FACTUAL FOR A NON-LINEAR AGE FACTUAL TV


the highest rated factual series on British TV in 2022, with audiences building through iPlayer. Rewind just seven years, to the launch of


Making a Murderer on Netflix. Over 19 million viewers watched the intense, immersive true- crime documentary in its first 35 days. Its success marked true crime out as a genre that would attract subscribers to global streaming platforms, alongside drama. With Paramount+, Discovery+, Disney+ still


all in their infancy as global streamers, they still need factual that will bring in an audience that has a world of TV at its fingertips. Factual ideas are heightened, not just ambitious in scope, but shot through with drama and peppered with big names, playing to an audience that’s steeped in Strictly and Bridgerton. “We definitely ask different things of our


producers for a streaming show vs a linear show; and that’s reflected in the price points,” says Laycock. “Streaming audiences expect more gloss, more twists and turns, untold stories and unique access, big talent. There really has to be a strong reason to watch a particular show at a particular moment in time - as opposed to our free-to-air linear brands which thrive on habitual viewing and long running franchises. Where we’re investing in content for discovery+ it has to look and feel like an SVOD production.” Raw TV is known for its documentaries


that stand shoulder to shoulder with drama on streaming platforms. Just two weeks after landing on Netflix, its series Don’t F**k with Cats qualified


UNIQUE ACCESS, BIG TALENT”


TURNS, UNTOLD STORIES AND


EXPECT MORE GLOSS, MORE TWISTS AND


“STREAMING AUDIENCES


as one of the streamer’s Top 5 most-watched documentaries of 2019. The Tinder Swindler clocked up 166m hours of viewing in the first 28 days after release in early 2022. Vatican Girl and Aftershock: Everest and the Nepal Earthquake are the latest Raw titles on the streamer.


NARRATIVE FLOW Dimitri Doganis, founder of Raw, says: “The pressure now is to deliver on the same sense of compelling narrative, fascinating characters, and satisfying arcs as drama does. And the production values also are now reaching for the same aspirations as scripted shows.” Don’t F**k with Cats, Raw’s first piece for


Netflix took a story that had been told many times before and structured it as an unfolding detective story, starting with two animal lovers who meet online trying to track down a man who’s posting terrible animal cruelty videos, and culminating with the murder. Another Raw hit, Three Identical Strangers told


its story of three brothers ignorant of each other’s existence as if the characters were reliving their journeys with the viewer. Doganis points to Banged Up Abroad, first made for Channel 5, now with Nat Geo, as Raw’s original model for telling the story through the eyes of the characters. He describes “creating a sense of an unfolding narrative rather than a kind of retrospective musing on something that happened a long time ago. Putting characters back into that moment, and back into those choices and those emotions.”


Winter 2022 televisual.com 21


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