TV Drama MIPTV 2015

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TVDRAMA

WWW.TVDRAMA.WS

APRIL 2015

Period Drama / Mad Men’s Matthew Weiner / The Cast of Law & Order: SVU

MIPTV EDITION

/ Behind the Scenes of The Americans

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CONTENTS FEATURES

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Past Becomes Present A sense of nostalgia seems to have taken hold of television audiences over the past few years.

Ricardo Seguin Guise Publisher Anna Carugati Editor Mansha Daswani Executive Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Managing Editor Joanna Padovano Associate Editor Joel Marino Assistant Editor Simon Weaver Online Director Victor L. Cuevas Production & Design Director Phyllis Q. Busell Art Director Faustyna Hariasz Sales & Marketing Manager Dana Mattison Sales & Marketing Coordinator Erika Santana Sales & Marketing Assistant Terry Acunzo Business Affairs Manager

Ricardo Seguin Guise President Anna Carugati Executive VP & Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development TV Drama © 2015 WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, #1207 New York, NY 10010 Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.tvdrama.ws

We seem to long for traditions and guidelines for behavior and interactions. Perhaps, since we are living through a period marked by terrorism, economic uncertainty and rapid technological advances, the view of the past through the rosetinted glasses of memory appears less complicated, dangerous and frenetic. But if we look beyond the rich production values of such series as Downton Abbey or Mad Men or The Americans, the eras depicted certainly weren’t easier. The characters had to deal with World War I and its aftermath, social and political upheaval, assassinations and the Cold War. And yet in Downton we are pulled in by the conventions, customs (and the costumes, although corsets and tailcoats won’t be making a comeback any time soon). In Mad Men we’re mesmerized by the changing relationship between men and women in the workplace and in the home. In The Americans we relive the “us versus them” world we experienced during the struggle between capitalism and communism, but are drawn into the narrative by the relationship and parenting issues between husband and wife.

Some of us also have very personal reactions to period dramas, especially if we were alive during the eras depicted by these shows. Take, for example, Mad Men. I remember the events that serve as a backdrop to the series. Just as so many people today know exactly where they were on 9/11, I recall exactly what I was doing when the news of JFK’s assassination broke. I remember the mixed feelings of awe, trepidation and concern while being glued to the TV, along with my family, for the entire Apollo 11 voyage to the moon. Reliving the mission while watching the show reminded me how united America was as a nation—actually, people all around the world who had a TV tuned in, amazed at that giant leap for mankind.

Regardless of the backdrop, period dramas take us back to a certain time in history, and remind us that human nature is largely immutable. We examine this subgenre of drama in this issue. Seeing a part of ourselves reflected in the stories and characters is part of what makes these shows so successful. I was also treated to three extremely gratifying experiences: I had a long discussion about Mad Men with its creator and showrunner, Matthew Weiner, and I got the chance to visit the sets of The Americans and Law & Order: SVU. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

—Anna Carugati

22 PAST PERFECT

There’s a wealth of period drama being rolled out internationally.

34 CRIME PAYS: LAW & ORDER: SVU

The showrunner and cast of this veteran NBC brand weigh in on the secrets of the show’s enduring success.

36 COLD WAR, HOT DRAMA

A look behind the scenes of FX’s critically acclaimed spy drama The Americans.

INTERVIEW

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Mad Men’s Matthew Weiner

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ARTE Sales Deep Though its primary focus has been on the distribution of factual content, ARTE Sales, the program-sales arm of European public channel ARTE, is for the first time expanding this year into scripted content. “The [drama] genre is becoming more and more popular in the TV market, so we need to be there,” explains Cédric Hazard, the head of international sales and acquisitions for ARTE France. “It’s going to be a big step for us.” The company’s main offering is the miniseries Deep. The production, which is shot in black and white, tells the story of a police officer who lives with his daughter. When he discovers he is suffering from an incurable disease, he infiltrates a violent network planning to flood Paris with a new illicit substance in order to save his drug-addicted daughter.

“We are very much looking forward to distributing dramas, which is new for us.”

—Cédric Hazard Deep

CJ E&M Corporation Super Daddy Yeol / Let’s Eat Among the scripted highlights being presented by CJ E&M Corporation at the market in Cannes is Super Daddy Yeol, which centers on a sick woman who wants to provide a father figure for her daughter before she passes away.

According to Diane Min, senior sales manager, the show “pulls together wounded, polar-opposite people under the loving shelter of the name ‘family.’” The company is also showcasing the second season of Let’s Eat, following on from the hit food drama that aired last year, in which eating is the universal theme. “CJ dramas are not just typical romantic comedies,” says Min, who notes that the company’s scripted catalogue also contains titles that are edgy and action-packed.

“CJ dramas are very well known in Asia, with local success in most territories, and we hope to expand to European countries via MIPTV.” —Diane Min Super Daddy Yeol

Content Television Olympus / Dead Rising: Watchtower / The Eichmann Show By the time Content Television arrives at MIPTV, the 13episode drama Olympus will have just launched on Syfy in the U.S. Jonathan Ford, the company’s executive VP of sales and distribution, believes this timely launch will translate into strong interest for the title at the market. Dead Rising: Watchtower is based on a video game franchise that has sold 7.6 million copies worldwide. “We’ve had tremendous sales for other brands such as Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, Halo: Nightfall and Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, and we’re confident that Dead Rising will do equally well internationally,” says Ford.

