In an example of content and context coming together perfectly, a smart new television marketing initiative is being promoted by a TV drama about a public relations expert. The French political drama Spin (More4, 9pm) is one of the show-case shows of Walter Presents, a Channel 4 project that makes available huge numbers of subtitled TV dramas.
This project is British TV’s highest-profile case of the currently fashionable concept of “curated programming.” The sell to viewers is that Walter Iuzzolino, chief creative officer of Global Service Network (GSN), Channel 4’s partner in the scheme, has made a personal selection of his favourites from 3,500 hours of foreign-language box sets.
Most of these will be available online, as a massive free-to-see streaming service through the All4 site, with some gems from the collection getting broadcast runs as well: including the cold war espionage drama Deutschland 83 (Sunday, 9pm, Channel 4) and now, as the second on-air offering, Spin, in which, following the killing of the French president in an apparent terrorist attack, PR consultant Simon Kapita (Bruno Wolkowitch) plots to prevent the election to the Elysée Palace of a former enemy of both the spin doctor and the slain politician.
Whether or not the character achieves his aim, the fact that UK viewers can see Spin itself represents a success in one of the main arts of political spin: overcoming negative perceptions. The French series combines two elements – subtitles and the subject of politics – that, as recently as five years ago, British TV executives would have insisted were unacceptable to audiences here.
Central to this change of perception was Borgen, the Danish parliamentary drama (screened here by BBC4) that became a sort of Scandinavian vaping for political junkies missing the nicotine rush of The West Wing. Although shows of this kind remain a minority taste – the sort you’ll find on networks ending with the number 4 – the advent of Walter Presents is a tribute to the mood change among viewers and commissioners created by Borgen, The Bridge, Wallander, Inspector Montalbano, The Killing, Spiral, 1864 and other European imports.
On the evidence of the opening two episodes being shown tonight, Spin is a deft combination of legislative procedural – we learn the definition of a “power vacuum” in French politics – and a drama of personal intrigue: there are already suggestions of a complicated diagram of romantic entanglements between the central characters. Returning from a professional exile in New York to see if the republic can be spun back in his direction, Kapita promisingly frets: “Everything I left behind is coming back to haunt me.”
That is one of the strongest lines on the black-and-white captions. Elsewhere, as with other high-profile buy-ins, I worried that we might tolerate in non-English dramas dialogue that would be considered dull or clunky in a homegrown show. Is a line such as, “He has severe internal injuries from the dramatic blow”, to be blamed on the screenwriter or the subtitler? Another worry is that the necessity of being forced to read speech at the bottom of the screen distracts us from the quality of the visuals, thus insulating international dramas from another of the tough judgments that English stuff suffers.
Even so, Walter’s first offerings suggest that he will entertainingly and educationally expand the range of British TV viewing. Apart from Spin and Deutschland 83, I am also keen to try the French crime drama Match Day and the Swedish political thriller, Blue Eyes. So, I say to Walter a word that the Scandi-dramas have introduced to the vocabulary of British viewers. Tak!
Spin starts Friday, 9pm, More4 and will be available to stream on Walter Presents after
