German Nets Abandon Local Drama

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Bad news for TV writers in Germany. The network RTL is shutting down their in-house fiction and comedy departments entirely after their slate of homegrown show flopped miserably in the ratings, according to the Hollywood Reporter. 

While imported U.S. series such as "House" and "CSI" continue to draw audiences for the channel, RTL has for years been unable to produce a new German-language fiction hit. Instead, it relies almost entirely on German adaptations of international reality formats such as "Supernanny" and "Pop Idol."
RTL has also been hit hard by the sharp drop in TV ad sales that have followed the economic recession. CEO Anke Schaferkordt has evidently chosen cheaper imports over the economic risk inherent with local production.

As someone at Pro7, another German network told me, they can buy three American series for what it costs to produce one original German show. And there's a lot less incentive to make German shows when they keep bombing.
The only consistent homegrown, scripted drama hit on RTL is ALARM FOR COBRA 11, made by my friends at Action Concept, and that's now in its 16th season. Action Concept has a new series for RTL called LASKO: FIST OF GOD that is premiering later this month. I'm hoping that LASKO will buck the trend and be a big hit.

Mr. Monk in Trouble

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Here's the full dust-jacket for MR. MONK IN TROUBLE, which comes out in December. There will also be an excerpt from the book in the November issue of ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE. (You can click on the photo for a larger image)

Monk in trouble dust jacket

Hat in Hand

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The most interesting thing about Ken Follett's THE PILLARS OF EARTH mini-series isn't the international cast (Ian McShane, Donald Sutherland, Rufus Sewell etc) or it's location shoot in Hungary and Austria — it's the complex financing that had to be put together to get the German/Canadian coproduction made. As the press release notes:

TANDEM COMMUNICATIONS and Muse Entertainment's broadcast and home video partners on The Pillars of the Earth are ProSiebenSat1's German FreeTV Group, Canada's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Movie Network and Movie Central, Spain's Socable, Austria's ORF, Germany's Universum Film Home Entertainment, Hungary's TV2 and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment – to name a few. In addition, the financial entities involved were gap financier FIDEC, Germany's DZ Bank and The National Bank of Canada. Legal counsel for the project was Mathias Schwarz in Germany, Cari Davine in Canada, Randolph M. Paul in the USA and Monika Horvath in Hungary.

Did you notice that it says that those are just a few of the financial partners? And did you see that the deal-making itself is  such a big part of the production, that the producers feel obligated to thank their lawyers in the press release? Incredible. 

The folks at Tandem obviously had to go, hat in hand, all over the world to get the money for this. Even more surprising is that the mini-series doesn't even have a U.S. or U.K. broadcast yet. This illustrates just how difficult it is to raise financing for TV productions these days…and how global the business has become. Tandem's managing director Rola Bauer says in the press release:

"The fact that we have been able to raise the production financing in these economically challenging times is testimony to the enduring strength of fictional television Event programming […] and could not have been achieved without our international networks as well as our financial and production partners."

Scott Free TV president David Zucker told the Hollywood Reporter that putting together such a complex deal and going into production without a U.S. broadcaster is  "the new world order."

"Yes, there is more risk at the top, but there's more latitude on the creative side. It's not dissimilar to the indie film biz in this respect. Given how difficult the economy became here, we decided to plow ahead and get funding and casting done before trying to do a licensing deal in the States."

Zucker said there was "a lot of interest" among yank broadcasters, cablers and pay cablers but did not specify how close to a deal the producers were.

For what it's worth, the last big mini-series that Munich-based Tandem put together, LOST CITY RAIDERS, ended up on SciFi. 

Mr. Monk in Eighth Heaven

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More reviews for MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP are coming in, this one from Mark Baker at eOpinions, Amazon, and a host of other sites. He says, in part:

Mr. Monk must be in eighth heaven. First, it's an even number. Second, the TV series is about to start the eighth (and final) season just a month after the eighth novel based on the series is released. The good news for fans of the show is that Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop is another strong adventure for our favorite police consultant.[…]Fans of the TV series that have missed the novels have truly missed out on some fun. If you aren't obsessive compulsive, Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop makes as good a place as any to start.