The drama The Eichmann Show looks at the televising of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who was one of the key architects of the Holocaust.

“Olympus is an immersive prime-time series that will hook viewers with its strong storytelling and spectacular production values.”

—Jonathan Ford Olympus 370 World Screen 4/15

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Eccho Rights Stone in the River / Cherry Season / Kacak For the last few years, Eccho Rights has been building up its expertise in the distribution of Turkish drama series. At MIPTV, the company comes armed with the new propositions Cherry Season, a youth-skewed series about an ambitious university student who dreams of becoming a top fashion designer, and Kacak, which has been confirmed for a second season in Turkey. Eccho Rights will also be introducing its first drama series from Hungary, Stone in the River. Fredrik af Malmborg, Eccho Rights’ managing director, says, “Stone in the River is an amazing production in which a pharmaceutical company on its way to bankruptcy starts to spread a virus in order to sell a vaccine. It is a very high-end production with a universal theme.”

“Eccho Rights’ focus is to empower independent producers and to give them a global reach.”

—Fredrik af Malmborg Cherry Season

FremantleMedia International No Offence / Deutschland 83 / Eye Candy The police procedural No Offence, which features touches of humor, is one of FremantleMedia International’s scripted highlights for this year’s MIPTV. The company is also showcasing Deutschland 83, which follows an East Germany native who is sent to the West to work as a spy, and Eye Candy, about a 21-year-old hacker who suspects that one of her suitors is a deadly cyber stalker. “We’re still on a mission to bring the best stories from around the world to global audiences, and recently we’ve been lucky enough to bring dramas to the markets from our hubs in Australia (Wentworth), the U.S. (The Returned), Germany (Deutschland 83), Scandinavia via Miso Film (Acquitted, Dicte) and the U.K. (Suspects),” says Sarah Doole, FremantleMedia’s director of global drama.

“Last year we announced that we wanted to up our drama business in a huge way, and we’ve done just that.”

—Sarah Doole Eye Candy

Global Agency Maral / My Destiny / Broken Pieces The drama Broken Pieces has been the highest rated series of the season in Turkey, and Global Agency is giving MIPTV buyers the opportunity to bring it to their schedules as well. Broken Pieces comes to the Global Agency catalogue from producer Endemol Turkey, as does My Destiny. The Turkish drama Maral comes from Acun Medya. “These titles all have the hallmarks of a classic drama series, with story lines that combine revenge, tragedy, passion and love with contemporary subjects,” says Izzet Pinto, the CEO of Global Agency. “I am sure that these titles have the ability to cross boundaries with their universal story lines, cutting-edge themes and well-known casts.”

“The originality of our stories makes them exceptional.”

—Izzet Pinto Maral 4/15 World Screen 371

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ITV-Inter Medya Filinta / Resurrection / Black Money Love The period drama Filinta, part of ITV-Inter Medya’s MIPTV catalogue, tells the story of a young police officer in the time of the Ottoman Empire. Kudret Sabanci, who is also behind the international hit 1001 Nights, directs the series. Another period drama from the ITV-Inter Medya slate is Resurrection, which takes place in the 13th century. “Ratings figures marked Resurrection as the best breakthrough Turkish TV series of the 2014 season,” says Can Okan, the president and CEO of ITV-Inter Medya. “The first episodes shook Turkey’s social media, with some people comparing it to Game of Thrones.” ITV-Inter Medya is also presenting Black Money Love and Black Rose.

“These two titles have been dominating the ratings in Turkey for the last two seasons,” says Okan.

“Filinta has incredible production values.”

—Can Okan Filinta

ZDF Enterprises Blochin: The Living and the Dead / Blue Eyes / Arne Dahl Two of the MIPTV highlights from ZDF Enterprises (ZDFE) were selected for this year’s Berlinale Special Series. The first is Blochin: The Living and the Dead, a thriller that tells the story of the policemen from a homicide unit, and the second is Blue Eyes, a political crime thriller set in present-day Europe. Also on the company’s slate is the second season of Arne Dahl, a Scandi-noir drama based on the crime novels by Jan Arnald, whose pen name serves as the show’s title. “All three series have already received many accolades, [be it] through the high ratings of their previous seasons, the enormous attention they received during their world premieres…or the international success of the novels they are [based] on,” says Fred Burcksen, the executive VP and COO of ZDFE.

“I have no doubt that these productions will be of great interest to any fiction buyer with the right prime-time slots.”

—Fred Burcksen Blue Eyes

Zodiak Rights Versailles / Tatau / The Returned The lavish period drama Versailles takes viewers on a journey into 17th-century France. The series, sold by Zodiak Rights, reveals a world of betrayal, lust and political schemes. “The creative team stems from a truly international and successful background, including Simon Mirren (Without a Trace), David Wolstencroft (Spooks), producer Anne Thomopoulos (Rome) and director Jalil Lespert (Yves Saint Laurent),” says Caroline Torrance, the head of scripted at Zodiak Rights. The company is also showcasing Tatau, about two backpackers who find themselves involved in a supernatural murder mystery, and season two of The Returned. Torrance comments, “The Returned is a stylish take on the supernatural genre that combines taut mystery with rich, character-led drama.”

