18/10/2024 – The 2024 edition shed light on the types of shows that viewers are watching across Europe and took a deep dive into four scripted series
The series A Better Place (© WDR/Komplizen Serie/Wolfgang Ennenbach)
On 18 October, Film Festival Cologne moved into its second day of programming with the European Series Day, which once again dedicated itself to showcasing trends, updates and new content within the European series market. The event was organised by Film Festival Cologne in cooperation with ifs Internationale Filmschule Köln, Creative Europe Desk NRW and Film- und Medienstiftung NRW.
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After a short welcome by Heike Meyer-Döring, of Creative Europe Desk NRW, the day kicked off with a market overview presentation by Siméon Mirzayantz, regional business manager for CEEMEA and Southern Europe at Glance, Médiamétrie’s international television branch dedicated to audience metrics across Europe and around the world. Looking at the last season of television with a focus on eight countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey [with data from the European side] and the UK), he noted that national content still dominated primetime viewership across all viewers.
The top ten scripted series in the UK, France, Germany and Italy were domestic productions or national co-productions with other countries. In Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Turkey, the number-one scripted series were all domestic productions. In particular, in the United Kingdom and Turkey, main channels aired more than 80% domestic series during primetime slots.
The top three exporting countries were the USA, with 46% of series; the UK, with 16%; and Turkey, with 12%. For shows exported from the USA, Germany and Italy were the top two destinations, and the UK’s top two clients were Denmark and the Netherlands. Turkey’s primary client was Spain: “In Spain, 80% of what is non-domestic, what are foreign series, has been from Turkey [over the last] two years,” revealed Mirzayantz. “There’s been tremendous success for Turkish series in Spain.”
Forty-four percent of shows on offer in the last season were crime shows, followed by drama, with 34%. There were fewer comedies and telenovelas than dramas, and both occupied a smaller viewership. Mirzayantz also brought the audience’s attention to several trends across the most popular European scripted series, with a noticeable number of shows that are lighthearted and character-driven crime genres. This type of series dominated the French, Danish and German markets, and also appears the most in the top ten scripted series watched by all individuals. Of this niched-down genre, he highlighted two examples, The Good Ship Murder (UK) and Panda (France), which, interestingly enough, both feature recognisable stars from reality-TV singing shows playing the leading character of a former policeman.
Other top trends were family series highlighting parenting and witty angles on cultural identity (Denmark’s De Bedste År, Ireland’s Faithless), reality-based fiction series focused on nationally well-known events from recent history and ordinary characters (Spain’s Las Abogadas, the UK’s Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office) and series based on cinema IP (Poland’s The Butler, Italy’s All You Need Is Crime).
The European Series Day also included case studies from creators, showrunners, producers, writers and directors affiliated with A Better Place, The Kollective, Moresnet and Soviet Jeans [+see also:
series review
series profile], all moderated by Torsten Zarges, chief reporter at DWDL.de. A Better Place is the first German series under the StudioCanal umbrella, co-produced with Komplizen Serien (the television arm of Germany’s Komplizen Film, known for Spencer [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Toni Erdmann [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Maren Ade
film profile]), and to be streamed on ARD Mediathek and broadcast on Das Erste. StudioCanal Series producer Nicolas Loock described the series as using the hook, “Imagine a world without prisons.”
Komplizen Serien producer David Keitsch noted that A Better Place, compared to many of the shows highlighted in Mirzayantz’s presentation, is “pretty customised” and has a “boutique character”. He described the series as “connect[ing] ethical human questions of revenge and forgiveness with a very concrete and timely social topic”. From the start, it was clear to Keitsch that public broadcasting would be the best choice for the series, as the team were sure that they would “be able to defend their creative freedom within this constellation way more than in a complete or total streaming solution”.
Femke Wolting, a producer for the Netherlands’ Submarine, held a similar view for the upcoming series The Kollective, which was commissioned by The European Alliance (made up of German-French-Italian public broadcasters ZDF, France Télévisions and RAI – see the news). As the show grew to become a very global thriller, the producers understood that its discussion of politicised topics might deter streamers. In the end, the broadcasters never asked them to change anything with a more political bent.
Wolting introduced the show as being very loosely inspired by digital investigative outlets such as Bellingcat. While the writers did a week-long journalism workshop with the organisation, she emphasised that the series is neither based directly on Bellingcat nor based on real people or events.
“The brilliant thing about the citizen journalist movement is that these communities come together from all over the world – they are very disparate but are connected by a central motivation,” added Edward Hemming, one of the writers. This also allowed for the casting of a group of international actors, and the series was shot in Kenya alongside four European countries. Wolting noted that the show made the most sense as an English-language series, as it “was organically the language that the characters would speak with each other”, living all around the world.
The originators of the series shared a fascination for this deeply compelling topic of accessible citizen journalism, but they needed to find collaborators who could bring it to life beyond the protagonists sitting behind computers. This led to the series integrating pieces of stock footage and bringing on board visual effects artists to create special computer-generated elements, shared Randa Chahoud, who directed half of the episodes. The Kollective, which had an overall budget of €19 million, received development funding as well as TV and online content funding from Creative Europe – MEDIA.
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Publish date : 2024-10-18 06:25:00
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