London Screenings 2022

DI Ray

Type: Drama
Length: 4 x 60-minutes
Producer: HTM Television
Broadcaster: ITV (UK)

Given that it’s a police drama produced by HTM Television – the company co-founded by Line Of Duty creator Jed Mercurio, which also made BBC1’s Bloodlands, and ITV’s Trigger Point and Stephen – DI Ray’s creative credentials look very promising.

The four-part series has another link to Line Of Duty – it is the debut drama from actor and writer Maya Sondhi, who played PC Maneet Bindra in the smash hit procedural. She has previously written on Ackley Bridge, EastEnders and The Kumars At No. 42, and has now created a Birmingham-set series following inspector Rachita Ray, a British Asian police officer new to homicide.

Ray, played by Parminder Nagra (Bend It Like Beckham; The Blacklist), is assigned to investigate the suspected honour killing of a young Muslim man. As well as grappling with the suspicion that she’s a ‘token appointment’ – chosen due to her ethnicity rather than her ability – she quickly realises that the suspects can’t be guilty.

The evidence against the two brothers from a British Hindu family is extremely thin, but her attempts to explain this to superiors and colleagues are ignored, driven by hidden biases and a keenness to wrap up the case.

When her investigation leads the team to a much more sinister crime, Rachita uncovers a web of deceit, which also challenges her to confront the lifelong conflict between her British identity and South Asian heritage.

Sondhi says the drama is “not a textbook thing, it’s so personal”. She believes that placing identity at its core will help DI Ray stand out in a crowded international crime market. “What Rachita discovers opens up a lot for her about her identity; it forces her to ask questions about herself,” Sondhi says. “Identity is something you never really sort out. I’m going to be 40 next year. I still feel like I’m doing a lot of exploration in the series.”

Madonna Baptiste, exec producer at HTM Television, says the theme of identity and the crime backdrop complement each other. “Crime opens up opportunities to go into the communities and understand the lifestyles,” she says. “Plus, the search for identity is a universal theme. Everyone can empathise with it.”

Mercurio, who is also exec producer on DI Ray, says the drama benefits from being “writer-led” and Sondhi’s presence on set as an exec producer “helped elevate the production”.

“Maya’s voice is a very specific one, relating to South Asian heritage, and the issues she raises are part of her life,” he says. “This is about creating a character with whom people who’ve gone through those experiences can empathise, through whom they can recognise the show’s authenticity and complexity.”

DI Ray is the key scripted London Screenings launch for distributor Hat Trick International, which is selective in the number of projects it represents. Director of sales Sarah Tong says HTM and crime are helpful selling points, but the story’s search for identity offers something different in the market.

“We’re not pigeon-holing DI Ray. We work across the world with free-to-air, pay-TV and SVoD, and we are already in discussions in a number of markets with all kinds of platforms,” she says.

Hot Picks

The Case of Stephen Lawrence

Type: Factual
Length: 3 x 60-minutes
Producer: Hat Trick Mercurio; Baby Cow Productions
Broadcaster: ITV (UK)

‘The drama will sell because it is a powerful story’

The racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 had huge ramifications for British policing, helped changed societal attitudes towards racism, and continues to resonate almost three decades on. In Conviction: The Case Of Stephen Lawrence, producer Hat Trick Mercurio is aiming for a worldwide audience.

Co-written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce and his son Joe, the ITV-commissioned drama follows attempts to bring Stephen’s killers to justice. It picks up the story in 2006, when DCI Clive Driscoll, who is brought in to secure a last-ditch conviction, discovers vital case files in a police station that is about to be closed down.

Driscoll, played by Steve Coogan, forges a friendship with Stephen’s parents Doreen (Sharlene Whyte) and Neville (Hugh Quarshie) and puts together an investigation that led to the imprisonment of two of the original suspects in the case.

While the series is partly based on Driscoll’s 2015 memoir, In Pursuit Of The Truth, series producer Madonna Baptiste says the Cottrell-Boyces put in four years’ worth of research, based on interviews and court documents.

The level of access to the story’s real-life protagonists is in part thanks to executive producers Mark Redhead and Paul Greengrass – who made ITV’s The Murder Of Stephen Lawrence in 1999.

Greengrass kept in touch with the Lawrences, while Redhead attended the trials and met Driscoll. “That’s when Mark went to ITV and told them how he’d like to return to the story and tell the rest of it, because what follows is really important,” says Baptiste.

The series is directed by Bafta-winning director Alrick Riley (The Walking Dead, Bridgerton), and Hat Trick International head of sales Sarah Tong says the casting of Coogan will help with international sales, but ultimately the drama will sell because it is a powerful story.

Conviction has already been sold to Paramount+ in Australia and HTI is in discussions with US platforms, while sales to smaller territories include Poland (Canal+ Polska) Greece (Cosmote) and Ireland (RTÉ).

Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country

Type: Factual-entertainment
Length: 8 x 60-minutes
Producer: Outline Productions
Broadcaster: Channel 4 (UK)

HTI’s headliner for Mipcom is Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country, an 8-part factual series from Outline Productions.

Starring home improvement expert Sarah Beeny, the show explores what happens when Beeny and her family buy a dilapidated house and 228 acres of farmland in the middle of the Somerset countryside.

“Shot over a year, the first series sees Sarah and her husband Graham tear down the house so they can build a new one on their estate,” says HTI head of sales, Sarah Tong. “At the same time, it focuses on the side projects they are hoping to get started in partnership with the local community.”

The first eight episodes are very much “warts and all”, says Tong. For example, “one of the first problems they run into is that they can’t get planning permission for the new house, so that holds up their dream”.

“Fortunately for the production crew, that news came through at about the same time as first Covid-19 lockdown. So, the time they had to wait to secure council approvals didn’t translate into lost shooting time,” Tong adds.

Because of the Covid-19 hiatus, the show is due for delivery in November, later than originally expected. Nevertheless, Tong is expecting it to generate wide appeal. “We’ve worked on a Sarah Beeny title before, so we know there is a strong base of buyers that will be interested. When you also take into account the feelgood factor of the show and C4’s stamp of approval, we’re confident about its potential.”

As for the prospect of future series, Tong is upbeat: “The hope is that the side enterprises will form the basis of future series – along with the interior decoration that Sarah is planning for the new house.”