“Our raft of new programs shows the diversity of our slate, which spans from dramas to crime and comedy, across different languages.”

—Caroline Torrance Versailles 372 World Screen 4/15

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Zodiak Rights’ Versailles.

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PAST PERFECT There’s a wealth of new period drama being rolled out internationally. ith dramas featuring Tudor England, the American War of Independence, Louis XIV’s Versailles, India in the last throes of the British Empire, 1940s Los Alamos, 17th-century pirates, Regency London and Turkey’s Ottoman Empire on offer this MIPTV, a trip through the Palais might feel like traveling through time. But are global audiences particularly hungry for period drama now, or has the appetite for it always been so keen?

“I think period drama has had a bit of a renaissance that probably kicked off with Downton Abbey,” says Cathy Payne, the CEO of Endemol Shine International, whose period drama portfolio includes Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and The Frankenstein Chronicles. “At that point, no one wanted a period drama that was ‘bonnets and bustles,’ and I think what Downton did was make period drama fun again. In terms of period drama in general, it’s about making a story relevant again to an audience.”

This ambition to imbue a historical story with strong modern resonance is key to the genre’s current appeal.

Longtime favorite Foyle’s War and 1920s jazz-era drama Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries feature in all3media international’s catalogue. It will be heading to market with New Pictures’ Indian Summers, a co-production with PBS’s Masterpiece set in 1930s India.

This lavish production has universal themes such as political unrest, an orphaned child and star-crossed lovers, which give it a luxurious air and contemporary resonance.

Both of these qualities were very important to the U.K. originating commissioner, Channel 4.

The broadcaster was looking for a show that gave equal weight to the English and Indian perspectives in this beginning-of-the-end scenario. Indian characters from all castes, each with varied motivations and agendas, create the thrust of the piece and promote and provoke the action.

Even a subject matter as quintessentially British as the Tudor Court of Henry VIII can connect to a global audience, according to Louise Mountain, BBC Worldwide’s

W

director of fiction strategy and development. With titles as diverse as Wolf Hall, Call the Midwife, Ripper Street and Da Vinci’s Demons, Mountain says good period drama is about finding a range of characters audiences can connect with, whether they’re fictional or rooted in actual events. In Wolf Hall, it’s the outsider character Thomas Cromwell who draws the viewer into the unfamiliar world of Henry VIII’s court.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE… Mountain uses the Australian period piece Banished as an example of how to make historical stories relevant to today’s audiences. The series explores the lives of the inhabitants of the first penal colony in Sydney. “In Banished, [screenwriter] Jimmy McGovern is exploring themes that he was exploring in The Street or Accused,” she explains.

“Relationships, love, survival, power, self-awareness, the notion of identity—they might revolve around the formation of Botany Bay, but the viewing experience is that you become immersed in those relationships and the questions McGovern is asking within that framework.”

Zodiak Rights’ MIPTV centerpiece is the lavish tenpart Louis XIV drama Versailles from Zodiak France, Capa Drama and Incendo for CANAL+. It’s billed as a dramatic journey into a unique time and place in history where the cults of celebrity and style were born, with some betrayal, lust and political schemes thrown in. Caroline Torrance, Zodiak Rights’ head of scripted, says the ambition was to make the definitive drama on the reign of Louis XIV with a story that resonates with modern audiences.

“Versailles is such a well-known name, it’s almost like a brand,” adds Torrance. “You can go anywhere in the world and people know about Versailles and Louis XIV. There’s such a high awareness of that period, which really helps because it’s about being able to get your audience in and I think audiences are really intrigued by Versailles and Louis XIV.” “It’s produced for cable,” she adds. “It’s quite sexy and it’s not necessarily going to play pre-watershed [in early prime-time slots], but we are looking at whether we can

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By Jane Marlow

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ITVS GE’s Texas Rising, a miniseries ordered by HISTORY in the U.S., was inspired by the Texas Revolution that took place in the 1830s.

make a version that is suitable for commercial and free-toair broadcasters too, as there’s so much interest in it.”

The flip side of the “contemporizing the narrative” coin is the role of nostalgia in period drama. Peter Iacono, the president of international television and digital distribution at Lionsgate, picks a classic moment from the studio’s 1960s drama Mad Men to highlight how much audiences enjoy remembering how we used to live. “People always bring up the same moment—[the scene] in an early episode when [the Drapers] went on a picnic, and Betty said, ‘It’s time to clean up’ and then just shook the blanket and left all the trash,” recounts Iacono. He adds that these stories travel well because of their ability to resonate on different levels.

“Even then, we lived in a global society,” adds Iacono.

“People were looking at things like the environment, smoking and drinking the same way—in those days, that behavior was globally accepted.”

Creating these detailed, authentic Mad Men moments is crucial to a show’s success.

“required a huge amount of work because the buildings were uninhabitable, but many of them were standing and they were exactly like what Los Alamos looked like at the time. We found something great and the team adapted it well. It was big and expensive, but the good news is that over time we’ll keep reusing it.”

Research was key in the production of the Treasure Island prequel Black Sails. “When we decided to make Black Sails, we talked to everyone who had ever done something with ships that was set on the water to get their reports,” says Carmi Zlotnik, the managing director of Starz, which commissioned the series and sells it globally. Zlotnik says that the production team studied the feature film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World to learn from its epic ocean sequences. “One of the reports said, ‘Don’t shoot on the water.’ From that we created a production approach that was largely based on land. We built a tank and six full-size ships.”

