CONTENT WARSAW: Gabriela Iacob, head of scripted content development at Romania’s ProTV, is focused on telling local stories as she builds the commercial broadcaster’s first sustainable pipeline of scripted content.
Gabriela Iacob
On May 28, the first Romanian animation series produced in the country for 35 years launched on Voyo, the streaming platform owned by pan-regional media company Central European Media Entreprises (CME).
The series called Ţup, aimed at three- to seven-year-olds, marks a milestone for Romanian TV animation, but especially for Gabriela Iacob, head of scripted content development at ProTV, the CME-owned commercial broadcaster that has put local storytelling front and centre of its content strategy.
Iacob has been tasked with setting up a sustainable pipeline of scripted content after being headhunted by ProTV to head up the broadcaster’s first scripted development department in June 2022. Ţup is among the first of the projects she and her team have developed that have made it to the small screen, and it exemplifies the types of local stories she has made it her mission to seek out across all scripted genres that aim primarily to resonate with Romanian audiences.
“It is a big deal,” says the exec about the 12×7’ series, which will run for two seasons this year, but is set to be a long-running series. “It is based on a Romanian bestseller book series with this amazing character; a bird without wings that proves that impossible is just a word. It’s a lovely story.”
Ţup exemplifies the types of local stories Gabriela Iacob wishes to make
Also to have emanated from Iacob’s fledgling development unit is the “feel-good comedy” Betoane, which launched on Voyo on May 31. “We hope it will also be a long running series,” says the exec of the new 8×60’ comedy.
Iacob is an experienced Romanian TV executive who began working in development in the 2000s. After studying film and TV directing, she first worked in film production servicing at Media Pro, a private company in Romania whose interests at the time included ProTV, as well as the formerly state-owned Buftea Studio, one of Eastern Europe’s largest and longest established film studios.
At the time, Romania was “one of the top choices for servicing,” says Iacob, who worked on movies from the US and UK, first as a PA, moving up to production coordinator. Projects she worked on include the 2003 feature film Boudica, the multi-BAFTA-winning two-part TV thriller, Sex Traffic, and the horror film An American Haunting.
But working in production “wasn’t my cup of tea,” admits Iacob, who then got the opportunity to join and then lead “the first development department at Media Pro Pictures”.
At the time, Media Pro was focusing on non-scripted content, including sitcoms and telenovelas. It was a chance for Iacob to “learn from people from abroad,” she says. Among them was John Vorhaus, the US TV comedy writer and author of The Comic Toolbox, How to be Funny Even if You’re Not.
“[Media Pro] hired him to be a consultant and to help us build a comedy pipeline. He was one of the many people that were brought to Romania to help us build a system, because after 50 years of communism, we don’t have the tradition of television and TV storytelling that western countries have,” explains Iacob.
Feel-good comedy Betoane launched on Voyo on May 31
Indeed, for a period of her career, Iacob moved to western Europe to hone her skills further. After leaving Media Pro to work at independent production company Multimedia Est in 2007 as head of TV development, the financial crash hit. “Unfortunately, 2008 came and everything went to ashes,” recalls the exec. She eventually took a job as publishing director for an online outlet, which gave her an opportunity “to learn a lot about online content and a very different audience,” but ultimately was not for her.
“I did that for a couple of years. It wasn’t something that interested me. I realised at the time that it will be very difficult for me to develop a career [in Romania] as a developer for TV. Romania has a very, very small market and I realised that Spain was on the bridge of expansion – it was 2017 – and it was obvious that it was going to explode, and I thought that it would be a good place to be.”
It was, nevertheless, a brave step for the exec, who did not speak Spanish. But Iacob soon found her feet becoming “a collaborator” for Barcelona’s indie film festival L’Alternativa, where she became a member of the selection committee. During her time in Spain, she also set up Barcelona-based storytelling studio Storyliners.
The opportunity to move back to Bucharest to set up ProTV’s first scripted content development unit was too good to turn down, however. At the time, ProTV was finding success adapting Turkish dramas, including action series Içerde, remade as Clanul (Insider), and Vlad, from the classic Turkish drama Ezel, which ran for four seasons on ProTV and is considered one of the best Romanian drama series produced.
Another hit for the broadcaster, this time on the comedy front, is the long-running original series Las Fierbinti. “They managed to do this without a development department. The head of fiction was doing that, working with production houses,” explains Iacob about the comedy hit.
But, despite the hits, the broadcaster lacked a sustainable pipeline of scripted content. “From the point of view of the development process, we’re training writers, we’re training script editors, we are training development executives, creative producers. It means ProTV is building something sustainable for the future, and not just for the company, for the whole country,” says Iacob.
By this, the exec means ProTV is, on the one hand, “helping the talent pool to get to the level of storytelling skills that enables them to tell the stories that they want to tell. The other thing is that we are building partnerships with all the main festivals, the players in the local market, and these of course are sources for stories,” she says.
Our Father (Tătuțu) is a prequel to the hit series The Clan
One key partnership is with Romania’s publishing houses’ association and the country’s main literary magazine. “Twice a year, we provide an award for the best book to be adapted,” says the exec.
Other partnerships include one with Palme D’Or winning Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), founder of the Write A Screenplay For Lab, which was originally set up in collaboration with HBO, until the streamer dropped out of the market. “After HBO left, we joined forces and we are developing a four-month residency for TV series and for cinema projects,” says Iacob.
Meanwhile, to develop a pipeline on the animation front, last year ProTV began partnering with the Romanian animation festival, Animest, to find and develop two scripts per year. “That’s a contest for screenplays for animation,” says Iacob, adding that ProTV also has a partnership with the Astra Film Festival for documentaries called Emerging Voices. “This is what I mean when I say sustainable; we are open-eyed for all genres.
Iacob says the aim is for ProTV to have a “diverse pipeline” of scripted content. “We have a comedy, a thriller mystery, even a procedural, in development,” she says. Meanwhile, though not developed by Iacob’s department, ProTV has also launched a new Romanian crime series, Our Father (Tătuțu).
Our Father, which is a prequel to the hit series The Clan, explores “the origins of key characters 20 years before the main series,” explains Iacob. “The production innovatively uses artificial intelligence technology to digitally age down the actors, creating realistic younger versions by applying AI-processed facial masks while preserving their original expressions and performances.”
Looking ahead, the exec is excited about the future of Romanian drama and the potential to showcase the country’s rich storytelling to both local and international audiences, while taking advantage of latest technological innovations. “For the western world, the golden age of TV drama is fading away, if you like. For us, we never got there, so, we are building towards it,” says Iacob.
