international markets (R. Neira 2017). Grand Hotel was acquired by Sky Arts in the UK, signalling the entry into a market where Spanish series were virtually unknown, and in subsequent years had versions in Italy, Mexico, the United States, and Egypt.

Bambú Producciones Spanish TV fiction  233 ­Table 15.1  Bambú Producciones production history (­­2008–​­2019) Title

International title

Operator

N/­A Hispania

TVE1 Antena 3

Genre

Production history

Suspense Season 1: 2008 (­8) Historical Season 1: ­2010–​­ drama 2011 (­9) Season 2: 2011 (­8) Season 3: 2012 (­3) Gran Reserva N/­A TVE1 Suspense Season 1: 2010 (­13) Season 2: 2011 (­13) Season 3: 2013 (­13) Miniseries: 2013 (­3) Gran Hotel Grand Hotel Antena 3 Suspense Season 1: 2011 (­9) Season 2: 2012 (­8) Season 3: 2013 (­22) Marco N/­A Antena 3 Drama Miniseries: ­2011– ​­2012 (­2) Imperium Imperium Antena 3 Historical Season 1: 2012 (­6) drama Gran Reserva: N/­A TVE1 Daytime Season 1: 2013 (­82) El origen serial Galerías Velvet / Velvet Antena 3 Romantic Season 1: 2014 (­15) Velvet drama Season 2: ­2014– ​­2015 (­14) Season 3: 2015 (­15) Season 4: 2016 (­11) Refugiados The Refugees La Sexta Suspense Season 1: 2015 (­8) Bajo sospecha Under Antena 3 Suspense Season 1: 2015 (­8) Suspicion Season 2: 2016 (­10) Seis hermanas Six Sisters TVE1 Daytime Season 1: ­2015–​­2017 serial (­489) La embajada The Embassy Antena 3 Suspense Season 1 2016 (­11) Tiempos de Love in Times Antena 3 Historical Season 1: 2017 (­13) guerra of War drama Traición Treason TVE1 Suspense Season 1: ­2017–​­ 2018 (­11) Las chicas del Cable Girls Netflix Romantic Season 1: 2017 (­8) cable drama Season 2: 2017 (­8) Season 3: 2018 (­8) Season 4: 2019 (­8) Velvet Colección The Velvet Movistar+ Romantic Season 1: 2017 (­10) Collection drama Season 2: 2018 (­10) Christmas Special: 2019 Fariña Cocaine Coast Antena 3 Drama Season 1: 2018 (­10) 45 revoluciones 45 Revolutions Antena 3 Drama Season 1: 2019 (­13) Instinto Instinct Movistar+ Suspense Season 1: 2019 (­8) Alta Mar High Seas Netflix Suspense Season 1: 2019 (­8) Season 2: 2019 (­8) En el corredor On Death Row Movistar+ Drama Season 1: 2019 (­4) de la muerte

Guante blanco Hispania, la leyenda

234  Concepción Cascajosa Virino According to Ramón Campos, Beta Film “placed Bambú in the world” (Cascajosa 2019), and in October 2014 an article in The Hollywood Reporter selected Bambú’s co-founder Teresa Fernandez-Valdes as one of “Europe’s 5 Most Powerful Showrunners” (Roxborough 2014). As co-producer, in addition to securing products, Beta Film provided the resources for non-English-speaking series to have the production values necessary to compete in the high-end drama marketplace. In April 2017, Beta Film announced that it was co-producing two Bambú series for the group Atresmedia, period drama Tiempos de Guerra ( Love in Times of War, Antena 3, 2017) and non-fiction book adaptation Fariña (Cocaine Coast, ­ Antena 3, 2018) (De Pablos 2017). Even though Studio Canal was by then a shareholder, Bambú maintained the relationship with Beta Film because, according to Campos, they were the ones who could best sell the content he calls “sublimated telenovela” (Campos 2019). Another mechanism of internationalization came through alliances with international operators. In the case of Europe, Bambú’s internationalization strategy included going hand in hand with Atresmedia, with whom it managed to get BBC’s commercial division, BBC Worldwide, to co-produce their first (and at the time of this writing, last) English-language series, the ­science-fiction ​­ thriller Refugiados (The ­ Refugees, La Sexta, 2015). The series was shot in a village in the Madrid region with British actors, including Natalia Tena (Game of Thrones) and David Leon (Vera). ­ Although BBC Worldwide’s objective was to achieve “cost-effective, ­­ ​­ ­high-quality ​­ output” with the alliance (Kemp 2014), the result was disappointing, and the series barely had international circulation after its broadcast, with poor audience results, on Atresmedia’s second channel, La Sexta. One reason for this failure was not offering a distinctive location that had worked so well in Gran Reserva (wine-region ­­ ​­ La Rioja), Gran Hotel (picturesque ­ Cantabria), and Velvet (a digital reimagination of 1960s Madrid), for an indeterminate space where the nationality of the protagonists was not even known. According to Bondebjerg et al., recent examples of European co-productions show that “our cultural identity and consumption of television is primarily connected to our national, local and regional reality and culture” (2017, 297). In fact, for Atresmedia’s drama executive Nacho Manubens, the problem had been that “people don’t perceive Refugiados as Spanish, no matter how much effort we have put in it” (quoted in Redondo 2015). In Latin America, the Mexican group Televisa hired Bambú for a period of three years for one million of Euros per year to write content for them exclusively for the region (Campos 2019). But the only series that came out of the deal was the telenovela En tierras salvajes (Las Estrellas, 2017). In the same period, through its American affiliate, Televisa attempted to make a version of Gran Hotel for the US public that was parallel to the Mexican version, El Hotel de los Secretos ( The Hotel of Secrets, Televisa, 2016) (Hopewell 2015). After changes in the creative team, an updated version

Bambú Producciones Spanish TV fiction  235 produced by Eva Longoria was released in 2019, with Ramón Campos and ​­ as executive ­co-producers. ​­ Teresa ­Fernández-Valdés As illustrated by the relationships that Bambú Productions was establishing with Beta Film, Televisa, and BBC Worldwide, the company pursued a clear internationalization strategy during its early years while maintaining its independence. However, the company began a new phase in April 2016 when it announced the sale of 33% of its shares to Studio Canal, which also bought 20% stake of British producers Urban Myth Films and Sunnymarch TV (Hopewell and Keslassy 2016). Owned by the Vivendi group, Studio Canal has redoubled its efforts in both film and television drama production through an active strategy of wholly or partially acquiring companies throughout Europe (Meir 2019a, 106–111): Germany’s Tandem and Britain’s Red were joined by Italy’s Cattleya in 2017. In previous years, Bambú had been courted by several Spanish and international companies, but Ramon Campos and Teresa Fernandez-Valdes decided to accept Studio Canal’s offer because it allowed them to be part of an international group while keeping control of their company. In fact, in the words of Campos, the offer of Studio Canal CCO Roman Bessi was “we want you to be free to create and we are making a great European production company” (Campos 2019). Bambú followed a path similar to that of Red in the United Kingdom after being bought by Studio Canal, maintaining its traditional production profile while expanding the global ambition of its content (Meir 2019b). This trend has been especially visible through Bambú’s relationship with Netflix, but also through an exploration of a new trend of quality drama. The first result was Fariña, an adaptation of the non-fiction book by journalist Nacho Carretero which chronicles the emergence of drug trafficking in the region of Galicia. For their first series shot in Galicia (where the company is legally based), Campos and Fernández-Valdés counted on their more veteran collaborators, such as directors Carlos Sedes and Jorge Torregrossa; screenwriters Gema R. Neira, Cristobal Garrido, and Diego Sotelo; director of photography Jacobo Martínez; and actor Javier Rey, who played the drug dealer Sito Miñanco. The premiere of the series was preceded by controversy when the book on which the series was based was banned by a court order (Hidalgo 2018). Nonetheless, although it was a modest ratings performer, Fariña became a critical darling and won all the main television awards in Spain, including those bestowed by the Academy of Television, professional associations, and critics. It was, at last, the series that made Bambú a quality brand. In the same period, Bambú started to produce for Movistar+, the most popular pay TV platform in Spain. In anticipation of the arrival of global video on demand platforms and the resulting loss of international series broadcast licenses, Movistar+ began an ambitious original production strategy in 2016 with the aim of premiering between 10 and 12 series per year (Cascajosa 2018). The first result of this new partnership was Vel​­ vet Colección ( The Velvet Collection, Movistar+, ­2017–2019), a Velvet

236  Concepción Cascajosa Virino ­ ­

­

Bambú Producciones Spanish TV fiction  237 the 1920s, seen through the eyes of four female telephonists. For Campos, ordering the series was part of Netflix’s plan to reach the female audience: “Who do I have to attract? The female audience that doesn’t usually see the series on Netflix. The audience which will tell her son, what is this about Netflix? I’ll give you the 10€, come on, take it” (Romero 2017b). Although Las chicas del cable received mixed reactions for its historical revisionism and conflictive representation of feminism (López Rodríguez and Raya Bravo 2019, 7– 8), it became one of the most popular Netflix global series, according to data from TVTime (Feldman 2018). The success of Las chicas del cable was a promising starting point for Netflix’s ambitious audiovisual production strategy in Spain. The company chose Madrid for its first production hub in Europe. During the inauguration event, company CEO Reed Hastings announced that Netflix had 25 global originals (both dramas and films) and 40 co-productions in some phase of production or development in Spain (Hopewell 2019). One of the new Net­ flix originals was Alta mar (High Seas, 2019–), another drama of love and mystery with young women protagonists in a characteristic space, this time a cruise ship. However, both Bambú and Netflix also started to diversify their contents together. One example was the true crime documentary series El caso Alcàsser (Alcàsser ­ Murders, 2019), an effort in reconstructing the gruesome murder of three teenagers in 1992. The Bambú–Netflix alliance also targeted movies. Although Bambú already tried to enter the film business with El Club de los Incomprendidos ( The Club of the Misunderstood, 2016), it did not produce another movie until the Netflix original A pesar de todo (Despite ­ Everything, 2019), which told the story of four sisters searching for their real father after their mother’s death. Again, the Bambú starsystem was at play, with familiar faces such as Blanca Suárez (Las chicas del cable), Amaia Salamanca ( Tiempos de guerra), Maxi Iglesias (Velvet), and ­ Emilio Gutiérrez Caba (Gran ­ ­Reserva) performing some of the main roles. A pesar de todo premiered at the Málaga Film Festival on 16 March 2019, the first time a Netflix original movie entered the Spanish film festival circuit.

Conclusions Just a few months after the release of A pesar de todo, Ramon Campos quit some of his main duties at Bambú to concentrate on a new production company, Mr. Fields and Friends Cinema. The reason for creating this new company was practical: as a 100% Spanish company, it was eligible for film promotion grants. After evaluating the relationship with Studio Canal and the strengths of the French conglomerate, Campos and Fernández-Valdés concluded that producing movies on a regular basis was the next logical step. While Campos moved to cinema, Fernández-Valdés was going to hold the reins of Bambú, which in turn grew with the assumption of executive production tasks by screenwriters Gema R. Neira and Diego Sotelo. For Campos, it was key not only to incorporate new professionals but also to

238  Concepción Cascajosa Virino give more opportunities to his oldest collaborators: “People feel that they can grow here. I think that’s very important, because if you put roofs on them at the end, they’ll leave. They are going to get opportunities in other places” (Campos 2019). Under the leadership of Ramón Campos and Teresa Fernández-Valdés, Bambú Producciones managed to find a place in the most difficult moment for Spanish television fiction with a cost-effective production model based on their experience with the modest budgets of Galician regional television. But they also innovated in traditional genres such as melodrama and crime drama, targeting female audiences. The star-system of using respected veterans and young talents, and the sophisticated aesthetics were other key elements of the “Bambú formula”. Campos and Fernández-Valdés were also extremely effective establishing long-term business relationships with channels and distributors. Their independence from the large conglomerates, which could have been an inconvenience to survive, allowed Bambú to react more quickly to the changes that were to come, first with the economic crisis and later with the arrival of video on demand platforms. The year 2019 symbolized a new landscape for Spanish television drama production. Their more recent drama for the broadcast channel Antena 3, 45 Revoluciones (45 ­ Revolutions, 2019), was a major ratings disappointment. At the same time, Bambú enjoyed the critical or commercial success of On Death Row and Instinto on Movistar+ and of Las chicas del cable and Alta Mar on Netflix, and it received the commission to produce Un asunto privado (A Private Affair) for Amazon Prime Video (Lang 2019). The Spanish television industry was becoming a case study for the global streaming wars (Green 2019), and Bambú Producciones was leading the way, just as it had ten years before.

References Bakøy, Eva, Roel Puijk, and Andrew Spicer (eds.). 2017. Building Successful and Sustainable Film and Television Businesses: A Cross- National Perspective. Bristol: Intellect Books. Beta Film. n.d. “Grand ­ Hotel”. Company Website. Bondebjerg, Ib et  al. 2017. Transnational European Television Drama. Production, Genres and Audiences. London: Palgrave. Bruun, Hanne. 2016. “The Qualitative Interview in Media Production Studies”. In Advancing Media Production Research Shifting Sites, Methods, and Politics, edited by Chris Paterson, David Lee, Anamik Saha, and Anna Zoellner, 131–146. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Campos, Ramón. 2019. Personal Interview at the Bambú Offices in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid). 23 October. Cascajosa, Concepción. 2018. “De la televisión de pago al video bajo demanda. Análisis de la primera temporada de la estrategia de producción original de ficción de Movistar+”. Fonseca Journal of Communication, 17: ­57–74. ​­

Bambú Producciones Spanish TV fiction  239 Cascajosa, Concepción. 2019. “Lo que la (buena) televisión española debe a la alemana”. El País, 11 February. Chalaby, Jean K. 2016. “Television and Globalization: The TV Content Global Value Chain”. Journal of Communication, 66(1): ­ ­35–59. ​­ Chicharro Merayo, Mar. 2013. “Telenovelas and Society: Constructing and Reinforcing the Nation through Television Fiction”. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 16(2): ­ 211–225. ­ ​­ De Pablos, Emiliano. 2017. “Spain’s TV Production Boom Sends Ripples through Industry”. Variety, 8 April. Feldman, Dana. 2018. “Netflix: Here Are the Top 10 Foreign Language TV Series and 12 New Shows Coming Soon”. Forbes, 7 March. García de Castro, Mario. 2008. “Los movimientos de renovación en las series televisivas españolas”. Comunicar, 30: ­147–153. ​­ Gil Poisa, María. 2018. “Commercializing Nostalgia and Constructing Memory in As leis de Celavella”. In Televising Restoration Spain, edited by David George Jr. and Wan Tang, 205–20. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Green, Jennifer. 2019. “How Spain Became a Case Study for the Global Streaming Wars”. The Hollywood Reporter, 26 August. Hammett-Jamart, Julia, Petar Mitric, and Eva Novrup Redvall (eds.). 2019. European Film and Television Co- production: Policy and Practice. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Havens, Timothy. 2006. Global Television Marketplace. London: British Film Institute. Herrero Subías, Mónica, and Patricia Diego González. 2009. “Series familiares de televisión: concepto, producción y exportación. El caso de Médico de familia”. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 64: ­238–247. ​­ Hidalgo, Carlos. 2018. “El curioso secuestro de Fariña, diez ediciones después”. El Plural, 21 February. Holt, Jennifer, and Alisa Perren. 2019. “Media Industries: A Decade in Review”. In Making Media: Production, Practices, and Professions, edited by Mark Deuze and Mirjam Prenger, 31– 44. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Hopewell, John. 2015. “Televisa USA, Lantica to Co-produce Gran Hotel”. Variety, 26 September. Hopewell, John. 2019. “Netflix Madrid Production Hub Inaugurated by Reed Hastings”. Variety, 4 April. Hopewell, John, and Elsa Keslassy. 2016. “MipTV: Studiocanal Buys into Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sunny March, Urban Myth, Spain’s Bambu”. Variety, 4 April. Jenner, Mareike. 2018. Netflix and the Re- invention of Television. London: ­Palgrave MacMillan. La Vanguardia. 2014. “Velvet ­ dobla la audiencia de su rival B&B en su estreno”. La Vanguardia, 18 February. Lacalle, Charo, and Mariluz Sánchez-Ares. 2019. “Producción de ficción televisiva española a partir de la desregulación: entre la atomización de las empresas y la concentración vertical”. El profesional de la información, 28(1): ­ ­1–9. ​­ Lang, Jamie. 2019. “Amazon Prime Video Reveals Three Spanish Originals, Drops Sergio Ramos Doc Trailer”. 23 July. Lobato, Ramon. 2019. Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York: NYU Press.

240  Concepción Cascajosa Virino López Rodríguez, Francisco J., and Irene Raya Bravo. 2019. “Teresa FernándezValdés and Female-Produced TV Series in Spain. Cable Girls/ Las chicas del ­cable as Case Study”. Feminist Media Studies, 19(7): ­ ­962–976. ​­ López, Tony. 2016. “Netflix rompe su acuerdo con Televisa y se burla de sus telenovelas”. El Español, 5 October. Meir, Christopher. 2019a. Mass Producing European Cinema. Studiocanal and Its Works. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Meir, Christopher. 2019b. “Becoming a Global Producer: Creative and Industrial Change at Post-Studiocanal ­ ​­ RED”. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 16(3): ­ 305–326. ­ ​­ Nogueira, Xosé. 2006. “El papel de la televisión de Galicia (TVG) en la configuración del panorama audiovisual gallego a lo largo de las dos últimas décadas”. Hispanística, 23: ­137–175. ​­ Palacio, Manuel. 2001. Historia de la televisión en España. Barcelona: Gedisa. R. Neira, Gema. 2017. Personal interview at the Bambú offices in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid), with Christopher Meir. 9 March. Redondo, David. 2015. “Refugiados, ­ un salto demasiado grande”. Cadena SER, 8 June. Romero, José M. 2018. “Del origen de Las chicas del cable a la lección de Fariña: así es la productora detrás de su éxito”. Cadena SER, 27 April. Romero, Nico. 2017a. “Teresa Fdez-Valdés: ‘Bambú se ha construido desde el ­ Escribir en serie, 26 January. fracaso’”. Romero, Nico. 2017b. “Ramón Campos: ‘Ramón Campos: El público femenino es el bizcocho de la tarta. Y sin bizcocho no hay tarta”. Escribir en serie, 9 February. Roxborough, Scott. 2014. “Meet Europe’s 5 Most Powerful Showrunners”. The Hollywood Reporter, 11 October. Saiz, David. 2016. “El ‘regalo’ de Navidad de Netflix a Bambú: así se fraguó su alianza para la primera serie en español”. Ecoteuve, 11 April. Smith, Paul Julian. 2000. “Spanish Quality TV? The Periodistas notebook”. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 1(2): ­ ­173–191. ​­ Vassallo de Lopes, Maria Immacolata, and Guillermo Orozco Gómez. 2011. “Síntesis comparativa de los países Obitel en el 2010”. In OBITEL 2011. Calidad de la ficción televisiva y participación transmediática de las audiencias, edited by Guillermo Orozco Gómez and Maria Immacolata Vassallo de Lopes. São Paulo: Globo. Wayne, Michael L. 2018. “Netflix, Amazon, and Branded Television Content in Subscription Video on Demand Portals”. Media Culture & Society, 40(5): ­ 725–741. ­ ​­

Part 7

Central and Eastern Europe

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group

http://taylorandfrancis.com

16 HBO Europe’s original programming in the era of streaming wars Petr Szczepanik

Introduction A recent New York Times Magazine feature about “streaming wars” pointed to the “trend toward volume” in the production of SVOD original content. The article speculates that the age of “prestige television” will be replaced by the age of “anything goes”, where even premium services such as HBO will be “pressured by corporate bosses to crank out more shows in order to better compete with smartphones”. If generating more and more diversified original content is indeed the near future of the VOD industry, and if in this “ongoing scramble for hours, international shows have emerged as another significant frontier” (Weiner 2019), how will this trend impact small Central and Eastern European (CEE) markets, where the production of SVOD original content is still relatively limited? Of all the transnational players, HBO Europe is the only exception, systematically churning out productions across the CEE region over the last decade. The first part of this chapter examines HBO Europe’s evolving business strategy and the manner in which this strategy is reflected in the service’s original programming, using the Czech Republic as a prime example1. The second part of the chapter investigates whether HBO Europe’s recent corporate decisions can be understood as a strategic response to the threatening innovations of Netflix, Amazon, and other OTT players, who have been building a strong presence across Western Europe and are also expected to make production investments in the CEE markets, namely Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary2 . Finally, the chapter proposes an explanation for HBO Europe’s competitive strategy vis-à-vis Netflix, based on the ongoing debates about the globalization of media production. HBO has been establishing its overseas pay cable services since the early 1990s. Surprisingly, the first region on the agenda was post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe, namely the “Visegrad” countries (September 1991 Hungary, 1994 Czech Republic, 1996 Poland, 1997 Slovakia, followed by other CEE countries), which led to the creation of “HBO Central Europe”. Two other noteworthy foreign offices opened shortly after: HBO Latin America in October 1991 and HBO Asia (Singapore) in 1994. In

244  Petr Szczepanik other markets, HBO programming (mostly US-origin) has been made available via third parties under the label “Home of the HBO” (e.g., Sky in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy, OCS in France, or Amedia in Russia), or via a branded SVOD service (Ding Ji Ju Chang in China). HBO Europe is the most internationally diversified of HBO’s foreign branches, producing the largest quantity of original local content and promising further growth. Although the company’s future remains uncertain following the AT&T takeover of what is now called WarnerMedia, HBO’s corporate parent since 2018, there have not yet been any changes in management at HBO Europe itself that would correspond to the departure of HBO’s longstanding CEO Richard Plepler or that would give credence to the widespread rumors about AT&T’s purported plans to sell HBO Europe to Sky ­ (Nicolaou and ­Fontanella-Khan 2019). ​­ After 2012, HBO Europe’s business strategy took a drastic turn, reacting to increasing competition from transnational and global pay cable networks and streamers, primarily Netflix, but also Amazon, Sky, and Canal+, and later Apple and Disney. HBO Europe has been combatting Netflix’s accelerating expansion by expanding on its own, although in the opposite geographic direction: after operating in the CEE region for 20 years, HBO Europe was quick to open a number of new offices across Western Europe. Netflix’s expansion into Western Europe started in 2012, which HBO Central Europe countered in the same year by re-branding itself as “HBO Europe”, accompanied by the launch of HBO Netherlands and HBO Nordic in Scandinavia, the latter of which became HBO’s first OTT service (i.e., preceding the 2015 launch of HBO NOW in the US). Soon after Netflix’s sudden move to the CEE territories in January 2016 (as a part of its “global switch on”), HBO Europe announced its original production plans for Scandinavia (HBO Nordic) and the Balkans (HBO Adria). It also opened a new office in Spain under the name HBO España in 20163, followed by Portugal (2019), thus reaching a total of 21 European territories4. However, HBO’s responses to the rapid global growth and disruptive innovations of Netflix and to changing consumer behaviour came with a significant delay. The first, preliminary step was made in 2010 when HBO Europe introduced HBO On Demand, a service operating via set-top boxes, limited to subscribers of selected cable operators. Similarly to other pay cable players like Sky and Canal+, HBO started adjusting its core business model5 in the upcoming years by launching online video on demand, followed by branded OTT services and multi-device access – though all of these changes came a little too late. While HBO Europe has been experimenting with the stand-alone OTT service HBO Nordic since 2012, its online VOD service in CEE called HBO GO (launched in 2011) was originally tied to cable subscriptions6 and did not become a fully stand-alone service until 2017–2018 (two to three years after HBO Latin America). Although its scope of localized content was much larger than Netflix’s (at least until 2019, when Netflix launched an aggressive localization campaign in the

HBO Europe’s original programming  245 Czech Republic and Poland), HBO GO was often criticized for its clumsy user interface, lack of download functionality (until 2019), personalization, multiple profiles, etc. The notion that HBO missed the bus for the directto- consumer marketplace, allegedly due to the company’s business ties with its long-standing cable and satellite partners, soon spread among the professional and broader public. Despite purportedly lagging behind Netflix in terms of OTT, HBO Europe still holds its ground as the leading premium cable and high-quality original local content producer in the whole CEE region. One of the key reasons behind the provider’s steadfast position is HBO’s established presence in the region and its embeddedness in local industry ecosystems.

