Skins co-creator Bryan Elsley has made a career out of “multi-strand” shows that follow numerous storylines each episode.
But Elsley today said “multi-strand” shows like Skins, which made the careers of Nicholas Hoult, Dev Patel, Daniel Kaluuya and Kaya Scodelario, have somewhat disappeared from vogue.
“Multi-strand is quite unusual out of the UK [today],” said Elsley during a work in progress session at Seriencamp. “It’s not so in fashion.”
Twenty years on from the cult classic Skins, Elsley is attempting to reinvigorate the world of “multi-strand” with the BBC and ZDF‘s Counsels, which follows a group of trainee lawyers.
He said Counsels, which stars a young, diverse cast of up-and-comers and is produced by his Balloon Entertainment, mixes the “pace and attack of the best America legal drama” with “some of the atmosphere of the legal profession” of his Glasgow hometown. The show eschews a traditional English approach to the legal drama of yesteryear that focused on “wigs and lots of beautiful rich people,” he added.
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“We wanted to do something a bit different and give a sense of what these lives are really like to a point,” said Elsley. “It’s a little bit different to many other legal dramas as it happens very much at ground level. Most cases are shoplifting, assault or petty theft. But they change the lives of the lawyers.”
Counsel’s path to screen was “a bit unusual,” said Elsley. Around the time the BBC canceled long-running Scottish soap River City, the corporation invited indies to pitch for a returning series set in Scotland. Elsley “decided on a whim to write a show about lawyers” with co-creator Gillian McCormack and Counsels was successful.
The BBC took Counsels forwards and ZDF jumped aboard as co-producer.
Counsels doesn’t have a direct German angle but ZDF commissioning editor Katharina Kremling, who joined Elsley at Seriencamp in Cologne, said this isn’t a problem for co-pros as long as “we can secure the core of the show.”
“In that sense we are a little bit different in how we do co-pros than other partners,” said Kremling. “We want to give the audience a window to the world.”
The BBC and ZDF have a co-pro deal in place and have worked on A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and upcoming Killing Eve prequel Honey.
Seriencamp runs to June 11.