BBC Drama Boss Says It’s Become ‘Tricky’ to Find U.S. Co-Pro Partners, Now Looking to Europe: ‘We Can’t Afford to Fully Fund Shows’

variety.com:

K.J. Yossman BBC drama boss Lindsay Salt says the difficult economic landscape is making it harder to find U.S. co-production partners, with European companies increasingly stepping in to fill the gap. “I feel that’s already shifted massively,” Salt said during an in-conversation panel at U.K.

television confab Content London on Thursday. “Not to say we’re not still going to the U.S. for certain co-pros: HBO have come on board Michaela Coel’s show and Richard Gad’s new show and we’re doing ‘The Night Manager’ series two with Amazon, so that is still there, but obviously it’s a really tricky time at the moment.

But what that means is we’re just shifting. So we’re just open to new models. We’re open to talking to new people.” Asked whether it meant the BBC would be looking more towards Europe for co-productions, Salt replied “Oh yeah.” “We need co-production at the BBC,” she added. “We can’t afford to fully fund shows.” A recent example of a continental European partnership is recent YA adaptation “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder,” which dropped earlier this year and was a co-production between the BBC, Netflix and Germany’s ZDF.

It has been renewed for a second season. “There’s a certain amount that we can sit here and just go, ‘Oh, God, that’s really difficult,’ and then just go, ‘Right, well, how do we change things?