The evolution of HBO Europe’s production system Existing statistics show that original TV series (as opposed to theatrical films and live broadcasts) have driven the global growth of OTT business, including HBO’s online services7. Exclusive premium series appear to be the most attractive content for the near future, with higher financial viability than feature films in terms of programming time, thus allowing for more efficient marketing campaigns and subscriber loyalty. Available industry data indicate that European territories exhibit an increasing preference for localized services and tailored content. What is more, the EU’s revised Audiovisual Media Services Directive, to be implemented by the member states by 2020, has introduced a 30% quota for European content in VOD catalogues8. It is not surprising then that in 2014, HBO CEO Richard Plepler purported original programming to be the “backbone” of HBO’s international strategy (Plepler 2014, 41) and that HBO has been upgrading its local serial drama production ever since. Throughout HBO’s US history, original content has proved to be the most efficient strategy for differentiating the service from standard FTA television and from competitors in the premium cable market (Santo 2008). In the 2010s, local original content (mainly serial dramas) has retained its ability to differentiate HBO from standalone OTT services around the world – especially in regions where local content is highly valued (Scandinavia, CEE). The current head of HBO Europe’s original programming Antony Root summarized his objectives thusly: “Tell stories no one else is telling [locally] in ways no one else can tell them. Because everything we do has to be about differentiation” (Berlinale Talents 2015). Coupled with the company’s long-standing relationships with local industry communities and the broad pay cable user ​­ ­​­ ​­ base, original local content for ­non-Western and ­non-English-speaking territories is HBO Europe’s main asset vis-à-vis Netflix. In 2004, after a period of hesitantly testing the viability of local production with relatively cheap stand-up comedies and documentaries, HBO’s largest foreign division HBO Latin America, produced its first original TV series – an Argentina-made serial killer drama titled Epitafios. As of 2019,

246  Petr Szczepanik HBO Latin America has released approximately 20 original drama series (in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Chile), many of them successful and critically acclaimed. Since 2013, HBO Asia has also been producing original series, starting with Serangoon Road, a ten-part multicultural detective series set in Singapore in the mid-1960s. However, the most prolific production hub among HBO’s foreign arms is HBO Europe. It started in 2004 with stand-up specials, followed by documentaries and the co-financing of independent feature films by pre-buying pay TV rights (from 2009 in the Czech Republic). After 2010, four of HBO Europe’s national divisions – Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, and Bucharest  – opened original programming departments, which have been responsible for supplying local content to HBO cable and on demand services, emulating the tried and tested US practice. Since 2016, HBO Europe has been systematically expanding its drama series production for various European markets, totaling 21 series as of 2019 (a number of them renewed for their second or third season), with many more productions on the agenda, primarily in Spain and Scandinavia. In each of the four CEE capital cities, HBO has been producing approximately one drama series per year since 2010. These series are either adaptations of foreign formats or original stories, made either in-house or with independent producers (where all rights are bought out in the latter case), shot exclusively in the local language and – with one exception thus far – without international coproduction deals. This systematic production initiative started in 2009, primarily with the intention of promoting HBO Central Europe’s five movie channels (HBO, HBO2, HBO3  – formerly HBO Comedy, Cinemax and Cinemax2). The HBO executive credited for orchestrating the launch of the original production was the then VP of Programming, Ondřej Zach, formerly the head of programme acquisition at the biggest Czech commercial broadcaster Nova9. As an experienced programming executive, Zach noticed the dwindling importance of exclusive licenses for Hollywood films in the era of online piracy10 as well as the narrowing of distribution windows, and realized that only original content can differentiate the brand from local free-to-air broadcasters. Since the late 1990s (when still working for Nova), Zach has observed an increase in production values of European acquisitions, coupled with the potential to compete with US imports, citing the German crime series Alarm for Cobra 11 (1996–, broadcast by Nova since 1998) as an example. Unlike commercial FTA broadcasters, who invest in original programming to supplement the increasingly expensive (and temporally strictly limited) licenses for foreign programmes and to fill vast programming schedules, pay cable networks produce content for marketing and promotional reasons. Under Zach’s management, HBO Europe stopped communicating primarily Hollywood movies and instead geared the focus of marketing campaigns and public relations towards original productions, despite the fact that acquisitions still made up the vast majority of its content, thereby mimicking the strategy employed by HBO US in the early

HBO Europe’s original programming  247 2000s11. Zach fully credits this strategic change – the brand being redefined as a fully-fledged local service rather than a mere outlet for Hollywood products – for opening the door to local media, otherwise uninterested in writing about HBO. Unlike free channels, motivated to produce original content in order to save money on licensing, HBO Europe didn’t respond to the increasing prices of acquisitions: with guaranteed exclusive rights to HBO US programming, it never needed large quantities of original content. The network could instead hone its focus on a handful of original programmes per year which were carefully selected, meticulously developed and well financed. Soon after taking the position of country manager in 2006, Zach introduced Czech independent films into the cable program. This added a new local layer to the stand-up originals that were launched across CEE territories around 2004 under the first HBO Central Europe CEO, Phil Roter12 . The next step was to introduce documentaries which offered a similarly advantageous price-performance ratio. While such productions did give HBO programming some local flare, it was not quite enough to “make it Czech” using Czech themes, faces and voices. Zach acknowledged that it was not until the first drama series In Treatment premiered in 2010–2012 in four national versions across the region that local audiences and media really started to take notice (Zach 2017). The final decision to ramp up original production and to develop the first drama series was made by the then HBO Central Europe CEO Linda Jensen13, who in 2009 hired Marc Lorber, formerly a London-based executive, to be HBO Central Europe’s first senior VP of original programming and production. It was a special time for the European arm: at the start of 2010, HBO US bought out Disney and Sony Pictures Entertainment to transform HBO Central Europe from a joint venture into a consolidated, wholly-owned subsidiary of Time Warner. HBO Central Europe thus acquired exclusivity on all HBO US content, which also meant that going forward, European channels had to schedule all HBO original series, not only the biggest international hits, but also more niche titles that had no obvious appeal in CEE markets. The brand’s distinctive aesthetics put more pressure on HBO Europe’s original programming to be on par with HBO US content (Stewart 2013). Nevertheless, significant differences between European and US programming have persisted – for example, HBO Europe has not featured any sports and cultural events (typical for HBO US) and focuses instead on films and TV series. Furthermore, HBO channels and OTT services have had to comply with quotas for European content (based on the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive), though the cable licenses granted under the Czech Republic’s Broadcasting Act have lowered the quotas for HBO channels to 10–12% (as opposed to 50% for FTA broadcasters), reflecting HBO’s specialization in US films and series14. The first stage of the upgrade involved increasing the annual slate of documentaries from approximately 8 to 20 (four to six per each key country), with the best to be presented at international markets and festivals.

248  Petr Szczepanik Jensen claimed that documentaries “were a good way to tap into local stories and there was good marketing, PR and viewer value in making docs for a certain amount, rather than bringing out ads for the channels” (Stewart 2013). Indeed, the Romanian documentary about a homeless artist titled The World According to Ion B. won the International Emmy Award for Best Arts Programming in 2010, and put HBO Europe on the documentary filmmaking map15. After testing production opportunities with ambitious but relatively cheap and niche documentaries, the next step for Lorber – who formerly worked as an international format consultant, e.g., on Russian and Czech adaptations of Yo soy Betty, la fea – was to test local markets with new versions of well-proven fiction formats. The Israeli drama Be’Tipul, structured as weekly sessions of patients with a psychotherapist, seemed to be a perfect fit, having already proven itself as HBO’s US version In Treatment (with Gabriel Byrne in the lead role, 2007). Furthermore, the show’s minimal set and repetitive story structure translated into relatively modest budgets and made it “a containable show in terms of production”, as observed by Lorber (Benzine 2010). The series, produced in Czech, Polish, Romanian and Hungarian versions, featured prominent local actors and became quite successful, attracting wide media attention and purportedly clicking well with HBO’s urban middle- class target audiences (for whom psychotherapy is regarded as an aspirational status symbol). It was even renewed for second and third seasons in all the territories but Romania. After Lorber’s departure, HBO employed the same strategy once again, with three national versions of another Israeli format, a dramedy titled Shall We Kiss. This was then followed by adaptions with steadily increasing production values and original creative input from the local talent – of the Finnish gangster family drama Easy Living (a Hungarian adaptation), Norwegian political/crime thriller Mammon (Czech and Polish versions) and crime thriller combined with coming-of-age gay relationship drama Eyewitness (the Romanian version called The Silent Valley), and Australian gangster family drama Small Time Gangster (the Romanian version called Shadows). HBO Europe became highly adept at picking up cheap and internationally obscure foreign formats, recruiting prominent local talent, and turning the formats into high-end, edgy productions, including substantial portions of newly authored story material, such as the highly acclaimed Romanian social/gangster series Shadows, directed by the award-winning auteur Bogdan Mirica. HBO Europe’s regional production infrastructure and strategy took on its current form after Antony Root replaced Lorber as the senior VP of original programming and production in 2011. It gradually transformed from a loosely connected set of national divisions into an integrated pan-European network with thin but tight central management answering directly to the New York headquarters: a strategic manager (EVP original programming and production) supervising a group of hands-on tactical managers, and executive producers or commissioning editors responsible for the whole annual

HBO Europe’s original programming  249 output in individual territories. Their main task is to select and co-develop new projects with local independent producers and authors, recommend them for approval by Antony Root, and finally to supervise physical production, conducted by a commissioned third party (in the Czech Republic, this means a company with long-term experience in servicing Prague-bound “runaway” productions). The middle level, between the EVP (Root) and the executive producers in individual countries, is occupied by Root’s two closest assistants: a central executive producer ( Jonathan Young) and a development executive (Steve Matthews). Under this system, the serial drama production system has been effectively overseen by the two London-based Britons: Anthony Root, a Cambridge philosophy and literature graduate with extensive executive experience in British and American television (working, e.g., as the SVP, European Production, for Sony Pictures Television before HBO) and his right hand, the central development executive Steve Matthews (hired in 2014), who had previously worked, e.g., on Showtime’s The Borgia and spent several years in Budapest. Under Root and Matthews, HBO Europe’s drama output stabilized and expanded into a total of four regions: CEE, Scandinavia, Spain, and the Balkans. So far, HBO Europe has produced local original content in nine out of the 21 national territories, with recent series premiering day-and-date across all European regions (Figure 16.1). Matthews and Young have been focusing primarily on CEE territories, while Root seems to have taken a recent interest in Scandinavia and Spain, where original production plays important role. In terms of Spanish-language content such productions have been regarded as more easily exportable to the US than other foreign-language ones. The first project completed under Root (although started under Lorber) adopted the localization method of multiple versions of the same format – ­the ­above-mentioned ​­ Israeli romantic dramedy Shall We Kiss (Hungarian, ­ Romanian, and Czech versions, 2011–). As Root explained in a discussion with regional filmmakers at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2015, the adaptations were meant to make each of the three capital cities intimately recognizable, featuring popular cafés and other locations, and to supplement the ­high-brow ​­ In Treatment with a more populist, soap-like format to broaden the promotional impact of the original production (Sarajevo Film Festival 2015). However, the most critical breaking point came rather unexpectedly with the company’s next strategic move when HBO Europe decided to make its first “event miniseries”. The Burning Bush is a three-part drama about Czech national hero Jan Palach, who immolated himself in 1969 to protest the Warsaw Pact invasion of the country and the subsequent moral capitulation of society. The project, co-produced by young independent production house Nutprodukce, cleverly combined daring story material by ­first-time ​­ screenwriter Štěpán Hulík with the mature filmmaking style of renowned Polish director Agnieszka Holland, who had previously worked with HBO US and who also attended the Prague film school FAMU during

250  Petr Szczepanik

­Figure 16.1 HBO Europe’s production system as of November 2019.

the invasion. The project, initiated in 2010, was developed in large part before Antony Root joined HBO. Upon its release in 201316, the series proved to be an immense national (record winner at the Czech Academy Awards) as well as international success, being sold to dozens of foreign markets, including the US. What is more, its global reach made people outside the CEE region recognize the existence of HBO Europe for the first time. If In Treatment placed HBO Europe on the map of regional television culture, The Burning Bush did the same on the global TV series scene, playing at international festivals, being represented by the renowned German sales agency Beta Film, and finally making its way into the HBO US catalogue. Jensen explained that this financially and creatively risky endeavor was directly linked to HBO GO: “We need to build a library of local product because that has meaningful added value on HBO GO. Strategically we want to build a library to sit alongside the US HBO content” (Stewart 2013). It seems that the change in corporate ownership coupled with full exclusivity on HBO US content and the launch of HBO GO were key drivers behind the decisions to dramatically upgrade production plans, increase production values, and combine deeply local stories with more universal themes, all while avoiding co-production deals and retaining full exclusivity rights. This created a shift in the company’s production strategy, whereby original content transitioned from serving merely as a public relations instrument aimed at a local user base, to valuable exclusive content, designed to be released in other HBO territories and possibly sold beyond them. Inspired by the international buzz surrounding The Burning Bush, the company’s production planning exhibited a honed focus on higher production values and original materials rather than scripted format adaptations. More highbudget event mini-series, reflecting controversial national themes, were thus quick to follow.

HBO Europe’s original programming  251 The strategic goal of building an exclusive VOD library was further supported by the new situation that arose when HBO Europe launched its Scandinavian OTT service in 2012. Ondřej Zach noted that the Scandinavian on demand market was already far more mature and saturated than CEE in terms of competition for premium film licenses. Furthermore, the VOD consumer base was younger, less stable and more dependent on new attractive serial content than the relatively conservative and loyal pay cable customers. “The demographic structure of the on demand services leads to a higher consumption of serial content. The VOD consumers are technologically more advanced, have access to more content sources, including online pirating, […] and tend to form clans and fan communities which then practice […] binge watching” (Zach 2017). This led the Scandinavian office to make an energetic push for expanding and upgrading serial content production. The division’s progressive role within HBO Europe was later acknowledged when CEO of HBO Nordic, Hervé Payan, became the pan-European CEO in January 2016. The Czech division stopped looking for foreign formats after releasing Mammon in 2015, and instead geared its focus towards original local projects, typically six- or eight-part miniseries (although it did continue producing new seasons of the format adaptations Shall We Kiss and In Treatment). In 2016, it already had nine projects in development, expecting to greenlight an average of one in three (Polachová 2016). The Czech production department virtually became a commissioning and development unit, working meticulously for several years on developing each of the stories with a small group. This team typically consisted of one to two writers and an independent producer who would later be joined by a leading director, and HBO Europe’s head of development, Steve Matthews, acting as a hands-on script advisor. A new three-tiered production typology has emerged since HBO Europe recruited Root, and can be summarized using Root’s own terminology as follows: (1) Multiple format adaptations, purely local and risk-averse tests of national markets with modest production values: In Treatment, Shall We Kiss. (2) High-end “returnable series”, either adaptations or original stories, mostly gangster dramas or/and thrillers about political corruption, ruthless competition for resources and dysfunctional or abusive father figures, allegorizing the neoliberal transformation of post-socialist societies (Easy ­ ­Living, Shadows, Mammon, Wataha, Eyewitness, Blinded by the Lights), or, more recently, sophisticated, ironic experiments with genre formulas in Spain (horror/action 30 Coins, a gastronomic love story Foodie Love) and Scandinavia (crime/ ­ ­­­ sci-fi ​­ Beforeigners, a hipster dramedy Gösta). (3) Limited series and “event miniseries”, often commenting on major events in a nation’s history or crime stories with socially realistic depictions of specific troubled environments: The Burning Bush, Wasteland, The Sleepers, Patria, Beartown. In addition to consolidating the pan-European production system and diversifying the production portfolio, Root has recently introduced several

252  Petr Szczepanik strategic changes in response to global OTT competition, namely Netflix’s dynamic production campaign. It appears that the Central and Eastern European region serves as a testing ground for HBO’s expansion into more competitive West European markets and for tailoring specific production strategies to the newly-entered territories (HBO Nordic and Spain, which were approached primarily via the OTT service). HBO Europe is also signaling that international sales beyond HBO Europe territories have finally become one of the company’s strategic objectives. While most previous series under Zach and Lorber targeted national markets exclusively, the projects supervised by Root have been developed with international sales in mind as well, some even with the intention of being acquired by the US. Patria is the first collaboration between two HBO’s foreign divisions (HBO España and HBO Latin America, 2020) while Hackerville (HBO Europe, Romania, with UFA Fiction, Germany, 2018) stands as HBO Europe’s first international co-production. HBO Europe has thus been following the lead of HBO US’s recent collaborations with foreign partners on highprofile projects such as The Young Pope (Italy-France-Spain-UK-US, with ­­ ­​­ ­​­ ­​­ ​­ Sky/Canal+/Rai, 2016) and My Brilliant Friend (Italy-US, with Rai). ­ ­ ­­ ​­ This historical overview has summarized the changing significance of HBO Europe’s original production as transitioning from (1) being a strictly local means of communication with the public and the local media while differentiating the brand from local FTA broadcasters (up until the success of The Burning Bush in 2013) to (2) building an exclusive library for HBO channels and HBO GO catalogues across the region in an era when online piracy and narrowing distribution windows have devalued the exclusivity of acquired Hollywood content, and (3) to a pan-European strategy of competing with Netflix and other global OTT players by producing premium content that is at once highly local and highly exportable across and beyond HBO Europe territories. Each of these strategies implies different production practices (budgets, production values, selection of genres, themes and talent) as well as criteria for success. The early format adaptations were aimed exclusively at local audiences and media, though they could not be measured by the standard people-meter ­ ​­ based ratings used by national free-to-air ­ ­​­ ​­ broadcasters. The reason behind this, as stressed by Zach, was that the total number of subscribers was too low in the small CEE markets to produce representative results  – with the exception of Poland, which is not only the largest, but also the most developed and competitive pay cable and VOD market in CEE17. In addition, the fluctuation of subscriptions – a crucial parameter for any premium cable service – could only be tracked on a monthly, not daily basis. Instead of using fast ratings results, HBO Europe tracks the impact of individual series based on month-to-month subscriptions18 as well as the number of media hits to measure their marketing effectiveness. With the advent of online VOD, it has become possible to accurately measure the streaming of individual titles. HBO Europe makes use of this by

HBO Europe’s original programming  253 occasionally publishing data attesting to the high popularity of its original ­ ­​­ ​­ HBO US productions19. Following the release of The Burncontent vis-à-vis ing Bush, original series are now also being evaluated by the publicity they generate at international festivals and award shows, as well as in terms of foreign sales outside of HBO Europe territories. This has been evidenced by Tereza Polachová, HBO Czech executive producer, who praised The Burning Bush for being sold to over 40 territories and for having been seen in 70 countries20. In addition, Anthony Root confirmed that making it into HBO US catalogues has become one of the company’s key strategic goals (Tizard 2018), following an announcement made by HBO CEO Richard Plepler at MIPCOM 2017 that HBO US will start introducing original foreign series to the US. This coincided with a repeated claim that HBO Europe will no longer produce format adaptations (apart from new seasons of adapted shows, based on original stories), reflecting the fact that adaptations are difficult or impossible to sell in foreign territories (Roxborough 2017). The local drama series production initiative started long before Netflix announced its European expansion and even a year before HBO Europe launched HBO GO. This initiative was originally meant to distinguish the HBO brand from local commercial as well as public service broadcasters rather than from global players. Nevertheless, after the launch of HBO Nordic in 2012 and even more so after 2016, when HBO Nordic’s CEO Hervé Payan replaced Linda Jensen as HBO Europe’s CEO, 21 some of the division’s key decisions can be read as specific preemptive or defensive strategies to counteract Netflix: attempts at gaining a “first-mover” advantage or to retain valuable customers that can be lured away by the competition. An example of this is when HBO Europe originally rejected claims that it was preparing for Netflix by buying out packages of OTT licenses to build a large portfolio of CEE content (Krasko 2014), though it eventually did just that, 22 as did Netflix in 201923. Another illustrative example is HBO Europe’s decision to expand into the strategically important territories outside CEE: Scandinavia and Spain/ Portugal. The company’s OTT-only entry into the Scandinavian market foregrounded HBO’s perception of the behavioural differences between online and TV consumers as well as between Western Europe and CEE. While the HBO brand has remained synonymous with conservative, family-based TV viewership in the less competitive and developed CEE markets, HBO Nordic and HBO España have played the risky digital game from the very start, lacking a stable consumer base as a result.

