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<\/p>\n\n\tWorking Title are probably best known for movie rom-coms like \u201cBridget Jones\u201d and \u201cNotting Hill\u201d but their latest project \u2013 \u201cJo Nesb\u00f8\u2019s Detective Hole\u201d \u2013 is sure to astound audiences as they swap big knickers and Chardonnay for semi-automatic weapons and increasingly wild screen deaths.<\/p>\n
\n\tBased on Nesb\u00f8\u2019s crime novel series about an obsessive but flawed detective named Harry Hole (pronounced Hoo-ley), with Nesb\u00f8 adapting the books himself, the 9-episode series is not only a highly-polished yet gritty local language Norwegian drama but delivers plenty of bombshells as Hole (played by Tobias Santelmann) and his team try to track down a serial killer stalking Oslo\u2019s streets while at the same time dodging corrupt officers inside his own force.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s some pretty shocking stuff in it, but one person\u2019s shocking is entertaining, another person\u2019s shocking is depraved,\u201d says Working Title co-chair, Eric Fellner in an interview with Variety.<\/p>\n
\n\tRead on to find out more about how the production team brought the action-packed show to life, what Working Title learned from their first (less successful) attempt to adapt a Harry Hole novel and why audiences won\u2019t be able to anticipate who\u2019s behind the grisly murders.<\/p>\n
\t\tWhat can you tell me about the show?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI don\u2019t want to give specifics but basically, as the show progresses, you start to go deeper and deeper into Nesb\u00f8 world, and Nesb\u00f8 world \u2014 I don\u2019t really know how to describe it but it\u2019s pretty tough and [has] pretty dark influences. Our characters have genuine human flaws and they are there for all to see and magnify, because it\u2019s a TV show, and it gets really quite exciting.<\/p>\n
\t\tEpisode 1 is pretty dark. Does it get darker than that?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI don\u2019t think it\u2019s darker. It gets maybe more \u2014 there\u2019s some pretty shocking stuff in it, but one person\u2019s shocking is entertaining, another person\u2019s shocking is depraved. It\u2019s strong and it\u2019s good because of that, in the same way people perceive the violence of Tarantino films; they love it. Because you\u2019re in the hands of a proper storyteller (or with Tarantino, a proper director) and with Jo, he\u2019s a proper storyteller. And the beauty of this series is it\u2019s his version of his books. You get double Nesb\u00f8. You get the Nesb\u00f8 who wrote the books and the Nesb\u00f8 who created the TV show.<\/p>\n
\t\tHow did Working Title get involved in the project?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tAbout 10 years ago, maybe longer Amelia Granger [Working Title\u2019s head of film and TV] brought the books to me and said we should make this into a TV series. And at the time, Jo was more interested in making a movie, but we took the rights, and it\u2019s taken us 10 years to now.<\/p>\n
\t\tWhat did you learn from your experience of adapting Nesb\u00f8\u2019s \u201cThe Snowman\u201d that you brought to this show?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThat to do a Jo Nesb\u00f8 adaptation you need Jo Nesb\u00f8 front and centre!<\/p>\n
\t\tThe series is based on the fifth book in Nesb\u00f8\u2019s \u201cDetective Hole\u201d series. Is there a reason you didn\u2019t start with the first?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThis was the story that Jo really wanted to tell, and he felt it would be a great way to start what hopefully might be a number of series. So he\u2019s taken a few bits and pieces from various other books, and then, if people like this and they want to invite us back for more, then we\u2019ll find another one to do.<\/p>\n
\n\t[The number] five becomes a really critical thing in the show. He peppers these clues through Episodes 6, 7, 8, and hopefully you will have no fucking idea who the killer is. And you kind of go, \u201cit\u2019s that one!\u201d \u201cOh no, it must be that one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\tWas it commissioned out of the U.S.?\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIt was commissioned out of the U.S. and then transferred to the Nordics.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tJoel Kinnaman<\/a> in \u2018Jo Nesb\u00f8\u2019s Detective Hole\u2019 (courtesy of Netflix<\/a>)<\/p>\n \t\tWas there any discussion about doing it in English?\t<\/p>\n \n\tYeah, initially we were going to do it in English and set it \u2014 firstly, we were thinking of setting in America, then we thought, \u201cNo, we need to be culturally specific\u201d and set it in Norway but have everybody speaking in English. Then Netflix, at quite a late moment during the process, went, \u201cIf we\u2019re going to be culturally specific, let\u2019s be culturally specific and let\u2019s be local language.\u201d and I think they were totally right.<\/p>\n \t\tHow did it work in terms of Working Title being able to look over the scripts?\t<\/p>\n \n\tWe ran it, rightly or wrongly as we would run a movie. So we were all over every aspect of it creatively. The only difference was the language, and so we had to trust \u2014 and because we had Jo in the center of it, it wasn\u2019t really that worrying \u2014 we knew that the translation would be pretty much exact to what we were reading in English. It\u2019s quite challenging, when you\u2019re sitting on set and you see a take and you don\u2019t understand a word that\u2019s being spoken, to fully appreciate whether or not you\u2019ve got it. But we trusted Jo. <\/p>\n \n\tAnd we trusted [directors] \u00d8ystein Karlsen and Anna Zackrisson. I think they got a really cool-looking piece that has the specificity \u2014 I keep using this phrase \u201ccultural specificity\u201d but I think it really resonates \u2014 combined with what I think we brought, which was a sense of, \u201cOkay, let\u2019s try to break this show out a bit and see if we can make something that is wider-looking for a global audience.