Zlotnik says interest in costume drama has grown because technology has helped television series achieve production

MAKING HISTORY Lionsgate also makes the 1940s-set Manhattan for WGN. Kevin Beggs, the chairman of Lionsgate TV Group, explains that the show’s production design is intended to immerse viewers in a particular period and world and never pull them out of it.

He describes the research involved in creating the 1940s setting in Manhattan as meticulous.

“A lot of the production challenge was creating—out of relatively thin air—and replicating the World War II science camp in Los Alamos,” remembers Beggs. Scouting in Los Alamos, the team came upon the old campus of a junior college. “It was slated for demolition, and if we’d been six months later it would have been gone,” he adds. The set

all3media’s Indian Summers, set against the backdrop of the final days of the British Raj, was recently renewed by Channel 4.

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but adds that this requires walking a fine line. “If [the show creator] roots something very firmly in what their vision is, it stands a much better chance of selling than if you’ve tried to create something that will appeal to all people.”

BOOKISH APPROACH

The Book of Negroes, eOne’s miniseries for CBC and BET, tells a story of slavery and emancipation.

values that were once the domain of feature films. But audiences are eagle-eyed, which means authenticity is crucial.

“You have to set the period of time and look carefully at everything that gets in front of the camera,” says Zlotnik.

“Every department has to have a high level of expertise as to what is and isn’t appropriate for that period. It’s critical that you create a world that feels like a complete thing. You can’t have swords from one period and armor from another or horses with the incorrect tack or the wrong kind of architecture, because all of these things had a reason for coexisting at a certain point in time.”

Not only does authenticity not come easy, often it doesn’t come cheap either. Production challenges and an A-list cast mean a big budget. Are there enough broadcasters with budgets to acquire this kind of output?

Another show with an impressive cast is Entertainment One (eOne) Television’s The Book of Negroes.

Cuba Gooding Jr., Ben Chaplin and Louis Gossett Jr. star in the miniseries that tracks an African woman’s journey that starts during the American War of Independence and takes her from New York to Nova Scotia, from the jungles of Sierra Leone to 19th-century England.

A number of deals have been inked on the high-profile Canadian, South African and U.S. co-production. Stuart Baxter, the president of eOne Television International, says he had expected most of the deals to be with public broadcasters, but a cross section of channels have picked it up. “The historical context lends itself to the public broadcasters,” says Baxter. “When you’ve invested a lot [in a drama] you’ve got to recover a significant investment, so it’s not the cheapest piece of work for TV, but the public broadcasters still have significant budgets.”

The series aired on BET in the U.S. and CBC in Canada, and as far as its take-up internationally is concerned, Baxter says he hopes it will follow in the steps of the movie

SUPPLY AND DEMAND ITV Studios Global Entertainment’s (ITVS GE) catalogue is bulging with costume drama, from Aquarius to Poldark, Mr Selfridge to Home Fires, not to mention the Arthur Conan Doyle drama Arthur & George. Its big new period piece for MIPTV is Texas Rising, which is set in the 1830s. It stars Ray Liotta, Olivier Martinez and Bill Paxton and is directed by Roland Joffé for HISTORY in the U.S. Ruth Clarke, the senior VP and director of acquisitions and co-productions at ITVS GE, says the slots are there for the right show.

“Texas Rising feels so cinematic, so the broadcasters are essentially getting multiple movies in one, which makes their schedules look fantastic. That’s something they really want to invest in. There are definitely people who have deep pockets when they need it for the right type of show.”

Clarke adds that broadcasters are looking for event pieces as well as long-term hits, but Texas Rising seems to encompass both. “With Texas Rising it’s the idea of being able to invest in something that has huge production quality and a great cast. You’re going to want to come back for more than one season to be able to advertise it across your schedule.”

Bringing a distributor onto a project early means that they can bring their knowledge of the international markets to the creative process.

Zodiak’s Torrance says casting is an area where she can advise as to what would work well in an international market,

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Starz’s Black Sails, from Michael Bay, focuses on 18th-century pirates.

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Global Agency’s Ottoman Empire drama Magnificent Century has been sold around the world.

12 Years a Slave. “You look at where 12 Years a Slave grossed big numbers and you follow that,” he explains. “The Book of Negroes isn’t a documentary about the history of slavery. It’s very much a tale about the journey of a woman who survived and evolved. People can identify with the story.”

Dynamic storytelling combined with the visual excitement of a detailed period setting appears to transcend cultural differences. Global Agency CEO Izzet Pinto says in territories such as Russia and Bulgaria, ratings for TIMS Productions’ Ottoman Empire drama Magnificent Century have tripled the broadcasters’ average share. “It’s based on historical events, and even though it has a lot of fiction in it, it’s a true story,” says Pinto.

“There is a lot of intrigue in the story, as well as passion, love and betrayal—those typical things people love to see.”

Now sold into more than 50 territories, including the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, CIS, Australia and the U.S., the show has recently started airing on Canal 13 in Chile, and Pinto expects new offering The Palace to follow suit. “I’m expecting sales mostly from Central and Eastern Europe, plus Indonesia and Malaysia, because these territories love historical period drama,” says Pinto.

