Hot Picks: Operation Dark Phone

The Garden has a long history of groundbreaking access shows, revolutionising the genre with its 24 Hours In A&E format in 2011, and evolving it again with spin-off 24 Hours In Police Custody.

This long-established trust in being able to sensitively capture the most critical blue-light moments has now led to one of The Garden’s most ambitious projects to date: Operation Dark Phone, a documentary that was more than five years in the making.

ITV Studios’ global content manager for scripted and non-scripted Harry Arkwright says that was “because of their unique relationship with the police”, which meant the company was able to gain access for a series “that would crank up the tension and scale even more”.

Operation Dark Phone follows the story of how police across numerous countries managed to secretly hack into an encrypted phone network used by high-ranking criminals, pulling back the curtain on how the world’s largest joint law-enforcement operation against global organised crime played out.

“The show centres on a massive, covert police operation tracking a previously ‘uncrackable’ phone network being used by Europe’s most powerful criminals and organised crime groups, where the organisation of drug deals, torture and even attempted assassinations was discussed,” Arkwright explains.

Across 74 days, the authorities secretly downloaded reams of messages sent via encrypted phones being used by 60,000 criminals. The operation saved lives and dismantled gangs before the criminals had even realised their data was being captured, and viewers are taken deep into this hidden world of organised crime.

“The operation involved more than the UK police – Interpol and multiple police enforcement units across Europe were working together to execute the biggest sting operation in European history,” Arkwright says.

“Owing to the scale of the operation and the sensitivities around the cases, we had to work hand in glove with The Garden and Channel 4 to ensure that the details of the show and its contributors remained confidential for five years until the show was able to be aired,” he adds.

This supremely rare access to such an intensive operation means that, according to Arkwright, “the plot is straight out of a premium scripted drama, giving buyers a premium true-crime box set that will cut through a very crowded market”.

“First of all, it’s a truly international story,” he says. “While the access point is in the UK, viewers all over the world will be interested to see how Interpol played its role in bringing together different groups, and how police forces in several different European jurisdictions worked side by side to bring down a cross-border criminal organisation. The result is a front-row seat to a true story that plays out in the present tense.”

He is confident that viewers around the world will want a front-row seat too, with ITV Studios targeting all major territory buyers including the US, Nordics, Benelux, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Australia.

The documentary has already debuted on Channel 4 and has secured a raft of pre-sales in multiple territories, including the Netherlands, Australia, Norway and Sweden, a clear demonstration of the appetite for this powerful true-crime series.