“Peaky Blinders” Producer Caryn Mandabach on Creating Hits and Writers' Room Mandates.
On The Media Mix podcast: Caryn Mandabach.
Photo by Dan Burton on Unsplash
Caryn Mandabach was once a partner in hit factory Carsey Werner Productions which made some of the most successful sitcoms in American TV from “Third Rock from the Sun,” to “That 70’s show,” “The Cosby Show,” and “Roseanne.”
Mandabach is better known these days as the force behind “Peaky Blinders,” a series about Irish mobs set just after World War I. The drama, starring Cillian Murphy, airs on Netflix in the US and on the BBC.
The independent producer now calls London home and has been watching the US writers and actors strikes and the broad dispute over payments and mandates over the size of writers’ rooms and questions such as how talent can figure out if they even have a hit at all.
Speaking on The Media Mix podcast, Mandabach said she believes there is no single right number of writers when it comes to creating hits.
“Historically this was never a problem,” she said. “If the writer wanted to have two buddies in the room, and if the head writer didn’t want anybody: Steven Knight wrote all 36 episodes of “Peaky Blinders” by himself.” Mandabach recalls Roseanne Barr had 22 people in the writing room on the sitcom, “Roseanne.”
She points to two individual forces in TV today: Mike White, who created, “White Lotus,” and Taylor Sheridan, the mastermind behind “Yellowstone,” who has been outspoken about his dislike of writers’ rooms.
“I do think the head writer has to make that choice and not be told what to do,” Mandabach said. “On the other hand this industry has to thrive and find a way to regenerate themselves otherwise there won’t be any hits.”
Mandabach, who has steadfastly remained an independent producer, recalls how in the eighties and nineties, broadcast was the goldmine and cable channels paid less but producers got to keep more of their rights. Back then, the formula was simple: “There is no money if there’s no hit. You have to have a hit.”
And how did producers know they had a hit? “It was just advertising. They would pay more money for your show, and then you knew you had a hit,” Mandabach said. Today, the talent industry is begging for more information about how well shows are performing, something that shouldn’t be too hard to figure out now that many more shows are on ad-supported streaming platforms that must deliver hard viewing data to clients about how shows performed.
Mandabach is sympathetic to those who feel in the dark about whether their productions are a success story or not. She made an investment in measurement firm Parrot Analytics which revealed how well some of her shows were doing in other markets such as Turkey and Brazil. “A hit is something that is widely appreciated and deeply appreciated,” she explains.
The producer grew up working class in Chicago, before heading to Los Angeles and then to London. That background has been her formula for finding what connects with large audiences. “If you understand how the working class works, if you read a Dennis Lehane book, you’ve got to honor that. No-one’s got money, they’re never going to get rich, they have families to deal with and women have a certain role.” And on taking the gamble on the “Peaky Blinders” script by Steven Knight, she said, “It wasn’t like I was betting on a horse. I was betting on myself and the people I hired. I thought it was a safe bet.”
For more on the conversation, click below for the podcast.
Thanks to EP Jamie Maglietta and the team at Situation Room Studios for all their work on this series.
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