ANYTIME, ANYWHERE As far as period drama is concerned, it seems that the world is your oyster. ITVS GE’s Mr Selfridge, set in the early 1900s in London, has sold into over 150 territories, and the company has similar expectations for Mammoth Screen’s Poldark, set in 18th-century Cornwall, England. Mr Selfridge often finds its home on public broadcasters, such as PBS in the U.S. and SVT in Sweden. ITVS GE’s Clarke says that broadcasters that have built an audience on their channels for period drama usually come back for more.

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Similarly, all3media international’s post-war British drama Foyle’s War has attracted an exceptionally loyal audience.

This is due to the fact that even though the series has been running for many years, it has withstood various fashions and trends in drama and maintained an intriguing plot and high-quality production values.

NEW FRONTIERS Endemol Shine’s Peaky Blinders, set in post-World War I England, is another show that transcends the specificity of its setting and has sold extensively, including in territories such as China and Russia.

“Peaky Blinders is set in Birmingham, and it’s about gangsters,” says Payne. “It was original, so there wasn’t any market awareness and people didn’t know what a ‘Peaky Blinder’ was. You had to educate people and get them excited about the project.”

Payne says the bar has been raised in terms of packaging projects. “You’re taking something like Peaky Blinders out, which is written by Steven Knight, who is not only a TV writer but a feature-film writer, and stars Cillian Murphy and Sam Neill. Then you come in with Tom Hardy in the next season.

The packaging is strong, and you need that now to compete.”

With services like HISTORY and Netflix moving into period drama, the fascination with historical drama is set to continue, and it seems there is a home for shows of every shape and size. Endemol Shine’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is a seven-hour event piece, but Payne doesn’t see that as restricting its international appeal. “The advent of so many more places that are acquiring scripted products in the States and the subscription services that can accommodate shorter runs has just increased the [number of potential] homes.”

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Mad Men For the passionate fans of Mad Men, watching the show has been like peeling back the layers of an onion. At first glance we were shocked at how much people in the ’60s smoked and drank— especially on the job. We were appalled by men’s treatment of women at work and at home. We then witnessed the facets of the characters’ personalities, often morally questionable, and the motivations behind their behavior. At the show’s core, what we ultimately saw were ourselves.

Even if we weren’t as handsome as Don Draper, as ambitious as Peggy Olson, as crafty as Bert Cooper or as unscrupulous as almost all of them, the characters reflected our humanity against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent eras in American history. Creator and showrunner Matthew Weiner talks about the show that helped change the course of television and won four consecutive Primetime Emmys for outstanding drama series.

TV DRAMA: When you set out to make the show, were there specific themes you wanted to explore, and did those themes change over the course of seven seasons?

WEINER: Yes, certainly things changed and evolved as we did the show, because one of the primary principles of the show was not to repeat ourselves. There is repetition in life, and you may end up finding that Pete Campbell ends up in the same place that Don has once been, but it’s going to be different because this time it’s Pete. On the other hand, as time goes on, different things are happening, and from the inception of the show I’ve wanted to cover a long period in people’s lives. That in itself was interesting to me if it was about regular people.

Obviously there is a plot and Don has this other identity, he is extraordinary and the events in their lives are extraordinary, as is appropriate to drama. But, I really did want the show to feel close to daily life or to identifiable issues, small problems that regular people have, and what that would be like over a period of time. And specifically I wanted to revisit what at the time was a pretty much forgotten transition in American history.

Something happened in between the ’50s—or what people perceived to be the ’50s, let’s say Happy Days—and Woodstock. This period was so crucial to American history and so crucial to the formation of how we are right now, but it had been ignored. And I wondered, having missed it, what it would be like to be a regular person and see that transition come in.

There is so much change from what I thought the show would be when I wrote the pilot to when I actually got to make the show. It happened because I had the incredible good fortune of working on The Sopranos for four and a half years. It just changed my concept of what I could do with the show. The Sopranos was so revolutionary; even if I hadn’t been working on The Sopranos it would have changed things for me because I watched it so much. [I was drawn to] this sort of non-cliché, non-television, non-baloney storytelling that would not lie about human emotions, that was not filled

with people surmounting the impossible and really caring about everything they did and being completely honest with each other, that instead highlighted the grey areas and the less virtuous moments in our life. Don is not a criminal like Tony Soprano, but I recognized more honest human behavior. That was something that I started with in the pilot on some level, but I don’t know if I would have had the confidence to follow it had it not been for The Sopranos. I think Mad Men would have been a lot more plot-driven if I had never seen or experienced The Sopranos.

TV DRAMA: Mad Men also seems very nonjudgmental of human behavior.

WEINER: That has been the intention of everybody on the show.

This is what I was talking about: admitting what human behavior is like and not having television represent a different standard or a fantasy standard. In movies and on TV, even the criminals have a code that seems unrealistic. I hope that on some level the lack of judgment feels forgiving because—I didn’t realize this until I was working for a while—so much of the experience of entertainment has to do with sitting in judgment of characters and saying, I hate this person, I love this person, I would never do that, I would do that. I don’t want to take that away from the audience, but as a writer whose staff is composed of people who feel the same way, you don’t want to make things that easy. People have good and bad in them and everybody has a reason for why they do what they do.