“Not in the international marketplace?” Netflix, post-globalization, and HBO Europe’s expansion from the east to the west HBO is a dynamically expanding and increasingly diversifying multinational corporation, integrated in multiple local media ecologies, and

254  Petr Szczepanik building new collaborative ties with local partners, talent, and even public institutions. At the same time, its European office has consistently insisted on being an “entirely standalone” corporate entity, adamant on going forward with original production without direct orders from the LA headquarters (although Zach acknowledged it was originally inspired by HBO Latin America’s original production that had started six years earlier). HBO came to CEE in the early 1990s as there was no noteworthy foreign competition, and its executives referred to it as a region of “bad TV”– an underdeveloped market lacking experience in producing quality dramas, thus bearing the implicit presumption that there was no “quality TV” before HBO. The company’s executives have presented themselves as mediators of the HBO US aesthetic and production values, with a pedagogic mission of cultivating the local production environment, training local writers and directors, and helping them realize their true authorial visions. In order to appeal to local professional communities, HBO Europe’s executives developed an elaborate production ideology of creative freedom, consisting of concepts such as “authenticity”, “authorial voice” and “a strong point of view” that Antony Root persuasively adapted from traditional HBO US production rhetoric to fit the regional conditions24. As HBO Europe’s Head of Development Steve Matthews put it, they have aimed at creating “US-style muscular storytelling in television form married with auteur cinema, young married with old” (Sarajevo Film Festival 2015). This ideology needs to be read critically against the core business model and production strategy described above, though that is not the aim of this chapter. Instead, the remaining section will foreground the evolving strategic position that CEE original content production holds in terms of HBO Europe’s competition with transnational OTT services across Europe. Upon first sight, HBO Europe seems to reject–unlike Netflix and Amazon – the key principles of globalization of media production, primarily those of international co-production, runaway production, and the related international division of cultural labor (Miller et al. 2008). Root insists that all original productions have been entirely conducted in the commissioning countries: “We need to be part and parcel of the ecology of the country we are in, so I would not be in favour of taking advantage of a tax break in the UK [for example, ] to shoot a Romanian-language series” (TBI Reporter 2014). Similarly, he and his colleagues have repeatedly rejected ideas for creating international co-productions, especially for financial reasons, or shooting local stories in English: “we’re not in the so- called ‘international’ marketplace, making internationally destined products right from the start from our local market, like the English-language Medici. Masters of ­ Florence, produced in Italy. We’re not in that game” (Pham 2016). Through its long-standing presence, strong relationships with local production communities, and its involvement with local stories and languages, HBO has been redefining the globalization of media production. Nevertheless, after Netflix’s “global switch on” and its rapid increase in local

HBO Europe’s original programming  255 production across Europe, it was no longer enough to communicate with local audiences. HBO Europe needed stories that could better transcend borders, stories that were “at once acutely local and affectingly universal” (Wittingham 2018), words used by Root to describe HBO España’s first drama project Patria (2020). The first Scandinavian original Gösta was hailed by its creative team as a self-ironic image of “what it is to be Sweden” (Roxborough ­ 2019), clearly aimed in equal part at the local market and export. According to HBO Europe’s executives, the saturated and highly competitive markets of Scandinavia and Spain offer more incentive and better opportunities for employing this new strategy, while also allowing for a more hands-off approach. Antony Root recalled that together with the local executive producers in the four CEE capital cities, he had to convince the local professional communities about the “spirit” of HBO, to do the “very hard work of re-aligning the expectations of the local producing community to what our needs are, that they are not just free TV needs or another opportunity to make a quick buck” (Berlinale Talents 2015). Steve Matthews similarly pointed out that unlike the CEE markets, where development needs to be watched closely, and where most projects are generated in-house, HBO Europe’s new territories are “different in that they have highly mature markets of independent production companies with huge experience in development” that can be trusted to do the actual development work on their own (Molhov 2018). Consequently, HBO Nordic shows boast better sales potential than their CEE counterparts, as acknowledged by Root: “If you say, ‘We have this great new Romanian show’, well, I’m not saying their [MIPCOM buyers’] eyes glaze over, but you have to get them used to the idea that there might be a great show coming out of Romania” (Roxborough 2017). ­ If the recent developments in Scandinavia and Spain are heralding a new original production and distribution strategy for HBO Europe, we have to consider conceptualizing it differently from original production in CEE. The original idea of marrying HBO production and aesthetic values with local stories, languages and talent to produce shows that “speak with a loud voice to local audiences” (Picard 2012) and still “sit well” alongside US premium content in HBO GO catalogues can be described as a highend form of “glocalization” (Robertson 1995). Glocalization, referring to the customization of global services and content for local markets and the fetishization of local cultures for branding purposes, serves as a common strategy of global media corporations (e.g., foreign production facilities of Hollywood majors or subsidiaries of US TV networks offering localized channels and content – Fontaine 2019). The key difference in HBO Europe’soriginal programming, however, lies in its established physical presence, a personality- driven organization system, high levels of investment and quality control in the small, peripheral media markets, and above all, the brand’s embeddedness in local cultures which has exceeded the framework of “localized Americana”. On the other hand, HBO Europe’s

256  Petr Szczepanik recent move towards developing more exportable, albeit still strongly local, content goes beyond the traditional glocalization strategy. Instead, the company operates by absorbing the Westernized content emanating from European “digital peripheries” first into transnational (regional) flows followed by global “dominant” flows (Thussu 2007). Unlike the noto­­ ​­ ​­ ­ rious  examples of “counter-flows” originating from ­second-tier “media capitals” – such as Bollywood movies or Mexican telenovelas exported to or adapted in the US – HBO Europe exports from small European markets that have no prior history as transnational creative hubs and whose national production remains notoriously unexportable (Grece 2017). In terms of power relations, cross-border circulation remains closely tied to the interests and territories of the corporate mothership, no matter how HBO Europe executives try to conceal this with their claims of regional autonomy25. HBO Europe’s recent original programming balances national specificity with what Mareike Jenner calls the “grammar of transnationalism” differently than HBO US or Netflix US original programming, whose primarily aims are transnational distribution. In HBO Europe’s original programming, local appeal still comes first, while transnational appeal plays second fiddle. Although the common denominator remains the same – the concept of “quality”– the difference is that HBO Europe’s original content does not “eschew more problematic aspects of each country’s history” to increase its accessibility across foreign territories ( Jenner 2018, 229). On the contrary, “problematic” aspects of national history, politics and culture – be it the moral anxieties of everyday life under the Communist regime, political corruption in post-socialist societies, or Catalan separatism  – are mined to create nationally specific spectacles. In her analysis of HBO Europe’s original production, Aniko Imre adopts the concept of “commercial nationalism” (coined by Volcic and Andrejevic 2016) to explain how HBO Europe opportunistically uses national stereotypes as sort of brands that can  – in the era of populist nationalism  – travel surprisingly well across borders, if married with the right blend of HBO “quality”. According to Imre, HBO Europe’s original programming has shown that “the branded politics of national and European belonging connects, rather than divides, ­ East and West, ‘völkish’ and cosmopolitan affiliations” (Imre 2018, 63). While she focuses on the former Eastern Bloc countries of Central and Eastern Europe, strategic shifts in HBO Europe’s new territories imply that “commercial nationalism” is becoming even more prevalent. According to Terry Flew, contemporary media industries have entered the era of “postglobalization”, characterized by resurgent populist nationalisms and the renewed power of nation states (Flew 2018). HBO Europe appears to be an example of a post-global corporation that has been able to cleverly tap into these tendencies. The question that remains is whether HBO Europe’s highly selective and locally controlled approach will prove viable in competition with Netflix’s

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regional market (Thomson 2019). A recent Ampere Analysis report predicted that Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Russian speaking territories are among Netflix’s next targets in terms of production investment (Editor 2019). Netflix emulated this move by announcing a multi-million investment into Spanish production and its Madrid production hub in 2018, and is also opening national offices across Western Europe, allegedly planning one in Warsaw (Dziadul 2019). As of 2019, HBO Europe’s 21 territories are divided among five regionally defined services: Central Europe (Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia  & Herzegovina), Nordic (Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark), España (Spain), the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), and Portugal. HBO was originally a content provider in the sense of delivering content to its cable or satellite partners, not to the end users. Cable providers have been selling HBO as a package with other channels, which has garnered the advantage of a stable infrastructure and consumer base. However, HBO has had to give up approximately 50% of its subscription revenues to its partners, a significant disadvantage when compared to OTTs as Netflix. Launching the standalone services HBO Now, HBO GO and HBO Nordic allowed HBO – at least partially – to eliminate these expenses, though it has compromised the safety of the company’s position as a result. The first CEE territory to launch HBO GO was actually Poland in December 2010, followed by the Czech Republic and others in 2011 (Dziadul 2010). In his presentation on HBO’s international growth in 2014, Richard Plepler included a graph (based on internal HBO data) showing that original series occupied approx. 70% of the total viewing time on HBO GO as opposed to HBO’s linear channels, where theatrical titles dominated (Plepler 2014). For an overview of trends in SVOD content production in Europe, see Fontaine (2019). Zach joined HBO in 2006 as HBO Czech Republic’s country manager, was promoted to the VP of programming in 2012 and SVP of programming, acquisitions and affiliate sales at HBO Europe in 2015. He left HBO Europe in 2017 from the position of COO Central Europe and EVP of affiliate sales, HBO Europe. A study of viewing habits commissioned by the Czech Producer’s Association in 2014 showed that the majority of online viewing in the Czech Republic was from illegal sources (MilwardBrown 2014, 71). In this context, it was logical that HBO Europe’s early original content (i.e., before In Treatment) was financed from the marketing budget. In the Czech Republic, the biggest stand-up comedy programme called Na ­stojáka launched in 2004 and it essentially introduced the previously unknown format to the local culture. It started with renowned actors but later cultivated a new generation of comedians, becoming immensely popular throughout its seven years at HBO (before it was taken over by the Czech PSB in 2012). Jensen, previously the President of MTV Russia, and the Director of Development at Central European Media Enterprises (CME), was HBO Europe’s CEO from 2005 until the end of 2015. See the Czech Broadcasting Act (No. 231/2001) and the yearly reports of the Czech Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting, under which HBO Europe cable and VOD services targeting other CEE countries have also been registered. HBO Europe has continued to build its documentary slate and in 2012 appointed its first documentary executive Hanka Kastelicová, a Czech national based in Budapest.

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References Benzine, Adam. 2010. “East European Hitmakers”. C21 Media, 22 July. Berlinale Talents. 2015. “High Season: Serial Storytelling and Producing”, 12 February. Clarke, Stewart. 2018. “The Evolution of Foreign Language Series”. Variety, 6 April. Dziadul, Chris. 2010. “HBO Launches Broadband VOD”. Broadband TV News, 17 December. Dziadul, Chris. 2019. “Netflix Eyes Polish Expansion”. Broadband TV News, 4 July. Editor. 2019. “East Europe Next Likely Focus for Netflix Original Content Investment”. Rapid TV News, 5 September. Filipek, Dariusz. 2019. “Erynie – Netflix niemal na pewno wyprodukuje polski serial z TVP”. Popkulturyści, 13 September. FilmTake. 2019. “Made-For-Streaming Movies”. FilmTake, 18 November. Flew, Terry. 2018. “Post-Globalisation”. Javnost – The Public, 25(1–2): 102–109. Fontaine, Gilles (ed.). 2019. Yearbook 2018/2019: Key Trends. Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory. Fontaine, Gilles, and Deirdre Kevin. 2016. Media Ownership: Towards PanEuropean Groups? Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory. Grece, Christian. 2017. The Circulation of EU Non-national Films. Strasbourg: European Audiovisual Observatory. Hrubý, Tomáš. 2014. Personal Interview. 29 October. Imre, Aniko. 2018. “HBO’s e-EUtopia”. Media Industries Journal, 5(2): 49–68. Jenner, Mareike. 2018. Netflix and the Re-invention of Television. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Krasko, Ivan. 2014. “Šéf HBO exkluzívne: Pirátstvo ja najväčší problém, jsme proti nemu bezbranní”. Strategie.sk, 2 November. Kucharski, Sebastian. 2018. “Prezes HBO: nigdy nie mieliśmy więcej abonentów”. Gazeta Wyborcza, 21 December. Küng, Lucy. 2017. Strategic Management in the Media. Theory to Practice. 2nd Edition. London: Sage. McNamara, Mary. 2019. “HBO’s Casey Bloys Isn’t Worried about AT&T, Netflix or the End of Game of Thrones”. Los Angeles Times, 9 August. Miller, Toby, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, Richard Maxwell, and Ting Wang. 2008. Global Hollywood 2. London: British Film Institute. Molhov, Yako. 2018. “Great Storytelling – the Key to HBO’s Hits across Europe”. TVBIZZ Magazine: NATPE Budapest, 23–25. Nicolaou, Anna, and James Fontanella-Khan. 2019. “AT&T Discusses Sale of HBO Europe to Pay Down $170bn Debt”. Financial Times, 10 April. Pham, Annika. 2016. “HBO’s Antony Root Unveils His Vision for Original TV Drama in the Nordics”. Nordisk Film & TV Fond, 29 April. Picard, Michael. 2012. “The HBO Treatment”. C21 Media, 19 June. Plepler, Richard. 2014. A Report on HBO’s International Growth. Industry document, http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/70/70972/TW_HBO_ 101514_FINAL.pdf. Polachová, Tereza. 2016. Discussion at “FAMU Lectures on Quality TV”, organized by The Burning Bush producer Tomáš Hrubý, 29 April.

HBO Europe’s original programming  261 Robertson, Roland. 1995. “Glocalization: Time-Space and HomogeneityHeterogeneity”. In Global Modernities, edited by Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson, 25–44. London: Sage. Roxborough, Scott. 2017. “HBO Europe: The Best TV You’ve Never Seen”. Hollywood Reporter, 16 October. Roxborough, Scott. 2019. “HBO Europe Launches Nordic Originals with Swedish Sitcom Gosta”. Hollywood Reporter, 28 June. Santo, Avi. 2008. “Para-Television and Discourses of Distinction: The Culture of Production at HBO”. In It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-television Era, edited by Marc Leverette, Brian L. Ott, and Cara Louise Buckley, 19–45. New York and London: Routledge. Sarajevo Film Festival. 2015. “Developing Stories for the Golden Age of European TV Drama”. Professional Roundtable. Schomer, Audrey. 2018. “HBO Is Making Moves on Local-Market Content”. Business Insider, 14 May. Stewart, Clarke. 2013. “HBO Europe’s Burning Ambition”. TBI, 16 January. TBI Reporter. 2014. “HBO Hang Hopes on Euro Dramas”. TBI, 6 October. Thomson, Stuart. 2019. “CEE SVOD Set to More Than Double”. Digital TV Europe, 1 May. Thussu, Daya Kishan. 2007. “Mapping Global Media Flow and Contra-flow”. In Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-flow, edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, 10–29. New York and London: Routledge. Tizard, Will. 2018. “HBO’s Antony Root on Creating European Shows for a Global Audience”. Variety, 28 June. TW. 2019. “Vod.pl wyprzedził Netflixa, VoD TVP i Chili.com mocno w górę”. Wirtualnemedia, 1 October. Uhlík, Dominik. 2019. Glokalizace na příkladu HBO Česká republika. BA Thesis. Prague: Charles University. Volcic, Zala, and Mark Andrejevic. 2016. “Introduction”. In Commercial Nationalism: Selling the Nation and Nationalizing the Sell, edited by Zala Volcic and Mark Andrejevic, 1–14. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Vyskočil, Tomáš. 2018. “Nová data z ČSÚ ukazují, kolik Čechů si předplácí Netflix nebo HBO”. Filmtoro. Weiner, Jonah. 2019. “The Great Race to Rule Streaming TV”. New York Times Magazine, 10 July. Zach, Ondřej. 2017. Personal Interview. 18 December.

17 Quality by design Feature TV series from premium television in Poland Artur Majer

Introduction: TV stations and series in Poland Before 1993, Polish viewers only had access to two public television channels, TVP1 and TVP2, broadcast by the state-owned network. Their content had been influencing the viewers’ tastes and expectations over the course of 40 years. This narrow selection was complemented by regional channels broadcast by the same network, albeit in a limited area. The first commercial free-to-air networks, as well as pay premium channels provided by dynamically growing cable companies, became available in the 1990s. Issuing private broadcasting licenses became an option once the Parliament passed the Broadcasting Act on 29 December 1992 ( Journal of Laws 7/1993, item 34). This law regulated the issuing of licenses by the National Broadcasting Council as well as the application process; its other provisions restricted monopolistic practices and limited the possibility of foreign capital flooding the domestic market. While all this may sound rather strict, it should be noted that the law had been written during the regime transition period – a time marked by political upheaval and economic crisis. The Broadcasting Act was nevertheless passed; the country’s first private FTA network, Polsat, received its license within a year. Canal+, the first pay TV channel in Poland, followed suit less than two years later, commencing to broadcast on 21 March 1995. HBO launched in Poland in September 1996; much like in the US and Western Europe (HBO Europe), it advertised itself as a “premium movie channel”, as per the “It’s not TV. It’s HBO” slogan. While 1989 – the fall of Communism – could be considered a watershed moment in the history of Polish television, the history of Polish feature television series dates back to the early 1960s and 70s. Produced by the state broadcaster, Telewizja Polska, they boasted high artistic values and frequently performed a “public mission.” Though criticized for their ideological bent in the later decades, they were highly popular at the time and remain the object of fond nostalgia. Created in the 1960s, Four Tank-Men ­ ​­ and a Dog (Czterej pancerni i pies) and More Than Life at Stake (Stawka ­ większa niż życie) covered the recent events of World War II in a lighter, more sensationalized fashion. The propaganda of success under the rule

Quality by design: TV series in Poland  263 of Edward Gierek in the next decade was reflected in comedy series about ­​­ ​ Poland’s “drive to greatness”; the top example of this trend, The ­40-Year­Old (Czterdziestolatek), ­ follows the family of an engineer working on the biggest urban construction projects in Warsaw. The viewers liked it so much ­​­ ​ that a sequel was produced after the regime change. Its title – ​­The ­40-YearOld. 20 Years Later (Czterdziestolatek. 20 lat później) – was both obvious and slightly grotesque, and the topics were similarly predictable: political transformation, crude budding capitalism, the birth of contemporary consumer culture… Apart from the more politicized shows serving a public mission in accordance with the demands or wishes of the government of the time, numerous live-action and animated series intended for younger audiences had been produced. Filmmakers were also understandably fond of adapting the widely known and well-liked works of Polish writers. Novels by Henryk Sienkiewicz, Poland’s first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Litera­ ture (1905), had been adapted several times. For example, Sir Michael (Pan Wołodyjowski), the final book of his ­Trilogy – a monumental oeuvre written in the XIX century to “bolster the spirit” of Poles in the partition period (Poland had been absent from the maps of Europe from 1795 to 1918) – was made into a TV series prior to a cinema version. Similarly, the state broadcaster hired director Jerzy Antczak to adapt Nights and Days ( Noce i dnie) into a series; the feature-length version of this work was nominated for the 1977 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This chapter is by necessity too short to even summarize the full history of TV series in Poland – the above paragraphs serve only to point out that this form of entertainment has been present and highly popular with creators using it to tell stories, as well as with their target audiences. Additionally, the history of feature TV series is inextricably linked both with the history of the country’s political transformations and that of Polish feature cinema. The imposition of martial law in Poland in the early 1980s had caused a number of creators (e.g., Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland) to leave the country and start making films abroad, while others (e.g., Wojciech Marczewski) chose “inner emigration” and silence instead of filmmaking. Actors boycotted the television and refused to perform. This deep crisis in Polish television and cinema lasted beyond the rest of the decade; the political and economic transformations in the early 1990s following the fall of Communism did not change the viewers’ negative perception of these media, which explains why the boom for Polish premium TV series only began in the second half of the 2010s, that is: in the last few years, even though premium pay television networks had entered the Polish market in the mid-1990s.

