HBO steps up original Euro drama

HBO Europe is prepping a slate of new dramas for next season, including several format-based renewals and a series described as “a Polish action thriller”.

Wataha (aka The Pack) is a six-part crime drama that HBO Europe has commissioned from Wroclaw-based prodco ATM Group. The producer is Artur Kowalewski alongside HBO’s Izabela Lopuch.

The show has a British script consultant and co-writer, Julie Rutterford (Shameless), while the other writers include Kamil Chomiuk, Artur Kowalewski, Maciej Maciejewski, Krzysztof Maćkowski, Wojciech Miłoszewski and Wiktor Piątkowski.

Shooting in the Bieszczady mountains on the remote Poland-Ukraine border is underway and the series will air in Poland and across HBO’s other European feeds next year.

The show follows a troop of border guards who come under attack, and was described as “broad in appeal and action-packed” by Antony Root, HBO Europe’s exec VP of original programming and production.

Root told C21 the show is the first originally developed series for the Time Warner-backed pay TV company, following original miniseries Burning Bush last year and a number of adaptations of imported scripted formats.

Next year, HBO Europe will air 13 half-hours of the Czech version of Israeli format Shall We Kiss and the second season of Hungary’s adaptation of another Israeli format, In-Treatment.

This comes after this fall’s debut of In-Treatment 3 in Poland, In-Treatment 2 in Czech Republic, Shall We Kiss 2 in Hungary and the debut of a local adaptation of Shall We Kiss in Romania.

“Our formats are getting much more localised,” Root said. “Although we’re taking scripts from Israel or the US and adapting them for our local markets, we’re cannibalising the original stories and writing our own ones so the adaptations are very flexible.

“We’re not in the business of slavishly following the original shows, shot by shot. We see them as an opportunity to speak to local markets as if they were originally developed there to kick-start screen-writing communities.”

The plan, Root added, is to “evolve a generation of writers who are writing the kind of things premium cable channels like HBO want. In many of our countries, screenwriters go from soaps five days a week to cinema with nothing in-between.”

The Pack, along with Burning Bush from Czech firm Nut Productions, is the fruits of this strategy and Root said he is now looking for a distribution partner for The Pack. Burning Bush went international via Germany’s Beta Film.

Root explained that while HBO Europe’s initial drama plan was to adapt the same scripted formats in each of its territories, as with In-Treatment and Shall We Kiss, the plan going forward is to have different shows in each territory, either imported formats or original development, to allow series to move between countries.