French TV production slows

The number of hours of drama, documentary and animation produced in France fell last year, but locally made dramas have grown in popularity in recent months.

UK crime drama Broadchurch

Research by funding agency Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC) shows that, in terms of ratings, French dramas overtook US series in the first quarter of this year.

Of the 10 highest rated dramas since the beginning of this year, nine are French and only one from the US. That included TF1’s TV movie L’Emprise (9.9 million viewers), TF1’s series Clem (7.3 million) and France 2 shows Les Témoins (The Witnesses, 4.7 million) and Chef (4.4 million).

Last year, French content accounted for 61 of the 100 highest drama ratings, up from just 37 the previous year, although foreign series continued to lead.

The highest rated TF1 series remained The Mentalist (10.1 million and a 37.1% share for its best episode), followed by local police series Profilage (8.6 million). On France 2, UK drama serial Broadchurch (7.9 million) and US series Castle (6.7 million) were the top dramas in2014.

The Mentalist

In total, 825 evenings featured drama on TF1, France 2, France 3, Canal+, M6 and Arte. This was down from 851 in 2013 and included 344 evenings with US series (down 14), 331 with French content (up 13) and 122 with European series (down 15).

Production of drama, documentary and animation fell 11% last year to 4,828 hours for various reasons.

Drama lost 4.2%, falling to 748 hours, but production values did not decline and the average budget rose to €958,000 (US$1m) per hour. That was driven by big-budget international dramas, which developed greatly last year. Foreign input improved by 67% to €45.3m due to the production of several international series: Europacorp’s Taxi Brooklyn, Lagardere’s Transporter II, Haut & Court’s Panthers and Capa Drama’s Versailles.

As for documentaries, after having reached a record figure of 3,092 hours in 2013, volume was down for the first time in many years, by 16.2 % to 2,590 hours.

This was blamed on changes to the CNC documentaries grant, which now favours creative docs rather than reality series, as well as the loss of notable doc strands.

Animation was also down, by 20.1% to 260 hours. The CNC pointed out that animation requires a long production process and, as result, goes through cycles. This figure follows a peak of 326 hours in 2013.