Arte on series shopping spree

MIPTV: French-German cultural broadcaster Arte is picking up content for new slots dedicated to scripted series, with new acquisitions including Danish crime drama Those Who Kill and Sweden’s Real Humans.

In January, Arte launched a new primetime slot dedicated to series on Thursday evenings, with two additional slots on Friday evenings.

Arte recently aired season one of Danish political series Borgen, with season two lined up for the autumn and season three following next year. Other series have included The Tudors and Whitechapel.

The network has now acquired Those Who Kill, produced by Miso Film, and has also pre-bought rights to Swedish series Real Humans, and BBC period drama Parade’s End, produced by Mammoth Screen.

It will also air another BBC series, The Hour. The third season of Danish crime series The Killing has also be picked up along with the fourth season of Sony Pictures Television’s Breaking Bad.

Another acquisition is Queens of Swing, a two-part period drama miniseries from Italian broadcaster Rai about three sisters and set in the 1930s.

“We are not a channel that specialises in drama,” Marie-Catherine Marchetti, head of drama acquisitions at Arte, told C21. “We mostly air documentaries but we’re acquiring more and more. We are a public channel so we don’t have a lot of money. It’s not easy to coproduce or buy big series. For US series, it’s very difficult. But as we are European and a cultural channel, we want to put things on that are not on other channels. We want to show other things from other countries. We are really looking for Spanish programming. We want to show all European cultures.

“We want lighter shows. There are a lot of heavy documentaries and news. Ten years ago, period and costume dramas were impossible. Now there is a lot of these types of programmes on all channels. The success of Downton Abbey shows that people now want to be transported to other worlds.”

Marchetti added that Arte was not interested in violent police series or anything based on horror. “It’s not for our audience,” she said.

This week Arte signed on as a coproduction partner for Spies of Warsaw, in a deal with BBC Worldwide.

It will also air The Heretics, a French-Canadian coproduction about a 13th Century religious rebellion.