EXCLUSIVE: Banijay Rights has sold rags-to-riches series The Hardacres to a wealth of territories as the sales giant reveals one of its biggest pre-MIPCOM deal packages with the Cannes confab kicking off next week.
The Channel 5 show from All Creatures Great and Small producer Playground chronicles the loves and fortunes of the working-class Hardacre family as they move from a grimy fish dock to a vast country estate in 1890s Yorkshire, England. The show has sold to BritBox in Australia, TVNZ in New Zealand, TV4 Sweden, MTV in Finland, DR in Denmark, RTÉ in Ireland, BBC First in Benelux and, as previously announced, Movistar Plus+ in Spain. Dazzler Media has acquired home entertainment rights for the series in the UK. It is made in association with Screen Ireland, Red Berry Productions and Newgrange Pictures.
Conversations with U.S. buyers are taking place, Banijay Rights boss Cathy Payne revealed to Deadline. PBS Masterpiece already co-produces Channel 5’s All Creatures Great and Small, which is comparable in scope to The Hardacres, while Banijay is also selling highly-anticipated BBC-PBS series Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light at MIPCOM.
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Payne described The Hardacres as a “broad audience piece” that should shine in a risk-averse market. “It’s appealing to the sort of big audience that would watch All Creatures Great and Small and it’s rags to riches, so there’s something there for the lover of warm, easy TV,” she added. “You can see where it will grow from season to season.”
The Hardacres also taps into a viewer penchant for family sagas, Payne added, citing the success of the likes of HBO’s Downton Abbey spin-off The Gilded Age, along with Banijay’s own Peaky Blinders and the upcoming House of Guinness, both of which come from Steven Knight.
“People like to look inside the dynamics and mechanisms of all family units,” said Payne.
“Everyone is grappling with how to fund scripted”
Payne was chatting with Deadline as she prepared to head over to Cannes for the 40th MIPCOM.
She described the current state of the scripted market as “selective,” stressing that there are opportunities out there but buyers remain picky. “It has been a very selective year,” she said. “There has been commissioning and acquisitions but [buyers] have focused on how to balance the books and what is the right program spend.”
Payne pointed to U.S. streamers like Prime Video and Peacock who are making few big bets each year, along with the turmoil at majors like Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, which has impacted their content buying and investment.
“Everyone is grappling with how to fund scripted,” said Payne, whose outfit sells the likes of Black Mirror and SAS Rogue Heroes. “We went through a stage a few years ago where you could underpin your risk out of the U.S. and that is certainly not the case at the moment. In a recovering market there is risk-aversion but as we know it is only risk that results in something breaking through. It’s about that balancing act.”
Opportunities continue to present themselves for sales houses as local networks bolster their Broadcaster VoD players, Payne added, and these platforms are “no longer simply catch-up services” but tend to have a “strong domestic flavor.”
On the formats side, Banijay is pushing The Summit at MIPCOM, which has already sold to a number of territories including CBS in the U.S.
Payne has high hopes for the show’s continued success in the international market and talked up how costs can be kept down by shooting different versions back to back from the same hub, which helps in the current climate.
She said “refreshed versions” of traditional IP are in vogue such as Banijay’s Deal or No Deal Island, while the rejuvenation of the genre led by The Traitors – sold by Banijay rival All3Media International – continues apace.
“We are finding constant demand for big significant pieces but it is not just about turning around the same program season after season,” she added. “It’s about giving these shows time to build and then looking at doing different iterations.”