Nina Hernandez, head of content at Banijay Iberia-owned Portocabo, discusses the creative journey of new cop drama Weiss & Morales, and how to tackle the climate emergency without your audience switching over.

Nina Hernandez

Hailed as a possible blueprint for more affordable European coproduced scripted series that don’t compromise on quality, RTVE and ZDF’s new procedural crime series Weiss ＆ Morales is also showing the way forward on how to naturally incorporate climate storytelling into the genre.

As the Canary Islands-set series launches on Spanish public broadcaster RTVE on May 23, C21 catches up with Nina Hernandez, head of content at Banijay Iberia-owned production company Portocabo about reflecting current climate issues in drama storytelling without comprising on entertainment.

Weiss & Morales is a procedural crime series, but with a difference. It’s put climate themes at the heart of the storytelling. Can you tell me more about it?
Weiss & Morales is a 4×90’ procedural. It’s very light and entertaining; the crimes aren’t particularly gruesome. It’s a blue-sky crime show. And at the heart of the story is the relationship between the police officers that have to investigate together.

Nina Weiss [played by Katia Fellin] is a BKA agent from Germany; she’s spending a few days with her mother who lives as an expat on the Canary Islands. She’s come to find something out about her past and while she is there a crime related to a German citizen happens and she’s called in to collaborate as an observer with Raul Morales [Miguel Ángel Silvestre] who’s a Guardia Civil officer on the island.

The series is mostly about them investigating and getting to know each other their opposing personalities and ways of working, but the first case they come across is set on in an oil rig shipyard in the harbour [of Las Palmas]. When you arrive in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, you see from the harbour these enormous structures in the horizon and they’re very imposing. This caught our attention, so we set up our first case in that scenario.

At Portocabo, we are very focused on trying to bring into our storytelling what is happening in the present and the climate crisis is current. We had started to collaborate with the European Climate Foundation here in Spain just as we had the first draught of the first episode, and they mentioned to us the possibility of bringing climate themes into our storytelling.

Miguel Ángel Silvestre, left, and Katia Fellin star as Weiss and Morales

Jaime Olmedo

Can you explain what the European Climate Foundation is and what it does?
The European Climate Foundation is a European NGO. It partners with different companies and organisations and is very active in diverse fields. Its mission is essentially to incentivise strategies to bring climate action into place – and also to communicate it. They have recently been working very intensely in the audiovisual field, initially starting with partners in script writing laboratories and consultancies, or working very directly with writers. But recently, they have explored new avenues and they thought that maybe contacting production companies directly would be interesting.

So they initially contacted you at Portocabo?
Yes, they got in contact with us. We hadn’t really thought that it would be possible to address the climate situation in the same way as gender and inclusion have been addressed in content. It was difficult for us to wrap our head around that idea because when you think of gender or inclusion, it’s something that’s related to a character, to a person. But here we’re talking about something that is structural, it’s a system, it’s about the place we live in. So how could we bring that into the story? And especially we had already started our development. So we had to weave it in afterwards.

Cosy crime with a climate change punch

So they approached you not knowing that you were developing Weiss & Morales. What year was this?
This was in 2023. We had a first draught of the first episode, so we started researching to try to find ways to bring it into our storyline. We thought we had a framework in which we could describe these scenarios and what the Canary Islands are doing right now because this is a place that has so much protected territory – it’s a natural reserve, it has protected waters. Shooting there, you have restrictions, and you have regulations, so you are always environmentally conscious. It just felt natural to bring in this element of the islands, because in the series we feel that the islands are also a character.

Treating the location as a character is a good way to look at it. Is that something that you already did before?
Previously at Portocabo, we had produced Hierro [for Movistar+ and Arte France], which I didn’t participate in the development of; that was [writer and producer] Pepe Coira. He developed a series that was based on a very remote island, El Hierro, in the Canary Islands. The island was a character [in that series].

