Firstly could you describe your job, who you report to and how many commissioners work at ARTE Fiction France?
Alexandre Piel: We have a unique set up compared to other broadcasters. We do everything in our drama unit, mixing the French slate with foreign slate, working hand in hand with the Germans, doing acquisitions, pre-buys, as well as international co-productions (minor/major) that we initiated five years ago. 

Our drama division headed by Olivier Wotling has a small staff of 12 people, including four commissioning editors; I’m Deputy Director. Olivier is in charge of the French slate and I supervise the foreign slate, but we work very closely with the idea of creating potential co-productions. We have tight relationships with foreign producers with whom we co-develop and co-produce. Our commissioning team works on the French and foreign slate with the same editorial line. 

We have an in-house quota which is to commission 85% European content, a target that we constantly keep in mind. We look for dramas from all around Europe, and of course, the Nordic region is very important to us. That’s where we initiated our co-productions with the Norwegian show Occupied. 

What is ARTE Fiction’s overall editorial line, the share of co-productions-external pick-ups?
AP: Roughly each year we produce 20-30 hours of French TV drama consisting of two long running series of 6 or 8 episodes, two mini-series of 3 or 4 episodes, plus 5 TV movies/one-off dramas. Next to the French slate, we co-produce 2-3 European series a year and do 1-2 pre-buys. Lastly, we acquire 50 episodes of foreign series every year. 

Our commissioning team is responsible for filling ARTE France’s prime-time drama slots on Thursday evening, dedicated to long-runners and mini-series, and on the Friday evening slot for 90-minute/one off dramas. The German part of ARTE is responsible for all 90-minute shows, except the 5 French TV movies that we bring in, plus 2-3 foreign TV movies that we acquire. 

What is your annual drama budget and split between French/international?
AP: We have €30 million for 2019. The lion share - around ¾ - goes to French co-productions, and the rest to foreign drama, equally split between co-productions and acquisitions. Our investments can cover around 20-25% of the budget of a foreign co-production. 
 
Has your drama budget increased in recent years?
AP: Olivier and I have been at ARTE Fiction for five years, and our budget has increased slightly year on year. It’s vital for us to support French and European quality drama. 

How important is TV drama for ARTE’s overall channel?
AP: Every unit works hard to expand the audience and ratings that have doubled over the last decade. We’ve grown from being a niche and elitist channel to being more mainstream, but demanding at the same time. Our motto is to create high quality, engaging and challenging content. Documentary is what we started with, but film and TV drama are hugely popular. For the Thursday prime-time slot, we can have an average 3-5% share of the audience which is our target. For a big hit, we can reach 800,000-1,000,000 viewers and a 5-6% share. 

How do you programme your shows across ARTE and arte.tv to maximise the viewership? How dramatic has been the shift on ARTE from linear to digital?
AP: The change has been huge. France and Germany are two major European markets, quite conservative. We were a bit late in terms of digital shift, compared to pioneering territories like Scandinavia or the UK. We started working on that in 2018 and now it’s the core of our programming strategy. For instance with Ride Upon the Storm - our major co-production last year - we decided to offer a binge experience to our viewers a week before the premiere on linear TV. It was new for French audiences. We maximised the communication and promotion via a major marketing push. 

How was the result?
AP: It was very satisfactory. The series aired every Thursday between November 29 and December 13, 2018 and averaged 3.5% audience share per episode in France. The 10 episodes were launched as well on arte.tv and totalled around 3 million views for France and Germany, which is an excellent score. 

Have you adapted your overall strategy to catch younger viewers on the go?
AP: Yes. For quite a while, we’ve been adapting our strategy to bring younger viewers onto our digital platform and we’re producing specifically for that target group. The idea is to be present with the ARTE brand across all platforms. In the future, we will probably acquire and co-produce non-linear shows. 

What are the key criteria for you commit on a foreign show as co-producer or as a pre-buy or acquisition?
AP: Our criteria are the same for foreign and French TV drama. We look for unique, original projects from strong voices, auteurs. For instance, with Adam Price, after Borgen, we told him we were interested in co-producing his next show. Weeks later he said he had something to pitch. That’s how it all started with Ride Upon the Storm. 

Another important element for us is to have a strong human angle. We love character-driven dramas that are altogether challenging with current political/social themes and entertaining as well.

How do you usually collaborate with your foreign partners and what uniqueness do you bring to the table?
AP: When we board a project, we tell our co-producers about ARTE’s DNA and what we’re looking for. At the same time, we behave as a minority co-producer and trust the broadcasting partners to make sure the show keeps its authenticity. Any creative decision has to be organic. We want to make sure our French and German audience will be curious, seduced by a Norwegian or Danish story, and that nothing will be twisted to make it more French or German. 

For instance our next co-production with TV2 Denmark, the crime series DNA, has several French characters, including a major role played by Charlotte Rampling, but that was an integral part of the original story. Our commissioning editor was very pleased to work with the creator Torleif Hoppe and the Danish producers from Nordisk Film, to make sure the French elements were credible. 

With DNA, could you explain at what stage you came in?
AP: It’s been a long story. We first heard Torleif’s pitch at Series Mania three years ago. We immediately expressed our interest. But the project had a different production set up. Then Tomas Radoor of Nordisk Film and TV2 Denmark took over. We knew TV2 quite well as we had pre-bought their series Norskov. So the idea to co-produce with them was natural. We share a similar vision on the drama side, taking care both of the creator’s vision and the audience. 

What genres do you go for? Could you cite some recent Nordic dramas that you’ve acquired or co-produced?
AP: The Sandamn Murders was probably among the first ARTE acquisitions that was very successful for us as well as Jordskott. For the premiere of Jordskott Season 1, we reached 7.5% share with 1.3m viewers. The total average was around 4%. Then we went into family drama with Thicker than Water. From Finland’s we’ve acquired the mini-series Raya, from Iceland the show Lava Field that was a huge success. From Denmark, we had for instance 1864 - co-produced from the German side - and of course Ride Upon the Storm, with season 2 set to premiere later this year. Norskov was a pre-buy and we acquired Broke (Bankerot) and The Legacy. From Norway, of course Occupied was a major co-production, and we’ve acquired the crime show The River (Elven). 

What’s next in terms of acquisitions and co-productions?
AP: We’re doing seasons 7-8-9 of The Sandamn Murders and we’ve acquired the Swedish comedy Simple Heist [FLX] set to air next month. Usually it’s harder for comedies to travel but we felt this one had something unique, both local and universal. 

Scandi crime is very popular with our audience. There are so many sub-genres within crime and Scandinavia remains top of the league within the genre. 

In our pipeline, we have potential co-productions with Norway, Denmark, Iceland, we’re working on a Swedish development and hopefully a new Norwegian development. 

Do you have regular meetings with the Nordic public broadcasters?
AP: We’ve had excellent relationships with our partners at DR, NRK, SVT, Yle and RÚV ever since we started co-producing with foreign partners. They know they can come to us as we are regular and attentive partners. It’s crucial for us to meet our public broadcasting colleagues and find ways to fight off competition. 

What major challenges are ahead for ARTE Fiction?
AP: There are many challenges. We’re keen to promote new storytelling, new territories which is why we’re co-producing with Spain, Italy on top of Scandinavia and we’ll probably expand to other territories. We’re also hoping to attract international partners on French majority projects. 

Other challenges are fighting off competition from regular French channels as well as international platforms, we need to develop new strategies to attract new audience and continue to bring the best drama series to our core audience.