Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6.04.2015
European TV serials
Learning from “Mad Men”
By Hernán D. Caro
Right now Europe’s most exciting serials come from Italy. Meanwhile, there is huge demand in
Germany for good screenwriters. Virtually all film schools continue to focus on traditional film
production.
The list of countries where the television serials revolution – now not so very revolutionary any
more – has taken root just keeps growing and growing. Whilst the main focus of the debate
nowadays in the United States, where it all kicked off, is on whether the best TV serials are still
actually on television rather than on Netflix or Amazon, in Europe this new mode of TV storytelling
is at long last starting to spread across the continent. Serials have long conquered the UK or
Scandinavia, and exciting serials have been emerging in France too. However, it is probably in Italy
that the most interesting developments are currently unfolding.
Last year the Mafia series “Gomorrha”, with its hard-hitting look at the brutal world of the
Camorra, met with enthusiastic responses from international audiences. Just a few days ago, “1992”
had its European premiere on the Sky Pay TV channel, following up on the successful screening of
the first two seasons at the last Berlinale. “1992” addresses a fateful year for Italy: that was the year
in which the “Mani Pulite” (“Clean Hands”) legal investigations began to uncover a huge network
of corruption, abuse of office and illegal party funding that permeated the entire country. To this
day Italian politics are defined by the tragic epilogue to that campaign: the irresistible rise of Silvio
Berlusconi.
Great cinema, great literature
“1992” is a bold, marvellously narrated serial. Just like its forerunner “Gomorrha”, it has no qualms
about engaging mercilessly with the country’s recent history, confronting viewers with complex
plots and brutish violence, and is ambitious enough to tell a tragic story in an elaborate, artistic
mode: not just great cinema but above all great literature. How did that happen?
Nicola Lusuardi, screenwriter and lecturer at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome,
is the one who holds all the threads together as the scriptwriting team for “1992” does its work. For
the past few years he has also been investigating the specific hallmarks that distinguish TV serials
and the cultural significance of the phenomenon. His 2010 book “La Rivoluzione Seriale” is the
fruit of these studies. Lusuardi believes that a number of different factors are at work in the recent
reinvigoration of Italian television. “For decades now, Italy has experienced evil in the form of
organised crime, and there is a tradition of Mafia stories. When Roberto Saviano wrote ‘Gomorrha’
in 2006, it was immediately apparent that the plethora of characters and conflicts from the Camorra
universe provided an ideal underpinning to tell a story that is much more complex and unfolds at a
considerably slower pace than standard cinema narration”, he explains.
The team that created the “Gomorrha” serial had already gained experience with story-telling in this
format thanks to their involvement in “Romanzo Criminale”, a Mafia serial that was a big hit when
it screened in Italy between 2008 and 2010. “The key factor, however,” Lusuardi emphasises, “was
Sky Italia.” He explains that the broadcaster decided it wanted to play a leading role in the Italian
television system and realized there was only one way to produce high-quality serials: “By listening
to scriptwriters and producers, letting them do their job in peace and giving them the freedom to
carry a concept all the way through to its logical conclusion”. The hugely positive response to
“Gomorrha” encouraged Sky to continue in this direction, and that is how the idea for a serial with
international ambitions was born: “1992”.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6.04.2015
Complex and morally ambivalent
That tale reminds us of the impact twenty years ago in the United States when pay-TV channel
HBO decided to produce its own content, which had a very different flavour to the usual overcorrect, innocuous TV shows. HBO opted to give free rein to two scriptwriters, Tom Fontana and
David Chase – although a number of other channels had for years judged their ideas to be
excessively complex, violent, and morally ambivalent, and therefore not television material.
Fontana’s serial, “Oz”, broadcast between 1997 and 2003, addresses a multi-ethnic prison: a hotbed
of machinations, rape and murder – and an extremely unsettling reflection of US society.
Chase wanted to tell a story about a “difficult character”. His serial concept focused on an ItaloAmerican Mafia boss: torn between his two “families”, he has started psychotherapy and is on the
verge of imploding. That serial, which hit TV screens from 1999 to 2007, is, of course, “The
Sopranos”. Both serials are now viewed as classics, paving the way for later famous examples such
as “The Wire”, “Breaking Bad” or “Mad Men”.
Has Italy’s time now come? Has the European serials revolution now got going there as well?
“Not really”, says Nicola Lusuardi. He thinks that “Gomorrha” is in the first instance a “lucky onehit wonder”. Only time will tell whether further seasons of the serial, and indeed of “1992”, will be
well-received by international viewers too. There is however no doubt that European TV makers are
starting to understand – albeit with a two-decade time lag – that the only way for them to survive is
to produce drama that is as well-made as American or British serials and just as multi-layered in the
topics it tackles. The sell-out serials screenings during the last Berlinale made very clear that there
is huge audience interest. And outstanding work such as “Borgen” and “The Bridge” from
Scandinavia, or the French production “Les Revenants” shows that ambitions have already been
notched up a scale or two.
