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Every October, Cannes hosts Mipcom, the largest international television content market in the world, a major programming fair where a large part of the audiovisual industry meets to sell and buy formats. This year, more than 11,000 participants from more than 100 countries worldwide met between October 16th and 19th. There you can feel where the TV trends are going, what is prevailing outside and where the industry is going.
Consulting firm The Wit is responsible for some of the most notable presentations, reviewing the entertainment formats it considers the most groundbreaking and promising, as well as fiction trends. Virginia Mousseler, president and co-founder of The Wit, began her talk about entertainment formats with a sentence from French YouTuber Squeezie: “What people are looking for on YouTube are formats that you could see on TV 10 years ago, but in a new, more authentic way Version. “We are replacing television that has become too timid.” Judging by what happened last week on Twitch, with the return of One, Two, Three in a version that combines personalities from the classic program with current influencers Squeezie is not wrong.
What stands out in The Wit is the attraction in recent months to formats such as The Traitors, Love Island and Cash Cab, a quiz show on board a taxi of which there were some versions in Spain years ago. They also highlight the great interest in “The Floor”, “Password”, “Temptation Island” and “Destination Spain has been one of the main importing countries of these formats in the last six months.
A promotional image of the Belgian program “Destination X”, one of the most successful in the world in the last six months
Among the premiere titles that stood out in the presentation was ETB2 adventure reality show The Hunt: Nothing is what it seems. Co-produced by Secuoya Studios and Grupo Proyección and hosted by Juanma López Iturriaga, the film premiered on the Basque public broadcaster at the end of September. 24 adventurers take part in it, and to the classic tests of adventure competitions they add an additional element with a game of hidden identities: although there appear to be two teams competing against each other, in reality there is a third group, unknown to the rest, consisting of eight wolves infiltrating the two teams aiming to win the competition while avoiding detection.
The presentation also highlighted “The Golden Bachelor,” a version of the dating show “The Bachelor” with older contestants. Forever Young is similar in approach, also with participants over 60 years old. In “Beating my Minimes,” six crooners perform surrounded by a group of children dressed as them, until only one child per team remains; Atresmedia already has an adaptation underway in Spain.
In fiction, The Wit highlighted stories based on true crime and science fiction as two of the top global trends of the last six months. According to this consulting firm, true crime has increased by 39% in recent months. The titles they mentioned in connection with this trend include the British The Reckoning and The Long Shadow, the French Samber and French Roulette, the Swedish-Finnish Stonia or the Argentinian Buenos Chicos.
Steve Coogan plays Jimmy Savile in The Reckoning.
Also presented at Mipcom were the Content Innovation Awards, awards from the publication Television Business International that recognize the best in television over the past year. Although there were no Spanish titles among the winners, several productions were in the final selection. “The Argonauts and the Gold Coin (Clan)” stood out in the “Best Children’s Drama with Live Action” category. Bosé (SkyShowtime) and Motel Valkirias (TVG, RTP, HBO Max) were nominated for best new non-English language fiction series. And Time Zone (HBO Max) was named one of the best releases of the year.
At the Diversify TV Awards, also held as part of this audiovisual content fair, the Spanish film Las noches de Tefía (Atresplayer) was chosen as the winner in the Screenplay category for the best LGTBIQA+ representation. One of the finalists in the category “Representation of Disability in a Fictional Series” was Fácil (Movistar Plus+).
Trends in fiction in Spanish
A talk by consulting firm Geca at Iberseries & Platino Industria also discussed upcoming trends in fiction, this time with a focus on series in Spanish. In addition to highlighting the increase in production in the final season, with significant growth in miniseries and dramas, the presentation also highlighted genres such as horror and supernatural, comedy – with a particular emphasis on combining drama and comedy – and drama themed personal and family stories , especially with female and young characters. Melodrama is also being reinvented for the new times and is one of the genres in which platforms have shown particular interest.
Thrillers and crime novels are on the rise, with novel-based storylines and stories particularly on the rise. Literary adaptations have been a constant in recent years. Television is already looking for stories outside of the novel (in comics, essays…) and is paying a lot of attention to trilogies in order to have more material for adaptation. Another important trend is series based on true stories and characters. Outside fiction, what stands out is the rise of the documentary genre, which seeks new ways of telling stories closer to fiction, abandoning the documentary model in a single part to opt for the documentaries.
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