A more authentic style, and relaxed rights position, could make FYI’s upcoming unscripted series Find My First Love an interesting test case for US factual production. Clive Whittingham meets the show’s creators.

A search for more authentic reality and factual programming tackling issues and social trends has led A+E Networks’ fledgling US cablenet FYI to traditional, and contemporary, love stories.

The channel, which replaced Bio in the US last year and is led by former BBC veteran Jana Bennett, had a hit out of the gate with Married at First Sight – a reality format that does exactly what it says on the tin, then asks the happy couple whether they want to stay together or divorce after a period of living together as husband and wife.

On Tuesday, the channel will premiere another show of a similar bent, Find My First Love, from Red Arrow-owned UK prodco Nerd. The show employs investigators and researchers to trace people’s ‘one who got away’ and arrange a meeting to see if the romance can be rekindled. The shows follow the intensive investigation and prolonged journey to finally track down the lost love.

Nerd’s creative director, John Farrar, says: “As a company we’re attracted to ideas that have universal themes. We spoke in the office about missed connections and lost opportunities in life, love and careers and it felt like something that instantly connected with everybody. Everybody seemed to have a story from university or a trip abroad or a music festival – a story of somebody who slipped through their fingers.

“The process of finding people is surprisingly hard, we’re not going after stories where a Facebook search will find them. Finding people makes compelling viewing.”

Three years ago, on another network, the show could have looked very different. Engineered plot twists, talking heads, ‘Frankenbites’ from the editing studio, the heavy hand of the producer throughout. It was a formula that worked well in the US and produced big hits, but also one that has now stagnated and left the unscripted industry short of a big hit and wondering where to turn next.

Bennett, FYI and LMN’s president, is determined to take her channels in another direction. She told C21 recently: “Our programmes need to be more authentic and less formal in tone. We’ve cut a different tone of voice to help us stand out in the marketplace.

“There have obviously been some great shows out there with a reality label that are extremely well made and cast – and I use that word deliberately. There’s a need to step back a little bit and think about what programmes are for and about. They’re not all about packaging. There’s a danger the audience feels not as much of it ends up as surprising as it should be, because it is over-packaged. The industry has become very efficient, but it can feel homogeneous.”

That’s something that worked well for Find My First Love showrunner Tiffany Trigg, although she admits it made the casting process the hardest she’d ever been involved in.

“It’s very much vérité,” she says, comparing it to Who Do You Think You Are?, which aired on TLC in the US and BBC1 in the UK. “It’s not a reality TV show with talking heads, it’s very much in the moment following the leads and clues as they unfold. It’s a beautiful and rich-looking show.

“From a storytelling point of view it’s closer to what the UK is used to than what we’ve had here, where reality shows have been incredibly produced and look the same, are lit the same and all unfold in a certain way.

“It’s the hardest show I’ve ever been involved in to cast. Some have come from the databases of casting companies, but we’ve tried everything. I’ve been handing out fliers at my kids’ school.”

Farrar believes the quest for authenticity will play well for UK prodcos, but is married with a distinctly US style of storytelling.

“What we’ve learnt from the US is that they are experts in story – drilling and mining the story wherever it can go,” he says. “It looks nothing like a traditional reality TV show but it has a solid story to it and a great look.

“TV is ready for another big turn of the wheel. We’ve had huge, very produced reality shows and now every network I’m meeting with wants shows feeling much more authentic and less produced. It’s a balancing act because you have to deliver on story and it pushes us harder to find those characters, worlds and formats that will always deliver on story without us having to over-produce the storyline.”

Unusually, for a UK prodco pitching into the US, Nerd has been able to hold on to some of the rights and Red Arrow International will launch the format for global buyers at MipTV next month, under the title Lost in Love.

“In this instance Red Arrow funded a proof-of-concept tape, and we invested in a mini-pilot that gave an idea how it would look on screen,” says Farrar. “Red Arrow also set up deals in smaller territories, so by the time we were taking it to A+E it wasn’t like it was a hit show from another channel but was a well-developed idea and had traction in other territories. Like everything, it’s a negotiation.”

Bennett says: “We have a desire to fill this potential set of channels internationally, and some of our ideas will be on other channels where we don’t have FYI. So we want global rights. However, some ideas have a different starting point and that may not be possible.”

There’s a suggestion that the thirst for a new unscripted break-out hit, a large number of smaller factual channels looking to coproduce in order to compete with bigger fish and the influx of UK producers into the US may soften its notorious rights position. Find My First Love – two episodes of which were greenlit initially but Nerd is hopeful more will follow in the US and elsewhere – could be an interesting test case in both rights ownership and programming style.