TV DRAMA: How challenging was it to intertwine real-life events with the story lines of the characters?

WEINER: Those things are a challenge because there are so many ways to do them. I have a policy on the show: it’s not a history lesson. I almost didn’t do the JFK assassination—Mad Men is a character story to me. Having lived through what I think could be considered an equivalent event, 9/11, I was interested in how news traveled, how alone you feel, how

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Lionsgate’s Mad Men wraps its acclaimed seven-season run on AMC this year.

glued to the TV you are and how powerless and afraid you are. We did it first with the Cuban Missile Crisis. For me, it’s always about what’s going to happen to the characters and how that is thematically related to the story.

You take a year like 1962, when Marilyn Monroe died, and you can see that very little happened. It is the time of Camelot; other than the Cuban Missile Crisis at the end of the year, there just aren’t a lot of events. But I found, in magazines and books, that the culture seemed obsessed with the end of the world. It was probably the hangover from all of the arms buildup that had gone on in the late ’50s. And then the year ends with the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was a terrifying and long ordeal. All of a sudden, I had a story for the season.

The Cuban Missile Crisis had an incredible, deep, personal impact on everybody in the United States. It went on for 13 days, and we now have all these stories about what happened—Kennedy and the red phone, the decisions that were being made and the information that was being released—but the people who were living through it knew nothing. And that is something that you try to recapture. What does a panic look like? How can I make this feel like real life? And also the television becomes a big part of it. The television is always part of the story. Part of the story of this show and of this period is the evolution of our relationship with TV. But then, take a year like 1968, when there is an event every month. It’s completely catastrophic and the world seems to be in revolution. For me, this was an opportunity to tell a story about Don, because that is what I’m always interested in, the people. Don is the great survivor; he lived through the Great Depression, through orphanhood. He’s pretty tough. But what can I do to show that what people perceive as the turbulence of the ’60s is really coming to pass in a period of months?

Well, part of it was [the feeling of,] I can’t believe that this keeps happening. By the time we did Robert Kennedy’s assassination, [people were thinking,] You’ve got to be kidding me.

That was the emotion I wanted to get across. I never want to

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lose the fact that the events of your own life are more important than events of public history. Somebody who was in the middle of a divorce on 9/11, the day after they felt sad and shocked, but they were still in the middle of a divorce. That’s what I want to remind people of.

TV DRAMA: What would you say is Mad Men’s legacy and its contribution to this overused phrase, the “golden age” of TV? WEINER: I always have an issue with the “golden age” expression, because to me it’s insulting to the history of TV. If your show is on the air next year, or it was on the year before The Sopranos, it wasn’t part of this? There is always good and bad TV. Legacy is a weird thing because I think that’s for other people to decide. I did have someone say something very interesting to me. They said [Mad Men] was the last show we all watched together, because so much has happened technologically during the life of the show. When we made the pilot, there was no Gmail, no iPad, no iPhone, no streaming and no VOD really. Somewhere around the middle of the show people stopped watching TV together and either caught shows when they could or binged or whatever. So that is one thing I think will be associated with the show in some weird way.

I feel so lucky that we got to do something so peculiar. I think that it will be a business model in some ways, as every small basic-cable channel goes into original programming, that you can do something and change your business with one show. That I am happy about, but creatively, honestly, having spent the last ten years doing a show about history, it would be insane to predict or guess what the legacy of it is. I hope that it stands out as a piece of originality that was successful. That is a rare moment and that is something that I would hope it would be known for. It’s very hard to encourage people to be original because it’s brutal. I feel so grateful that they let us do this weird and unusual show. It really has proven to be unlike anything else. I didn’t know that when we were doing it—it feels like normal TV to me—but now I’m aware of it.

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CRIME PAYS

LAW & ORDER: SVU

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) is part of the famed franchise created by Dick Wolf, whose original Law & Order pioneered the unique formula of investigating “ripped-from-the-headlines” crimes in the first half of an episode and prosecuting the perpetrators in the second. Law & Order not only attracted hugely loyal audiences, but its procedural format was perfect for international distribution, because the self-contained episodes could air in any sequence. SVU has continued this success—now in its 16th season on NBC, it is the longest-running prime-time drama currently on the air in the U.S. TV Drama caught up with the ensemble cast—which includes Mariska Hargitay, Kelli Giddish, Raúl Esparza, Danny Pino and Ice-T—and showrunner Warren Leight on a recent set visit in New York City.

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LEIGHT: I’ve made a big change to SVU and I’ve had to hash this out with Dick Wolf to a degree, because the premise of this show was that any episode can rerun anywhere in the world at any time. What I argue is that fans have [to have a] reason to watch tonight at 9 p.m. And that’s my survival—making sure the fans watch tonight. I have to make it relevant with the issues we present, but the viewers also want to know these characters better. I believe in continuity for the characters, and if one episode affects another, you can still watch them. But the audience is tracking [the serialized story lines] and, by the way, some people are pissed off by them!

HARGITAY: The growth of the audience’s investment is exponential, in my opinion.

LEIGHT: We had to go there. I think it’s more interesting for the actors, for the writers, and I think for the fans.

Most of them like it more. This show is not 1990s Law & Order, but [we are not in] 1990.

HARGITAY: The fans need to grow with the characters.

