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C21 DIGITAL SCREENINGS

Theme Festival - True Crime and Investigation

Programming Profile

When truth is stranger than fiction

16-05-2022

Is ‘stranger than fiction’ the latest twist of the true crime dial, or does the scarcity of suitable stories mean it is simply a niche successfully exploited by just one streamer and one production company? Find out in this month’s Theme Festival report on true crime.

 

True crime has been a fix-all for the unscripted business. It skews slightly female but appeals to a broad demographic. It’s so popular and moreish that it’s capable of reversing even the supposedly irreversible decline in US cable viewing. It has long been the genre that creates the most buzz for Netflix, outside of drama.

 

Recently the genre has evolved from the self-contained, one-hour Wives With Knives-style series that proved such a boon for Discovery’s Investigation Discovery (ID), A+E Networks’ Crime+Investigation and NBCUniversal’s Oxygen towards a more serialised, page-turner approach led by Netflix and its Making a Murderer.

 

With the post-pandemic audience perhaps tiring of murders – particularly as so many of them are perpetrated against women – the dial has been turned again. The watercooler television in this genre now comes in the form of ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ tales that twist and turn through up to half-a-dozen episodes, presenting a story so outrageous nobody would believe it were it not true. The Imposter, Three Identical Strangers, Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer and Tinder Swindler have led the way, and although they’ve landed in three different places – A+E/Film 4, CNN Films and the last two Netflix – they’re all from one production company.

 

“There are things that make all true stories successful,” says Dimitri Doganis, MD of All3Media-owned Raw TV, the London-based firm behind the docs. “A critical part of that is some degree of relatability to the protagonist, even if they’re an anti-hero. There needs to be a focus on the emotional journeys of the people rather than just an analysis of the crime itself. If you look at Don’t F**k With Cats, it’s the story of a murder in Montreal. But you get to that through the emotional journey of the online investigators concerned for animal welfare.

 

Three Indentical Strangers
Three Indentical Strangers

“Tinder Swindler is an amazing example of how, even though people make decisions or choices that you may not agree with, there is something in that experience that you can identify with – in that case an understandable and legitimate desire for love and quest for romance. And then, of course, the critical element is the unexpected twist and turns you would get from a scripted narrative. One of the things that make documentaries of this nature successful is their implausibility. They are unbelievable, which makes the scripted versions of them problematic because they’re not believable. They are often stories that are only redeemed by being true.”

 

Doganis promises “you can expect more from us,” but the stories, by their very nature, are rare. Does Raw risk being a victim of its own success, because by Doganis’ own admission every time a book, an article or a story of this kind emerges now there is a rush of production companies trying to seize on it. This has meant some projects have missed the mark.

 

Netflix’s Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel was roundly criticised for dragging the sad death of student Elisa Lam out over four episodes, which felt horribly exploitative, while the second season of Making a Murder (10 episodes) and another Netflix project, Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer (four episodes), were so long as to give the audience the feeling of watching rushes rather than a finished, edited piece.

 

“They are difficult to find,” Doganis says. “I am noticing a huge number of stories that are being found, brought to us or proposed to us that are not quite good enough or don’t quite meet our bar for the number of beats and the journeys those characters are going to go on, but they are two-thirds of the way there. I suspect a lot of those will end up being made – not by us but I’m sure some of them will get made.

 

“One of the disciplines we have learned is not to take on stories where it’s not quite there, because it’s such hard work to then produce something worthy of one’s time and effort. There’s not a strict checklist. It’s something you know. That comes with experience and with failure. It is very useful to have sat in an edit suite pulling your hair out thinking, ‘Shit, we don’t have a third act here’ when it comes to deciding which stories to invest time and resources in.

 

Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer
Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer

“I don’t think it needs to be sensationalist. Recent successes, ours and other people’s, have demonstrated you don’t need to be sensationalist or salacious to garner great audiences or have a great impact. It’s just uncomfortable. It’s a completely inelegant telling of the story if you’re relying on that. To revert to the most sensationalist telling demonstrates a weakness in the story or a weakness in the storytelling. It’s just unnecessary.

 

“The number of episodes is critical. I’d much rather watch a tighter story where I’m hanging on every beat of it and left wanting more than have my attention wander and find myself flicking to see how many hours there are left. The challenge for us is that once filmmakers get deep into the story there is only so much one could say. It’s not everything that could go in, it’s what’s the best telling. That’s an active debate we have all the way through production.”

 

So is this a trend in a genre, or is Raw TV a trend in itself? As VP of commissioning for entertainment at Discovery in the UK, Charlotte Reid has gone from ordering self-contained linear hours to complement the content she gets from ID to broadening out into more limited true crime with the launch of Discovery+. That will surely only increase now HBO and HBO Max fall within the Warner Bros Discovery merged family.