The early days of “Polish” premium series As Polish premium TV series are such a recent phenomenon, it is useful to start with a description of the involvement of Polish producers working

264  Artur Majer for Canal+ and HBO Polska. They started out by producing licensed formats based on production bibles instead of pursuing original show ideas. Almost all of these producers had been externally contracted. Whether they should be called de facto producers is a matter of legal definition: Polish law defines the producer as the party which “initiates, actually organizes, and bears the responsibility for the creative, organizational, and financial process of producing an audiovisual work” (2 April 2004 amendment to the Broadcasting Act; Journal of Laws 91/2004, item 874). The contractor or service provider carries out some of these duties while the TV network provides official guidance. Once the task is done, the contractor transfers the footage to the network which had commissioned the production, along with all usage and exploitation rights over any mode of communication utilized by said network. Therefore, in the Polish legal system “an HBO production” or “a Canal+ production” means “content produced for the broadcaster”, not “by ­ the broadcaster.” I consider this a sufficient reason to devote some space to the first Polish film producers who started working with premium TV networks, choosing to locally produce series based on licensed show formats. The list of companies and titles will be relatively short. The first title is No Secrets (Bez tajemnic) – the Polish adaptation of the ­ Israeli series Be’tipul and its US version In Treatment. The Polish version was shot for the fifteenth anniversary of HBO’s presence on the local TV market. Executive production was handled by Telemark, but the licensing idea came from HBO. It was an understandable decision – the format was already successful in the US. In addition to the use of a well-known format (practically the network’s property by then), other means of lowering production risks were also implemented. Filmed in Poland, the series boasted a lineup of famous creators and actors known from many other forms of narrative media: theater, cinema, and literature. The main writer was Przemysław Nowakowski, who ­co-wrote ​­ Katyn with Andrzej Wajda, and renowned playwright Magdalena Fertacz provided additional input. The episodes were directed by Jacek Borcuch, Anna Kazejak, and Marek Lechki, while Wojciech Smarzowski, Agnieszka Glińska, Bartosz Konopka, Agnieszka Holland, and Kasia Adamik collaborated with them on individual plot lines. All these are big names in Polish cinema, the recipients of domestic and international awards. A total of 115 episodes was broadcast on HBO Polska between October 2011 and December 2013. The collaboration with Telemark proved profitable enough for HBO to contract the production company for another adaptation, this time of the Norwegian series Mammon. The ­six-episode ​­ Pact (Pakt) ­ based on the Norwegian format was filmed in 2015. Six more episodes made up The Pact II (2016); instead of adapting the source material, original scripts were written featuring the protagonist of the first series, investigative journalist Piotr Grodecki (portrayed by Marcin Dorociński). Telemark is a good example of the career potential for an external producer (officially an executive

Quality by design: TV series in Poland  265 producer) collaborating with a premium channel: from the adaptation of a format to an original sequel inspired by the source material. Notably, ­Telemark’s ­co-owner ​­ ­co-wrote ​­ ­ the second (original) season of The Pact. Blood of My Blood ( Krew z krwi), produced by Endemol Polska for Canal+, is another example of cooperation between a production company and a premium TV network. This gangster drama series explores the story of a woman getting involved with the mafia in coastal Poland (Trójmiasto) while trying to protect her loved ones. Only one season was produced in 2012, even though the source material, the Dutch Penoza, was five seasons long. When Canal+ decided to cancel the show, a surprising deal was made: the public, state-owned Telewizja Polska picked up the broadcasting license for the first season along with adaptation rights in 2014 and contracted Endemol to produce the next season, which premiered in 2015 on TVP2. The show was discontinued due to the political changes in Poland, but Endemol created two other shows for this network as an external producer. The state broadcaster is currently negotiating the purchase of adaptation rights for the subsequent seasons of Penoza, to be ­produced – ­​­naturally – ​­by Endemol. These examples are a run-up to the description of the dynamically developing market for original Polish feature series on premium networks. They highlight the market interdependencies between broadcasters and producers: the former participate in the creative and preparatory period of production as well as oversee the shooting, which is set up, managed, and carried out by the latter. The network then purchases all rights to the content, formally becoming its producer and project owner entitled to use the content in all ways, including the exploitation and sale of anything related to the show  – from idea to production bible (the set of rules concerning licensing and adaptation for foreign markets).

The prelude: Mission: Afghanistan (Misja ­ Afganistan, 2012) The first Polish original series made for a premium TV network was not a huge hit despite having been “designed for success.” Canal+ issued press releases about the filming and special training for actors portraying the soldiers, then premiered the first two episodes in an unencrypted broadcast, available practically to all cable TV consumers. Mission: Afghanistan (Misja ­ Afganistan) had all the hallmarks of a quality TV series: a novel topic not covered in earlier Polish or European serialized shows; extremely comprehensive background documentation; specialized training for actors portraying soldiers on a peace mission; a star-studded cast and creative team; production was handled by one of the best production companies in Poland  – Akson Studio. Most importantly, an extensive marketing campaign had preceded the broadcast. The first episode, which served as the pilot, was shot in the fall of 2011 and underwent evaluation by the network.

266  Artur Majer Unlike most of the later episodes, its events took place entirely in Poland, before the unit’s departure for the titular mission. The work of director Grzegorz Kuczeriszka (a cinematographer by profession) was deemed unsatisfactory and a more experienced filmmaker, Maciej Dejczer, was brought in as the showrunner. Dejczer was thought to be better equipped to handle action sequences as well as scenes of emotional struggle, strife, and rivalry between the characters. Production quality had clearly been an important part of the project from the outset, throughout the preproduction stage, the shooting itself, and the marketing campaign. Viewership figures for the early episodes (particularly the ones which had been broadcast unencrypted) were surprisingly high. The second episode, which premiered on Sunday, 14 October 2014, attracted over 200,000 viewers – a 2.54% market share in the 16– 49 commercial group, over ten times the daily viewership averages for the channel (PP 2012). However, interest in subsequent episodes kept plummeting. That was naturally due in part to the limited number of Canal+ subscribers in 2012, before its merger with the n platform and the launch of Platforma Canal+ in 2013. The main artistic reason, however, lay with the script: the story arc, the main characters, their plot lines, and interactions. Unfortunately, the aforementioned tremendous attention to production value had a negative impact on the clarity of the plot. The scriptwriters collected interesting war stories (based in part on true events related by military veterans), but often assembled them too flimsily, more intent on providing a cliffhanger at the end of every episode than on a spectacular, surprising resolution, thus sacrificing moving, emotional narrative solutions for the sake of formal appeal. The broadcaster therefore did not commission a second season; Canal+ viewers in Poland had to wait until 2016 for another domestic original series. Akson Studio, the executive producer of Misja Afganistan, has not produced another premium TV show so far, shifting its focus to serialized feature narratives for ­free-to-air ­​­ ​­ networks.

The success: The Teach (Belfer, 2016) Novelist Jakub Żulczyk, the ­co-writer ​­ of The Teach, called the show a crime drama. In the world of this narrative, discovering the truth about the cause of death of a girl from a small-town high school is not the most pressing question – the whole town is embroiled in dark mysteries of the past, gang dealings, and psychological warfare in the power structures. Although the series is set in a school, not only students and teachers, but even the prosecutor and police are involved in the structures whose ruinous influence was behind the central tragedy. Originally intended for TVN, a private freeto-air network, the show proved too dark and bold for the broadcaster (Mróz 2016) and Canal+ became involved in the production. The scriptwriters – the erstwhile Jakub Żulczyk and playwright Monika Powalisz  – were joined by creative producer Wojciech Bockenheim and two editors from

Quality by design: TV series in Poland  267 the network, Dominika Kamińska and Wojciech Zębaty. Written over the course of two years, the script was tailored to deliver a quality production. The team endeavored to avoid simplistic crime-show tricks widely known in the world of Polish TV series – instead of a crime procedural, the narrative was a developing tale with every episode raising new questions rather than resolving the earlier mysteries. This made the world of the story both dark and rich in side plots, each one firmly anchored in the narrative. The motivations of the protagonists were psychologically justified and the depravity of the world influenced the moral depravity of the characters, building dramatic tension as well as the interlinked crystalline structure of causes and effects. The creators have repeatedly stated that they were inspired by original formats successfully adapted in the US, like The Killing, The Bridge, or Homeland. The numerous side plots helped develop the cast of supporting and episodic characters. The teenage actors portraying the students of the Dobrowice high school – selected through protracted casting calls – were part of the mystery, not just the background to a criminal investigation. The titular Teach played by Maciej Stuhr was both an enigma (why would a teacher from the capital move to a small town?) and an unusual detective figure. These aspects of the plot and narrative construction of this ten-episode series contributed to its success and the decision to produce a sequel; naturally, significant credit is also due to the director  – awardwinning feature filmmaker Łukasz Palkowski  – and his collaboration with eminent cinematographer Marian Prokop. Steadicam shots created a “world constantly in motion”, where danger could be lurking behind every tree or corner, while the score written by Bulgarian multi-instrumentalist Atanas Valkov further heightened the tension. As was the case with the previous original series, Mission: Afghanistan, the first two episodes of The Teach were broadcast without encryption. They were watched by approximately 350,000 viewers on two channels (Canal+ and Canal+1) and the show retained this viewership average until the finale, which broke the ratings record for encrypted pay television in Poland, attracting over 460,000 viewers (Pallus 2016). The show was very well reviewed and won an Eagle – the Polish Film Award – for Best TV Show as well as a special Telekamera (the Tele Tydzień weekly magazine award established in 1998). ­ This lucky streak led the network to commission not only a sequel – ​­The Teach 2 (2017) – but also two other premium series, which aired in 2018. That year saw an unprecedented number of feature series produced for premium TV networks in Poland.

2018: the year of milk and honey The premium networks began investing in Polish original series following the success of The Teach, coupled with the 2016 launch of Netflix in Poland as well as the 2017 launch of the HBO GO streaming service available

268  Artur Majer without a cable subscription (VOD News 2017). Out of six shows, five had premiered in 2018 – the “magic year” – as a result of this rivalry between channels and platforms. Their summaries will let us recognize the strategies and interests (topics, genres) of the broadcasters. Canal+ and crime stories As the Canal+ hit The Teach had been built around a crime story, the broadcaster focused on this genre of filmic (serialized) storytelling, offering its subscribers a new dark narrative in March/April 2018: the tale of police detective Adam Kruk working to solve a contemporary crime and defeat the demons of his own past at the same time. Kruk. Whispers Heard After Dark (Kruk. Szepty słychać po zmroku) is basically a six-episode miniseries; its core mysteries were explained in the finale and any continuation would not only require a new crime, but also pack less of an emotional punch, as the cathartic ending allowed the protagonist to come to terms with his past. However, in the words of scriptwriter Jakub Korolczuk, Kruk is not the type to “put on comfy slippers and watch TV” after work (Korolczuk 2018), so a new installment of his adventures remains an option. The character of Kruk exists on an edge between two worlds: one real and logical, the other mystical, filled with ghosts, guilt, and uncertainties. Kruk is both a brilliant, clearheaded police detective and a depressed, schizophrenic pill-popper. The love he feels for his wife saves him from breakdown and failure; her support and understanding help him overcome the evil which he had suffered and could not defeat by himself. Any crime narrative can become extraordinary when the viewers are guided by a mysterious and whimsical character in this vein. The Illegals (Nielegalni), aired on Canal+ in the fourth quarter of 2018, ­ is different in scope. This spy tale pulled out all the stops on a scale unprecedented in the history of Polish TV series (premium indeed!). The plot takes place in several countries, dialogues use several languages, and the network of influences  – both professional and private  – encompasses numerous characters. The production values seem very high, as is the case with Kruk, the show described above. Kruk was directed by eminent Polish creator Maciej Pieprzyca; the owners of Opus TV – Piotr Dzięcioł and Łukasz Dzięcioł – ­ were its executive producers. The Illegals was produced by the aforementioned Telemark (Bez ­ tajemnic, Pakt), while direction was handled by two Polish cinematic artists, Leszek Dawid (episodes 1–5) and Jan P. Matuszyński (episodes 6–10). Both had authored highly popular and well-received biopics in the recent years: Dawid recreated the story of Polish hip hop crew Paktofonika ( You Are God/Jesteś ­ Bogiem, 2012), and Matuszyński the life of the painter Zbigniew Beksiński and his unusual family ( The Last Family /Ostatnia rodzina, 2016). All three directors had won awards at the prestigious Polish Film Festival in Gdynia; their involvement certainly added quite a lot of grandeur to the narration and production of TV projects. Both shows are fast-paced, although the former

Quality by design: TV series in Poland  269 meanders down the subjective paths of the thoughts, memories, and deductions of the titular protagonist, while the events of the latter barrel tirelessly ahead. Both were well received by critics and audiences alike, raking in nominations for national awards, therefore sequels may be on the cards. Besides, Telemark had admitted that a second season of The Illegals was being written even before the first one launched (Tracewicz 2018). HBO and the criminal underworld As Mission: Afghanistan had been the first Polish original series on Canal+, The Wolfpack (Wataha) was the first on HBO. This Telemark production from 2014 proved uniquely divisive: some critics called it derivative and poorly produced (Korus 2014), while others praised its great photography, surprising plot twists, and good acting (Cyra 2017). The best summary of this contentious issue was penned by film critic Darek Arest for the trendsetting Dwutygodnik magazine: “the series was made SOMEHOW. The form of the show is not a byproduct nor an intersection of limitations. In accordance with the best standards, The Wolfpack is conceptually a feature film split into episodes, consistent in its visual aspect and distinct in construction, featuring morally gray protagonists. In a nod toward going beyond this minimum, the creators are playing with the viewers’ expectations, making sure that the photography reflects the mental state of the characters, trying to build tension within the scenes, and even daring to employ a bit of a metaphor. The results vary, but the very effort of including the formal ‘how?’ alongside the narrative ‘what?’ serves to outdistance the vast majority of domestic competition. The ‘somehow’ (jakoś) doesn’t im­ mediately translate into ‘quality’ (jakość), but it suffices to arouse the view­ ers’ curiosity and lure them into this world of the Bieszczady mountains” (Arest 2014). The show boasts extremely high viewership: the first episode, broadcast without encryption, had reached over 500,000 viewers, and the full six-episode series attracted an average of 355,000. This is a very satisfactory result. The average viewership of The Wolfpack was twice that of any other film or series broadcast on HBO Polska to date (Kurdupski 2014). Nevertheless, three years had passed before the decision was made to continue the story of Border Patrol officers, the thriving smuggler underworld, and the attempts to solve a criminal mystery. The second season was eventually filmed; it premiered in October and November 2017. The third season has been broadcast in December 2019 and January 2020. The distinction of “the hit of HBO Polska” belongs, however, to another show. Based on the bestselling novel by Jakub Żulczyk, one of the co-writers of The Teach as well as this adaptation, Blinded by the Lights (­Ślepnąc od świateł) hit the absolute paydirt. The first episode premiered on 27 October 2018, and the complete series was immediately available on HBO GO, becoming that November’s most popular content on this platform in Poland, pulling ahead of such giants as Game of Thrones and Westworld. The source

270  Artur Majer material had made a significant cultural splash as well, netting Żulczyk a nomination to the prestigious Paszporty Polityki award. HBO optioned the novel and hired House Media Company, founded by veteran production manager Andrzej Besztak (his credentials include working with Peter Greenaway and Agnieszka Holland), to serve as the executive producer. Krzysztof Skonieczny, a maverick young filmmaker, directed and co-wrote the show in addition to starring in a supporting role. Skonieczny and Żulczyk have formed a rebel duo in the world of serialized narratives. This eight-episode series covers a week in the life of the protagonist who needs to sort out a few things before leaving for his dream holiday in Argentine. Unexpected events coupled with his hasty decisions turn out to cause him more grief than an average citizen could bear  – but Kuba is no average citizen: he is an independent dealer supplying Warsaw residents with cocaine. “The stuff” unites everybody: small-time crooks, mafia bosses, devoted parents, students, celebrities… Following in Kuba’s footsteps, the viewer becomes a silent witness of the nighttime underground – the life-giving blood in the veins of the capital city. Blinded by the Lights is a slightly dreamlike gangster story. An antihero and his perverse moral system; loyalty and faithfulness as forgotten but desirable characteristics; the impossibility of atoning for past misdeeds; the vortex of crime: these are the main subjects of this project. The photography of Michał Englert serves to further deepen the gloomy picture of fatalistic destiny and the inevitability of punishment for wrong and irresponsible choices. The events take place mainly in the grayish half-light of dawn or dusk, or in the gloom of night when gangsters settle their differences. This is another premium TV production boasting high production values and visual grandeur; one could even say that while the content is unpleasant to behold (the subject matter is painful and the characters suffer over the course of the show), the form is a delight. Indeed, the 2019 Polish Film Academy Eagles Award for Best Original Feature TV Show went to Blinded by the Lights; more importantly, for the first time in the history of the prize all three nominees in this category were premium network series. The other two contenders were produced for streaming platforms – Netflix and Showmax. All three had similarly high production values, attention to detail, as well as a portrayal of an unsettling, hopeless world unreal in its depravity. The HBO production scored the highest on all these counts, including the bitterness of outlook: the finale showed the protagonist ultimately trapped with no way out. Streaming platforms: history, politics, and fiction The Showmax streaming platform was available in Poland from February 2017 to the end of January 2019. In addition to serving as a regular online movie and series rental service, it also contributed to the creation of two serialized productions, one of which was a comedy show. Written by the founder and leader of comedy group Kabaret Moralnego Niepokoju (The

Quality by design: TV series in Poland  271 ­ Cabaret of Moral Disquiet), Robert Górski, The Chairman’s Ear (Ucho prezesa) had been produced by TPQLS, a company launched for this purpose. This series had netted Showmax a 14.2% rise in income in 2018 compared to the previous year (Informacja ­ prasowa 2019). However, while The Chairman’s Ear was broadcast on Showmax, it cannot be deemed a “quality” production due to the characteristics of the platform and its rapid withdrawal from the Polish market. The episodes would first premiere for subscribers, then become available on YouTube for free one week later. Rojst, instead, is a full-fledged member of the premium TV genre. The story takes place in the 1980s – the final decade of Communist Poland – and follows two investigative journalists trying to discover the motive for the double murder of a high Communist official and a prostitute, along with the suicides of two teens. Writers Jan Holoubek (Polish cinematographer, showrunner here) and Kasper Bajon sketch a historical depiction of provincial Poland with all its crudeness and small-town mentality in just five episodes. While the criminal intrigue is important and the main mystery is eventually resolved, the biggest part of the appeal is the atmosphere of the bygone times, portrayed not through the lens of nostalgic longing, but as an era of lost causes and no hope for the future. Hope may possibly lie in store for one character: the sassy prostitute rescued from her fate by the kind, ­battle-scarred ​­ journalist. The series was filmed by Kadr, one of the oldest film studios in Poland, which at that time was helmed by the father of one of the writers – Filip Bajon, himself an experienced and renowned Polish film director, appointed to this post by the Minister of Culture. The fate has a sense of irony: less than a year after Showmax had pulled out of Poland, most likely taking any chances of a continuation with it, the Ministry of Culture shuttered the venerable Kadr. Rojst was one of its final productions. 1983, the first Polish Netflix original series, definitely has a better chance of being renewed for the second season. Despite the title, the setting is not contemporaneous with ­Rojst  – this show belongs to the political fiction genre, a subset of fantasy, and introduces an alternative timeline. This is the premise: a series of deadly terrorist attacks hits the major cities of Poland in 1983, during the martial law period. This allows the Communist Party to tighten its grip on the country and provide much-needed security. After two decades of strict Communist rule Poland develops into something akin to Communist China or North Korea. The story takes place in 2003, following a maverick policeman and a fresh law school grad as they attempt to investigate the mysterious death of an “overly reflective” academic. While the show is based on an original idea and scripted by Joshua Long, the title and political setting evoke the George Orwell novel 1984. Long seems a successor of this type of literature and its portrayal of the world. Production had been handled for Netflix by House Media Company, helmed by Andrzej Besztak, the production director of the show. Four eminent female directors were handed the reins: Agnieszka Holland, Kasia Adamik, Olga

272  Artur Majer Chajdas, and Agnieszka Smoczyńska, making this the first Polish series directed entirely by women. The show focuses on the growing political consciousness of the characters instead of their emotional relationships. Though the protagonists have to stand up to power both in 1983 and 2003, the regime undergoes character development as well – where the 1983 rulers were overtly cruel, the 2003 ones are an iron hand in a velvet glove. The multiple side plots allow the viewer to explore the new tools of power and its repressions, as well as the no less cruel methods employed by the resistance movement. The artistic success of the show is unusual given the relative absence of fantasy from the history of Polish cinema. Not many series used this kind ­ of premise after 1989 with the exception of The Crew (Ekipa) from 2007, broadcast by the commercial free-to-air Polsat television and reasonably well-received. That production is notable for two other reasons: firstly, Agnieszka Holland and Kasia Adamik had been the showrunners as well, which coupled with their involvement in 1983 makes them the preeminent political fiction directors in Polish audiovisual media. The second reason is sales-related – while the episodes had been originally broadcast on a weekly basis, the complete season was released on DVD almost immediately after the launch, similar to the Netflix model of content availability in the present times. In a sense, Holland and Adamik along with the Polsat network had been precursors of immediate content availability without the need of waiting for a scheduled broadcast.