But [with Weiss & Morales], we went a step further and we didn’t focus on one island, but on a concept of what the Canary Islands are in general and what it means in terms of the the limitation of resources that island life brings with it. This made us research and find avenues in which to weave this idea of the climate situation and the future of the islands.

Specifically in the first episode, we dealt with relevant oil-related companies and we discovered a scheme that is actually being put in place to implement energy self-sufficiency through a project where they are going to repurpose oil rigs with a windmill and produce hydrogen from seawater.

Did you incorporate that then in your story?
Yes, it became a project that was being dealt with at the company where the crime occurs. What we discovered is presented to the audience through this crime story. As we didn’t have experience [of climate storytelling], we were put in contact with Climate Spring in the UK, which has an agenda of working in the climate space. So, we were sending them our scripts, we were talking about our ideas, we were getting feedback.

How were you introduced to Climate Spring?
It was through the European Climate Foundation (ECF). They put us in contact. The development occurred in a very short period of time. There were four episodes, we did two blocks, with two episodes each and we were writing as they were shooting so everything was a bit messy, but we did manage to incorporate climate in two of the episodes, the first and the last one.

Filming took place across the Canary Islands

On the last episode, what was the storyline that you incorporated?
In the fourth episode, the scenario is an international scientific community that is researching marine science and it’s specifically about an investigation about coral reefs. Scouting on the islands, we contacted marine scientists that had recently discovered that at 50-plus metres there are pristine black coral reefs surrounding the islands. They had not been discovered earlier because they are in locations that are in very strong currents and 50 metres deep, so you have to be very professional to dive down there.

But they seem to be a form of coral reefs from the time before our climate impacted on the sea temperature and the coral started to die. So, it was something that we wanted to bring to the forefront of this episode and it will be carrying on into the second season. I’m not able to reveal everything that is going to be known in the end, but what we do get to know is the impact of microplastics on coral reefs.

Was there any resistance or concerns voiced by any of your partners or broadcasters about you bringing the climate crisis into the story?
No, actually, we kept it low profile. We worked internally; we spoke to them and they read the scripts, but we didn’t highlight it or underline it, because we think the best way is just making it natural, bringing it into storytelling in a natural way. I’m really invested in future development to bring it into the characters, into their emotional sphere, and making them have an interest or a special interest in climate topics and how they navigate the world with this special interest.

Given the incredible position of influence the entertainment industry has and holds on audiences across the globe, do you think it should reference climate issues more?
Recently we took part in a little summit organised by ECF, where they invited some of the partners. I had an idea that it would be interesting to communicate what we are doing, but I was quickly corrected by people inside other corporations that have to deal with the repercussions from misinformation or denial platforms that may attack them.

And the position was that you must be wary because one can become a target of these strategies of misinformation and it can very quickly be politicised. As an individual, obviously you can talk about what you’re doing, but as a corporation, it’s a bit more delicate. So behind closed doors, the conversation is ongoing; commissioners are concerned, they are incorporating these policies, and they’re invested. And something that was [also a] recurring [point] is that you don’t want to include it in the pitch, because it’s very sensitive.

In the UK, the BBC has made a requirement for all commissioned producers to discuss with their commissioner how they’re incorporating these ideas in their storytelling; that’s mandatory now. What is it like with RTVE in Spain for example?
We’re some steps behind, I think. We haven’t been considering the topic long enough, even though we are in the frontline of the repercussion of the climate crisis. But yes, I believe we need to move forward and make it natural. Our stories are related to what is happening in the world, they can be any genre, they can be crime, they can be romance, but they’re always related to a time and space, and that time and a space has its implications, and we want to bring those into our storylines. So, I believe it’s only natural that, in time, it will probably be mandatory.

Beyond Weiss & Morales, how do you see the climate issue creatively influencing Portocabo?
It’s part of what we will do from now on. We are starting development, we are thinking of avenues in which we can give our characters a specificity regarding climate. So, we are invested, we have taken a step into climate narrative and don’t want to shy away from it. I think it’s important.