Swedish comedy wins Mania drama pitch

SERIES MANIA: A dark comedy from Banijay Group-owned Swedish prodco Jarowskij has been awarded €50,000 (US$59,900) in development funding at the Series Mania event in Lille.

We Got This! (6×44′) was announced as the winner of Series Mania’s coproduction pitching sessions as part of its European Project & Talent Forum yesterday.

The series, which has Swedish public broadcaster SVT attached, beat off competition from 15 other projects to win the development money.

It tells the story of an American immigrant living in Stockholm who becomes obsessed with a SEK$50m (US$5.6m) reward for solving the seemingly unsolvable assassination of Olof Palme, Sweden’s former prime minister.

Written by Santiago Gil and Schiaffino Musarra, it is due to shoot in Sweden in April 2019 in Swedish and English. Banijay Rights will be responsible for international sales.

The five-member jury consisted of president Christophe Riandee, vice-CEO of Gaumont; Piv Bernth, CEO of Apple Tree Productions; Damien Couvreur, creative executive, international originals, at Netflix; Nacho Manubens, director of content at Atresmedia Studios; and Anne Mensah, head of drama at Sky in the UK.

“Schiaffino Musarra from Jarowskij was able in just 10 minutes, thanks to a brilliant pitch, to describe characters that were gripping and a storyline that was compelling. Couple this with the fact that dark comedy is often harder to produce than drama and we unanimously voted for We Got This! and are delighted to award him with the €50,000 prize,” said Riandee.

It marked the second time a cash prize had been awarded to the winning pitch. Previous projects pitched at the event that have gone on to series include Swedish thriller Jordskott, Sundance TV/ITV’s Liar and the S4C/BBC Wales drama Keeping Faith.