European commissioners look to UK for scripted partnerships

European broadcasters are looking to increase partnerships with their UK-based counterparts, as budget squeezes continue to impact scripted output across the continent.

Production costs have soared in the UK and across Europe over the past three years, putting increased focus on coproductions and closer partnerships to share budgets.

A recent report from UK trade body Pact revealed international production revenues have risen, and European co-productions have been talked up in recent years, despite the drop-off from the US. However, the production model can remain a fraught process with multiple partners, despite its increasing importance.

Manuel Alduy, the former Disney exec who heads up acquisitions and international co-productions at France TV, said that working with British partners “had been too UK-centric previously”.

Alduy, who was speaking at Content London, added that many UK shows tended to be too domestic for his audience and that producers in both countries needed to “try to share things from our cultures”.

Elly Vervloet, international drama commissioner at Belgium’s VRT, agreed that a “cultural shift” was required to improve the types of shows emerging from European and UK partnerships.

VRT is part of the year-old commissioning club New8, which earlier this week unveiled its first drama, Queen of Fucking Everything.

The show is produced by Finland’s Rabbit Films and was originally commissioned by domestic operator YLE, but deals have also been struck with club members ZDF in Germany, NPO in the Netherlands, NRK in Norway, and RUV in Iceland, alongside VRT.

Vervloet said part of the problem with partnering up with UK producers is that it has proven “difficult for English drama to land if it’s not rooted in the UK”, but she said the situation is changing.

“We’re also not used to collaborating or co-producing, we need to retrain our commissioners in a way. We hope the UK market will open up and that the process will be reciprocal,” she said.

Mette Nelund, who was appointed head of drama at TV2 in Denmark last year, also underlined the importance of “strategic partnerships to make everything you’d like to.”

She added: “We are a small territory and we can afford a lot of hours ourselves, but if want to make bigger shows than we can afford then we need to work together.”