Jane Tranter on ‘crisis of empathy’ & microdrama possibility

Bad Wolf’s co-founder and chief executive Jane Tranter has said The Other Bennett Sister is a response to the “crisis of empathy” in the world, and admitted she is exploring the potential of microdramas.

Tranter’s work ranges from Industry and Succession to The Night Of and Doctor Who, but she told Broadcast International that Sony Pictures Television-backed Bad Wolf had always tried to put empathy at the centre of her shows.

That was never more so than with the BBC and BritBox drama The Other Bennett Sister, an adaptation of Janice Hadlow’s book that began as a TV project almost a decade ago.

“I’m a great believer that there’s a right time for the right project and with The Other Bennett Sister, we actually started developing that around 2016 when Janice first mentioned the piece to me,” Tranter said.

A few pages were sent across, followed by the manuscript, and the novel was published in 2020, with Tranter securing rights.

The drama did not originate at the BBC, Tranter explained, and its development took longer than expected. “We hadn’t quite found our mojo with it – sometimes pieces take a while to hit the point where you genuinely feel they’re going to resonate with the world around them, and it was only a couple of years ago when I thought, you know what, the world needs a Mary Bennett right now.”

The show was a major hit for the BBC earlier this year, with 7.3 million consolidated viewers over 28 days for its first episode, and a three-part Christmas special has now been greenlit that will debut later this year. 

Tranter continued: “We needed a piece that could speak to the crisis of empathy that I believe our world is going through, and which could do so with joy and fun and escapism.

“If I just strode out and rather pompously said I’m now going to do a drama about the crisis of empathy, everyone would quite rightly run away.

“But if you use something that gives you the lens of a love story, within a period drama, where you allow that period drama to be pretty, to be springtime, to be buttons and bows and hedgerows, then you allow an audience to search for the happy ending that we all seek.

“It’s about putting it through a lens that isn’t quite as harrowing as putting a mirror up to the way we live now and yet still speaking to the way we live now. That’s really how the whole piece clicked into place.”

Creative focus & microdrama potential

Despite its period auspices, Tranter and the Bad Wolf team produced The Other Bennet Sister on a lower budget than other similar shows, and during a keynote at MIA, the former BBC drama chief told younger producers to follow their creative urges.

“If someone says that you can’t make period dramas and that no one’s buying them, or if they say you can’t make fantasy, just make it – just find a way.

“Go in the opposite direction of everyone else’s traffic. If they are all zigging, then you should zag because at some point they’re going to want your zag because they’re fed up with the zigs.”

Tranter, who produced shows including Succession and Industry for HBO, told Broadcast International that her focus remains on creating stories that provide “positive pathways” for viewers rather than simply reflecting the world back to them.

“The world in which we live can be quite harrowing and quite anxious-making, so why is an audience going to want more of that?,” she asked.

“I’m not interested in making dramas that look at the terrible, shitty world which we live in. What I’m interested in is making dramas that show, through compelling entertainment, positive pathways to how we can be better.

“Everyone’s questioning everything now, but you cannot question a writer’s story because it’s their story. It’s our job as drama makers and as storytellers to tell stories about us, about humanity, and sometimes those are positive pieces, rather than just about the apocalypse. Because what’s the good in that?”

Tranter admitted the industry’s travails – tighter budgets and fewer commissions – has made “us all extremely thoughtful about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it”.

She added: “The scattergun approach of just trying to sell a show has gone, although maybe that’s not such a bad thing. But it’s tough for newer producers,” she said, urging the industry to nurture talent “or else in 10 years’ time that next generation won’t be there.”

Tranter is also interested in what some believe could be the next generation of scripted content, with the potential of microdramas being considered by the Bad Wolf team.

Sister co-founder Jane Featherstone recently predicted that top TV talent would “end up on YouTube or TikTok” and Tranter said her team has been exploring how the medium could work for them.

“I feel the same way about [microdramas] as I do about looking at content creators, and that’s that we we need to know what the themes of it are. We need to know a bit more about it before we leap in but but it’s definitely not out of the question.”