 

“We’ve been making crime for a while because we have an ID pipeline and get a lot from the US, and have been making it for linear for a long time on Quest Red, then more recently for Discovery+,” Reid says. “They’re slightly different shows – more returning formats for the linear channels and more bigger pieces or limited series for the streamer. There is also quite a lot of crossover for what works on the various platforms so it’s a really interesting genre for us.

 

“Discovery+ is much more likely to do a limited series of three or four parts. Stuff we’ve done there includes Children of the Cult, five parts with Mentorn Media, which we did because they had three women who wanted to talk about the experience of being in that cult, the abuse they suffered, and they had access to archive they’d smuggled out of it. Then you’re providing a platform for people who want to tell, are brave enough to tell, a really important story.

 

The Tinder Swindler
The Tinder Swindler

“Anni: The Honeymoon Murder was a four-part limited series, and one of the things about them is you can go into forensic and granular detail in a way you never could before. [The show] was motivated by the 10-year anniversary and the frustration of the family to have a day in court. It gives you a reason to do it, it’s not gratuitous.

 

“We’re motivated by why you go back and look at a crime story. We often get pitched, ‘Do you want to go back and look at the [Jamie] Bulger case?’ but I don’t think you should ever do stuff just because it happens to be a big crime story. You have to have a reason to go back and look at it, be it new analysis or different archive, because underneath there is an awful tragedy, victims and families.

 

“There has to be a compelling reason to do it, particularly if it’s a recent and high-profile case. We did The Murder of Grace Millane: A Faking It Special last year. You make sure we speak to the family directly or through the police and they know it’s happening. We have something in development now and part of the family involved don’t want it to happen so I don’t think we’ll go ahead with it. If they’re not comfortable I don’t think we can justify doing it.”

 

So will Discovery+ and HBO Max be heading in the stranger-than-fiction direction following Raw and Netflix’s recent success?

 

“Don’t F**k With Cats and Tinder Swindler were obviously both made by Raw and they’re phenomenal producers of this kind of series,” Reid says. “They get the access, they craft the stories so brilliantly. Perhaps they’re a trend in themselves.

 

Making a Murderer
Making a Murderer

“We think about it a lot. In that box-set space there was a serial killer wave, we’re currently in a com-crime wave and we’re wondering where we go next. Is it towards lighter crime and slightly less victim and tragedy? We’ve wondered about a caper-crime wave, where people have got into a spot of bother and come up with absolute fuckwit ways of getting out of it. We have got one like that, it bridges linear and SVoD exactly in that space – people doing things where you think, ‘How did you ever make that decision?’”

 

Among the other producers and distributors we spoke to in this area, takeaways from the stranger-than-fiction trend and opinions on where true crime goes next were varied.

 

Mark Procter, CEO of Big Little Fish Television, which makes Married to a Psychopath for Channel 4, says Raw TV’s success raises the bar for the rest of the production industry. “For the last five years, low-cost/high-volume titles have dominated the true-crime market.Whilst there’s still clearly a global need for this kind of content we are seeing evidence that channels, and viewers alike, are demanding more sophistication from the genre,” he explains.

 

“Rather than a simple tabloid retelling, more appealing now are stories that are crafted across two or three parts and have PR’able new evidence, new details, new voices or new lines of inquiry.

 

“On our development slate we do have a couple of non-violent stranger-than-fiction true crime titles. There are actually more stories like this around than you might think. But what we’ve seen from Don’t F**k With Cats and Tinder Swindler is simply that Raw TV are just so incredibly good at telling stories! If it does become a trend that channels want more of these kinds of shows, and we as producers are tasked with delivering this, then that can only be a good thing for the industry and audiences.”

 

Anni: The Honeymoon Murder
Anni: The Honeymoon Murder

At Endeavor Content, director of content Liz Tang was excited about two projects from another serial winner in this space, Jonathan and Simon Chinn’s Lightbox, which are joining the company’s distribution slate. The Curse of the Chippendales, for Amazon in the UK and Discovery+ in the US, chronicles the dark side of the 1980s male striptease troup, and Spector, for Sky in the UK and Showtime in the US, spotlights music producer Phil Spector, who murdered his girlfriend.

 

“Factual content, and true crime in particular, is really having a moment right now,” Tang says. Budgets and audiences are bigger than ever, and what we’re seeing is drama-level, premium productions, but rooted in non-fiction. There are still homes for the high-volume, cost-efficient true crime anthology shows that so many broadcasters’ schedules rely on. However, there’s an appetite alongside this now for tentpole serialised pieces, with one case or overarching story told across three or four episodes, or as a feature doc – often with a resolve, so the viewer can play armchair detective.

