Helping The Garden grow
The Garden stands as a prime example of the value of a good reputation in television.
Just over 18 months since its formation, the UK indie’s successful 14-episode season of 24 Hours in A&E is selling around the world and Channel 4 has ordered a second season. The network has also picked up its light-hearted look at vertically challenged pantomime series Seven Dwarves and 30-minute one-off The Merits of Ferrets. Meanwhile, the BBC has aired its three-part series Perfume.
When asked, company founders Nick Curwin and Magnus Temple say the biggest challenge facing the company is the speed with which it has grown. “Rapid growth is always difficult to manage,” says Curwin. “Without being greedy, you can just grow and grow because things take off and work well but then you can get pinch points in the company.
“You find that things can’t quite happen in the way you want them to because it’s all happened a bit fast. If you’re growing quickly it’s harder to anticipate what you need and that’s been difficult.”
Those pinch points were relieved somewhat in December when the company appointed five new execs to its creative team and three new faces on the production side. Most had worked with The Garden before and Emma Tutty was a promotion rather than hire. Curwin says: “If you know genuinely talented people and they will join you, then it’s slightly dumb not to take them. In the end, we decided that rather than stay as a tiny team and bolt things on as and when necessary, we want to be the sort of company that has an incredibly strong senior creative team.”
“With each of the hires we make there is a quite specific reason,” Temple adds. “It’s not like we’re just hiring really brilliant ideas people. You want to have a company that on the one hand is generating the best ideas and has a good combination of minds coming together and on the other also makes sure it can deliver.”
Jon Smith is the company’s creative director. He joined after years working with the BBC documentary department, and with Curwin and Temple on The Family and award-winning One Born Every Minute.
“TV is generally a freelance world,” he says. “So it reflects well on the company that this year we will have a slate that’s interesting and varied enough that people who could pick and choose where they want to work choose to stay here and be fulfilled. It’s a statement about the sort of company we want to be – with a range of programmes but also as a place that people really want to come and work.”
Charged with holding the whole thing together and making sure the numbers add up is MD Scarlett Ewens, who worked with Curwin and Temple as a production assistant at Dragonfly. “I remember the initial discussions about having a small, perfectly formed boutique company. I’m not sure I ever did believe them,” she says. “I really admire the type of projects they have always worked on with The Garden, and intend to work on, and to be able to get that whole wealth of experience under my wing has been fantastic.”
It sounds like the company has come close to overstretching itself on occasions, and Temple admits the team enjoys being scared sometimes. “The thing that characterises a lot of what we do is not being afraid to take risks – quite big risks,” he says. “But if you do that the rewards can be huge. We will inevitably have some failures along the way but you need to be in a position where you feel slightly scared.”
And perhaps a bit of that fear went when their previous prodco Dragonfly (previously Firefly) was bought out by Elisabeth Murdoch’s Shine Group in 2007, just over three years after it formed.
Curwin, who left in 2009, says: “We were still running it after it was bought out, but inevitably there is a difference between being part of a big parent company, however wonderful that company is, and being totally, truly independent.”
Smith also enjoys the risks associated with being an indie. He says: “The Family nearly didn’t happen and One Born nearly didn’t happen. But they turned out to be great. With One Born we saw, hopefully, very high production values but also something that was very popular. You need to aim for that sweet spot.
“[You need to] take risks and make things that will be seen by people, because you can work for years on something as a documentary maker and then four people see it. It doesn’t mean it’s not fantastic or shouldn’t have been done, but it’s a bit less fun than if four million people watch it.”
The reputation the team built and brought with it has meant The Garden has been able to hit the ground running, even turning down offers of work from broadcasters over the past 18 months. They admit you’d be “mad” to do that if working for an owned prodco.
“The fundamental principle is that we’ll do it because we really want to,” says Curwin. “I don’t think any channel wants a company to make something without their heart in it.”
Temple adds: “Every project you do is hard work and if you’re in the middle of something and you think ‘My heart’s not really in this and the company’s heart isn’t in this,’ then it’s a lot of hard work for not much reward.”
So where is their heart in 2012? Curwin and Temple say they want to become known for innovative programmes with high production values, but most of all they want to use their reputation and relationship with the BBC and Channel 4 as a springboard to international success.
24 Hours in A&E, an ambitious rigged-camera show filmed in the emergency department of a London hospital, has already travelled to Discovery-owned TLC and BBC America. The Garden is in negotiations with US agents over a new series idea for which they have high hopes Stateside.
Even 24 Hours came with risks – Channel 4 scheduled it against The Apprentice on the BBC and the team at The Garden’s office near London Bridge was braced for sub-million ratings. But it consistently clocked more than three million for the length of the 14-episode series.
Temple says: “We don’t want to take our eye off the ball here. Anything that we do internationally will always be done in partnership with local prodcos, but at the same time anything we do we want to stay heavily involved with.
“Even if we have an arrangement with a local producer, we want to make sure the output has our hallmark on it, so it might be that the logical progression is to produce ourselves. Given the growth challenges we’ve already faced, we need to take it one step at a time.
