Issue #4 April 2016 The magazine celebrating television’s golden era of scripted programming New cop on the block New detective in the vineyard South Pacific Pictures for Prime, New Zealand DI Mike Shepherd walked out of the vineyard and into global success. all3mediainternational.com @all3media_int Scripted OFC Apr16.indd 2 16/03/2016 14:12 TBI_FC_BROKENWOOD_AD_v2.indd 1 16/03/2016 12:14 Zodiak Rights presents… Set in the wild Australian outback, a brand new A federal police officer investigating a series psychological thriller based on the international of child murders is ordered to protect hit feature films of the same name. public enemy #1. A 10-part thriller. Provocative, intense and addictive, an epic The true story of how the terrorist bombing of the retelling of the story of Versailles. For Canal+ infamous Greenpeace boat, The Rainbow Warrior, and coming soon to the BBC. ultimately ended nuclear testing in the Pacific. Distinctive and critically acclaimed BAFTA winning drama returns with three hours of compelling television for the BBC. Ground-breaking political suspense thriller from an original idea by Jo Nesbo and the makers of The Millennium Trilogy. The best new drama launch ever for TV2 Norway. The highest-rating crime drama of all time on Canal+ and International Emmy Award winner. Brand new 4th series. Series dramatising the Easter Rising and the Second series of the original International violent birth of modern Ireland. For RTE in Emmy Award winning supernatural drama. co-production with Sundance TV. MIPTV Stand C20.A zodiakrights.com ScriptedpIFC-01 Zodiak Apr16.indd 2 16/03/2016 14:23 TBI_DPS_MIPTV16_Drama_AW.indd 1 14/03/2016 15:09 Zodiak Rights presents… Set in the wild Australian outback, a brand new A federal police officer investigating a series psychological thriller based on the international of child murders is ordered to protect hit feature films of the same name. public enemy #1. A 10-part thriller. Provocative, intense and addictive, an epic The true story of how the terrorist bombing of the retelling of the story of Versailles. For Canal+ infamous Greenpeace boat, The Rainbow Warrior, and coming soon to the BBC. ultimately ended nuclear testing in the Pacific. Distinctive and critically acclaimed BAFTA winning drama returns with three hours of compelling television for the BBC. Ground-breaking political suspense thriller from an original idea by Jo Nesbo and the makers of The Millennium Trilogy. The best new drama launch ever for TV2 Norway. The highest-rating crime drama of all time on Canal+ and International Emmy Award winner. Brand new 4th series. Series dramatising the Easter Rising and the Second series of the original International violent birth of modern Ireland. For RTE in Emmy Award winning supernatural drama. co-production with Sundance TV. MIPTV Stand C20.A zodiakrights.com ScriptedpIFC-01 Zodiak Apr16.indd 3 16/03/2016 14:23 TBI_DPS_MIPTV16_Drama_AW.indd 1 14/03/2016 15:09 8 X 1 HOUR / DRAMA SERIES 10 X 1 HOUR / THRILLER SERIES 8 X 1 HOUR / POLITICAL THRILLER SERIES COME VISIT US AT MIPTV / STAND P1. A1. [email protected] / www.studiocanaltvseries.com Scriptedp02 StudioCanal Apr16.indd 1 16/03/2016 13:52 In this issue Editor’s Note History has always been the most fertile soil for scriptwriters: what is more dramatic than the events of real-life, after all? History plays a pretty big role in this issue of TBI Scripted, too. Our in-depth reports on new high-end dramas coming to market take us to post-World War II Paris and the brutal 18th and 19th Century worlds of the United States. The Collection – an Amazon Studios, BBC Worldwide, France 3, 6 10 Lookout Point and Federation Entertainment coproduction – is set in a high-end Parisian house that emerged at the end of WWII, while Roots, a reworking of the revolutionary 1977 ABC miniseries, takes a harrowing journey into the world of African slave trading that existed in early America before and after the country’s official establishment on July 4, 1776, while showing how an enslaved family survives the hardships. Making one of history’s larger-than-life figures, Queen Victoria, relatable, was the challenge for Daisy Goodwin, who we know best in TV circles as the former ‘head girl’ of Silver River Productions, the UK factual producer she founded. Her first-person account of writing an ITV drama about the younger years of the famous British royal, who ruled the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901, focuses on imaging how a person goes from being a youthful teenager to the most powerful person in England overnight. Imagining the future is an equally popular activity for television’s best 12 14 writing talent. We hear from Braquo creator Olivier Marchal, who tells us about his new dystopian drama Section Zero, which considers a Europe in which evil mega-corporations have taken control of the continent and the police are forced to become gun-toting freedom fighters. Author Lawrence Hill had a similar idea with The Illegal, which we review in our regular feature ‘Award winner’. Set in a dark near- future Europe, the Canada-created series, which went down a treat in Berlin’s European Film Market, pulls in themes relevant to today’s world, such as immigration and how we treat refugees. 