 

“Stranger-than-fiction is a trend, but we are in a world more digitally connected than ever, so it’s unsurprising wild stories like this are emerging more and more. What’s really interesting about Don’t F**k With Cats and The Tinder Swindler is the global narrative integral to both cases. These are locally specific crimes, solved through an international lens, incredibly dark tales where people’s lives are destroyed with seemingly no justice. That is, until online communities unite across oceans to take down the villains.”

 

Tom Brisley, co-founder and creative director at London’s Arrow Media, is behind more traditional ID series such as See No Evil and Body Cam, as well as limited series like The Co-Ed Killer: Mind of a Monster. “Whether it’s a returning series or one-off, the number one need from commissioners is for exclusivity – never before seen or heard, someone talking for the first time or unique access to a precinct. That’s become the entry point now, and if you have it on a sizzle even better,” Brisley says.

 

“Stranger-than-fiction is definitely part of the mix – the challenge is convincing commissioners that standalone series about subjects that aren’t well known are going to rate. That’s where the exclusive access comes in. More and more it’s about marketing. Is there a hook that will attract marketing dollars to draw an audience to it in the first place and then let word of mouth promotion do its thing?”

 

The Curse of the Chippendales
The Curse of the Chippendales

Anne Morrison, creative director for factual at London-based indie Nevision, says: “True crime in drama and documentary form has never had such a boom as in the last few years. There can hardly be a high-profile murder in the UK or US that has not been explored in one form or another. We need to be conscious of how societal attitudes shape these narratives and the idea of the ‘perfect victim’ who is white, female and ideally middle class and attractive. There is also an emphasis on ‘stranger danger’ while the most dangerous place for women remains their own homes, with 58% of female murder victims worldwide being killed by a partner or family member.

 

“On the other hand, women are often the audience for true crime stories, and for most, the psychological aspects are more fascinating than the gory detail. We wonder, ‘Would I have spotted him as a serial killer?’ or speculate what techniques we would use to survive if kidnapped. For these reasons and others, I don’t think true crime will ever lose its appeal.

 

“However, over the last year, our interest seems to have moved from murder to fraud as there is now a slew of programmes about conmen and women, from Tinder Swindler to Inventing Anna to The Dropout. These are often jaw-dropping tales and again there is the unspoken question of whether we ourselves would have been taken in.

 

“The trend is bound to expand its scope into stranger-than-fiction tales which no writer would dare make up because they are too outlandish. I have two of these on my current slate at Nevision, both true stories. One will be a factual drama and the other a blend of drama and documentary, and both are perfectly true yet strain credibility to the max. I’ve always felt the truth is stranger than fiction and it looks like TV audiences agree.”

 

Karen Young, CEO of UK distributor Orange Smartey, has more than 200 hours of true crime on her slate, including Channel 5’s The Missing Files: The Secrets of the Milly Dowler Case (2×90’) and Green Eyed Killers (26×52’) for Crime + Investigation.

 

Body Cam
Body Cam

“There’s a definite trend in relatable crime, where people feel they can equip themselves with knowledge,” she says. “The key is always the access and the ability to tell a great story that captures the imagination of the viewer whilst remaining familiar in topic.”

 

A great example of this is Screendog Productions’ Stacey Dooley: Stalkers (2×45’) for BBC Three, which offers a familiar subject that resonates, educates and offers new perspective. “While the appetite doesn’t look to be waning the challenges are in finding new cases that have not been seen before or present new evidence that shines a different light on a well-trodden path,” adds Young.

 

Paul Heaney, founder and CEO of UK distributor BossaNova Media, has franchises including Murder First on Scene (10×60’) for CBS Reality and Cold Case Killers (6×60’) for Paramount-owned UK terrestrial Channel 5 on his slate. He admits the trend is, “Oh wow, you couldn’t make this shit up, that is totally bat-shit crazy,” according to a recent buyer. But these stories are difficult to find, which makes them all the more lucrative and in-demand.

 

“True crime is now just one of the sub-genres in the crime/stranger-than-fiction bouquet and is, of course, driven by what the channels are demanding. We are seeing strong demand, for example, for single-story projects across one to six parts along with new potential long-runners, which there is definitely still a hunger for despite the apparent over-supply,” he says.

 

Anna Hall, director and exec producer at the UK’s Candour TV, has produced the Catching a Killer strand for Channel 4 and is currently working on a three-part box-set series for Sky Documentaries and a Discovery+ project that retells the story of an historic British crime with never-before-heard audio footage of the killer. Hall believes podcasts are an underestimated force driving the genre’s evolution.

