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Based on a true story.
It’s a common phrase in the entertainment industry, but what does it really mean?
“You do have to wrestle with how fictional can you go while giving the audience a truthful experience,” said Mikko Alanne, showrunner, writer and executive producer of National Geographic’s The Long Road Home, said Thursday at the Drama Summit West 2018 conference in Los Angeles.
The series delves into the events of what’s known as Black Sunday—the day a platoon of soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas, were ambushed in 2004 on the fourth day of a peacekeeping mission in Iraq, and is told from the perspective of both the soldiers, and their families at home.
“You do have an obligation,” Alanne said. “As long as you are truthful to the essence of who the people are and the event, dramatization is valid.”
It’s a statement that holds across other fact-based fictionalized series such as USA’s Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G., History’s Vikings, FX’s American Crime Story and NBC’s Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders.
Tiffany Hawthorne, vice president of scripted content at NBCUniversal, and one of the voices behind Unsolved, said such series should be factual enough that viewers can’t call bullshit, and should be fair in how the characters on which the show is based are portrayed.
“We were also just trying to show you things that you didn’t know,” Hawthorne said. In today’s context, it also highlights the topicality of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Black Lives Matter movement.
“It’s a way for us to say thing are so much more complicated than what you see,” she said.
Especially when it comes to true crime, one of the appeals of the format is that it provides viewers with something new.
“One thing that has changed a lot is the context,” said René Balcer, executive producer, creator and showrunner of Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders.
Looking at the popular court case from the ‘90s about two boys convicted of killing their parents with fresh eyes brings a new perspective in 2018, especially in light of the #MeToo movement. Stepping back, there were clear undertones of gender politics when it came down to the female defense team, and a “chauvinistic” judge.
“Things that in 1992 went under the radar, suddenly it makes sense as to why this trial went the way it did,” he said.
There’s also value in letting a story breathe, and waiting for the right time to develop a such a show.
“I’ve done a lot of pitches on Trump,” said Arturo Interian, senior vice president, scripted programming, History. But he acknowledges it might be best to wait, and get more perspective about the current president before pursuing a fact-based series about his time in office.
Indeed, Vikings had plenty of time to breathe. For cases of historical fiction, authenticity can play a big role, and simple details, like the fact that Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets, can make a big difference in terms of believability and immersing viewers in that world, Interian said.
When it comes to an appetite for the genre itself, Hawthorne says there’s a yearning for people to connect, and to understand the psychology of why people make the decisions they make. Dramatizing it can often get the point across in a clear way that stays true to the essence of what actually happened.
And that’s not going away any time soon.
“Historically, there’s always been a fascination with history,” Balcer said. “It may take different shapes, but that fascination will always be there.”
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