After two years of online BBC Showcases the 2023 Showcase is set to give an insight into the year ahead for BBC Studios, kicking off in London from February 27th.
Mediaweek spoke to Caroline Stone, BBC Studios Commercial Director of Scripted, about what this year’s Showcase will look like and what it means for Australian partners.
This year will see a new-look Showcase, being held in London instead of traditional Liverpool. Can you tell me a bit about what it’s going to look like and what some of the changes are?
“It’s definitely different! I’ve done the Showcase event that we used to do in Liverpool, which was this big extravaganza – we had all our buyers up there for about three days. This is different, we really looked at what our buyers have needed since the pandemic and during the pandemic.
“We really wanted to do something that felt a bit more boutique. We know from listening to our key buyers that they wanted to have more access to our producers, so we’ve really focused on making sure that can happen, making it feel like they can come into the BBC Studios world a bit more. We’ve also made it more accessible, London is easier, everyone flies into London, they don’t have to move up to Liverpool.
“I’m really buzzing about it, I’m excited to see how it goes.”
The way that some of your projects will be financed has changed, could you tell me about that?
“What’s great about BBC Studios is that we’ve got this amazing global distribution team, which is huge. We’re constantly evolving and looking at different ways of how to help shows get financed.
“We still do deficit financing where the show gets commissioned, and then we step in to fund the deficit so the show gets made. But we also do big co-productions – we’ve done a co-production in Germany with The Chelsea Detective, we do a lot in the States, we’re now doing big global co-productions, and we’re doing a lot of big pre sales as well where the money helps to fund the show. There are different models, and I think we’ll keep evolving.
“We’ve got brilliant commercial expertise and studios to really make sure that we can help the production companies that we own to fund the shows that they want to make.”
The BBC is currently doing a lot of work creating shows for non-BBC channels and streamers, and you’ve recently taken a minority investment in a premium scripted indie Turbine Studios. What do you look for when it comes to partners?
“From our production side, we’re looking for the best creative talent we can work with, and I think that’s always been what we’ve looked for. Most of the companies we back are British, because we’re part of the BBC that’s important to us – it’s in our DNA.
“I’m so excited about Turbine Studios. I’ve worked with them for a long, long time, and now I’m working with them more closely. They have this big global show, Constellation, with Apple, so it’s exciting to see what they can do.
“We look at producers who can work for a number of different commissioners – whether that be BBC, ITV, Channel Four, Sk, or can they work for the big global streamers? We’re looking to try and help create brilliant storytelling that actually travels around the world.”
What will the focus be for BBC Studios over the next 12 months?
“We’ve just had a restructure, we’re now very much focused on the genres. They’re all under one big BBC Studios production hub now, and I sit in the scripted division. Then there’s factual – that’s where natural history, science, and doc sit – then there’s children’s and family, and international production formats. So we are quite targeted now, that’s really exciting to me.
“I work across all our independent producers, there are 10 – six we fully own and we have a minority ownership in four. Then there are our three in-house production units as well. It feels like we’ve got the size and scale now to really try and make sure we’re making for audiences globally, which I’m so excited about.”
From your perspective, what are some of the highlights of the upcoming slate?
“We’ve got Six Four, which is House Productions’ new crime drama that is based on a Japanese book of the same name. It’s hugely successful in Japan, and they’ve reimagined it for the UK audience, but I think it will, it will travel really well.
“One that I’m buzzing about is called Boiling Point, you might have seen the film. It was very buzzy in the UK and it won some BAFTAs, so that’s been commissioned as a TV series.
“We’ve got another one from one of our own companies Clerkenwell, they’ve got a new show called True Love which is for Channel Four. It’s a bit different for them, because the main protagonists are in their 70s and it’s a very cool premise about two people who come back into each other’s lives after not seeing each other for 30 or 40 years.
“Then we’ve got Devil’s Peak which has just finished production. That’s all set in South Africa, and based on books by Deon Meyer who is one of South Africa’s biggest novelists. It’s a crime thriller that’s beautifully written, and it’s all set in Cape Town.”
It sounds like you’ve found a lot of great existing stories to work with.
“I think IP is more important than ever. We’re trying to work a lot earlier to source that IP. We’re asking how we can help develop it, we’re doing a lot with the producers that we have, and asking how can we help them find the stories they want to find?”
What is the key message for partners and advertisers for us down here in the Australian market?
“Australia is so important to us and our business, it’s such a critical territory for us and it’s a really important relationship. We cherish the broadcasters in Australia – the ABC is so important to us, and we’ve recently renewed a new agreement with them. There’s also BBC First, which is on Foxtel, another important relationship. They’re integral to making sure the shows get made.
“The message to them is that we’d love to do more. We’d love to open up co-production conversations and do bigger pre-sales with them, we’re listening to what they want. I’ve always loved meeting them as well and trying to work out how we can do more. We’ve seen the successes of The Cry and The Tourist.
“That’s a huge thing for me, to try and find an opportunity to come to Australia more and to find shows that work for Australian buyers out there.”