LEIGHT: But [serialized story lines] will affect the characters. You tell an actor that they have a secret and they play a scene differently. You tell Mariska that Olivia Benson has a 1-year-old at home who has no one else in the world and it will affect how she plays the scene.

HARGITAY: When I say to a victim, “You had a knife to your throat,” it’s much different now—having had a knife at my throat by William Lewis [the character who kidnapped Benson in the finale of season 14]—than it was before. And that just builds. I wouldn’t do half the stuff I do now if I didn’t have that history that Warren built. It changes how you act.

GIDDISH: We are still around and we are doing the 16th season now, and the show is a well-oiled machine. It’s a Dick Wolf production; you don’t forget that. But because of [writer] Julie Martin and Warren Leight coming in, we do have the freedom to fail and to explore and to bring up story lines and thoughts we had last night and they’re welcomed and incorporated. There is still a freshness to this show that people respond to. I was in Starbucks and I had to take eight selfies with fans! People love the show!

ESPARZA: One of the best things about this particular iteration of the Law & Order franchise is that SVU never lets you off the hook. A warmth was always inherent in Mariska’s performance that forced you to deal [with the issues presented in the episode] without being able to wrap everything up neatly and put it away. The episodes end and they’re each a satisfying hour of television, but you’re still left with the repercussions of what you faced, and you know there is a central character who has been deeply affected by it, so you are not let off the hook. And that is true for everyone on the team. The great thing I always loved about [Assistant District Attorney Rafael] Barba is that he doesn’t have time for any sentimentality.

He doesn’t have time to deal with anything but the reality of [a situation]. And the reality is that sometimes to

accomplish the most humane and kindhearted things, you have to be an absolute bastard. [I like that] the SVU franchise has an attorney who does that and brings extreme toughness and really brutal honesty to incredibly sensitive subjects—it allows the audience to have a little bit of that feeling of, Yeah, let’s go get the bad guy!

GIDDISH: It’s been crazy learning about actual laws, too, like the statutes of limitation. What? That’s true? I don’t know if this happens on other shows—maybe it does—but we are all very attentive and all very willing to do research. We get a huge research packet for every show.

The other day they had just called “Cut,” and I raced back to finish reading this interview with a porn star; I can’t put it down. Then they called “Rolling!” So, I put down my research for another episode that’s way down the line. It’s crazy!

ESPARZA: Nobody who gets shot at or murdered ever says, “Yeah I really wanted to get killed,” or, “I wanted to get shot at.” But people tend to assume if a crime involves some sort of sexual violence, well, maybe [the victim was] asking for it. It’s the first thing that comes up. To look at the law very, very coldly and say, What can I do to not let someone get away with that argument? That is pretty exciting, because it tells you, when you are watching the show, that not every avenue has been explored; it’s not all a dead end. The law keeps changing. I think it’s satisfying for an audience to know that we have the edge of the knife in your mouth.

PINO: I think that one of the reasons the show works so well is because it is law and order—we [detectives] work hand-in-hand with Raúl’s character to make sure we can prosecute a case. So you see, from the very beginning when we meet a suspect, how we are building a case so that we can hand it off to the legal side. That is authentic.

ICE-T: The name of the unit is what it is, so you have major crimes, you have homicide, and then you have special victims. These are particular types of victims who are special—children, rape victims—heavy stuff. That’s what this show is about. It’s all about the type of crime that’s hit them.

PINO: Plus, it’s about psychology.

ICE-T: I’ll tell you what happened to me. I’ve been doing this show and it’s never affected me. I’m a pretty hardcore cat, as you all know. One time I was in Miami and I was at a pool. Somebody had a kid out there naked, a little 5-year-old, bathing. I would have never thought about it.

I’ve been around naked babies my whole life, when people take their babies to the beach and let them go. But, after doing this show, I thought, maybe there are some weirdos looking at this kid. So [the show and its crimes] do affect you in real life. You live in New York where people all [live in apartments with windows close together]. You see a person at a window there, but over there is a person with a video camera who has been watching you every night.

You realize that there are really f**ked-up people out there. In this show, these are all real people.

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COLD WAR, HOT DRAMA Anna Carugati goes behind the scenes of the spy drama The Americans, a critics’ darling that enjoys a passionate following. he period drama The Americans takes place in the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War. It follows Elizabeth and Philip, two KGB spies posing as American nationals in suburban Washington, D.C. The series is packed with intrigue and spy tradecraft—from breaking and entering to dead drops, surveillance to cryptography, honey traps to disguises. But at the heart of the show is the tenuous relationship between Elizabeth and Philip, thrown together into an arranged marriage by their handlers in the Soviet Union and sent to the U.S. to live as a couple, have children, raise them as Americans and not reveal their true identities.

Pretending to work at a travel agency, Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell) serve Mother Russia, carrying out missions, killing when necessary, donning disguises and luring unsuspecting people into bed to get information. All the while, Philip and Elizabeth live next door to an FBI agent, Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), who is having an affair with the beautiful Nina (Annet Mahendru), who works for the KGB and who Stan turned into a double agent.

The Americans was created by Joe Weisberg, a former CIA operative who also serves as showrunner, along with Joel Fields. Season three premiered in January on FX in the U.S. The show has been greeted with high critical acclaim. Part of the appeal of The Americans is the fact that Weisberg and Fields weave events that really happened in the ’80s into the worlds of the characters they have invented. And, on top of that they layer the covert activity, some based on what actually happened in real life and some made up.