Specific serial dramaturgy
However, there is still a lot of work ahead before the serials revolution really arrives in Europe, in
Lusuardi’s view. “Serials function on the basis of entirely different mechanisms from films, where
the story is what really counts. A television serial has to conjure up a whole world and create
characters that can generate endless conflicts, and, as a result, endless stories. And a serial that
really wants to stand out from the crowd has to throw up questions right from the first episode, even
metaphysical questions, that can, if need be, remain unresolved for years.”
The screenwriters for the best American series are the fruit of an extremely active, competitive
television system. Before Vince Gilligan dreamt up “Breaking Bad”, he had written screenplays for
“The X Files” for many years; Matthew Weiner, the man behind “Mad Men”, and Terence Winter,
the inventor of “Boardwalk Empire”, were both on the scriptwriter team for “The Sopranos”. In
Europe, Lusuardi explains, “the structures are completely different. Virtually all film schools
continue to focus on traditional film production and still cling to the principle of a single
screenwriter, although work on high-quality serials calls for a well-functioning scriptwriter team. If
we want brilliant European serials, first we need to train people to create them”.
With that goal in mind, two years ago the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb)
launched “Serial Eyes”, an intensive study course taught in English. Nicola Lusuardi is one of the
lecturers on the programme, along with other renowned creative stars from the TV industry in
Europe and the United States, such as “Oz”-inventor Fontana, “The X Files” screenwriter Frank
Spotnitz or Danish producer Sven Clausen. Every year, twelve screenwriters and film producers
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6.04.2015
who are already active professionally can, for a 4,500 Euro fee, devote their energies to eight
intensive months of study in the programme. They have a unique opportunity in the course to learn
about the specific dramaturgy, meaning and language of TV serials and to develop their own
concept for a serial. The approach “Serial Eyes” adopts is modelled on working methods used in the
United States and now deployed in Scandinavia too: cooperating in the “Writers Room”, with a
“showrunner” – as the lead screenwriter on a serial is called – at the helm.
Close to the television industry
“Serial Eyes”, the only such programme in Europe so far, came into being in response to a practical
problem. Producer Klaus Zimmermann (“Die Patin”, “Borgia” and “Transporter”), one of the cofounders of “Serial Eyes”, explains the back-story. In 2011, when preparations were underway for
“Borgia” – one of the first experiments in creating a top-notch English-language series in Europe –
the production team was hunting for young European screenwriters to join Tom Fontana’s “Writers
Room”. “We noticed how few people in Europe have the necessary training or experience to write
good television serials”, Zimmermann explains. “Serial Eyes” set out to change that – and to create
a new generation of screenwriters and producers, finally equipped to make production of top-quality
serials in Europe more than just a matter of a “lucky one-hit wonder”.
That is no easy task. One of the priorities for “Serial Eyes” is “working as close to the European
television industry as possible”, explains Programme Director Lorraine Sullivan, who has worked in
Paris and Los Angeles for commercial broadcasters, as well as organising “Totally Serialized”, a
festival dedicated to serials. The training programme includes sessions where participants meet
broadcasting executives and producers in London, Copenhagen and Cannes, along with regular
practice in pitching concepts for serials vividly enough to pique the interest of even the least
imaginative commissioning editor. However the European TV industry, especially risk-averse
public broadcasters, moves very slowly. Germany is an especially illuminating example. “Serial
Eyes” is organised with funding from the EU’s Creative Europe programme, the London Film
School and RTL. In Sullivan’s diplomatic formulation, ZDF “did express some interest”. But so far
the broadcaster has not come on board with genuine financial or institutional support – which would
be really important for this ambitious programme, which is not just high level but correspondingly
rather cost-intensive.
Does Europe need its own serials?
In a few weeks time participants from year two of “Serial Eyes” will be launched onto the market.
Some of the concepts they have devised have certainly got what it takes to become the next hit
European serials. But do screenwriters in Europe really have a chance? Or would they be better off
looking for their “Writers Room” in Los Angeles or London, as some “Serial Eyes” participants
comment self-deprecatingly?
Ultimately it all boils down to whether Europe needs good television serials at all or whether we
should just keep on watching serial drama from the United States and Great Britain instead. Nicola
Lusuardi thinks that there is indeed an urgent need to act, for there is much more at stake than just
television. “It’s about politics too”, Lusuardi asserts vigorously. “If European politicians want to
move beyond the EU’s purely economic foundations, that policy goal needs to be reinforced by a
sense of community among the citizens of Europe. European screenwriters, producers and directors
have a historical opportunity to foster that feeling, and a responsibility to do so too. How? By
creating mythologies and worlds that reflect Europeans lives and serve as a conduit for shared
aesthetic and cultural values. Of course we need good television serials. And they must become the
‘Odysseys’ of the new Europe.”