Alex Berger: France must embrace US showrunner model

The producer of hit French espionage thriller The Bureau and upcoming Apple original La Maison believes embracing the US showrunner into its drama can help propel France to the forefront of the premium scripted arena.

Alex Berger, who is the creative mind behind Apple TV+’s prestige French fashion drama and exec producer on Paramount+ with Showtime’s US remake of The Bureau, The Agency, adds that combining the country’s creative ‘savoir-faire’ and long-revered financing system with the US’s innovative writer-centric system is the key to successful premium drama.

Berger launched France-based media company The Originals Group (TOG) in 2008 (then known as The Oligarchs) with writer-director Éric Rochant. The outfit, which houses production division The Originals Productions (TOP), expanded on the success of the duo’s flagship series The Bureau (Le Bureau des Légendes), created by Rochant and produced with Federation Studios.

The five-series Canal+ original, which centres on undercover agents at France’s equivalent of the CIA, transformed the way French series were made and catalysed what had until then been a slow crossover of top film industry talent to the small screen.

“Eric’s genius is that he reinvented a genre,” Berger tells Broadcast, adding that such reinvention came with an entirely new process.

“The concept of the showrunner hardly existed in France, including at Canal+,” Berger explains. “We said: we have to start from scratch and show Canal+ how we want to do it. Let’s get people from the movie business – not TV – and teach them what we want to do. Internally as well, we had to learn how to create our own process among ourselves.”

That process has now become the driving force behind TOG, which besides TOP, digital, publishing and music publishing arms, includes US-based company The Originals of America (TOA). Berger says the US label “enables us to do a lot of deals in the US and benefit if necessary from tax rebates and incentives.”

Born in the US to a French mother and American father, Berger has spent most of his life in France and says his duality is a microcosm of TOG’s approach to bridging the divide between Hollywood and France.

Its methodology has made working with major US buyers more seamless, starting with The Agency. The starry remake, produced in association with 101 Studios and Federation, is directed by George Clooney who exec produces with Grant Heslov at Smokehouse Pictures.

Berger says the high-profile producers “got what Le Bureau was and were interested in a show that was a bit different in pace and tone and a little highbrow.” From there, “fantastic talent was attached quickly,” he says of director Joe Wright (Atonement) and screenwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, who are penning all 10 episodes. The show has an A-list cast, headlined by Michael Fassbender with Richard Gere, Jeffrey Wright, and Jodie Turner-Smith.

Blending US, UK and French creativity has also been harmonious, he notes.

“I’m culturally blind when it comes to talent,” Berger says. “We can put writers in a room anywhere in the world. It’s all about finding the right match for every project.

“How do you fit different cultures into one room? Everyone has to [embrace] the common culture of the show, but then we have to impose our corporate culture, our way of doing shows – that’s the hardest part.”

Fresh off the set at Warner Bros Studios, Leavesden where shooting is underway in London, Berger describes The Agency as “The Bureau with Showtime and Paramount dimensions”.

“The set is five times our biggest set at Paris’s Cité du Cinéma. Everything is on steroids.”

“I’m focused on making premium content. We are Hermès as opposed to H+M” 

Berger been pushing to change the ways TV drama is made in France on a broader scale. In 2019, he published an eponymous report in 2019 for France’s media regulator, the CNC, calling for a complete overhaul of the country’s scripted drama market to adapt to a rapidly changing global audiovisual landscape that has seen US studios and streamers flock to France and Europe.

His report proposed putting writers at the centre of the creative process – not an easy sell for a country tied to its ‘seventh art’ filmmaking industry where writer-directors reign.

Despite A-list Hollywood talent beginning to embrace the medium, the concept of collective writing and combining auteur vision with more practical production decisions went against decades of ingrained French filmmaking and storytelling techniques.

“We based the audiovisual system on French cinema, which was sophisticated and set in stone, but we forgot to update it.”

Berger continues to push for government and industry reforms to “impose a system that is good for everyone, that protects local producers, but is also up to date”.

TOG: Less is amour

Besides The Agency, TOP’s other high-profile project 10-episode La Maison, which is set to premiere on Apple TV+ on 20 September.

The star-powered French-language drama following rival families battling it out in the cut-throat world of high fashion in Paris is quintessentially French creative with global scale.

But, even as TOG continues to expand with such big budget streamer series, Berger doesn’t envision the company as a rival to other France-based rapidly growing and consolidating groups like Mediawan, Federation Studios or Banijay.

“We don’t have the same job. It’s a different business. Big production companies are focused on EBITDA and having 70 projects going at the same time. I’m focused on making premium content. We are Hermès as opposed to H+M.

“As [ex-HBO chief] Richard Plepler said: more is not better only better is better.”

Among TOG’s dozen or so major projects, in various stages of development, are an adaptation of Laurent Guillaume’s adventure espionage novel Les Dames de Guerre (War Ladies) about the Western presence in Southeast Asia and another adaptation of Les Mouettes, a novel set in the universe of Le Bureau that zooms in on a top secret DGSE action unit specialised in military operations. Berger describes it as “more than special forces – they’re like ghosts that don’t exist”.

TOG owns all of its subsidiaries and, Berger confirms, “we always own a minimum of 50% of our IP. Those are our rules, that’s the way we work.”

Looking forward, Berger predicts a concentration in the market – “everyone is downsizing, costs are being reviewed, which is an obligation after the craziness of the golden past five years – the cost of making a show in the US is insane, so something has to shift.”

He is optimistic France can keep up with the changing tides. “There is an amazing skill set in Europe –writers are efficient, we just need to teach them what it means to go from writer to showrunner and be more open in what they have to factor into such skill sets.”

Amid such positivity, he warns that a healthy dose of paranoia keeps you grounded.

“If you’re an independent producer and you don’t stay paranoid and passionate, it can become very scary very quickly because things are changing rapidly,” he says. “Tectonic plates are moving, and I hope Europe can be one of those tectonic plates.”