Conclusion Premium network series differ from other Polish TV shows mainly in their “production value” – their grandeur is obvious and undeniable. The stories they tell are not intimate and modest – the interpersonal layer serves as a background to the spectacular events taking centre stage. This may be the reason for the similarities of their genres – almost every show is built around a thriller or crime narrative. The criminal mystery attracts and involves the viewer in the setting; additionally – or maybe: most importantly – this approach allows the use of various narrative tools, the precise arrangement of plot points, the introduction of increasingly more exciting aspects of the world… in short: the creation of a complex, spectacular space. This is not hindered by “the love of the local” – most of the series take place outside the big cities: The Wolfpack is set in the mountains near the southeastern border, ­Kruk – ​­in Białystok in Eastern Poland, and The Teach and Rojst ­depict ­small-town ​­ life. Even Blinded by the Lights, centred around the criminal underworld of the capital of Poland, portrays the city’s hidden, secret life. The provincial setting turns “the problems of ordinary people” into a universal metaphor. The interior is no paradise – local political struggles impact everyone in the area. The mysterious arrangements among the residents of Dobrowice in The Teach reflect, in essence, a network of political

Quality by design: TV series in Poland  273 influences; the mafia dealings in Blinded by the Lights hit the same notes as the business dealings of Białystok bigwigs in Kruk and interactions within the Communist Party in 1983. Talking about politics seems to be leading the authors of these shows to a very bold conclusion. The political dealings depicted in their works are not based on a need to improve the life of the society – they are primarily a power struggle, an unfair game egocentric at its core, which tends to oppressively limit the freedoms of any private life it touches. However, there is no escape from politics, not even down by the eastern border (in The ­Wolfpack)  – one can only attempt to regulate it through opposing its clutches. The protagonists of The Teach, Kruk, Rojst, and Blinded by the Lights do it on a small scale, unlike the grander attempts depicted in Mission: Afghanistan and The Illegals. This last title is unique in its direct depiction of national policy – the other shows resort to metaphorical portrayals of the tactics and strategies of governance. Domestic literary works are being adapted into premium feature series in Poland at an increasing rate. The Illegals was based on two books by former intelligence agent Włodzimierz Sokołowski, published under the pen name Vincent V. Severski in 2011 and 2012. Blinded by the Lights is an adaptation of the 2014 bestselling novel of the same title written by Jakub Żulczyk. Another crime mystery series, A Nest of Vipers (­Żmijowisko), directed by Łukasz Palkowski (The ­ Teach) and premiered in November 2019 on Canal+, is an adaptation of the 2018 Wojciech Chmielarz novel. The King (Król), ­ a historical/political show based on the award-winning prose of Szczepan Twardoch, is in the works. By basing feature TV series on Polish books and setting their events in small-town Poland, the Polish premium networks seem to strive to highlight locality and make it a value in and of itself. However, this is not a new trend – the works of domestic writers were being adapted on TV even in the 1970s. Bringing well-received narratives from other media to TV is safe and sensible; this marriage of contemporary literature and premium series seems like a fortunate comeback to the tried-and-true methods of enticing viewers.

References Arest, Darek. 2014. “Wataha dorzyna się sama”. Dwutygodnik.com, December. Cyra, Mateusz. 2017. “Wreszcie coś dobrego – ­ Michał ​­ ­Gazda – ​­Wataha, sezon 1 [RECENZJA]”. Głos kultury, 14 October. Informacja prasowa. 2019. “Ile zyskał producent wykonawczy serialu Ucho ­prezesa?”. 25 July. Korolczuk, Jakub. 2018. “Czy Kruk. Szepty słychać po zmroku jeszcze wróci? Rozmowa z Jakubem Korolczykiem, scenarzystą serialu”. Interview by Kamil Czaja. Serialowa, 28 May. Korus, Jakub. 2014. “Idzie wylinieć z nudów [RECENCJA WATAHY]”. Newsweek Polska, 13 October.

274  Artur Majer Kurdupski, Michał. 2014. “Wataha ­ hitem HBO. Serial oglądało 335 tys. widzów”. Wirtualnemedia, 18 November. Mróz, Kalina. 2016. “Palkowski o serialu Belfer. Przypomina bardzo długi film fabularny”. Gazeta Wyborcza, 7 October. Pallus, Patryk. 2016. “Belfer pobił rekord Canal+. Ale zakończenie historii rozczarowało część widzów”. Businnes Insider Polska, 28 November. PP. 2012. “Misja ­ Afganistan z Pawłem Małaszyńskim hitem Canal+”. Wirtualnemedia, 23 October. Tracewicz, Joanna, 2018. “Serial Nielegalni od Canal+ jeszcze nie miał swojej telewizyjnej premiery, a już wiemy, że będzie 2 sezon”. Rozrywka.blog, 3 October. VOD News. 2017. “HBO otwiera się dla wszystkich także w Polsce”. VOD News, 4 December, 2017.

18 Familiar, much too familiar… HBO’s Hungarian original productions and the questions of cultural proximity Balázs Varga Introduction “Why do we have to import stupid things from abroad when the supply is good enough at home?” That was the conclusion of a review published by a leading Hungarian internet portal, discussing the local version of Married… with Children in 2006 (Szabózé 2006). The critic’s sarcastic remark clearly illustrates typical beliefs regarding TV, scripted formats, and adaptation, and describes the cultural climate around Hungarian screen production at that time. Sitcom as the leading genre of mainstream television fiction is nothing more than lazy entertainment. Domestic adaptations and local versions of fashionable products from the international market are doomed to failure, due to the lack of local talents and the problems and limits of adaptability. We are surrounded by stupidity – why to add any more? It would be easy to attribute the tone of the review to the cynicism of the trend-setting portal and its journalists, or the overall sense of belatedness and underdevelopment of Hungarian popular culture. I would rather use this quote as a simple marker of ambiguity regarding the uncontrollable flow of hybrid media content and the sign of uncertainty about the evaluation of local content and cultural proximity. The distinction between and the segmentation of “local”, “domestic” and “global”, “non-local” or “basic” is almost impossible, and no format bibles or license agreements can solve (at best, they can only reduce) this problem. It is not surprising that the term complexity appears so often in discussions of the global flow of television formats. As Tasha Oren and Sharon Shahaf argued: “ No televisual shift has so shaken traditional scholarly models as the explosion in the first decade of the second millennium of global television format circulation” (Oren and Shahaf 2012, 2). While format trade itself has a long history, even the new era of format frenzy that began in the 1990s has lived different stages and can be discussed along with varied types and genres of formats (Moran 2006, 2013; Esser 2013; Ellis, Esser, and Gutiérrez Lozano 2016). Jean K. Chalaby, examining the “late rise” of scripted formats in the overall history of format trade, highlighted “that their adaptation is more complex than for other genres. The

276  Balázs Varga knowledge transfer cannot be as perfunctory as with formulaic formats, and with the reception of scripted entertainment being always uncertain, the risk remains substantial” (Chalaby 2016, 4). This complexity and unpredictability is an obvious challenge for the scholarly analysis of scripted formats, especially in the case of transnational adaptations or television series remakes (Fickers and Johnson 2010; Bondebjerg 2016; Perkins and ​­ Verevis 2016; ­Wells-Lassagne 2017). The situation is even more complex when it comes to a region undergoing fast and hectic transformations, as Eastern Europe. The robust legacy of socialist television is not a closed part of the past, nor is the period of the post-socialist transformation which is often interpreted as an emblematic example of rapid Westernization. Furthermore, the “illiberal revolutions” of the 2010s can be interpreted as a kind of reversal or de-Westernization (Štetka 2012). These challenges highlight the need for a nuanced and multidirectional understanding of the dynamics of changes, as these histories and transformations are barely linear (Barra, Classen and de Leeuw 2017). However, it is reasonable, to begin with the master narrative of the transformation (Szostak 2016). Szostak, discussing the changes and transformations in the field of Polish scripted dramas, argues that the direction of change leads from imported content to original domestic production. She writes that the development and maturity of the TV market resulted in the growing market share and the importance of domestic content: “American shows started losing prominence in the Polish prime-time schedules in the ­mid-2000s, ​­ giving way to domestic TV fiction in the most prominent positions on Polish TV screens” (Szostak 2016, 167). This is a trend that, in her opinion, is taking place in Eastern Europe similarly to what happened in Western Europe in the 1990s. Szostak emphasizes that with the help of domestic content broadcasters can reach an audience that is otherwise (with imported dramas) would be difficult to reach. Thus, these market dynamics could improve the creativity of local filmmakers: “Producing fiction genres similar to those previously imported from America, provides the viewers with a familiar viewing experience to the one they became accustomed to in the 1990s when fiction was dominated by imported US product. But, more importantly, this programming strategy is an attempt to compete with cable channels, and their American fiction offer, for Polish ­audiences – ​­particularly the ­advertiser-coveted ​­ ­16–49 ​­ demographic. Poland is not unique in this respect, as Western European broadcasters and producers similarly rely on American genres and have for quite a while now” (Sosztak 2012, 176). Improvement, gradual change, import, evolution, knowledge transfer, cultural proximity, and the preference of domestic content: these are all recurring topics of the discussion of format transfer and the market dynamics of emerging territories1. The master narrative of the transformation draws a clear line from the shortage of domestic fiction to the evolution of the market, even glancing at the chance that Eastern Europe will be the new

Too familiar: HBO’s Hungarian production  277 terrain of innovative ideas where new talents will come up with unique and inventive formats and concepts. The endpoint of this narrative (which is unquestionably the wishful narrative of local showrunners) is that Eastern Europe will be the next goldmine of global formats (like Israel and Scandinavia was in the 2000s), and global markets will be flooded by original series and concepts which were developed here (Nadler 2008). This chapter will discuss the process whereby, in addition to operating as a subscription movie channel in Hungary and Eastern Europe, HBO started to produce its original local content in the region. While the description will be linear and may look straightforward, I aim to highlight the complexity of the process. With the examination of HBO’s activities in Hungary, I will focus on coincidences, trials and errors, successes and failures, to demonstrate the complexity of the problems of cultural proximity. I assume that the localization of the production (development and production of original content) and cultural proximity do not always go hand in hand. The belief that original domestic series will be the “culturally most proximate” is not always true. Familiarity, identification, and recognition is an intricate question, with a lot of entangled aspects from the production, cultural and political embeddedness, generic and textual specificities (localization and adaptation of the stories, conflicts, and characters), and reception (audience demand for domestic content). HBO’s Eastern European activities should not be understood within a one-directional and asymmetrical core-periphery model (adapting Western concepts and workflow to Eastern Europe), but as a dynamic, interconnected and multi-directorial process within which both a leading multinational/global media company adapts itself to the local and global environment while introducing a new content development and production system in the transformative media system and creative industry of Eastern Europe after the political changes.

HBO in Eastern Europe HBO has been present in Eastern Europe since the end of the Soviet bloc, but the motivations of the company’s global expansion in the late 1980s were mainly market-driven factors, not pure political issues. As the US domestic market has reached the limits of its growth in the mid-1980s, HBO began to look for opportunities for international expansion (Mesce 2015). Thanks to the changing policies of trade openness and global commercial and financial liberalization of that time on the one hand, and to the political changes and democratization in Latin-America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe on the other, new areas opened for international expansion. Western Europe could have been a natural target and expansion destination for HBO, but other service providers, especially Canal+, already had strong positions in this area. However, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Eastern Europe, with its newly opened market and ongoing democratization, was a great opportunity. Yet, fragmented national markets and high

278  Balázs Varga satellite broadcasting prices, which would have been a problem in Western Europe, were also a challenge in Eastern Europe. That is why instead of satellite transmission HBO opted for the not so up-to-date terrestrial microwave transmission (therefore, the company used the same technology and echoed the way it started in the States in the early 1970s). HBO’s first base in Europe was Hungary, where experiments with community-based cable television began in the mid-1980s (Szekfű 1989), and a joint venture company between UIH, Time Warner and US West was formed in 1991 (Kovács 2016). It is needless to mention that HBO’s international expansion of the early 1990s is part of the transformation and globalization of media industries: since the Time Warner merger in 1989, the newly merged company entered many international ventures both in television and film production, distribution and exhibition (Havens 2006). The launch of HBO in Hungary on 28 September 1991, was just a few days before the launch of HBO Olé (already prepared with the success of Spanish-dubbed films within the US Spanish-speaking audience from the previous years; Sinclair 1999), the company’s Spanish language version, provided to LatinAmerica and Caribbean territories. Also, part of the company’s international extension was the launch of its Southeast Asian division in 1992 (as MovieVision which was rebranded to HBO Asia in 1995; McIntosh 2008). The launch of the first HBO channel in Europe, in Hungary in 1991, was followed by the second in the Czech Republic, founding HBO Europe’s predecessor under the name HBO Central Europe. In 1995 Walt Disney entered in joint-venture, and in 1996 HBO was launched in Poland (1996), Slovakia (1997), Romania (1998), Moldova (1999), Bulgaria (2002), Croatia, Slovenia (2004), Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro (2006) and Macedonia (2009). Scholarly discussions of HBO’s dynamic activities and changes (from being a subscription-based channel to its emerging original productions) and the company’s brand development (repositioning itself as a unique provider of quality content, representing the “aristocracy of contemporary TV culture”; McCabe and Akass 2008) usually focused their attention on the US (and partly on the Asian) market (Edgerton and Jones 2008; Leverette, Ott and Buckley 2008; Newman and Levine 2011; DeFino 2013). However, it is clear from these analyses and the debates about “quality TV” that the definition of the term is not evident – even if we didn’t mention the questions of globalization, cultural exchange and different local contexts (McCabe and Akass 2007). Indeed, as Milly Buonanno argued, debates over “quality TV” should not focus only on US networks and series, as there are different alternative discourses of quality and television (and consequently “quality TV”) outside the US (Buonanno 2013). Eastern Europe, with its postsocialist legacy and cultural-political dynamics, provides a special field of examination (Havens, Imre and Lustyik 2012; Bardan 2012). As we have seen, HBO has been present in the region for decades, however, not as a producer of original content, but as a subscription channel. Although the

Too familiar: HBO’s Hungarian production  279 company’s emblematic slogan (“It’s Not TV. It’s HBO”) was used in Eastern Europe, HBO’s activities in the region were taken rather as premium and not “quality” service. The local reception of HBO’s original series (such as Sex and the City and Sopranos) was not necessarily and strongly connected to the company’s brand, as these series were discussed rather within a more general label of US screen production. Thus, the original production was crucial in the process of the development and transformation of brand identity in the region. Although television (as opposed to politically committed art cinema) did not enjoy high prestige in the cultural elite during socialism, television and authorship were not mutually exclusive concepts (Imre 2016). Many acknowledged Eastern European directors were active in TV (yet these productions are often excluded from the discussion of their oeuvre), and this can even provide an opportunity for bringing together “quality TV” discourse and author theory, as in the case of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalogue (Talarczyk 2018). After the political changes, in the hectic years of marketization and the transformation of the whole cultural ecosystem, television was everything but the basis of quality and culture. In the late 1990s, when the Western discourse on “quality TV” was on the rise, Eastern European intellectuals were crushed by the appearance of commercial TV and tabloid press. In addition to this moral panic, public service did not experience its best years. Constant financial problems, mismanagement, and debates over political issues made it hard, if not even impossible, to focus on the redefinition of public service values, and to produce and promote original content – for example, serial fiction. In the 2010s, and especially in the new illiberal democracies of Eastern Europe, overall scepticism and mistrust in public values and institutions, the loss of credibility of the public service media and of the cultural elite has resulted such a vacuum, that for some critics and for some parts of the audience, HBO’s local productions can be received and welcomed as examples of public service content and representatives of cultural nationalism (Imre 2018). In the span of ten short years, HBO’s transnational activities have undergone a major transformation, almost as profound as the transformation of Eastern European mediascape and society.

Natural Born Losers As we have seen, for more than a decade HBO has been known as a premium subscription channel in Eastern Europe. It was the 2000s, in the years of the continued expansion of US quality TV and the international breakthrough of European and transnational series (Bondebjerg 2016; Bondebjerg et al. 2017) that the scene has begun to transform, and HBO Central Europe turned toward local production. The testing ground was Hungary. In 2007, not even a year after the release of Married… with Children in Budapest, importing “Western stupidity” to the Hungarian television

280  Balázs Varga market, HBO launched its first Hungarian production, a morbid anthology series, Natural Born Losers. The ten-minute long episodes revolved around weird and absurd cases that could have been rewarded with the ­so-called ​­ Darwin Award 2 . Each independent episode focused on a sensational and foolish action, based on bad decisions and stupid judgments, showing the limitlessness of human nonsensicality. The twelve-minute-long parts (two of these episodes were screened at the same time, during prime time on Sunday evenings) presented freaky stories of Hungarian peasants brewing brandy at home, portrayed a doom of a boy who wanted to scare his friends dressed as a mummy, showed the story of a man who built the perfect trap system around his house and introduced an angry old man whose enthusiastic dog brought back the discarded grenade. The episodes were quite different in style, their connecting point was the use of black humour and the same extra-diegetic storyteller. Each episode began with a sequence that showed how “universal” these local stories are: the radar picked up a point on the globe, zoomed in and presented the exact location and time of the event. Although the stories covered very different territories and cultures, the whole concept could be understood as a satirical action enlarging and exaggerating a distinct local topic: mocking human stupidity (laughing at those who are even more stupid than “us”), ridiculing death and selfishness. Even though the series had no noticeable critical and audience reception and can be considered a smooth failure, it was an important entry point to the local film industry for many energetic and young filmmakers. All the leading screenwriters of the episodes have gained important positions in the next decade: Gábor Krigler became a key figure of HBO’s local production, Bálint Hegedűs and Balázs Lovas became heads of Script Development at the Hungarian National Film Fund. Natural Born Losers, in terms of production and development, was much closer to the standards and production culture of that time Hungarian film industry than to HBO’s production model. The filmmakers were given quite a degree of freedom and HBO’s creative control was not particularly strong. Furthermore, since it was an anthology series (thematically linked, a series of standalone episodes), script development and narrative structure did not present as much of a challenge as in the case of contemporary complex (television/series) narratives. Natural Born Losers can thus be interpreted as a trial-and-error example, the first step in a learning and development process.

Documentaries: from the porn industry to social engagement The making of the anthology series Natural Born Losers was a single and distinct experiment and was limited only to Hungary. Elsewhere in the region, HBO began its original production with documentaries. Although the predominant interpretation of HBO’s local documentaries is that the company (especially in Hungary in the 2010s within a government- controlled public

Too familiar: HBO’s Hungarian production  281 media environment) became a unique supporter of independent documentaries and helped to escape documentaries from the influence of state control and ideology (Imre 2018), this might be appropriate for the mid-2010s3. HBO’s early Hungarian documentaries tried to apply the model of the company’s controversial and provocative documentaries from the late 1980’s which (like ­ Eros America and Real Sex), dealing with sex and taboos, tested the “limits of explicitness” and gave HBO the aura of free and liberal expression (Mascaro 2008). The very first Hungarian documentaries, The Pierre Woodman story (A András M. Kovács and ­ Pierre Woodman-sztori, ­ ​­ Péter Szajki, 2009) on the casting sessions of a successful porn producer, and Miss Plastic. The Beauty of the Scalps ( Miss Plastic. A szikék szépe, Dávid Spáh, 2009) about the very first beauty conquest, organized for those who has plastic surgery, fit well into the sensationalist approach but were not more daring (only a bit more eccentric) than that time mainstream local commercial TV. Indeed, these provocative and piquant topics were in a distance from the tradition of local documentary traditions and were not well received by the audience. In the following years HBO made serious changes in the profile of their documentaries, and, instead of provocative and eccentric topics, focused on emotionally captivating stories with stronger social relevance4. Still, these documentaries, portraying dramatic individual stories with high emotional frequency and being quite dynamic in style, were also different than mainstream, classic Hungarian documentaries and their talking head-style and direct social commentary (Stőhr 2016; Imre 2018). The case of HBO’s original documentaries from Hungary demonstrates how the intervention of a multinational/transnational company on the regional market, besides providing important (and independent) financial sources and novel production and development know-how, might have unintentionally interfered with local traditions and standards. Furthermore, the limits of political criticism were shown by the production history of ​­ ­ Eszter Hajdú’s ­award-winning documentary, Judgement in Hungary (Ítélet Magyarországon, 2013). The film followed the trials of those Hungarian right-wing extremists who in 2008 and 2009 committed a series of attacks on random members of the Roma community, killing six people. Although there were negotiations about HBO getting into the film as a co-producer, in the end, the company withdrew from the project, due to its political directness (Hajdú 2016). Thus, HBO’s local activities in documentaries might be an example of balancing between public values, social consciousness, and careful political engagement. This is the tightrope dance which will be repeated with the company’s domestic fiction series production  – although with a different output.

