More screens, more Australian content, less dependence on US studio output and a
game-changing realignment of the technological goalposts promise a fiercely
competitive year in Australian television in 2014.

With analog television a thing of the past, the digital landscape equalises the ”big five”, pay TV and the newer, smaller digital channels, as well as new online players.

But the big money is still sunk into content for flagship channels on free-to-air and pay TV.

Herewith, our guide to what’s in store this year.

SIX OF THE BEST

Australia: The Story of Us (Seven)

A documentary series as a marquee program is an ambitious idea for a commercial network, particularly one that has defined itself in the past as a smart player of a safe game. Australia: The Story of Us, billed as ”more than 40,000 years in the making”, comes from the production company Essential Media.

The Code (ABC)

A ”contemporary [political] thriller stretching from the spectacular red desert of Australia’s outback to the cool corridors of power” from Playmaker Media, the company behind House Husbands and Love Child. The Code boasts an outstanding cast: Adam Garcia, David Wenham, Lucy Lawless, Aden Young, Dan Wyllie, Aaron Pedersen and Paul Tassone.

The Face Australia (FOX8)

The third version of this format, fronted by supermodel Naomi Campbell who, with model mentors Cheyenne Tozzi and Nicole Trunfio, searches for a young model who will become ”the face”. While the genre is well known – notably via another Foxtel series, Australia’s Next Top Model – The Face dials up the drama.

Living with the Enemy (SBS)

Production company Shine Australia pushes into SBS’s Go Back To Where You Came From space with Living with the Enemy, a provocative six-part series which explores ”the faultlines of social cohesion” by taking two people with diametrically opposed views and immersing them in each other’s lives.

Party Tricks (Ten)

Producers John Edwards and Imogen Banks have packaged a star vehicle for their muse Asher Keddie, who stars in another Ten drama, Offspring. Here Keddie and Rodger Corser play colleagues who once had a love affair. It’s a six-part series based on a ”cat-and-mouse game which culminates in an election-night finale”.

Schapelle (Nine)

A telemovie from Fremantle Media based on the arrest, trial and conviction of Schapelle Corby in Bali in 2004 and 2005, which, even before its broadcast, has divided the audience and galvanised Schapelle supporters into a campaign against the project. It stars Krew Boylan, Jacinta Stapleton, Denise Roberts and Colin Friels.

Michael Idato – SMH – January 2, 2014

MICHAEL BODEY – The Australian  – September 21, 2013 12:00AM

I BELIEVE we’re “drama-ed out”. Too many good Australian drama series haven’t
attracted the audiences they deserve this year.

One of them, Power Games: The Packer Murdoch Story (M, Roadshow, 250min, $39.95), is released on DVD this week. Another local series, Upper Middle Bogan (M, ABC, 237min, $29.95), perhaps shows where television programmers and producers should head.

This year reminds me of 2005-06, when we saw a generational distaste for Australian drama. The industry got ahead of itself, launching dramas of differing style and budget, including The Cooks, Young Lions and Canal Road. There were too many and we turned off until new funding led to splashier fare such as Sea Patrol, City Homicide and the Underbelly franchise. There has been a run of success since.

We over-egged it this year. Every week, there has been a new Australian drama, “an important story” that “Australia’s talking about”. There is not space for them all.

The accessible, middle-Australia space previously inhabited by Packed to the Rafters is now taken by House Husbands and Winners & Losers. Offspring managed to recover from its mid-season madness to take the quirky space while the jury’s out, just, on Wonderland.

Nine’s reliance on men behaving badly through the Underbelly and the Packerfocused Howzat and Power Games series is telling. Underbelly: Squizzy was competent but began timidly. Power Games is splendid but niche, particularly when Seven’s A Place to Call Home took the period space not taken by ABC1.

The ABC has had winning telemovies such as Cliffy and Mabo, and played to a formulaic strength with Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. But scheduling The Time of Our Lives against Underbelly and House Husbands was the kind of hubris that saw audiences shun local drama.

Which brings me to Upper Middle Bogan. DVD Letterbox enjoys the work of Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope, which includes The Librarians and Very Small Business. They’re not laugh-a-minute comedies but keenly observed and performed beautifully. Anyone who casts Glenn Robbins, Michala Banas and Robyn Nevin, as they did here, knows what they’re doing.

Upper Middle Bogan is a ripper, the kind of narrative comedy we don’t see enough of. It’s a little bigger than most ABC1 comedies without overreaching. And it hits a socio-political moment, the comfort of middle Australia, without being meanspirited. I doubt it would have worked on the commercial networks but it should raise the question: why aren’t Seven, Nine and Ten doing narrative comedy or sitcoms?

