CANNES – Marriage and TV are very different, except when it comes to keeping both new and exciting. So when a trio of industry heavy-hitters gathered Tuesday at MIPCOM to offer their take on how to reap the rewards of today's golden age of TV, their advice sounded as if it was aimed at newlyweds.
Keep it simple, keep it fresh.
Shaftesbury CEO Christina Jennings recalled a dinner Monday night on the Croissette with a French broadcaster of The Listener, which has just received a fifth season order from CTV to get to 65 episodes.
"I said to him, why does it work for you? And they said because it's easy," she recalled. The one hour drama that stars Craig Olejnik as a mind-reading crime solver works in primetime, Jennings reported hearing, or can run during the day, or anywhere else on a schedule. "It's a show you can pop in and out of. It's not too dark or gritty," she said the French broadcaster added.
The takeaway for Jennings was, in a TV business dominated by serialization and dark shows like The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, "we need a balance."
And TV needs new voices and fresh ideas, Sheri Elwood, the creator and showrunner of HBO Canada's Call Me Fitz, told the MIPCOM panel. The Canadian comedy from Amaze Film & Television, Entertainment One and Big Motion Pictures features Jason Priestley as a foul-mouthed used-car salesman has just launched its fourth season in Canada after being sold worldwide.
But Elwood said getting her first TV comedy off the ground before launching in 2010 was an uphill battle. "I dragged the script around everywhere. And the note I got back the most was fantastic writing, but you have to make the main character nicer," she recalled.
Making a TV show accessible and easy for everyone to watch? That’s not Call Me Fitz. "Our show is very serialized, so you can't pop in and out," she remarked, betraying her passionate trust in her material as a showrunner.
Another strategy to keep it fresh is bringing film directors to TV. Take Daniel Grou. The Quebec film director doesn't even distinguish between lensing movies or TV episodes. "It's a movie," Grou says of 19-2, the Radio-Canada cop drama that became a huge primetime hit in Quebec before Bell Media recently ordered an English-language adaptation for its Bravo channel.
"From my end, it's simple. I never approach a TV series like a traditional TV series. It's a movie," he explained. The result is being able to take more risks, to be innovative. "Our season two opener (for 19-2) had a 13 minute shot," Grou recalled.
What also worked for 19-2 in Quebec, and will be attempted with the English-Canadian remake, is making a cop show that goes into the heads of beat officers, rather than making an action crime drama. "We're trying to get into the psychology of the cops. It's not based on the action as much as what they are thinking," Grou argued.
The result is Canadian TV getting the good stories and storytellers to make it fresh and accessible – especially as people increasingly avoid the multiplex for complex cable dramas on their TV sets or digital devices. "TV is filling the gap between monster movies and art films. The intelligent cinema is missing from our screens, and it's on TV now," Grou said.