Format adaptations Shortly after the launch of the first documentary projects, HBO began developing local fiction content in the region. As a first step, after 2009,

282  Balázs Varga local production units have been set up in four regional countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Romania). As opposed to the production and development method of Natural Born Losers, the new model was not given local filmmakers and new talents a free hand but based on the adaptation of tried and tested know-how – both in terms of production culture and content (Szczepanik 2016). We have already discussed the master narrative of the transformation of TV markets in the region from import to format adaptation and production of original content. HBO’s activities by and large followed this schema, however, it happened at a much faster pace: it took less than ten years from the initial phase (when HBO provided premium Hollywood movies to the subscribers) via the format adaptations to the original productions. In this manner, the whole process might be interpreted from the point of view of autonomy, originality, and differentiation. However, this condensed transformation took place differently in each country’s market. In order to see the inner dynamics and differences of the production workflow, it worth to have a closer look at the chronology of HBO’s original productions at each Central European country (Table 18.1). In each market, local production started in the early 2010s and has been continuous since then, with one premiere each year. In three domestic markets (Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania), HBO began its original production with the adaptation of the Israeli series, Be’Tipul. The first bigbudgeted production which was not based on the imported format was the Czech Burning Bush. It was followed by the Polish Wataha and the Czech Wasteland in the following years. The Norwegian political thriller Mammon was the last show that has been licensed and adapted to different national markets in the region (Czech and Polish versions were made). From the mid-2010s, HBO only produced original local content (Blinded ­ by the Lights, The Sleepers) or adapted a series, but only to one, given market (Golden ­ Life for the Hungarian, Shadows and The Silent Valley for the Romanian). Furthermore, the making of a German-Romanian cyber­crime series, Hackerville (2018), is the first example for an HBO Europe co-production (with the German TNT Serie). Petr Szczepanik characterized HBO’s workflow as a t wo-tiered production strategy. The first layer is the production of “low-budget licenced series to test local responses to a property” (Shall We Kiss, Be’Tipul), the second is the big-budget event miniseries (Burning Bush) which represent the company’s quality profile in ­ the region (Szczepanik 2016, 98). HBO’s Eastern European series have tried to establish US and international standards for quality TV in the region. Following the licensed series and adaptations, they focused on the improvement of local production, with special emphasis on script development. They work with local writers, but typically there is a lot of discussion with (and continuous reporting to) the company’s executives in London. Meeting, negotiating and collaborating between different work cultures and languages is the basis and challenge of these productions  – as well as international co-productions and

Too familiar: HBO’s Hungarian production  283 ­Table 18.1  L  ist of HBO’s format adaptations and original productions from the region. Title of the source series in brackets, original productions underlined Czech Republic Poland 2011 Terapie (­Be’Tipul)

Bez tajemnic (­Be’Tipul)

2012 Bez tajemnic 2 2013 Hořící Keř/­ Bez tajemnic 3 Burning Bush Terapie 2 2014 Až po uši/­Shall Wataha We Kiss

Romania

Hungary

În derivă (­Be’Tipul)

Társas játék/ Shall We Kiss (­M atay Nitnashek) Terápia (­Be’Tipul) Társas játék 2

În derivă 2 Rămâi cu mine/­Shall We Kiss

Umbre/­Shadows Terápia 2 (­S mall Time Gangster) Aranyélet/­Golden Life (­Helppo elämä) Valea Mută/­The Aranyélet 2 Silent Valley (­Øyevitne) Umbre 2 Terápia 3 Hackerville Aranyélet 3

2015 Mamon (­M ammon)

Pakt/­The Pact (­M ammon)

2016 Wasteland

Pakt 2

2017 Až po uši 2018

Wataha 2 Ślepnąc od świateł/ Blinded by the Lights Wataha 3 Umbre 3

2019 Terapie 3 Bez vědomi/­ The Sleepers

service jobs. It is no coincidence that HBO, which does not have its own production department, committed Pioneer Production to produce the first local remake (­Shall We Kiss), as Pioneer Production is a company with extensive experience in working with Hollywood films and series service jobs in Hungary. Another decisive and novel factor of HBO’s local development activity was the introduction of the writers’ room practice, which was almost completely unknown in Eastern Europe (­Szczepanik 2016, 2017, 2018). It is again something which is strongly connected to the questions of quality TV, authorial filmmaking traditions, and cultural prestige, and might demonstrate how the interaction between these components is changing. Collective authorship and shared control had almost no tradition in the Eastern European film culture and not even in television production. These production practices have been appeared only with the launch of the commercial televisions in the late 1990s but were hardly comparable to the Western or American systems, which were also different (­for example in the position and role of the showrunner). HBO’s Eastern European productions basically followed the model in which there is a creative manager of

284  Balázs Varga the production, different from the director. However, the role and personage of the director is far from irrelevant. Indeed, it is also a special feature of HBO’s regional practice that they usually pair renowned directors and talented filmmakers to be the directors of a series. Combining art house (and film festival circuit) reputation, cultural prestige and the dynamic attitude and worldview of a young filmmaker who is open to popular film culture: this is also an important component of the (re)definition of quality in Eastern Europe (Imre 2018)­5. After the discussion of HBO’s production activities in Central Europe and before the textual analysis of the series, a short introduction is needed to provide the contexts of Hungarian television series.

HBO’s Hungarian productions and domestic screen fiction content While HBO’s local productions play an important role in the field and history of Hungarian screen fiction content, their importance and distinctive position cannot be traced back to a single cause. Cross- cultural program exchange and a heavy network of influences and interactions accompany the history of state-run, socialist TV from the 1960s (Imre 2016; Mihelj and Huxtable 2018). Besides these close-knit systems of cultural borrowings and their overarching (post) Cold War history, and certainly besides the systemic transformation of the Eastern European state-run television industries into the liberalized, transnational digital global markets, fundamental changes in the production cultures and workflow have also profoundly affected the landscape, style, and milieu of Hungarian screen fiction content. Following the political changes, the opening of the markets and the flow of global screen content, Hungarian television producers and programmers in the 1990s resisted experimenting with previously proven formulas and genres. The launch of the commercial TV channels in 1997 radically changed the market and industrial landscape, blasting two daily ­ soaps to the top of rating lists. Among Friends (Barátok közt, 1998–) by RTL Klub, a Hungarian version of FremantleMedia/Grundy Television’s ­ traveling format, Neighbours, and For Better or For Worse (Jóban rosszban, 2005–) by TV2 brought the daily serial drama format to Hungary, contributing to the broadening of the know-how and scripted drama contents in the Hungarian screen industry. In the following years, the Hungarian commercial television market was characterized by the sitcom versions, however, most of these experiments failed (as it was the case with the afore­mentioned Married… with Children in Budapest by TV2 in 2006–2007). In the early 2010s, when HBO has begun to make adaptations of successful international series in Hungary, the domestic market had ambivalent experiments with scripted format adaptations. While in the field of television dramas and scripted formats local sitcom versions defined the new era, the 2000s was momentum for domestic popular cinema as well.

Too familiar: HBO’s Hungarian production  285 The changing landscape of Hungarian popular cinema was dominated by cultural borrowings, mostly local versions of romantic comedies and caper comedies (Varga 2017). Following the new film law in 2004 and thanks to the growing number of international service jobs (a tendency which will be booming in the mid-2010s), the Hungarian film industry experienced a major shift in the second half of the 2000s (Varga 2016). Thus, HBO’s original productions did not arrive into an inhabited land, as they could build on a new generation of scriptwriters and filmmakers. If we want to describe the transformation of the Hungarian screen industry within the frame of a ​­ gradual process, the making of Shall We Kiss, the ­Israeli-format dramedy, is an important link between domestic sitcoms, romantic comedies and a new wave of domestic series6. Though from the perspective and standards of quality television, it could have seemed strange and improper that HBO chose a romantic comedy as its first local adaptation, but considering the trends and dynamics of the local screen landscape, it was a cautious yet precise decision.

Shall We Kiss: Rendezvous with the ordinary? The protagonists of Shall We Kiss are young urban professionals and middle-aged characters who have problems in their workplace and family, and storylines revolve around relationship problems. The most common and general topic imaginable, indeed, but the series’ wanted to portray commonplace relationship difficulties within the familiar, cosmopolitan backdrop of Budapest – different from how these topics were depicted in the sterile upper-middle- class milieu of that time local romantic comedies. Although parts of the original story and characters needed fi ne-tuning (the protagonist in the Israeli version owns a flower shop, in the Hungarian version he is five-ten years younger and has a more “trendy” profession: having quit with advertising industry, he runs a bike shop), these were not significant changes. Localization strategies concentrated on taking advantage of higher production value. Instead of uniform interiors (like in the case of sitcoms), the story broke out of closed situations and studio sets and turned forward the vivid, colorful streets of Budapest. Sunny exteriors and touristic places of the city played an important role (beginning with the series’ ­cartoon-like ​­ ­​­ ​­ title sequence), promoting the ­here-and-now familiarity of the story. Similarly, more nuanced characterization was also important. Shall We Kiss revealed ordinary leads, far from the loud and blatant characters of the soap operas. Likewise, the series deliberately broke with the domestic trend of loser comedies of the 2000s, in which there were no classically comic characters, only exaggeratedly violent, macho and stubborn figures. Shall We Kiss did not provide a distorted mirror to Hungarian society but confronted it with the image of normal or ordinary life, in-between the ideal world of soap operas and the dark naturalism of the black comedies and crime films. In the early 2010s when a growing number of the audience

286  Balázs Varga felt lost and felt that society has fallen apart, HBO’s series was received as a proposal about how to be “normal” (and how to deal with ordinary relationship problems) again. Shall We Kiss introduced the confident middlebrow screen culture to Hungary and helped to reduce the aversion toward popular culture. The strengths of the series were not the standard “quality” features of HBO productions, but the clever portraying the quotidian. The company’s next local production focused more directly on the middle- class and tried to show how quality series would be adapted to Hungary.

Therapy: get to know yourself The only series which has been adapted for all four territories covered by HBO Central Europe, Be’Tipul is one of the most prominent global success stories of global format adaptation, as it was remade in more than 15 countries (covering Latin-America, Unites States, Europe, Russia, and Japan; Lavie 2015; Perkins 2015). The recognition and the glorious path of the series might be attributed to the strong high concept which is combined with relatively low budget feasibility. The story of the therapist and his/ her (in the Russian version the protagonist is a woman) patients and the supervisor with different sessions on consecutive days of the week forms a focused, yet various structure. Be’Tipul is a smart example of a complex narrative as its modular structure cleverly mixes repetition and variety. Beyond this clear structure the series offer concentrated stories of human encounters, emotions and (inter)personal dramas, in a “tell, don’t show” manner which is seemingly the opposite of the action-packed current style of serial narratives. However, Central European adaptation of the series provides a kind of cultural homecoming (“bringing back Freud home”, to Central Europe, to the cultural and geographical birthplace of psychoanalysis). Furthermore, as psychotherapy was neglected over the decades of socialism (except in the late period) after the political changes psychotherapy did not only had to regain scientific legitimacy, but it had to reinforce its public recognition and acceptance. The perception of psychoanalysis in Hungarian public opinion at the time of writing the series was still very controversial, many regarded it as a hobby for rich people. For this reason, the Hungarian version had to introduce and evaluate psychotherapy to a wider domestic audience. Therapy not only portrayed the method of the therapeutic sessions and the work of the therapist. It also showed what are topics, questions, and emotional problems with which the patients turn to the therapist. Moreover, and this is a social function, even the cost of therapy is revealed in the series, which (being not a small amount of money) showed that psychotherapy is still something that could be available by the middle class. Also, middle- class and middle-brow associations were strengthened with the help of the casting, most importantly because of the choice of the protagonist. The lead actor is a key factor in the atmosphere of the series, in

Too familiar: HBO’s Hungarian production  287 each of its local version. This is no different in this case either. Each Central European version chose a well-known and acknowledged actor (usually with high theatrical credits), in order to channel the middle-brow aesthetics and prestige into the realm of the series. It worth to notice that in the Czech and the Polish version the protagonist is played by an actor whose credits include Hollywood films (Karel Roden, the dangerous enemy figure from Hellboy and The Bourne Supremacy, and Marcel Iures from Mission Impossible). As both actors returned to their home countries after their Hollywood films, their participation in the series has a sense of transnationalism, homecoming – reinforcing the non- conformist character of the protagonist. Additionally, their star persona (and screen personality) helps to combine the sense of middle-brow values and popularity. The Polish and Hungarian version carried out it differently. The Polish version chose Jerzy Radziwiłowicz (known among others from Andrej Wajda’s emblem­ ​­ atic political-historical drama, Man of Marble), and the Hungarian version opted for Pál Mácsai, actor and director of one of the leading Hungarian theatres. Mácsai’s intellectual appeal, calm and personal charisma proved to be an excellent choice. His cool, distant and enigmatic behaviour is an important driver of the story. When interpreting the series as cultural translations or borrowings, I consider the above aspects more important than the usual textual comparison, while of course, it is also a relevant point. Although the whole structure of the series focuses so much on human interactions and emotional encounters that national specialties or contexts do not seem to need so much emphasis, this is not the case. The source series itself is regarded to target the very heart of Israeli national identity and problems of masculinity via the ambiguous character of a “male warrior” (Harlap 2018). Season 1 of the Hungarian version begins with careful and small adjustments (the character of the fighter pilot is changed for a young CEO, who is, compared to the Israeli version, not that allegoric). Second 2 move forward with the introduction of a new character, who is a member of the Parliament, and with the help of his story the series discussed the problems and memory of secret agents and the questions collaboration. Moreover, in Season 3 (now following the US adaptation, as there were only two seasons in Israel) the character of the elderly man of Indian origin was changed to Szekler origin7 in the Hungarian, bringing the ambivalent and moving question of national identity to the horizon of the series which until then was specifically urban (and in some sense cosmopolitan) in the selection of characters, topics, and location. This choice is even more important as the writers left out the gay character as they felt that is would be counterproductive in Hungary.

Golden Life: it is not easy to live a decent life HBO’s first series, produced exclusively for the Hungarian market, was Golden Life (Aranyélet), ­ adapted from the Finnish Easy Living (Helppo ­

288  Balázs Varga elämä). According to the creative head of the production, Gábor Krigler, earlier polls by the company showed that viewers were mostly lacking homemade crime fiction. Indeed, Hungarian screen culture did not completely lack the genre, but remarkable productions were not made8. The series follows the lives of a family who owe their well-being to the father’s low-profile criminal activities and his favors to a mafia boss. Even though the father decides to give up a criminal lifestyle, the family’s well-being ­ ​­ cannot be achieved without it  – what the wife cannot accept at all. The series discuss diverging paths of the members of the family: who is trying to live a decent life, what to do with themselves when it comes to choosing between principles and values, family or wealth and self-esteem. As a socially critical drama, Golden Life discusses the struggling of common people to survive and shows the series of everyday tricks and scams: the entrepreneur who builds a house with paper-weak walls, the bartender who pours water to expensive drinks in the tourist area bar, and the real estate agent who pulls off customers with a three-month deposit (Soós 2018). At the generic level (as crime or gangster narrative) Golden Life is a rise-and-fall story of ­ ­​­ ​­ a petty criminal who wants to quit, and a story of his son, who step by step throws himself into the vortex of crime. The series became the most popular of HBO’s local productions, the cult grew up mainly around Season 2. According to an HBO survey, more people watched the series than The Handmaid’s Tale and Westworld together (Matalin 2018). Golden Life openly presents a vast variety of social and political problems. This may be one of the keys to the effect of the series. The hit and hot topics of life in Budapest are discussed, perhaps all too clearly, as if one had to put together the most glaring cases in a single catalogue. The series mixes elements and figures of current crime fiction (the dysfunctional family dynamics are taken from Italian-American gangster films and the issue of the reforming criminal; Soós 2018) and provides a whole list of outrageous examples of misconduct and social injustice from contemporary Hungary. Watching these situations, actions and characters, we can’t forget the feeling that it is like reading the headlines of newspapers or internet portals. The filmmakers took care to hide telling motifs even in the background. In Season 1 an episodic character (a politician who is courting the protagonist’s wife) has a fancy car with a Slovakian license plate, not a Hungarian one. The car only appears in one single shot and only in the background, yet, it is enough for those who are interested in details and politics, as this trick was often disputed in the newspapers at the time the episode was written. A lot of wealthy Hungarians would rather register their car in neighbouring Slovakia, where they had to pay much less tax. Similarly, in Season 2 the son of the protagonist takes up a position in the university student government, and he can take advantage of this to do illegal business, which also reminds the audience of a well-known case. And these are only minor examples as the series is much more open about political corruption and the sticky business of Hungarian oligarchs (Imre 2018). The writers of the series have

Too familiar: HBO’s Hungarian production  289 repeatedly stated that they often did not follow the news but wanted to make a strong narrative twist – but shortly after the finishing of the scripts, they were caught up in the reality. Stories, situations, events that they have just invented, echoed from the news (Rakita 2018). “Golden Life is overt and brave in its choice of subject matter and riskaverse, since it does not look so much behind Hungarian reality, but rather enhances and reflects the image about “Hungarian reality” that lives in people’s minds – with a fun, enjoyable way.” (Soós 2018: 34) The novelty of the series is not only that it shows the life of the post-socialist new rich from within, but the way it presents an ambiguous rise and fall family story. Although numerous middle-brow novels portray the decades of post-socialist transformation in Hungary, films or series weren’t very much about this topic. Golden Life, especially Season 2 which involves a plotline based on flashbacks from the early 1990s, showing the protagonists in their youth in the hectic early years of the post-socialist market economy, fills a gap. The series describes the working class-roots of the protagonist family and give a twist to the familiar patterns of dysfunctional family stories taken from Italian-American gangster films (Soós 2018). The mentality, worldview, and attitude of the Miklósi family, its frustrated relationship to work and money, is still the product of the socialist regime (Sepsi 2017). They came from low social backgrounds, and after the change of regime, they believed in the dream of “it will be better now” but had to realize that without fraud and corruption one cannot get ahead (Soós 2018). The combination of popular (genre) fiction patterns and social commentary is a significant factor of the discourse over “quality TV”. This is where we should look again at the other HBO series from the region. One of the highlighted aspects and features of HBO’s original series is the “HBO-ification” of genres  – the innovative use and transformation of generic patterns (Tait 2008). The making and use of genres is also an important question of HBO’s Eastern European productions. While the first series took different genres (dramedy/romantic comedy, psychological drama, thriller), a variety of crime narratives have come to the forefront in recent years. Thrillers (Wasteland, ­ The Silent Valley), political thrillers (Mammon, ­ The Pact), action thriller (The ­ Pack), gangster (Golden ­ Life), or ­gangster-noir ​­ versions (Shadows); ­ the supply almost completely covered the range of criminal genres and sub-genres. The influence of Nordic Noir seems obvious, especially in the case of the Czech Wasteland, with its spectacular sceneries, rundown industrial milieu at the Czech-Polish borderlands (Durys 2018), as the impact of Nordic Noir, combining crime narrative, social commentary, bleak atmosphere, and strong stylization, is an emerging trend in Eastern European popular cinema in the late 2010s. But beyond the influence of the Nordic Noir which has achieved massive success on the international market (Bondebjerg 2016; Hansen, Peacock,

290  Balázs Varga and Turnbull 2018), and in that sense its Eastern impact might be the simple sign of the time, how regional screen culture rides Zeitgeist, it should be emphasized that this recent wave of crime narratives in Eastern European screen culture (including cinema, series, and crime fiction) is also a sign of the serious need for new ways, modes, and narratives of social consciousness. Crime stories play a decisive role in the work of social self-awareness and imagination, in the presentation and shaping of the boundaries and mechanisms of the social imagination. HBO’s Eastern European crime series undoubtedly rearranged and catalysed the local and regional scenes of social commentary. These transnational series are exciting examples of retransformation, as they tell and create the ­understanding the ­post-socialist ​­ founding myths of a new order and a new world (Golden Life, Mammon, ­ The Pact) and also show the uncertainty of the neoliberal capitalism in Eastern Europe, with the help of bleak family dramas (Golden Life, Waste­ land, Shadows, The Pack) (Batori 2018). The chances and possibilities for a decent life and the questions of enrichment and social elevation are two of the thematic motifs that play a key role in each of these series – and evidently, these are crucial questions of transforming societies.