Thanks, Mark! I never noticed all that stuff about the eights…eighth season, eighth book. It makes perfect sense. The natural order of the universe has been maintained.

It Never Gets Easier

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Even after writing fifty books, it doesn't get any easier. It only gets harder, so says Elmore Leonard in an interview with Barnes & Noble.

"When I was working at an ad agency, which I did through the '50s — I left in '61 — I was getting up at 5 a.m., and I'd write for two hours. I was just beginning to write. I didn't know it beforehand, but I learned I could write two pages, a page an hour. I did it all through the '50s. I wrote five books and thirty short stories that way. But now it's a lot harder; it just gets harder. For a while, maybe, it gets easier — you're relaxed, and you can just write what you want, and it seems to work. But then, you don't want to sound like you're imitating yourself, and you don't want to use the same sorts of situations over and over."

It's a great interivew. He talks a lot about his process and gives us a glimpse into the development of the book that he's working on now, which brings back Karen Sisco from OUT OF SIGHT and drops her into the world of Somali piracy.

UK Actors Flocking to US

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It's no secret that UK actors are swarming to Los Angeles to become leads in TV series (HOUSE, LIE TO ME, LIFE, LAW & ORDER, JOURNEYMAN, GREY'S ANATOMY, SARAH CONNOR, THE WIRE, etc.). Now Broadcast magazine reports in an interview with actor James Nesbitt that it's the  lack of jobs on UK television that's sending them overseas.

The Cold Feet and Murphy’s Law actor, who also stars in BBC1’s Occupation next week, told the Radio Times that the UK TV industry was in a “desperate state”, and that he was having to look to the US for work.

He said Hollywood did not naturally appeal to him – “the notion of waiting six months to play a baddie in a bad film just wasn’t my idea of career utopia” – but that he had now employed a US agent.

“I was challenged here, I enjoyed what I was doing. But the British TV industry is in a desperate state – not creatively but financially,” he said. “There’s so little work happening here, it [Hollywood] is not a door that I’d slam shut,” he said.

Mr. Monk and the Dirty Review

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Alan Cranis at Bookgasm really liked MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP. In his lengthy review today, he says in part:

After seven previous tie-in novels, it’s safe (if not fairy obvious) to say that nobody knows the world of obsessive-compulsive detective Adrian Monk better than novelist Lee Goldberg. But that doesn’t mean he’s become lazy or complacent. As MR. MONK AND THE DIRTY COP shows, Goldberg is willing to take chances with the firmly established characters, and is still able to provide plenty of laughs and well-crafted entertainment. 

[…]Once again, the story is told from Natalie’s first-person perspective, and her personal doubts about her identity and career provide an unexpected depth and pathos to the telling. But she maintains her hard-forged sense of humor and innate sarcasm, even in the face of her suddenly uncertain future. How else can she put up with a boss who, for all his detecting genius, feels that the inventor of the Diaper Genie deserves a Nobel Peace Prize? 

[…] Authors like Goldberg — and Max Allan Collins, most notably — completely disprove the notion that tie-in novels are inferior wastes of time. Truth is, you’d be hard-pressed to find another recent work that provides so many hip and humorous moments, along with its believable plot twists. MONK series fans — and that means both the TV show and these novels — have another winner here to enjoy. And for those who haven’t experienced Monk in print, this new book is a fine place to start.

Thanks, Alan!

The Plan is Coming Together

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Variety reports that the cast is shaping up for the big screen version of my buddy Steve Cannell’s hit series THE A-TEAM. Liam Neeson is taken with the part of Hannibal (George Peppard’s role) and Bradley Cooper is being wooed to play Faceman (Dirk Benedict’s part). No word yet on who is being sought for the roles of Murdock (Dwight Schultz in the original) and “B.A.” Baracus, played by Mr. T. Joe Carnahan is directing, and Ridley Scott is producing with Jules Daly and Cannell from a screenplay by Carnahan, Brian Bloom and Skip Woods.