2 0 16 20 Our immediate future at TBI Scripted is a trip to Cannes for MIPTV, where the first MIPDrama Screenings will take place. We’ll see you there, or perhaps at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival. Contents TV drama? It’s history in the making. 4 Award winner: The Illegal Jesse Whittock 6 In the spotlight: Stephen Poliakoff 10 In depth: Section Zero TBI editorial director Stewart Clarke • [email protected] • @TBIstewart TBI Scripted editor Jesse Whittock • [email protected] • @TBI_Jesse 12 Interview: Domingo Corral, Movistar Sales manager Kate Roach • [email protected] 14 In depth: The Collection Art director Matthew Humberstone • [email protected] 16 In depth: Roots Publisher Tim Banham • [email protected] Published by Informa, Maple House, 149 Tottenham Court Road, 18 Festival watch: Monte-Carlo TV Festival London W1T 7AD Tel: +44 (0)20 7017 5000 e-mail: [email protected] web: www.tbivision.com 20 Country focus: Brazilian drama Printed in England by Wyndeham Grange Ltd, Southwick, West Sussex BN4 4EJ 24 Regional focus: MENA drama © 2016 Informa UK Ltd All rights reserved Reproduction without permission is prohibited 26 Berlin’s Dirty Dozen 16 Writer’s room: Daisy Goodwin on Victoria @TBImagazine TBI Scripted | April 2016 3 Scriptedp03 Contents + Ed Apr16scJWscJW.indd 3 18/03/2016 18:51 Award-winner Legitimate success for The Illegal D’Oliveira is best known as the production partner of director-screenwriter Clement Virgo and frequent collaborator Lawrence Hill. The trio worked up CBC’s critically acclaimed The Book of Negroes, which last year gave the Canadian pubcaster its biggest ratings for an original drama since The Road to Avonlea in January 1990. The result for cable net BET in US cable was similarly strong numbers. The Book of Negroes was screened at Berlinale/EFM’s first Drama Series Day last year, which D’Oliveira describes as “a great experience”. After that, the festival’s organisers asked the production team if they had other projects that could be pitched, bringing our story into 2016. D’Oliveira quips that the organisers loved The Illegal as “it wasn’t a crime drama set in Europe”. It is, in fact, based on a best-selling Hill novel, just as The Book of Negroes was. The At the CoPro Series pitching competition in Berlin, new project follows a talented African runner the team behind The Book of Negroes was successful who lives in the corrupt, fictional, near-future with a dystopian drama with dark tones that strikes state of Zantoroland. a chord with contemporary current affairs After a government coup destroys his family, Ali is forced to seek asylum in Freedom State, a mostly-white, authoritarian ith the mass coverage of the (Friland Produksjon) and Lucky Per nightmare of a democracy that the producers Syrian refugee crisis, it was (Nordisk Film Production). say is reminiscent of Airstrip One in George perhaps inevitable that a show Despite being a film-actor-turned- Orwell’s 1984. He soon falls in with residents covering similar themes would veteran-producer, Damon D’Oliveira, co- of an underground community, Africtown, Wcatch attention of investors at the CoPro founder of Illegal producer Conquering where those hunted by the state can find Series pitching event in Berlin at the Berlinale Lion Pictures, says pitching in front of 350 security for a price. He is then forced to take Co-Production Market in February. people was a “nerve wracking, first-time part in a series of gruelling marathons that The Illegal, about an African immigrant living experience”, adding: “This was my first D’Oliveira says gives the proposed eight-part illegally in a dystopian European state, was time doing a public pitch; I normally just series a “Hunger Games element”. named the winner of the competition, meaning meet people over coffee.” The project was in the works long before the its producers now go on to present at the Séries In the event, it was worthwhile. After Suzanne Collins novel series was turned into Mania competition in Paris this month, as part beating off competition to win the contest, films, however. “Lawrence Hill conceptualised of a ‘project exchange programme’. he had 22 meetings in Germany’s capital The Illegal back in the 1980s, when his sister lived The official selection for the competition city and has been inundated with interest in Berlin,” says D’Oliveira.