Conclusions Hungary served as the first base and headquarters for HBO’s European expansion. However, Hungary was not only important because of the structure and organization of the company but it was also a testing ground ( Natural Born Losers, the first HBO production in the region). Concerning HBO’s local productions, we have seen that they both have common characteristics and local specificities: the way of the development of local and original productions in the countries of the region was not the same. One of the intriguing aspects of this differentiation is the fact that it was only the Hungarian market where HBO did not make an original series. Nevertheless, the scriptwriters and creative figures around Golden Life often argued that it has been so thoroughly modified and remodelled that it no longer resembled the source – that is they treat it as an original, locally developed series. This excitement forward originality (home-grown products) nicely illustrates the complexity and ambiguity of innovation, cultural proximity, and cultural borrowings. An essential aspect of this question is the state of the given market, as in the case of Hungarian screen industry HBO’s activities represented an important and influential alternative, transnational production system, compared to the local film and television funding and production mechanisms and systems. HBO was trendsetter not only regarding production methods but dealing with sensitive social and political issues. Following the buzz around ­Season 1, Golden Life was the saviour of Hungarian quality screen culture, providing a trendy crime narrative with cutting-edge spectacle and high production value – and performing sharp social and political commentary. Season 2 and especially Season 3 tried to take that direction further, even

Too familiar: HBO’s Hungarian production  291 more sharply. A broad catalogue of social and political problems that have arisen, perhaps just because of the familiarity, has been less disturbing and compelling. However, proving that popular culture and screen fiction (quality TV) might be a forum of legit and relevant social commentary, was a significant achievement. Similarly, three seasons of Therapy had a remarkable career and showed that the chain of human encounters and personal interactions can be work as pieces of a large-scale social puzzle or an imaginary map of social imagination. HBO’s Hungarian series has taken on a huge, sometimes too massive, task. The seriousness of the challenge shows that it is essential to discuss not only the series themselves and their success or failure but also about the cultural milieu in which a series could have such a large-scale mission.

Acknowledgements This chapter was supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (no. 135235).

Notes 1 It worth to note that a strong audience preference for national programming has an important role in the explanation of the term cultural proximity – a term which was coined by Joseph D. Straubhaar, discussing the transformation of the Latin-American television markets in the 1980s (Straubhaar 1991). 2 This bizarre award goes to those who killed themselves because of their own demise or stupidity. 3 The importance of HBO’s documentary content production work was only highlighted by the fact that in Hungary this coincided with the reorganization of the film financing system, as this was done in the interregnum between the halt of the Hungarian Motion Picture Public Foundation and the setting up of the new system, marked by the Hungarian National Film Fund and the Hungarian Media Patronage Programme (Varga 2016). 4 Invisible Strings (Láthatatlan húrok. A tehetséges Pusker nővérek, Ágnes Sós) portrayed the story and relationship of two sisters, both violin prodigies. Between Two Worlds (Két világ között, Viktor Oszkár Nagy) about a Hungarian refugee camp. Gipsy Cops (Romazsaruk, ­ Kata Oláh) the story of three Roma men who chose a police career, and Wonderful Gladiators (Varázslatos ­ gladiátorok, Zsófia Kabarcz 2011) about a Hungarian theatre company whose members are mentally challenged, actors and actresses. 5 Therapy was directed by Ildikó Enyedi and Attila Gigor. For Enyedi, who was awarded by a Cannes prize for her debut film in 1989, however, since the turn of the millennium has not made a film, the making of Therapy was a comeback – which was followed by the international success (and Berlinale main prize) of her 2018 feature, Body and Soul. Attila Gigor, on the other hand, belonged to the young generation of filmmakers. His debut film noir, The Investigator (A nyomozó, ­ 2008) was hailed as a breakthrough, a smart combination of popular genres and art house complexity. Enyedi’s and Gigor’s directorial pair was complemented by a supergroup of experienced dramaturgs from (independent) theatres. 6 Shall We Kiss was helmed by Gábor Herendi and Gergely Fonyó, directors of domestic hit romantic comedies in the 2000s.

292  Balázs Varga ­

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Index

#0 43, 216–222 ¿Qué fue de Jorge Sanz? 216 1983 259, 271–273 1984 271 1992/1993/1994 38, 59, 64, 146–147, 153, 160 21st Century Fox 74 30 Monedas (30 Coins) 251 4 Blocks 7, 183–187, 206 45 revoluciones (45 Revolutions) 233, 238 4oD 77 8 Days 206 Abraham, David 75 Academy Awards (Oscars) 4, 23, 92, 149, 165, 169, 263 Adamik, Kasia 264, 271–272 The Affair 171 Agatha Raisin 63 Aída 223 Ainsi soient-ils (The Churchmen) 128 Akson Studio 265–266 Alarm für Cobra 11 (Cobra 11/Alarm for Cobra 11) 199, 205, 246 Albert, Xavier 109–111 Albrecht, Chris 120 All 4 77 All3Media 73 Alta Mar (High Seas) 233, 237–238 Altice Studios 22, 114 Álvarez, Begoña 221 Amazon (Amazon Prime Video) 2, 6, 14, 16, 24–26, 30, 33, 35–36, 41, 51, 56–58, 61–65, 71, 77–81, 90, 126, 181–188, 193, 200, 206, 214, 238, 243–244, 254; Studios 185–186 AMC 33, 44, 130 Amedia 244

American Cinematographer 170 American Idol 74 Ammaniti, Niccolò 147 Ammon, Marcus 185 Amoedo, Migue 230 Amoroso, Roberto 158–160 Amour 207 Anonymous Content 182 Antczak, Jerzy 263 Antena 3 42, 59, 218, 228–234, 238 Antidisturbios 224 The Apartment 22 Apollo 2 74 Apple/Apple TV 14, 79, 124, 214, 244 Aquarius Film 150 Aranyélet (Easy Living; Golden Life; Helppo elämä) 248, 251, 282–290 ARD 64, 178–184, 193–207; Degeto 179–180, 184, 196, 201 Arde Madrid 223 Arest, Darek 269 Arndt, Stefan 185, 201, 207 ARTE 196, 206, 221 As leis of Celavella 229 AT&T 244, 257, 259 Atlantique Productions 22, 221 Atresmedia 63–65, 215, 231, 234 Atresmedia Studios 221 Attal, Yvan 139 The Audience 92 AVMS – Audiovisual Media Services Directive 16, 35, 83, 192, 245–247 Až po uši (Shall We Kiss) 248–251, 282–286, 291 B&b 232 Babe Film 150 Baby 25, 59 Baby Cow 46

296 Index Babylon Berlin 4, 7–8, 25–29, 38–39, 43, 58, 64, 181–185, 192–194, 200–206 Bad Banks 182, 206 BAFTA 92 Bajo sospecha (Under Suspicion) 233 Bajon, Filip 271 Bajon, Kasper 271 Ball, Alan 130–131 Bambú Producciones 8, 218, 222, 227–240 Banda della Magliana 40–42 Banijay 46, 74, 108, 114, 186 Banlieusards 104 Bantry Bay 180 Barátok közt (Among Friends) 284 Barmack, Erik 106, 236 Baron noir 121 Barroso, Mariano 218 Basedow, Rolf 196 Bauer, Wolf 206 BBC 25, 46–47, 51, 57, 65, 71–79, 82–83, 86–87, 90–91, 94–98, 219, 234; Drama 96–97; Four 121, 192; iPlayer 77–78, 87, 91; One 91; Royal Charter (2017) 72–73; Studios 73–74; Worldwide 46, 73, 90, 234–235 Be’ Tipul (In Treatment) 153, 248, 264, 282, 286 Beat Bugs 109 Becker, Wolfgang 207 Bedlam 62 Beforeigners 251 Beksiński, Zbigniew 268 Belfer (The Teach) 266–269, 272–273 Belmer, Rodolphe 125 Bentley Productions 73 Berg, Quirin 183 Berger, Alex 126–127 Berlin Alexanderplatz 196–197 Berlin Station 182 Berlinale 199, 202, 245, 255, 291 Berlusconi, Silvio 166 Bertelsmann 179–180 Bessi, Roman 235 Besson, Luc 138 Besztak, Andrzej 270–271 Beta Film 51, 152, 181, 184–185, 201–202, 232–236, 250 Bez tajemnic (No Secrets/Without Secrets; Be’Tipul) 264, 268, 283 Bez vědomi (The Sleepers) 283

BFI – British Film Institute 75–76 Big Talk 46 Bigazzi, Luca 171 Billen, Andrew 96 Billingham, Mark 43 Birt, John 73 Bises, Stefano 19, 152 Björnstad (Beartown) 251 Black Mirror 22, 26, 42, 65, 81 Blanco, Alfonso 229 Blim 236 Blochin 202 Blumenberg, Lisa 182–183 Bo Odar, Baran 183 Bochco, Steven 138 Bockenheim, Wojciech 266 Bodyguard 91, 97 Bolloré, Vincent 119 Borcuch, Jacek 264 Borgen 192 Borgia 22, 40, 63–64, 121–127, 249 Boris 146–149, 158 Botti, Christophe 108 Bourdieu, Pierre 124 The Bourne Supremacy 287 Braquo 64, 121, 125 Breaking Bad 93, 131–132, 135, 202 Bref. 120 Brera, Guido Maria 28 Breton, Pascal 104 Brexit 83, 170 BritBox 83 Broadchurch 74 Broadwayworld 130 Bron/Broen (The Bridge) 22, 44, 179, 192, 267 Brown, Tina 197 Bruch, Volker 201 BSkyB 36 Buñuel, Diego 107 Burgaleta, Estíbaliz 221 Byrne, Gabriel 248 C More 64 Cactus TV 73 Caesar 139 Cahiers du cinéma 130 Call the Midwife 74 Calls 124 Campillo, Robin 26, 42, 123 Campos, Ramón 227–238 Canal Satélite Digital 215 Canal+ 2–8, 14–16, 26, 36, 38, 42–54, 58–64, 108, 112–115, 118–130, 138,

Index  297 148, 153, 165, 170, 213–219, 223, 244, 252, 262–269, 273, 277; Décalé 124; España 213–219; Series 216 Canal+1 267 Candilis, Takis 125 Cannabis 128 Canneseries Festival 219, 223 Cantet, Laurent 42 Capa Drama 108 Cape Town 58 Capítulo 0 223 Carlos 63–64 Carnival 74 Carretero, Nacho 235–236 The Castle 138 Cattelan, Maurizio 167–168 Cattleya 3, 14, 21–26, 148–152, 157, 235 Cavestany, Juan 218 CEE – Central and Eastern European 243–259 Centovetrine 149 Cesarano, Daniele 30, 150–151, 156–158 Chajdas, Olga 271–272 Channel 4 41–42, 57, 63–65, 71–72, 75–77, 81–82, 200, 205 Channel 5 71, 74 Charité 206 Cheesbrough, Dan 91 Chelsey Girl 139 Chiamatemi Francesco (Call Me Francis) 173 Chimenz, Marco 148 Chirbes, Rafael 43, 216 Chmielarz, Wojciech 273 Chris Ryan’s Strike Back 63 Cimadevila, Sergio 231 Cineaste 170 Cinemax 246 Cinemax2 246 Ciszewski, Jean-Michel 105–106, 112 Cité du Cinéma 138 Citizen Kane 133 Clinton, Bill 135 Clocking Off 64 Cloud Atlas 201 Club de Cuervos 106 CME – Central European Media Enterprises 257–258 CNC – Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée 46, 112–115, 118, 126 Cobeaga, Borja 222

Coben, Harlan 259 Coira, Jorge 229 Coira, Pepe 229 Coll, Marta 219 The Collection 63 Colorado Film 148 Columbo 131 Comcast 14 Comencini, Francesca 152 Company Pictures 73 Competition Commission 77 Conrad, Marc 196 Coppola, Francis Ford 196 Core Media Group 74 Corral, Domingo 217 Cosmopolitan TV 62 Costanzo, Saverio 43, 148 Couvreur, Damien 110 Covid-19 1, 83 Crazyhead 57 Creasun Media American 94 Création Originale 119 Creative Media Europe 184 Crematorio 42, 59, 216–218 Criminal: France 107 Crimini 151 Crooks Ltd. 207 The Crown 4, 6, 25, 38–40, 74–76, 80, 86–98 CSA 115 Cuéntame cómo pasó (Tell Me How It Happened) 230 Cupellini, Claudio 152 Czech Academy Awards 250 Czech Council for Radio and Television 258 Czech Producer’s Association 258 Człowiek z marmuru (Man of Marble) 287 Czterdziestolatek (The 40-Year-Old) 263 Czterdziestolatek. 20 lat później (The 40-Year-Old. 20 Years Later) 263 Czterej pancerni i pies (Four Tank-Men and a Dog) 262 da Vinha, Matthieu 127 Daldry, Stephen 92 Damages 132–133, 138 Dark 8, 22, 38, 41, 58, 65, 181–183, 186–187, 206, 257 Darwin Award 280 Das Boot 206 Davey, Gary 201

298 Index Dawid, Leszek 268 De Cataldo, Giancarlo 42, 149–151, 157 de Greef, Alain 119 de la Patellière, Fabrice 120, 123, 127 Deadwood 125, 131 Debbouze, Jamel 120 DEFA 178 Degeto Film 201 Dejczer, Maciej 266 Dekalogue 279 Depardieu, Gérard 107 Der gleiche Himmel (The Same Sky) 206 Der König von St. Pauli (The King of St. Pauli) 180 Derrick 180, 205 Desaparecida (Missing) 230 Despentes, Virginie 125 Deutschland 83/Deutschland 86 4, 7, 16, 29, 65, 181–183, 191–205 DGSE – Directorate-General of External Security 133–136 Diavoli (Devils) 28 Die Bergretter 199 Digital+ 215 Dime quién soy (Tell me who I am) 224 Ding Ji Ju Chang 244 Discovery 74 Disney 74, 103–105, 244, 247, 278 Disney+ 14, 214 Distretto di polizia 149–150 Dolera, Leticia 223 Dorado, Jorge 221 Dorociński, Marcin 264 Dov’è Mario? 146 Downton Abbey 74, 92–96 DR 179, 192 Dracula 91 Dujardin, Jean 139 Dwutygodnik 269 Dzięcioł, Łukasz 268 Dzięcioł, Piotr 268 Eaton, Andrew 93 Echevarría, Paula 231–232 Edinburgh Television Festival 75 EFA Fiction Series Award 194 Egy rém rendes család Budapesten (Married… with Children in Budapest) 279, 284 Einaudi 162 Ekipa (TheCrew) 272

El caso Alcàsser (Alcàsser Murders) 237 El Club de los Incomprendidos (The Club of the Misunderstood) 237 El día de mañana (What the Future Holds) 218–219, 222–224 El embarcadero (The Pier) 221–222 El Hotel de los Secretos (The Hotel of Secrets) 234 Elizabeth II 92 Elmaleh, Gad 108 Empreinte digitale 46, 108 The End of the F***ing World 42 En el corredor de la muerte (On Death Row) 222, 233, 236 En tierras salvajes 234 Endemol (Endemol Shine) 2, 22, 25, 46, 51, 74, 81, 186; France 22, 114; Polska 265 Englert, Maciej 270 Engrenages (Spiral) 64, 121 Enyedi, Ildikó 291 EPG – Electronic Programming Guide 161 Epitafios 245 Epix 182 ER 123 Éric and Ramzy 120 Eros America 281 Erynie 259 ETA 224 Eurovision Song Contest 194 Faccia d’angelo 38–40, 146–147, 160 Facebook 79, 93, 162 Falcon 216 Family Business 104, 107 FAMU – Film and TV School of the Academyof Performing Arts in Prague 249, 259 Fandango 152 Fariña (Cocaine Coast) 233–235 Farmacia de guardia (On-call Pharmacy) 228 Fasoli, Leonardo 20, 153 Fédération Entertainment 51, 63, 104–108 Félix 219 Fellini, Federico 131, 170 Fernández, Carlos 231 Fernández-Armero, Álvaro 218 Fernández-Valdés, Teresa 227–238 Feroz Prize 223 Fertacz, Magdalena 264 Filmanova 230

Index  299 Filmstiftung NRW 184 Firefly 74 Flaubert, Gustave 139 Fontana, Tom 125–127, 130–131 Fonyó, Gergely 291 Foodie Love 251 Football World Cup 194 Forbrydelsen (The Killing) 44, 179, 192, 267 FORMATT 198 The Forsyte Saga 94 Fortitude 22, 38, 64 Foucault, Michel 125, 173 Fox 47, 51, 63–64, 74; Italia 146–149, 158 France 3 63 France 4 63 France Ô 63 France Télévisions 63, 115, 118 Franco, Francisco 223 Fremantle (FremantleMedia) 2, 22–25, 54, 149, 153, 180, 198, 206, 284 Fries, Liv Lisa 201 Friese, Jantje 183 Funk 197 FX Networks 13, 34 Gaccio, Bruno 120 Galerías Velvet (Velvet Velvet) 233 Game of Thrones 76, 79, 219, 234, 259, 269 Gardini, Gina 150–152 Gardner, Ava 223 Garrido, Cristobal 235 Garrone, Matteo 42 Gaumont 114 Gay, Cesc 219 The Generi 146 Gephi 54 Gereon Rath Mystery Series 185, 201 Germano, Elio 160 Gianani, Mario 22–25 Gierek, Edward 263 Gigantes (Giants) 221 Gigor, Attila 291 Gilmore Girls 93 Glińska, Agnieszka 264 Globomedia 229–232 GMPF – German Motion Picture Fund 182–184 Gobert, Fabrice 18 Godard, Jean-Luc 111, 139 The Godfather 196 Golden Globe 92

Gomorra (Gomorrah) 4, 7, 19, 21, 25–28, 38–42, 59, 63–64, 146–147, 152, 158–162, 165 Goodbye Lenin 39 Google 79, 161 Górski, Robert 271 Gösta 251, 255 Graf, Dominik 196 Gran Hotel (Grand Hotel) 200, 231–236 Gran Reserva (Grand Reserve) 231–237 Gran Reserva: El origen 233 Grandinetti, Darío 221 Greenaway, Peter 270 Grégory 104 Grey’s Anatomy 123 Grimme Award 194, 197 Grob, Veronika 181–182 Grundy Television 284 Grupo Ganga 230 The Guardian 95 Guante Blanco (White Glove) 227, 230–233 Gutiérrez Caba, Emilio 231, 237 Guyane 121, 124–125 Hackerville 252, 282–283 Hackfort, Hanno 183, 186–187 Hajdú, Eszter 281 Hall, Tony 73, 76, 87, 90, 95–98 Handloegten, Hendrik (Henk) 28, 39, 201 The Handmaid’s Tale 288 Haneke, Michael 207 Hanisch, Uli 185 Happy Valley 74 Hard 121–123 Harry, the Duke of Sussex 92 Hartmann, Nils 28, 154–157 Hartswood Films 91 Hastings, Reed 78, 106, 237 Haut et Court 45–46 Havas Group 118 HBO 7, 15, 22, 33, 36, 43, 47, 59, 76, 80, 86, 118–127, 130–131, 148, 153, 165–172, 180, 184, 193, 197, 243–259, 262, 276–291; Adria 8, 244; Asia 243; Central Europe 243; Comedy 246; Czech Republic 258–259; España (Spain) 8, 214–219, 224, 244, 252–253; Europe 2, 8, 14, 26–27, 64, 243–259, 262, 276–291; GO 244–245, 250–255, 258–259, 267–269; Hungary 276–291; Latin

300 Index America 243–246, 252, 254; Max 259; Netherlands 244; Nordic 64, 244, 251–255, 258–259; NOW 244, 258; Olé 278; On Demand 244; Polska (Poland) 8, 259, 262–264, 269–270; Romania 278 HBO2 246 HBO3 246 Hegedűs, Bálint 280 Heimat 197 Hellboy 287 Helppo elämä (Easy Living) 248, 251, 287 Herendi, Gábor 291 Herres, Volker 196 HETR – High End Television Tax Relief 75 Hierro 221 Hill Street Blues 138 Hindenburg 199 Hippocrate 121–126 Hispania, la leyenda(Hispania) 231–233 Hitchcock, Alfred 172 Hochet, Timothée 124 Hoffmann, Frank 198–199 Hofmann, Nico 191, 198–199, 206 Holland, Agnieszka 27, 249, 259, 263–264, 270–272 Holland, Cindy 88, 92–93 The Hollywood Reporter 234 Holoubek, Jan 271 Holzamer, Karl 179 Homeland 135–136, 140, 170–171, 181–182, 267 Homicide 125 Hooten and the Lady 63 Hořící keř (Burning Bush) 4, 27, 249–253, 259, 282–283 House Media Company 270–271 House of Cards 91, 105, 135 House of Lords Select Committee on Communications 71 House of Tomorrow 22 How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) 206 Hrubý, Tomáš 259 Hulík, Štěpán 249, 259 Hungarian Media Patronage Programme 291 Hungarian Motion Picture Public Foundation 291 Hungarian National Film Fund 280, 291

I delitti del BarLume 43, 146 Ibar, Pablo 222 Ich bin ein Star!… (I’m a Celebrity…) 199 Iglesias, Maxi 237 Il commissario Montalbano/ Montalbano (Inspector Montalbano) 34, 146 Il Fatto Quotidiano 170 Il miracolo (The Miracle) 22–23, 146–147, 153, 158–162 Il mostro di Firenze 146 Im Angesicht des Verbrechens (In the Face of Crime) 7, 180, 193–199, 203–205 Imperium 233 The Independent 98 În derivă (Drifting; Be’Tipul) 283 In Search of Lost Time 132 In Treatment (Be’Tipul) 43, 146–148, 153, 158–162, 247–251, 258–259, 264 Inglorious Bastards 204 Instagram 162, 220 Instinto (Instinct) 222–223, 236–238 International Emmy Award 121, 194, 248 IPTV 194, 214–216 Ítélet Magyarországon (Judgement in Hungary) 281 iTunes 195, 206 ITV 71–79, 86, 91, 94; Hub 77; Player 77; Studios 3, 14, 21, 24, 73–75 Iures, Marcel 287 Jack the Ripper 65 Jamestown 40 Jasper, Bernhard 183, 186 Jauss, Hans Robert 108, 123 Jensen, Linda 247–250, 253, 258 Jerks 49 Jesteś Bogiem (You Are God) 268 Jeux d’influence 128 Jóban rosszban (For Better or For Worse) 284 John Paul II 167–168 John Stanley Productions 74 Johnston, Trevor 96 Jour polaire (Midnight Sun) 121, 128 Journal du Hard 122 Julie Lescaut 119 Justo antes de Cristo 222

