“A Foundational Building Block”: The Procedural Is Back & Streamers Are Aboard – MIPCOM Scenesetters

News broadcasts have been dominated by conflict, pandemics and economic strife in recent years, and sometimes a bit of escapism is just what’s needed in troubled times.

Sellers are alert to this notion and know that nothing builds a greater sense of escapism than the procedural genre, one that is having a moment as buyers seek cheaper, repeatable fare in an era of squeezed budgets and risk aversion. That well-trodden formatted path of a pair of grizzly detectives solving the unsolvable each week feels very much in vogue again.

Huge international franchises such as NCIS, Death in Paradise and SEAL have been expanding, while others have gotten a second wind on streaming platforms.

When Deadline invited submissions for its 2024 Hot Ones, we were not surprised that several distributors were making procedurals a cornerstone of their MIPCOM slates, including Paramount Global Content Distribution’s NCIS: Origins, Fifth Season’s Saint Pierre and Leonine Studios’ Juliet — all key titles.

“Procedurals have become a foundational building block both for linear and streaming,” says Brandon Katz, Senior Entertainment Industry Strategist at Parrot Analytics, which recently wrote a white paper on the topic. “Not only do they bring in a consistent flood of viewers, but they are extremely recyclable. This makes it easier to branch off and create other formats and suddenly your broadcast network is 45% full of franchises, easing the pressure off programming teams.”

Rather than kill the market for procedurals, streamers appear to have given them a fresh lease of life, and they are not just playing in the acquisition game. While Grey’s Anatomy has been one of Netflix’s top acquisitions for a decade, the streamer recently ordered medical procedural Pulse, produced by veteran Carlton Cuse, one of the brains behind Lost. Max, meanwhile, commissioned a cop drama based on Geraldine Hart’s experience as an FBI agent, while High Potential, the U.S. remake of the French-Belgian procedural HPI, has been performing well on ABC and Hulu.

Streamers have turned to retention over subscriber growth as their most valued metric, and Katz explains that procedurals “boast some of the highest levels of genre affinity,” meaning that once someone has watched one, they are likely to watch another. This is gold dust for in-flux streamers desperate to keep subs on their platforms for longer.

What does this all mean for the limited series, which were so in vogue during the boom era? While Katz feels there is still a place for them, he says this current era is defined by “seeing the value of recurring engagement and interest, where you don’t have to sell audiences on something new.” Instead, he feels the major players are more likely to bet big on more seasons of shows that may have started out life as limited series but took off, such as Shogun or Beef.

If a murder needs solving somewhere near you, a distributor is likely not far behind.