I host Ankler Agenda, interviewed California AG Rob Bonta, spoke to Backrooms casting director Wittney Horton, wrote about TV failing young men and boys and covered the DGA v. WGA fight over pilot credit.
About five minutes into the pilot of The Other Bennet Sister, the adaptation of Janice Hadlow’s 2020 book that imagines Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice from Mary Bennet’s perspective, Lizzie Bennet’s ruddy-cheeked younger sibling (the middle daughter of five) wonders what becomes of you when you’re not “the beautiful one” or “the quick-witted one.”
You might say period pieces are the Mary Bennet of the TV market: dismissed, considered maybe a little too serious, and overlooked by many suitors.
Network and streaming execs across town often bluntly instruct, “Don’t bring us period,” one senior TV lit agent tells me. They’re too costly, and audiences don’t want them, the conventional wisdom goes. (See my TV sellers’ guides for more evidence of period’s demise, though top creators — think Shonda Rhimes’ Bridgerton and Ryan Murphy’s The Shards — still get them made.)
But one streamer that describes its business model as the “anti-Netflix” is actually increasing its slate of original period dramas: BritBox, which in conjunction with corporate parent BBC Studios produces The Other Bennet Sister, a show that has turned out to be a huge hit with BBC and BritBox audiences.
Now BBC Studios chief content officer of DTC operations Jon Farrar, who heads programming for BritBox, tells me exclusively that he’s aiming to ramp up the streamer’s originals slate to consist of 25 percent period drama — and the streamer’s execs are bullish on the appeal of period pieces as a way to bring in coveted annual SVOD (streaming video on demand) subscribers.
So this small British streamer with a tiny fraction of Netflix’s audience — just more than four million subscribers in the U.S. and other non-U.K. territories as of last year — is pouring more money into period dramas as everyone else pumps the brakes. It’s a strategy not just to serve existing audiences and draw new ones (including — surprise — a younger demo), but also to build and sustain a standout brand among platforms with vastly larger subscriber bases and resources. At a moment when AI fears are boiling over, shows that look back to pre-tech times have a powerful appeal. And BBC Studios DTC chief Robert Schildhouse, who oversees BritBox, tells me it’s “very” profitable.
Today, Farrar, Schildhouse and producers make — oh, swoon — several period series reveals including:
- Why period series are core to BritBox’s strategy, and the audience opportunity bigger streamers are missing
- The budget range and exact financing breakdown for The Other Bennet Sister
- The show’s outsize impact on BritBox subscriber growth — including in new demos
- How BritBox and its partners make period dramas for less than a third of The Crown
- The corners any period drama can’t afford to cut
- Why historical series suddenly have a timely appeal
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