Exclusive: Czech TV eyes crime & co-pros as ZDF’s 1980’s paranormal project nears debut

We’re On It, Comrades! (Czech Television)

The Czech Republic’s public broadcaster is looking to forge closer ties with international partners with particular focus on crime and family drama, following the commissioning of ZDF coproduction We’re On It, Comrades!.

The procedural, which is from Barletta Productions’ Matěj Chlupáček and Maja Hamplová, tracks the activities of an investigative division that explores paranormal activities during the 1980s and reflects the interest in German-Czech coproductions that were popular 30 years ago, according to Jan Maxa, Czech TV’s director of content & new media.

“It’s interesting for our audience and Germans because it reflects the spirit of coproductions that happened between German broadcasters and Czechoslovakia in the 1980s,” said Maxa, talking to TBI here at NEM Dubrovnik.

“Those shows were focused on family fantasy series that treated the paranormal as something that disrupts the normal lives of the ordinary citizens instead of going into fantasy. That is the spirit that this show has.”

Jan Maxa

The show is being sold by ZDF Studios and underlines Czech TV’s increasing interest in coproduced dramas says Maxa, with We’re On It, Comrades! receiving funding from the Czech Film Fund, the Slovak Audiovisual Fund and the Moravian-Silesian Region.

Czech TV’s scripted focus

“In the past we would fully finance everything, but now producers are becoming more and more adept at finding other sources of financing,” he explains, adding that the broadcaster is looking to build on existing relationships that see it partnering with countries such as Slovakia, Poland and Austria.

“Typically we want all rights for Czech Republic, then our other financing parties can have all their rights and then we split whatever proceedings from rest of world,” Maxa adds, highlighting that shows are typically running to budgets of around €400,000 ($430,000) per episode, outside of Christmas specials.

“The ruling genre is crime, Czech’s love their crime. As my former boss once said, you Czechs are not Slavic people, you are German people pretending to be Slav people! And like Germans we love our crime dramas, the whodunnits.

“We want well executed, thoughtful, family drama and family dreamed that relates to reality. Czech’s like a close contact with reality, to feel like it is not just a fairytale – although Christmas fairytales are always the most watched shows each year.”

Entertainment formats, however, are a tougher sell, Maxa says.

“We have our set of formats and we’re really living with them happily ever after. We have Strictly Come Dancing, which works magic for us, and we added Bake Off to the portfolio too, which also has that fairytale-ish quality, the Cinderella element.

“We aren’t doing gameshows at all. And in terms of other shinyfloor shows, because Strictly is such a strong brand – and Bake Off is doing well – we are not really looking.”