Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s strand in which, each fortnight, we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films making a splash internationally. The industry is more global than ever and breakout projects are appearing in pockets of the world all the time, making it hard to keep track, so we’re doing the hard work for you.
This time round we head to New Zealand, the comedy powerhouse that introduced Flight of the Conchords and What We Do in the Shadows to the world. Comic Tom Sainsbury teamed up with some of New Zealand’s biggest names, plus Felicity Kendal, to reversion his hit true crime parody Small Town Scandal pod to the small screen, and the results were impressive. Now, BBC Studios is taking Small Town Scandal worldwide.
Name: Small Town ScandalCountry: New ZealandNetwork: Sky New ZealandFor fans of: Only Murders in the Building, Flight of the ConchordsProducer: Miss Conception FilmsDistributor: BBC Studios
The past decade’s cultural zeitgeist has in some ways been defined by the never-ending popularity of true crime podcasts, and these shows are of course ripe for parody.
New Zealand comic Tom Sainsbury knows this all too well. His iHeartRadio pod Small Town Scandal was a huge hit in his home nation and he subsequently took a step rarely trodden by creatives of his ilk, reversioning his podcast for the small screen.
The resulting TV series starring Rose Matafeo, Morgana O’Reilly and Felicity Kendal, along with Sainsbury himself as lead, has been a success for Sky New Zealand and distributor BBC Studios is hoping it can break out globally from the nation that gave the world What We Do in the Shadows and Flight of the Conchords. Small Town Scandal follows Toby (Sainsbury), who in another meta twist is a disgraced journalist turned podcast host. He returns to his rural hometown to investigate the bizarre death of his millionaire uncle – killed, suspiciously, by an automatic lawnmower. As Toby dives deeper into the case, he finds himself surrounded by a cast of quirky, eccentric townsfolk – all with secrets of their own.
Sainsbury, one of the writers and stars of What We Do in the Shadows spin-off Wellington Paranomal, can’t understand why more creatives don’t make podcasts with a view to turning them into TV. For Sainsbury, podcasts act as a perfect “proof of concept” when pitching ideas to TV commissioners, which was helped in the case of Small Town Scandal by coming armed with a number of national podcast awards.
“I’d recommend everyone to make their ideas into a podcast,” Sainsbury tells Deadline. “People can listen instantly to an episode and understand the world, the characters and tone. It was like a shorthand communication tool.”
Sainsbury was inspired to create the podcast after devouring hit true crime pods like Serial, The Teacher’s Pet and Amanda Knox’s Blood Money and realizing there was a clear parody angle.
New Zealand producer Georgina Conder devoured Small Town Scandal and immedaitely phoned her friend Carthew Neal, the Oscar-nominated exec behind Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, who got on board with a small screen adaptation. Not long after, the team had their Sky greenlight and BBC Studios jumped aboard to shop globally.
“Not all podcasts work but with this one you could easily see the adaptation,” says Neal. “Georgina and I loved the balance between comedy and whodunit. Even though it was parodying a whodunit, it left you wanting more at the end of every episode.”
The podcast was recorded in iHeartRadio’s “crummiest studio” and, incredibly, Sainsbury explains that he did all the circa-40 voices himself, but when it came to the TV show he needed to scale up.
While Sainsbury jokes that he briefly planned to play all the characters in the show, he landed a “gorgeous” cast including New Zealand comic royalty Matafeo and O’Reilly, both of whom he knew well from the comedy circuit, along with British acting legend Kendal, who has starred in some of the biggest UK sitcoms of all time including The Good Life. “I was besotted with her,” says Sainsbury. “And everyone in New Zealand knows each other so ringing up Morgana or Rose isn’t a big deal. We had such a shorthand and knew each other’s style so well.”
Sainsbury had loved the DIY way in which he assembled the pod but putting together a fully-fledged TV show involved a hell of a lot of tinkering. And while the podcast was inspired by straight true crime pods, he looked to the tone of shows like Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building for his TV show.
“The difference in the medium was the biggest challenge,” he says. “When you’re making a podcast you have to keep all these ideas in the audiences head because you don’t have visual clues but we had to make changes to the story in the show because audiences can see someone acting shady. They will get it in one frame.”
For Neal, there was always a niggling concern that fans of the pod wouldn’t return to the series, but thankfully this couldn’t have been further from the eventual truth. The team hosted special screenings of the show for the pod’s super fans and were also able to attract an audience coming to Small Town Scandal cold. Sky New Zealand told us INSERT RATINGS DATA HERE
“The commissioner was worried people would already know the story but actually it worked out really well,” adds Neal. “TV has a bigger marketing budget and is a bigger medium so we could bring that audience along with us.”
Having taken the show to last year’s MIPCOM and having previously struck a deal with Australia’s ABC, BBC Studios is now seeking more international sales.
Neal is confident the show could perform well in the States, a natural home for both What We Do in the Shadows, which was remade by FX, and HBO original Flight of the Conchords. He also reckons Small Town Scandal could work in the UK, where Sainsbury is due to tour over the coming weeks in a nation that has similar comic sensibilities to the small Australasian island with population of just over 5 million.
As with so many territories, landing that all-elusive greenlight is tricky in New Zealand today, Sainsbury and Neal explain, but their cause has been helped along by a new initiative that allows shows like Small Town Scandal to benefit from both the local New Zealand production rebate plus up to 25% of private funding from outside sources, in this case BBC Studios.
“We can expand out the world and locations where our projects are made,” adds Neal.
With such a glut of quirky comedy coming out of New Zealand, let’s hope this continues for as long as true crime remains ripe for parody.
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