Banijay Entertainment’s Steve Matthews Drills Down on Europe’s Crime Boom, ‘Local for Local,’ Genre as a ‘Scalpel to Cut Into Society’

variety.com:

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Banijay Entertainment’s three shows selected for Series Mania underscore just how far the film-TV’s giant has come in scripted, and most especially its vast range, Apple TV+’s “Carême,” from Banijay’s Shine Fiction, opened the French TV festival, Europe’s largest, delivering a portrait of the world’s first celebrity chef, the Napoleonic-era Antonin Carême, as Variety reports, a “sex-oozing rock star.” Playing Series Mania in International Panorama, “A Life’s Worth,” from Banijay Nordics’ Yellowbird, follows the challenges faced by the first Swedish U.N.

battalion, made up of volunteers, sent to Bosnia in 1993. Subject of a Series Mania Forum, “Weiss & Morales” allies two of Europe’s most energetic public broadcasters, Germany’s ZDF and Spain’s RTVE, and a German and Spanish cop cracking a case in the sun-sluiced Canary Islands, against OMG landscapes, a hallmark of its Spanish producer, Banijay-owned Portocabo.

Upped to Banijay’s scripted, creative this January, Steve Matthews wouldn’t claim to have overseen development on every single scripted series at Banijay.

The biggest independent TV production company in the world, Banijay as too many labels – 130, 60 of them scripted – to make that feasible.