Portuguese TV Fiction Moves Into Premium Scripted, Expands Co-Production Path

variety.com:

Emiliano De Pablos The Portuguese TV fiction sector is experiencing growth as it garners international visibility through co-productions and alliances with streamers and foreign broadcasters.

With a small domestic market – some 10 million inhabitants – Portuguese TV production is making a virtue of necessity. The region possesses a diversity of TV fiction offerings, ranging from commercial telenovelas to an increasing number of premium TV dramas, and is rapidly opening up to international partnerships.

In 2015, local indie producers got into TV fiction series via public broadcaster RTP, a driving force behind the sector. That was then followed by private TV operators and later by global streamers. “Portugal has changed a lot in the last few years,” says José Eduardo Moniz, general manager at TVI, the country’s top private broadcaster. “The transposition into Portugal of the European Union’s Audiovisual and Media Services Directive created the conditions for investment in local production,” argues Pedro Lopes, content director and executive producer at powerhouse SPi. Universal Stories “For some years now, we have been investing in stories that might be recognized as genuinely Portuguese, although universal,” Moniz says.

In a milestone move in recent Portuguese TV fiction, “Rabo de Peixe” (“Turn of the Tide”), a drug thriller inspired by real-life facts, produced by Ukbar Filmes, spent two weeks on Netflix’s global top 10 most watched non-English series list. Increasing International Potential The public broadcaster RTP develops fiction projects with local indie producers.