Witnesses (2014 – 2017) – Police investigate when bodies are taken from a cemetery and placed in houses for sale, along with a photo of retired police officer Paul Maisonneuve.
• product of French public service broadcaster – France 2 – associated
with quality, serious drama in continental Europe
• France 2 were able to develop the series in the context of new
opportunities for distribution and exhibition – e.g. the Walter Presents
platform in the UK which is a subsidiary of C4, exploiting broadcast
and digital opportunities. Series distributed in US, Australia, Europe
• style, content and characters of the series deliberately designed to
replicate international success of Nordic Noir in order to target
audiences beyond the national
• The Missing contains a mix of French regional, local identity with more
familiar genre conventions and characters
• the series was marketed using familiar (to national audiences) actors
but focused on the familiar iconography of the thriller and horror
aspects abroad
• the postmodern, hyperreal style is fashionable; internationally
recognizable and popular.
The Missing (2014 – 2016) – A young British woman stumbles through the streets of Eckhausen in Germany and collapses. Her name is Alice Webster – and she was abducted from the same town 11 years ago. Her return sends shockwaves through the tight-knit local community, as her family is thrown into turmoil. As the search for the abductor gathers pace, Alice also appears to hold vital clues to the whereabouts of a second missing girl, Sophie Giroux.
subject matter is both nationally specific and deals with global issues
• BBC Worldwide, as a powerful international institution, is able to
target a global audience unrelated to the national audience
• co-production between BBC and Starz as a means of addressing
audiences and extending appeal across nations
• the second series is promoted in the context of the existing popular
brand which includes the popular thriller genre and distinctive
storytelling based on time slip elements (product identity)
• the cast is balanced to be familiar and different to both national and
international audiences (familiar British and French TV and film stars)
• themes and setting are constructed to appeal to an international
audience: setting Europe and the Middle East. Themes span the
domestic and global – family melodrama, fictionalised reference to
recent wars and themes of immigration
• conscious exploitation of global social media landscape to create both
anticipation and ongoing interest (especially Twitter: 1000 tweets a
minute).