Index  301 Kabarcz, Zsófia 291 Kabaret Moralnego Niepokoju (The Cabaret of Moral Disquiet) 270–271 Kaboul Kitchen 63, 121 Kadr Film Studio 271 Kafka, Franz 138 Kamińska, Dominika 267 Kassovitz, Mathieu 132–140 Kastelicová, Hanka 258 Katyn 264 Kazejak, Anna 264 Keaton, Diane 160 Keough, Damian 97 Két világ közöt (Between Two Worlds) 291 Kieślowski, Krzysztof 279 The Knick 139 Konopka, Bartosz 264 Konrad, Bob 183, 186 Korolczuk, Jakub 268 Kovács, András M. 281 Kowalski Films 26 Krajewski, Marek 259 Krampe, Ariane 206 Krew z krwi (Blood of My Blood; Penoza) 265 Krigler, Gábor 280, 288 Król (The King) 273 Kropf, Richard 183, 186–187 Kruk. Szepty słychać po zmroku (Kruk. Whispers Heard After Dark) 268, 272–273 Kuczeriszka, Grzegorz 266 Kudos 22, 74 Kurth, Peer 201 Kutscher, Volker 26, 43, 201–202 L’amica geniale (My Brilliant Friend) 15, 22, 59, 170–172, 252–257 La casa de papel (Money Heist) 59, 65, 213, 221 La Commune 121 La embajada (The Embassy) 233 La grande bellezza(The Great Beauty) 165, 171–172 La Grande classe 104 La Isla Mínima (Marshland) 217 La línea invisible 224 La nona ora 167–168 La Parisienne d’Images 46 La Peste (The Plague) 217–224 La Resistencia 222

La Sexta 63, 231–234 La squadra 149 La Stampa 170 La trahison des images 168 La Unidad 224 La Voz de Galicia 229 La zona 26, 218, 221 La7 47, 51 Lacan, Jacques 168 LaEffe 64 Lagardère 22, 114 Landgraf, John 13 Las chicas del cable (Cable Girls) 4, 8, 25, 38, 40, 59, 65, 213, 222, 227, 233, 236–238 Las Estrellas 234 The Last Dragonslayer 40 Láthatatlan húrok. A tehetséges Pusker nővérek (Invisible Strings) 291 Laumet, Yves 130 Law, Jude 160, 165–167 Le bureau des légendes (The Bureau) 4, 7, 29, 38, 40, 64, 121, 124–126, 130–140 Le Grand Journal 120 Le Journal Télévisé Nul 119 Le Parisien 118 Le tunnel/The Tunnel (Bron/Broen; The Bridge) 22, 26 Le vol des cicognes 63 Lechki, Marek 264 Left Bank Pictures 74, 76, 80, 86, 95 Leon, David 234 León, Paco 223 Leonine Holding 22 Les Guignols de l’info 218 Les Revenants (The Returned) 18, 25–26, 29, 40, 42, 63–64, 121–126, 200 Let’s Dance! 199 Letterbox Filmproduction 182 Levy, Dani 207 Lewinsky, Monica 135 Liberty Global 74 Liddiment, David 73 Life on Mars 74 Lilti, Thomas 123–125 Lime Pictures 74 Line of Duty 91 Lion Television 73–74 Little dot studios 74 Lola rennt (Run Lola Run) 201, 207 Long, Joshua 271

302 Index Longoria, Eva 235 Lookout Point 97 Lorber, Marc 247–249, 252 Loro (Them) 166 Lost 196 Loughrey, Clarisse 98 Louis Delluc Prize 139 Louis XIV 127 Lovas, Balázs 280 Love Sick 42, 57 Love Without Pity 139–140 LoveFilm 77, 195 Luchetti, Daniele 173 Lumea vãzutã de Ion B. (The World According to Ion B.) 248 Lusuardi, Nicola 153, 156 Lynch, David 139 Mácsai, Pál 287 Mad Men 202 Mafiosa 121, 124 Magritte, René 168, 173 Maigret 119 Maison Close 64, 121–127 Málaga Film Festival 237 Malkovich, John 160 Malvaldi, Marco 43 Mamon (Mammon) 248, 251, 264, 282–283, 289–290 The Man without Quality 138 Mandarin Télévision 108 Maniero, Felice 147 Manubens, Nacho 234 Marchal, Olivier 125 Marchesini, Paolo 150 Marco 233 Marczewski, Wojciech 263 Marianne 104–107 Marone, Patrizio 152 Married… with Children 275 Marseille 38, 65, 104–107, 110 Martínez Lobato, Esther 221 Martínez, David 229–230 Martínez, Jacobo 235 Masterchef 145, 158 Masterpiece(Masterpiece Theatre) 86, 94 Matar al padre 218–219 Matay nitnashek (Shall We Kiss) 248–251, 282–286, 291 Matthews, Steve 249, 251, 254–255 Matuszyński, Jan P. 268 Maverick 74

Maxdome 195, 206 May, Sarah 109 Mediapro 47 Mediaset 24, 30, 34, 149, 154–157; España 215, 223 Mediawan 114 Medici. Masters of Florence 59, 254 Médico de familia (Family Doctor) 229 Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg 181–184 Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex 92 Merlí 222 Merlí: Sapere Aude 222 Mermoud, Frédéric 18 Messier, Jean-Marie 119 Mieli, Lorenzo 149, 153, 158 Milch, David 131 MIPCOM 253–255 Mira lo que has hecho 218, 223 Mirica, Bogdan 248 Mirren, Helen 92 Misja Afganistan (Mission: Afghanistan) 265–269, 273 Miss Plastic. A szikék szépe(Miss Plastic. The Beauty of the Scalps) 281 The Missing 73 Mission Impossible 287 Mitterrand, François 118 Moana 38, 146–147, 161 Möbius 139 Mod Producciones 51 Mojto, Jan 202 Molina, Ángela 231 Montero, Pepón 222 Monty Python 222 Mordkommission Istanbul 199 Morgan, Peter 38–39, 92, 95–96 Morrison, Steve 73 Mortel 104 MovieVision 278 Movistar Lite 224 Movistar Series 216 Movistar TV 215–217 Movistar+ 2, 8, 16, 26, 36–43, 47, 51, 59, 62, 64, 213–225, 233–238 Mr. Fields and Friends Cinema 237 MTV Russia 258 Murdoch, Elisabeth 74 Murdoch, Rupert 46, 74 Musil, Robert 138 Na stojáka 258 Nagy, Viktor Oszkár 291 Narcos 87, 93

Index  303 National Broadcasting Council (Krajowa Rada Radiofonii i Telewizji) 262 Navarro, Julia 224 Nay, Jonas 198 NBC Universal 46–47, 51, 54, 58, 74, 119 Neal Street 74 Negativ 259 Neighbours 284 Nel nome del male 146, 161 Netflix 2, 4, 6–8, 14, 16, 21–26, 30, 33–36, 40–42, 46–47, 51, 56–61, 65–66, 71, 76–83, 86–98, 103–116, 126, 170, 181–188, 197, 206, 213–219, 222–224, 227–228, 232–238, 243–245, 252–259, 267, 270–272 Neue Berliner Straße 185, 204 Newen Studios 114 The New Pope 22–23, 26, 146, 153, 160, 170 NewsCorp 145 The New York Times 96, 121, 130, 170 The New Yorker 170 Nielegalni (The Illegals) 268–269, 273 Nielsen 93 Nobel Prize 263 Noce i dnie (Nights and Days) 263 Noethen, Ulrich 198 Non pensarci 146 Nordic Noir 1, 4, 13, 180, 183, 257, 289 North One 73 Nova 246, 257 Now TV 90 Nowakowski, Przemysław 264 Nox 121 A nyomozó (The Investigator) 291 NTL 77 Nulle Part Ailleurs 119 Nury, Fabien 125 Nutprodukce 249, 259 O’Regan, Tom 81 Objective Productions 74 Occupied 128 OCS – Orange Cinéma Séries 64, 244 Ofcom – Office for Communications 72–81, 89–91 Oláh, Kata 291 One Potato Two Potato 74 Oppenheim, Jacques W. 112

Optomen 74 Opus TV 268 Orange is the New Black 91–93 Orlando, Silvio 160 Orwell, George 271 Oslé, Sergio 236 Osmosis 104, 111 Ostatnia rodzina (The Last Family) 268 Outlander 74–79 Øyevitne (Eyewitness/The Silent Valley) 248, 251, 283 Oz 120, 125, 130–131 Pakt (The Pact; Mammon) 264, 268, 283 Paktofonika 268 Palach, Jan 249 Palkowski, Łukasz 267, 273 Pan Wołodyjowski (Sir Michael) 263 Pantaleon 184–185 Paquita Salas 65 Paramount Television 182 Paris est à nous 104 Paris etc. 121 Parsley, David 81 PaszportPolityki Award 270 Patria 251–255 The Patriots 139–140 Payan, Hervé 251–253 PBS 86, 92–94 Peacock Report 72 Peña, Candela 221 Penoza 265 Periodistas (Journalists) 232 A pesar de todo (Despite Everything) 237 Petronio, Barbara 21, 150 Pieprzyca, Maciej 268 A Pierre Woodman-sztori (The Pierre Woodman story) 281 Pigalle, la nuit 121 Pina, Álex 221 Pinewood 79 Pioneer Production 283 Pisarra, Drew 200 Placido, Michele 41, 149–150 Plan Coeur 104, 111 Platane 121 Platforma Canal+ 266 Platino Prize 223 Plepler, Richard 244–245, 253, 258 Polachová, Tereza 251–253, 259 Polish Film Festival 268–270 Polle, Michael 184

304 Index Polsat 262, 272 Polska Nagroda (Eagle Award) 267, 270 Poniewozik, James 170 Powalisz, Monika 266 Pozzi, Moana 147 Premiere 206 Prince of Wales 93 Princess Diana 92 Princess Productions 74 PRISA 215 Producer Choice 73 Project Kangaroo 77 Prokop, Marcin 267 ProSieben 49, 178, 195, 198–199 ProSieben.Sat1 178, 206 Pustina (Wasteland) 251, 282–283, 289–290 The Queen 92 Queer as Folk 74 Quo vadis, baby? 42, 146–149 R 54 R. Neira, Gema 228–237 Radziwiłowicz, Jerzy 287 Rai 16, 22–25, 34, 59, 146, 154–157, 170, 252, 257 Raiuno 23 Rămâi cu mine (Shall We Kiss) 283 Rampoldi, Ludovica 153 Real Sex 281 RED 74, 79 Refugiados (The Refugees) 233–234 Reiz, Bettina 206 Renzi, Matteo 169 Reporters 121 Rey, Javier 235 RHI 46 Riemelt, Max 195 Riester, Frank 115 Riget (The Kingdom) 139 Ripper Street 22, 25, 65, 97 RIS 149–150 Riviera 22, 38–40, 64 Robbe-Grillet, Alain 132 Rochant, Éric 125–140 Roden, Karel 247 Rodríguez, Alberto 217 Rojst 271–273 Romanov 96 Romanzo criminale 7, 21, 25, 30, 38–42, 59, 64, 146–152, 156–162, 165

Romazsaruk (Gipsy Cops) 291 Rome 125–127 Romero, Berto 218 Romulus 21 Root, Antony 245–255 Rose d’Or 223 Ross, Deborah 94 Roter, Phil 247 Rousselet, André 118 RTL 7, 16, 63, 65, 178, 181, 191, 195, 198–200; Group 114, 206; Klub 284; Now 200; Passion 63 RTVE 215 Salamanca, Amaia 237 Salvatores, Gabriele 42, 149 San Sebastián Film Festival 223 Sánchez-Cabezudo, José 216 Sarajevo Film Festival 249, 254 Sarandos, Ted 88–89, 92–93 Sardo, Stefano 153 SARS-Cov-2 1 Sat1 178, 195, 198 Saviano, Roberto 26, 42, 152 Scalp 121 Schilling, Peter 203 Schrader, Maria 198 Schweighöfer, Matthias 184–186 Scrosati, Andrea 9, 30, 147, 154–158 Section Zéro 64, 121 Secuestrados en Georgia (Kidnapped in Georgia) 230 Sécurité intérieure 121 Sedes, Carlos 229–230, 235 Seis hermanas (Six Sisters) 233 Sense8 201 Serangoon Road 246 A Series of Unfortunate Events 109 Severski, Vincent V. 273 Sex and the City 279 Sex Education 42 SFR– Société Française du Radiotéléphone 64 Shanghai Creasun Media Culture Corporation Ltd. 94 Shed Media 74 Shepperton studios 79 Sherlock 91 Shindler, Nicola 79–82 Shine 74; France 22, 114 Show Buzz Daily 171, 174 Showmax 270–271 Showtime 43, 125, 130, 170, 249 Sienkiewicz, Henryk 263

Index  305 Silvestre, Miguel Ángel 222 Simon, David 130–131 Six Feet Under 120, 130–131 Skam 220, 224 Skonieczny, Krzysztof 270 Sky 4, 7, 8, 26, 45–53, 61, 64–65, 71, 74, 80, 89, 170, 181, 201, 214, 244, 252; Arts 64, 232; Atlantic 64, 89; Cinema 161; Deutschland (Sky Germany) 7, 16, 36, 38, 43, 58, 184–185, 201–202, 206, 219; Europe 2, 13–14, 16, 36, 64; Italia 5, 9, 22–24, 28, 36, 38, 40, 42, 59, 145–163, 165; Life 160; One 40, 43; Studios 14; UK 6, 38, 57; Uno 43 The Sleepers (Bez vědomí) 251, 282–283 Ślepnąc od świateł (Blinded by the Lights) 251, 259, 269–273, 283 SMAD 114–115 Small Time Gangster 248, 283 Smarzowski, Wojciech 264 Smith, Harry Leslie 96–97 Smoczyńska, Agnieszka 272 Soderbergh, Steven 139 Sokołowski, Włodzimierz 273 Sollima, Stefano 39, 150–152, 157 Sonnenalle (Sun Alley) 204 Sony Pictures Entertainment 247 Sony Pictures Television 76–76, 86, 92, 249 The Sopranos 120, 125, 195, 279 Sorogoyen, Rodrigo 224 Sorrentino, Paolo 4, 7, 23, 36, 147, 160, 165–174 Sós, Ágnes 292 Sotelo, Diego 235–237 Spáh, Dávid 281 Spooks 74 Spotless 64 Squadra antimafia 149 SRAB Film 108 St. Elsewhere 125 Stabilini, Giovanni 148 Starsky and Hutch 131 Starz 76 Stawka większa niż życie (More Than Life at Stake) 272 Strictly Come Dancing 89 Studio Babelsberg 182, 185 Studio Canal 74, 79, 227, 232–237 Studio Lambert 74 Stuhr, Maciej 267 Sturmflut (Storm Tide) 199

STV 71 Suárez, Blanca 237 Suburra (Suburra: Blood on Rome) 21, 25, 30, 38, 40, 59, 65, 170 Sundance TV 7, 16, 64, 191–192, 198–200 Sunnymarch TV 235 Szajki, Péter 281 Született lúzerek (Natural Born Losers) 279–280, 282, 290 Talpa 49 Tandem 235 Taodue 149–150 Társas játék (Shall We Kiss) 249–251, 282–286, 291 Tatort (Crime Scene) 179–182, 194, 197, 202 TeamWorx 180, 206 Tele München Group 22 Tele Tydzień 267 Telecinco 223, 229–232 Telefónica 16, 64, 214–216 The Telegraph 92, 97 Telekamera 267 Telekom 206 Telemark 264–269 Televisa 234–236 Televisión de Galicia 229 Televisión Española 230–231 Telewest 77 Telewizja Polska 259, 262, 265 Tena, Natalia 234 Terápia (Therapy; Be’Tipul) 283 Terapie (Therapy; Be’Tipul) 283 Terry Pratchett 40 Testről és lélekről (Body and Soul) 291 TF1 114–115, 119 Thompson, Mark 73 Thorne 43 Threesome 63 Tiempos de Guerra (Love in Times of War) 233–234, 237 Tiger Aspect 22, 25, 46 The Times 96 Time Warner 247, 257, 278 Tin Star 38–40 Tini, Maurizio 148, 152, 156, 158 Tinopolis 74 TNT 180, 184, 206, 216, 282 A Touch of Cloth 63 To Walk Invisible 97 Todas las mujeres 216–218 Tony 92

306 Index Torregrossa, Jorge 235 Totti, Maurizio 148 Tozzi, Riccardo 23–24, 148 TPQLS 271 Trabant 203 Traición (Treason) 233 Treasure Island 63 The Trial 138 True Blood 130 Truffaut, François 131, 139–140 Trump, Donald 170 Trylogia (Trilogy) 263 The Tudors 125 Türkisch fur Anfänger (Turkish for Beginners) 205 Turner 47, 180, 217 Tűzvonalban (In the Firing Line) 291 TV2 128, 284 TV3 222 TVN 266 TVP1 262 TVP2 262 Twardoch, Szczepan 273 Twenty Four 9 Films 181 Twin Peaks 138–139 Twitter 162 Tykwer, Tom 28, 185, 201, 207 Typhoon AG 196 Ucho prezesa (The Chairman’s Ear) 271 UFA 180–181, 206; Fiction 198–199, 206; Serial Drama 206; Show & Factual 206 UIH 278 Ulloa, Tristán 231–232 Umbre (Shadows; Small Time Gangster) 248, 251, 282–283, 289–290 Un asunto privado (A Private Affair) 238 Un Natale coi fiocchi 146–147 Un Natale per due 146–147 Un posto al sole 149 United Artists 207 Unity Media 206 Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter (Generation War) 180, 204 Upstairs, Downstairs 94 Urban Myth Films 235 Urbizu, Enrique 221 US West 278 USA Today 170 Valea Mută (The Silent Valley; Øyevitne) 248, 282–283, 289

Valenti, Leonardo 150 Valkow, Atanas 267 Valsecchi, Pietro 149 Vampires 107 Varázslatos gladiátorok (Wonderful Gladiators) 291 Variety 74 Velvet 42, 221, 232–236 Velvet Colección (Velvet Collection) 8, 40, 42, 218, 222, 233–236 Venice Film Festival 26, 169 Vera 234 Verasani, Grazia 42 Verdachtsfälle 199 Vergüenza (Shame) 40, 218, 223–224 Vernon Subutex 121, 125 Versailles 38–40, 121–122, 127–128 Vía Digital 215 Viacom 74 Victoria 94–96 Vida perfecta (Perfect Life) 223 A vida por diante 229 Videoload 195 Virgin Media 74 Vis a Vis 221 Vivendi 108, 119, 216, 235 Vivere 149 The Voice of Germany 199 von Borries, Achim 28, 201 von Trier, Lars 139 VOX 178 Voz Audiovisual 229–230 Wajda, Andrzej 263–264, 287 Wall Street Journal 170 Wall to Wall 74 Walter Presents 191, 200, 205 War and Peace 97 Warhol, Andy 139 The War of the Worlds 94 Warner Bros. 51, 74, 150, 185–186 WarnerMedia 244, 257 Was nutzt die Liebe in Gedanken (Love in Thoughts) 201 Wasteland (Pustina) 251, 282–283, 289–290 Wataha (The Pack/The Wolfpack) 251, 259, 269, 272–273, 282–283, 289–290 Waterson, Jim 95–97 WDR – Westdeutscher Rundfunk 179 Web Therapy 43, 223 Weinberg (Vineyard) 180 Weissensee 180

Index  307 Wells, H.G. 94 Wenger, Piers 95, 200 The West Wing 131 Westworld 259, 269, 288 Wiedemann & Berg 22, 47, 186 Wilder 149 Wildside 22–26, 47, 51, 54, 149, 153 Winger, Anna 183, 198–200, 206 Winger, Jorg 183, 198 The Wire 120, 130–131, 196, 202 WoCC – Window of Creative Competition 73 Wolf Hall 73 The Woods 259 Wotling, Olivier 127 Woytila, Karol 167 X Factor 145, 158 X Filme 26, 184, 201, 207 XIII, la série (XIII: The Series) 121 Yellin, Todd 88 Yo soy Betty, la fea 248

Yomvi 215–216 You Are Wanted 7, 41, 58, 181–186, 206 Young, Jonathan 249 The Young Pope 4, 7, 22–26, 36, 59, 121, 146–148, 153, 158–162, 165–174, 252 Youth 165 YouTube 78–79, 124, 195, 222, 271 Zach, Ondřej 246, 251 Zander, Doris 206 ZDF 63–64, 178–184, 195–199, 204–206 Zębaty, Wojciech 267 Zeppotron 22 ZeroZeroZero 20–21, 26 Ziegler Film 180 Żmijowisko (A Nest of Vipers) 273 Zodiak 114 Zoo Productions 74 Żulczyk, Jakub 266, 269–270, 273