\u201d I\u2019m hoping that audiences will really enjoy a setting that they may not have seen before.<\/p>\n \t\tThe show definitely looks high-end. Are you able to share what the budget was?\t<\/p>\n \n\tWe\u2019re not. It\u2019s high-end for Norway but low-end for America.<\/p>\n \t\tIt doesn\u2019t look low-end for America.\t<\/p>\n \n\tI know, I\u2019m really proud of that. \u00d8ystein and Anna wanted to make a mainstream show. We had one DP for the whole thing [Ronald Plante] and he is absolutely incredible, the way he gives a very glossy, \u201cbig show\u201d feel, even when he\u2019s on the hoof. And then the crews are just amazing.<\/p>\n \t\tIt opens with a helicopter, was it a real helicopter?\t<\/p>\n \n\tEverything in film is real.<\/p>\n \t\tHelicopters cost a lot of money.\t<\/p>\n \n\tYou\u2019re with the helicopter, and then you\u2019re outside the helicopter, and then you\u2019re zooming in, and then there\u2019s a car chase and then there\u2019s a huge car crash and then it hits a tram, flips over, ends up on train tracks, you know, big action scene. And then you cut to a bank, and there\u2019s a guy coming in with a gun, and then a woman gets blown away. So yeah, there\u2019s a lot going on in that opening four minutes. That\u2019s the trick of cinema \u2014 that\u2019s the producer\u2019s job \u2014 is to try and make things look as big as you possibly can, engaging and entertaining enough to capture the audience. Also, with Netflix, it\u2019s really important that you deliver drama in the first five minutes. I think we might have delivered too much.<\/p>\n \t\tI can\u2019t believe you killed off [spoiler] in the first episode.\t<\/p>\n \n\tAnd she\u2019s a big actress in Norway. It\u2019s gonna blow people\u2019s minds, because they\u2019re settling in for her to be the third lead.<\/p>\n \t\tWere there any scenes or set pieces that particularly stood out for you?\t<\/p>\n \n\tThe only big problems we had was there was more story than time, so we had to make some quite tough decisions about losing scenes. A lot of the episodes initially started out at an hour, hour and five minutes, it was just too much, so we slightly reordered things, we squashed things, we chose to edit out some of the elements that we deemed were unnecessary, but otherwise, we pretty much shot the scripts. There was nothing that our limited funds couldn\u2019t achieve. We had to get creative, but \u00d8ystein and Anna deserve a lot of credit as directors, they really gave the show the feel and the look.<\/p>\n \t\tHow did you end up with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis doing soundtrack?\t<\/p>\n \n\tI would love Nick Cave to do the soundtrack for everything. I\u2019d like Nick Cave to do the soundtrack for my life. He\u2019s just a genius. We asked him, and he said yes. It was him and Warren. They\u2019re my musical heroes.<\/p>\n \t\tWhat else is on the horizon for Working Title?\t<\/p>\n \n\tSo I think pretty much everything that is real has been written about. We\u2019re busy. We\u2019ve got a lot of films coming out. We\u2019ve got a lot of films either in production or going into production. We\u2019ve got \u201cBilly Elliot\u201d about to open on a tour, and then coming into the West End, tickets just went on sale, that\u2019s doing great. And then there will be some other musical theater projects that are going to come in \u201827 which we can talk about nearer the time. So we\u2019re pivoting \u2014 we\u2019re not pivoting \u2014 but we\u2019re focusing a little bit more on musical theater.<\/p>\n \t\tHas that been a conscious decision or just how things have worked out?\t<\/p>\n \n\tThese things take so long, and it\u2019s a bit like busses that suddenly there\u2019s more than one project at the same time that that can go. And when it can go, you go, \u201cOkay, let\u2019s take advantage of that.\u201d I think there is also a little bit of \u2014 it is so hard to persuade people to go to the cinema at the moment. I don\u2019t know what the answer is. I mean, we just keep striving to try and make projects that we believe in, and make them as well as you possibly can, but it isn\u2019t easy. <\/p>\n \n\tSo I think the idea of doing something different, a bit more TV, doing some documentaries maybe, doing theater. We\u2019re not going to suddenly re-emerge as WT Creator Studio. I would love to, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s in our DNA. We\u2019re looking at podcasts. We\u2019re looking at everything. And, yeah, it\u2019s a challenging, but an exciting time. We\u2019re very fucking lucky, though, because we have this big library and big reputation for the company and a lot of connections with talent, both in front and behind the camera, that we\u2019re able to keep lurching on. But it\u2019s difficult.<\/p>\n \n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Working Title are probably best known for movie rom-coms like \u201cBridget Jones\u201d and \u201cNotting Hill\u201d but their latest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,132079,132080,14810,1868,282],"class_list":["post-367054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jo-nesbo","tag-jo-nesbos-detective-hole","tag-joel-kinnaman","tag-netflix","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}