Netflix Said No 3 Times to a TV Pitch. Then Said Yes. What Changed?
'Geek Girl' is a case study in navigating the streamer's bureaucracy and quiet strategy shift. Plus: BBC U-turns on comedy
Hello, Series Business readers! Delighted to be in your inbox today with the first of a two-parter on the vagaries of creative decision making. Before we get to my deep dive on the treacherous road one scrappy producer took to bring Geek Girl to life on Netflix, I attended Tuesday night’s BBC Comedy Showcase, where the broadcaster’s director of comedy, Jon Petrie, confirmed a startling change in direction.
Out: Personal storytelling and comedy-dramas like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag
In: Ensemble, highly commercial sitcoms à la Ghosts
After eight years of championing projects in the same spirit as Fleabag, the BBC has had its fill.
“We’ve had loads of comedy dramas, where it’s all based on one person’s story. But once that’s been told, there’s nowhere else for it to go,” one wary comedy commissioner at the Soho House event told me. “What we need are comedies with lots of characters that have the capacity to go on and on and on.”
Characters, he hastened to add, who aren’t drug dealers or serial killers or terribly flawed human beings. “People just want to laugh,” he shrugged.
This plea for sitcoms with a “high joke rate” and story-of-the-week plots feels inextricably linked to the global success of the beloved Ghosts — the BBC comedy gem that gave CBS a hit show in its American remake. Honestly, who doesn’t love Ghosts? It’s bloody adorable. And it sells! BBC Studios, the BBC’s distribution arm, has sold the U.K. show all around the world, while Germany and Spain are making their own versions. It’s the ultimate modern British TV success story.
“You can still have story arcs and all of that, but maybe it’s not someone’s personal journey,” said Petrie, elaborating on his new strategy to a small audience of journalists. The irony wasn’t lost on his interviewer, comedian Michelle de Swarte, whose very own “story of personal renewal”, Spent, was previewed as part of the showcase.
“Feels like shade, mate,” joked De Swarte to laughs from the room.
She’s not wrong. It does feel incongruous. Petrie was talking up his desire to find the next global sitcom phenomenon mere minutes after previewing an hour of seven new comedy titles — the bulk of which are . . . comedy dramas. In Only Child, a budding author returns to the family home in Scotland to care for his aging father; Daddy Issues sees David Morrissey and Aimee Lou-Wood as father and daughter rooming together out of financial desperation; We Might Regret This is about a tetraplegic who invites her messy best friend to live with her and her new boyfriend.
These are all solid, well-executed shows, but it’s evident there’s a deficit in the pipeline. At a moment where the BBC is fighting tooth and nail to compete with the streamers, it’s starting to feel like the era of authored, personal comedy may soon be on its way out, even as Netflix has a massive hit with exactly that in Baby Reindeer from the U.K.’s own Richard Gadd.
Speaking of Netflix, let’s turn to the second half of today’s exploration into what does and doesn’t get made. The YA series Geek Girl, based on the best-selling novel by Holly Smale, debuted on the streamer on May 30, rocketing into Netflix’s Top 10 charts both globally and in the United States.
Another YA series climbing the streamer’s Top 10?
Yes, but the story behind Geek Girl’s rise is a case study in pivoting and persistence appropriate for creators of all ages. Every major streaming service and broadcaster turned down the adaptation. Including Netflix, which said no to three unsuccessful pitches on both sides of the Atlantic — before the show received its eventual, miraculous ‘yes.’
Today I’ll tell you:
About the Netflix department that straddles acquisitions-originals you’ve probably never heard of
What the deal with Netflix reveals about a little-publicized strategy shift
How innovative financing in the international space sealed the deal
What the executive producer insisted on creatively — and got from Netflix
Other buyers who had first rejected the series and why
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