GENRE REPORT
TV DRAMA
POLLY HILL HEAD OF DRAMA, ITV
What are you looking for on ITV1? The main channel still has all the same drama slots. I still have to find those shows that can have mass, broad appeal, in those familiar territories, but that don’t feel derivative. That’s a challenge. Also, to find shows that are outside crime, because there are so many versions of what we mean by crime – true crime, procedural, thrillers and there’s often a crime thread. We’ve got Maternal coming up next year, which has no crime, so finding shows that genuinely step out of that and still have big enough stories to hold an audience weekly.
I Am series shows our commitment to innovation and championing women’s stories - topical, compelling and insightful - demonstrating how important Channel 4 is to the media landscape. “2023 starts with The Light in The Hall, a Welsh
crime drama co-production with S4C starring Channel 4 alumni Joanna Scanlan and Alexandra Roach, showing our commitment to reflecting all of the UK.” Coming up is also Get Millie Black, Booker-prize winning writer Marlon James’ first original series for TV, and the adaptation of Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams.
UP STREAM According to Ampere, the number of new and
repeat commissions announced for scripted shows has increased significantly on Channel 4, Sky and Channel 5 in the last year. But what about the streamers? “Netflix has been the only streaming service that has consistently competed with the free to air and commercial broadcasters in the UK in the number of scripted commissions,” says Zuzana Henkova, analyst at Ampere. In 2022 Heartstopper, from See-Saw, has been
a stand-out hit, with two more series ordered. While Bridgerton and The Crown have stayed on everyone’s lips. Amazon’s spend on UK content has reached
above £1bn since 2018, but little of it is drama. Although it has recommissioned thriller The Devil’s Hour from Hartswood for two more series and announced tennis drama Fifteen Love, a World Production. While Disney is experiencing bumpy times, it
has irons in the fire. Sid Gentle is in production on a comedy for Disney+, Extraordinary, from writer Emma Moran and Dancing Ledge is behind romance-come-action thriller Wedding Season. The streamers, most still targeting subscribers,
have a menu of thrillers and crime dramas, alongside other drama genres that could bring smaller numbers, but are also a roll of the dice for more unusual mainstream hits. If you look at the Ampere stats more closely,
ITV is almost level pegging with the BBC for the number of crime and thrillers, as it stokes its upcoming ITVX streamer. Paramount+ has more thrillers in the pipeline, after success with The Ex Wife. Fremantle label Dancing Ledge is in production
on a thriller with a supernatural twist, Platform 7 for ITVX. Md Chris Carey says “I’m not sure Platform 7 would have been something that a mainstream channel would have commissioned. Its central themes will be of big interest to an ITV audience, but it’s also a ghost story and to have ITVX support
What difference will ITVX make? We are doing 50 per cent more drama, with ITVX premieres, and that allows us to commission a different sort of show to the dramas on the main channel. It still feels like a big ITV show, it still feels mainstream, but it allows us to go into certain genres that we can’t make on the main channel – maybe horror or fantasy - or the tone can be something that feels cooler, or wittier, or just a bit more heightened. You need to stay quite real, at least in the real world, for it to feel like a show that can work on the main channel... There’s a whole range of shows - as drama evolves and so much content is consumed, - that we want to be part of.
Tell us about some ITVX titles We’ve been looking at stories that we haven’t been telling. You and Me is from a new writer, with young talent, a love story with lots of elements, a romantic comedy. Also, The Winter King, an adaptation of a Bernard Cornwell book that deals with a period in England where life was short and tough, but there was a belief in spirits and Gods, a real-world epic, but it should be able to appeal to that fantasy audience. Passenger which is very deliberately sitting a crime world, but it’s disrupted.
Winter 2022
televisual.com 47
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