 

The Co-Ed Killer: Mind of a Monster
The Co-Ed Killer: Mind of a Monster

“Audiences are becoming much more sophisticated,” she says. “They want detail and authenticity. Podcasts have helped with this, in that the audience love the level of detail found in podcasts. Series like Making a Murderer have paved the way to allow producers to tell stories in more than 45 minutes. Sometimes that’s not always necessary but having the ability to really dig deep presents the opportunity to ask questions and raise themes that aren’t always possible in a commercial hour.

 

“The stranger-than-fiction stories are intriguing and carry mystery and lots of twists and turns that audiences love. Any stories that hit the number of twists and turns required for a box-set have a good chance of at least getting to the commissioning table and we’re very much developing in this space. But we also have to constantly ask ourselves what’s next, with such a slew of these tales being dropped in recent months.”

 

Few UK producers have made the genre their own quite like Woodcut Media, where Koulla Anastasi, who crossed the divide from commissioning crime for A+E Networks UK to developing it as commercial director at Woodcut, says buyers are certainly broadening their scope.

 

“For years, we have stuck to the grisly brief that only homicide or serious violent crime will cut through. But recent hits, such as my personal favourite, HBO’s McMillions, have demonstrated that an incredible ‘good guy/bad guy’ story will always resonate,” she says.

 

“I don’t believe that framing it in those terms oversimplifies the genre. A villain with varying degrees of extreme behaviour is at the heart of these stories, whether it’s a billion-dollar conglomerate [see also The Crime of the Century about the Sackler/Oxycontin crisis] or a good old-fashioned conman. The phenomenal success of these docs and what we’re hearing from commissioners, that they are actively seeking true crime beyond homicide, suggests that the trend will continue for some time yet. These unbelievable stories have always been there, and will continue to arise, it’s just that we weren’t necessarily seeking them out previously.”

 

Surviving a Serial Killer
Surviving a Serial Killer

Woodcut is about to deliver a second season of Surviving a Serial Killer to Channel 4 and Murdered At First Sight to Sky Crime with another 40 hours in various stages of production.

 

Adam Luria, Impossible Factual’s head of documentary, says: “In recent years the true crime genre has evolved almost beyond all recognition. It’s become a much broader genre than previously, and some of the most inventive and compelling films and series over the last few years have been true crime stories.

 

“There’s a real rush to find those stranger-than-fiction stories at the moment. It reflects a growing appetite for true crime stories that don’t necessarily have to involve murder, and they seem to be top of most broadcasters’ wish lists. The beauty of making documentaries is that real life is endlessly varied, so I’m sure there are countless stories out there waiting to be told.”

 

In the US, where the fight between the cablenets and the streamers has its epicentre, Allison Corn and Stan Hsue, co-presidents of Lion Television US, say: “We do think the bar is getting higher and higher in terms of the stakes, the characters, the twists and turns, the access – you name it. Finding these stories is a monumental challenge, especially with so many veteran documentary filmmakers turning to true crime. That said, we know they are out there. Although we have been living and breathing true crime for nearly 10 years, we continue to unearth these hidden gems.”

 

Ari Mark, co-founder of Ample Entertainment in the US, has shows in development at Peacock, Discovery+ and elsewhere and is on to season five of his Murder in the Heartland franchise. “My hunch is that we are going to see more complex characters in the space, less archetypal and more 3D,” he says. “Stranger-than-fiction is what we do. It’s a big part of what drives our passion for the genre and I do not think it is just a trend at all. Non-fiction stories can surprise audiences in a way that stories conjured from fiction never can. That’s why we are where we are in this space. It’s awesome.”

 

Murdered at First Sight
Murdered at First Sight

In Germany, Alexandra Boehm, head of international coproduction at Autentic and producer of Inside the Mind of a Con Artist, adds: “The genre of true crime has changed a lot in recent years. Of course, there are still the classic crime stories that deal with murders and violent acts, but the genre has also opened up. Films like Tinder Swindler or Bad Vegan reflect a different kind of true crime story, which is more focused on decoding events and the psychological patterns behind them. This is the same approach we are taking in Inside The Mind of a Con Artist.

 

“You can definitely see a shift in the genre towards stories like Tinder Swindler, so yes, you can call it a trend. However, such cases are hard to find. In the end, you must look at it this way, there are certainly still countless clever fraudsters out there, only they are so successful that they are not exposed – especially when the shame of the victims often prevents the frauds becoming public. So in many cases they don’t get reported. Psychological crimes are harder to prove than physical ones.

 

“Ultimately, finding good protagonists is the big challenge for producers. It takes good stories with exclusive access. Such stories are hard to find; they are mostly in the past, which makes them difficult to cover. In some cases, there is no archive footage from the time when the crimes took place, which means that you have to dramaturgically reenact all the key scenes.

 

“This is expensive but the effort is worth it.”