‘Catch Me a Killer,’ with ‘Game of Thrones’’ Charlotte Hope, Sells Widely as Abacus Media Rights Rolls Out Its Crime Drama Slate (EXCLUSIVE)
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Underscoring the enduring popularity of crime drama, Abacus Media Rights (AMR), an Amcomri Entertainment company, has announced a slew of sales on two titles, led by Showmax Original “Catch Me a Killer,” a true crime drama with “Game of Thrones’” Charlotte Hope playing South Africa’s first and most famous serial killer profiler. Hope also headed “The Spanish Princess,” as Catherine of Aragon.
AMR has moreover closed further deals on fiction drama “Scrublands,” a scripted drama about the real reasons for a country town massacre. The sales comes as it is readying a screening of a third title, “The Boy That Never Was,” at this week’s London TV Screenings.
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Scoring a coveted berth at next month’s Series Mania, Europe’s biggest TV festival, “Catch Me a Killer” has sold, among major territories, to BritBox North America, SBS Australia, UKTV’s Alibi channel and AXN’s Mystery Channel/NHK Enterprises (NEP) in Japan.
BBC First in Benelux and Poland and Cosmote TV Greece have also picked up the title.
In new deals, the BBC has acquired “Scrublands” for the U.K. and Ireland. RTE Ireland, Warner Bros Discovery New Zealand, and Cosmote TV Greece have also secured the title. As previously announced, Sundance Now, AMC Networks’ streaming service, has picked up “Scrublands” for the U.S. and English-speaking Canada.
“These exceptional dramas, created with high-end production values, clearly demonstrate the continued international appetite for strong high-end crime series,” said Hana Palmer, Abacus Media Rights sales head.
A South African co-production with LMP and the South African DTIC, produced for pay TV channel M-Net South Africa by CMAK Films and Night Train Media – the Munich headquartered majority shareholder of BossaNova Media and Eccho Rights – and with Kowalski Films, the 11-part “Catch Me a Killer” is based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Micki Pistorius. A forensic psychologist and university lecturer, she was invited in 1994, with South Africa on the cusp of democracy, to join the police force hunting with no result for the so-called Station Strangler, accused of the murder of 22 young boy in a township in the Cape Town suburb of Parow.
The case occupies the totality of Eps. 1 and 2. It is followed by other cases in which Pistorius was involved, all notable by the complexity which Pistorius brings to the psychology of serial killers: “Control, power, the power of life and death, serial killers often been powerless, abused but now get to decide, choosing victims who represent themselves,” Pistorius tells a class in Ep. 1. “The killer is an abused child, a bullied teenager We all contain shadows of our former selves,” she adds.
“Catch Me a Killer” also emphasises the toll which investigation takes on the police and Pistorius herself, who resigned in 2000 her post at South Africa’s the Investigative Psych Unit, having developed a post-traumatic stress disorder.
Gritty, sometimes grisly, “Catch Me a Killer” is “warts and all. “You don’t just have a profiler coming in and solving the case. It’s about the effects on her life and her world, it consumed her for six years, where she was doing nothing else than joining police investigations, leading a very peripatetic life across South Africa and getting to grips with some horrific crimes,” executive producer Simon Howley (“A Tale of Two Thieves”) told Variety.
At one point Pistorius is ask how she copes. “I keep thinking about the light, then morning breaks and the dark disappears. And I chain smoke,” she replies.
Initially, she has to battle for respect in a male-dominated world. “At that time, there was much more suspicion within the culture of the South African police force not just of women, but women in more powerful positions. ‘I don’t want a degree with a skirt,’ the local police commander says in Episode 1,” Howley observed.
Lead written by South Africa’s SAFTA winning playwright and screenwriter Amy Jephta, behind Oscar entry “Barakat,” “Devil’s Peak” and Showmax Original “Skemerdans,” “Catch Me a Killer” has featured as a banner title on African SVOD service Showmax’s recent relaunch, now partnered by MBCUniversal and Sky.
The series’ producers brought in Tracey Larcombe to direct early episodes, before employing South African directors. Apart from Hope and Larcombe, all of the series’ cast and crew are South African, Howley noted.
“There are great shows coming out of South Africa. It is relatively untapped in terms of true crime drama. What we tried to do is to make a South African crime series with tropes you wouldn’t necessarily expect from South Africa, from drama series such as ‘Mindhunter’ and Nordic Noir, for example,” Howley said.
“Scrublands” sees a journalist investigating a massacre committed in a country town by a young priest. Something, he senses, doesn’t add up.
The four-hour crime series is produced by Easy Tiger Productions, based on Chris Hammer’s award-winning novel and stars Luke Arnold (“Black Sails”) and Jay Ryan (“It Chapter Two”). Greg McLean directs from a screenplay written by Felicity Packard, Kelsey Munro and Jock Serong.
Sold to the U.K.’s Alibi channel and France Télévisions, “The Boy That Never Was” has Harry in Dublin thinking he glimpses in a crowd a six-year-old boy who is Dillon, his son, who went missing in an earthquake in Morocco three years before. His obsession tears apart his marriage, exposing shameful secrets.
A London Screenings Variety hot pick choice, the four-hour drama series was commissioned by RTÉ from Subotica adapting the Sunday Times best-selling debut novel by Irish author Karen Perry. “The Boy That Never Was” is directed by Hannah Quinn (Vikings: Valhalla”) and stars Colin Morgan (“Belfast,” “Legend”).
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