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“Industry” and “Doctor Who” producer Jane Tranter has made a career of going against the grain, and at Rome’s MIA Market on Tuesday, she told European producers that the only way to survive in uncertain times is to “go
in the opposite direction of everyone else’s traffic.”
“If everyone else is zigging, you zag. Because at some point, they’re going to want your zag because they’ve run out of zigs,” she said. “We have to be ready for it.”
Appearing in conversation with MIA’s head of drama content Paolo Ciccarelli, Tranter dished on her career as a ground-breaking TV producer, rising through the ranks of British television to become head of drama at the BBC before going on to launch her award-winning production company Bad Wolf with co-founder Julie Gardner in 2015.
Opening up about her early days in the industry in the 1990s, Tranter recalled her time as a drama script editor at ITV franchise Carlton Television, when she was told that “no drama that had a female protagonist was ever going to draw an audience.” Before long, however, she joined a cohort of powerhouse female executives who would reshape the face of British television.
“I didn’t think that I was leading a revolution. I just thought that I was going to make drama that I wanted to watch,” she said. “And if it’s drama that I want to watch, the drama should be inclusive of all. And in particular, I wanted to watch drama that had women in it.”
The wide-ranging conversation touched on some of the iconic series that Tranter helped shepherd to the screen, from the HBO crime drama “The Night Of” (“It took two Obama presidencies to see it through”) to the multi-Emmy-winning “Succession” (“It was the best writers’ room I have ever experienced”) to “His Dark Materials,” the HBO fantasy adventure series that aired from 2019-2022 and “had a heartbeat to it that was speaking to where the world was going.”
“It was the very, very early days of what we see so much of these days, where people are just thinking, ‘You know what? I don’t want that system. I don’t want to live in a way where the climate’s going to be destroyed. I don’t want to live in a way where my human rights are not given to me. I want to live in a different way,’” Tranter said.
Asked about her decision to revive “Doctor Who” at the BBC in 2003, Tranter briefly gushed that she “loved the show” but otherwise steered clear of talk about the beloved series, whose future remains up in the air following the departure last year of Disney+ as a co-financier. Earlier this year, Tranter told Variety that Bad Wolf was commissioned to make 26 episodes of the series, insisting, “There was never any talk of more than that.” Last month, the BBC launched a competitive tender inviting pitches from producers to reboot the series. (Contacted by Variety following her appearance in Rome, Tranter’s team said she would not be answering any questions related to “Doctor Who.”)
On stage at MIA, Tranter trumpeted the period drama “The Other Bennet Sister,” which is produced by Bad Wolf in association with the BBC and BritBox, as the latest example of her company reaching audiences by going against conventional wisdom.
“If someone says to you, ‘You can’t make period drama. No one’s buying it. You can’t make fantasy. No one’s buying it. You can’t make a drama set in finance. No one will buy it.’ Make it. Just find a way and make it,” she said.
Based on Janice Hadlow’s novel of the same name, the series follows “Pride and Prejudice” protagonist Lizzie Bennet’s less charismatic sister Mary as she tries to step out of her family’s shadow and find her own place in the world.
Describing her as an “outsider” who’s “just slightly outside the norm,” Tranter heralded Mary — who’s played by “Call the Midwife’s” Ella Bruccoleri — as an example of an unconventional character “that people will respond to.” More importantly for the producer, she’s a woman who society “doesn’t really think should be an acceptable face of a woman.”
“Mary doesn’t look like people want a woman to look like. She doesn’t sound like people want a woman to sound like. She doesn’t behave like a society wants a woman to behave like. And yet Mary Bennet is her own woman,” Tranter said.
“Stories about people being accepted for who they choose to be are the kind of stories that I will keep making until someone carries me out in a wooden box. And I would really urge you to keep making those kinds of stories,” she added. “We have to group together. We have to tell stories that will change the lack of empathy in our world. And if I leave you with anything from my ramblings about my career, it is to look into yourselves and go and tell your own stories that will make our world a more empathetic place.”
The 12th edition of Rome’s MIA Market runs Oct. 19 – 23.