They’re happy to air imports, and fill panel and reality shows with comedians. So why not risk the Australian sitcom? It’s not solely the job of the ABC. Is anyone even looking at setting a sitcom around, say, Anh Do? I’d bank on that before another local drama series.

TEN’S new drama Wonderland turned in less-than-wonderful ratings for its second episode, attracting 769,000 viewers in the five capital cities, according to preliminary OzATM data.

Nohr originally accepted the role on a yearlong basis in September 2012 and has
been a consultant to Shine International since 2010, overseeing the relocation and
restructure of Shine Group’s global distribution company in 2011.

By Mansha Daswani – WorldScreen – August 27, 2013

Prior to joining Shine, Nohr had held a variety of roles within international distribution, including that of managing director of Granada International for 12 years. Nohr, the CEO of Shine International, recently spoke to TV Drama about the company’s drama series strategy.

TV DRAMA: Shine International has stepped up its drama offerings over the last year or so.

NOHR: Our scripted story is an incredibly positive one. Just a few years ago, [Shine International] was primarily focused on unscripted. We’re hugely diversified into scripted now and count The Bridge—on FX and sold to 122 countries worldwide—and Broadchurch, ITV’s biggest drama in the last ten years, as part of our portfolio.

The drama portfolio has grown significantly. We’re active at all points of the spectrum, from post-production selling right through to significant deficit funding.

Our production companies are actively co-producing. The Bridge was a coproduction between Shine America and FX. Co-production is one of those terms that is often misused. In [the case of The Bridge] it was a true co-production in every sense—a financial co-production, an editorial co-production, and it just happened to focus on subject matter that genuinely lent itself to co-production between two important countries. The narrative naturally featured a coming together of cultures without this being artificially engineered for financing purposes.

We’re actively discussing a number of co-productions at the moment, and that’s across both our in-house production slate and our third-party activity—we have In the Flesh from the BBC and Real Humans from Matador. One thing we’ve been quite active in is scripted changed-format deals. The Bridge was originally Swedish-Danish [as Bron], then it was made in the States and Mexico and now it’s being made in the U.K. and France [as The Tunnel]. Real Humans is a very strong scripted format.

Broadchurch is being sold all over the world and there’s a lot of interest in that from a format point of view.

TV DRAMA: The Bridge has been very well received by critics in the U.S.

NOHR: I have to say Bron, the Swedish-Danish version, is one of the best dramas I have ever, ever seen. It’s absolutely fantastic. You think, how do you remake that, and have something that stands on its own merit? The Bridge is fantastic and The Tunnel is fantastic. In a world where content is ubiquitous and you have all these different versions of the same story, you think, are people going to only follow one?

And as a fan of the original myself, I would and have quite happily sat and watched all of them. They all bring their own sensibility and their own different resonance and the cultural and political context is different. Look at how many times great works of literature have been adapted and you realize that a great story bears retelling.

TV DRAMA: What are some of the elements needed to create successful coproduction partnerships?

NOHR: Ultimately it has to be story driven. Then it’s about bringing together a limited number of like-minded partners. Realistically, there’s only room for so many people around a table. As a distributor, we’re not here to have a creative seat at the table. That’s not what we do. We’ll invest in productions that we believe have the right qualities to enable them to sell around the world. We’re not here to dilute a producer’s editorial integrity or editorial vision. We have to buy into their vision in order to support the project in the first place.

TV DRAMA: What have been the major changes in the business of making drama co-pros?

NOHR: Some of the principles haven’t changed; there has to be resonance for the various partners and they are often driven by financial necessity, which is where a distributor can help. What has emerged more recently is this trend toward more scripted changed-format productions. It’s a very different model to an (unscripted) entertainment format being rolled out around the world, which is all about creating multiple versions. That isn’t the issue when it comes to scripted. The funding model is very different, and that’s something you have to be a little more careful with. There are some markets, like the U.S. and the U.K., that are still deficit models and they are reliant on investment and support from a distributor to be able to complete the funding. The level of budget required to make these dramas enhances the uniqueness of certain properties and therefore in success makes them highly exportable.

TV DRAMA: What opportunities are you seeing with digital platforms?

NOHR: They have become very significant players and so they add to the roster of buyers you can be selling to. And they’re not just post-production buyers now but coproducers, and in some cases commissioners, of original drama. They’re people we’re talking to at the early development stage of a production.

By Mansha Daswani – WorldScreen – August 27, 2013