“There is the known history of what took place in the ’80s, then the fictional characters going about their lives, and then there is a covert history, which we can, with some latitude, make up some stuff for and weave in,” explains Weisberg. “The only thing we try not to do is make up events that would be so outrageous as to not be credible, or events that we can twist with the real history—that’s what we avoid. And as long as we avoid those, everything seems to work out. The events we make up, we try to have them take place within the context of the real events. Last season we had stories about the Contra War in Nicaragua and about the stealth program that were very central. The things that we made up were more like minor incidents within those bigger stories.”

T

Season three starts with the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the rise of Yuri Andropov and the war in Afghanistan. As Fields explains, everything that was simmering or active during the Cold War provides storytelling possibilities. “We have a really good story about South Africa and the ANC this season.”

While the politics and ideology of the time, as well as the covert missions, are crucially important to the series, the real focus is the relationship between Philip and Elizabeth and the conflicts within their family. In fact, at the end of season two, Philip and Elizabeth’s handler tells them it’s time to tell their teenage daughter Paige what they really do for a living and prepare her to also join the KGB. Philip vehemently disagrees; Elizabeth thinks Paige might need a mission into which she can channel her passions.

“This is very much the heart of the show,” explains Weisberg.

“In this season we are going to go even deeper than we have [in past seasons]. Last season ended with Philip and Elizabeth staring at each other wondering whether they are really going to come into conflict over this issue of Paige’s future. That was a little foreshadowing of the fact that that conflict is going to blossom into one of the biggest marriage fights you have ever seen on the show. And, with that conflict, all the issues [of values, ideology and parenting] are going to blow up for the whole family.”

The embattled marriage and family conflict are also what the actors find most interesting. “My favorite aspect of the show is still the complicated marriage,” says Russell. “The fact that it is a period show set in D.C. and we are these KGB spies is just the conceit that allows us to push and pull this relationship so much. It starts off as this estranged, kind of arranged marriage and then you slowly see Elizabeth and Philip fall in love with each other and then really trust each other amidst the craziness of this world. They’re having sex with other people, they’re in life-and-death situations—the stakes are very high. In season two, their relationship was so solid and they really were going to choose each other and fight for that. Then this issue with their daughter comes up, and it’s really stressful for them both.”

The difficult relationships are part of what makes the show so appealing to viewers. “My own opinion is that the show works because there are a number of very relatable elements to it,” explains Rhys. “Obviously the spy element is great—but those spy elements are extreme versions of

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Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell lead the cast of the critically acclaimed FX series The Americans, which is sold worldwide by Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution.

universal themes that are relatable. The arguing about whether Paige should be recruited or not is like an extreme version of parenting. If you are watching as parents you can still relate to it because you clash over where your children’s futures lie and how they should be raised. So even the more extreme versions, I think, are relatable.”

Rhys and Russell find themselves wearing disguises in almost every episode as Philip and Elizabeth must pretend to be different people in order to complete their spy missions.

This allows them as actors to work on a number of different levels. But in acting, as in the spy business—as Weisberg told Rhys when he talked about his training at the CIA—“you should never veer far from the truth,” explains Rhys. “You need to stay as close to the truth as possible in order to convince the person in front of you. That holds for acting as well.

You need to convince the person in front of you so that the audience can believe it as well. [Philip and Elizabeth] are not transformative. They are not chameleons. They don’t become completely different people. They need to keep close contact with the truth in order for it to be believable; if not, the person in front of them clearly knows they are lying.

To me, it’s always about making whatever persona you are playing as believable as possible, and usually that doesn’t mean veering too far from the truth. Sometimes when a disguise goes on, it can lead you to a small place—it’s in the minutiae. I kind of allow that. If I look in the mirror, something new tends to come out quite naturally, and as long as it’s not too extreme, I’ll follow it.”

Awareness of the minutiae is pervasive on the set of The Americans. Wherever possible, the showrunners, set

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designers and hair and makeup artists go for what’s authentic: from actual KGB briefcases, to actors who speak Russian with the correct regional accent from Moscow, to circuit breakers used in the set that actually come from Ukraine and were bought on eBay. Even with the set for the jail in the Soviet Union [spoiler alert: yes, Nina is in season three and the beginning of the season sees her in jail], the cell and interrogation room were built in square meters, not square feet, in order to be true to reality.

Another way, and perhaps the most important way, the series remains connected to what is real is through the themes it explores.

“The show has always been about the nature of self, the truth of identity, who we really are to ourselves, to our friends, to our family,” says Emmerich. “Is there a public self and a private self? It’s about the nature of relationships.

If you think of the identity of self as a complex issue and then you put two people together, the identity of a relationship becomes exponentially more complex. So in the context of a spy’s life-and-death world, it becomes more dramatized and more illuminated and exaggerated. But the issues that these characters have are the same issues everybody has.

“This year the show is talking about Philip and Elizabeth’s relationship with the children; before that, it was their relationship with each other and their marriage. It’s really about how we relate to each other as human beings in the world, and that is quite a broad umbrella. Maybe every drama is about that to some degree, but that is the center of this show,” says Emmerich.

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