Writers come together day after day for an extended period, develop serial storylines and try to find original ideas of high quality through their continuous interaction in the same physical room, while a few doors down the first episodes are shot. Such a scenario is still a great exception in the German television industry. Much more frequently, writers in Germany work on their own, clearly separated from production, and come together only for a few meetings, if at all. Along with addressing issues of individual and collaborative work and the connection between screenwriting and production, the interviewed and observed practitioners described negotiating agency in both project networks and screen idea work groups. They often argued for shifts in power and changed modes of production, linking these to questions of content and aesthetic quality. The following chapter analyses how the practitioners dealt with production cultures within the discourse on German quality drama.

The particular focus of this chapter is screenwriting. This emphasis finds its roots, first of all, in my interview study, which revolved around television professionals involved in the screenwriting work of individual quality TV dramas, and it also stems from a similar focus found at the attended industry workshops. Furthermore, it is a decisive and well-known argument among TV practitioners that this phase of television drama production is crucial for quality and that the German industry has deficits in this area, especially compared to other production countries. Finally, in the feature pages and review sections of German-language newspapers in the 2010s, a similar assessment and special attention to script work featured heavily in the debates on quality TV drama (e.g. Staun and Caro 2017), and likewise in the halls of academia (e.g. Jensen 2017).

We will look in more detail at how practitioners of that era as well as those working today have engaged with the production cultures of script development and, in the process, with the work of screenwriters. This professional group traditionally has been considered secondary to directors within the context of European film and television production (Szczepanik 2013; Kasten 1994) and appears marginalised in the accounts of many TV professionals. However, with more recent approaches to the showrunner—the lead “writer/executive producer who create[s] the series and who oversees the writing staff” (Del Valle 2008, 403)—we can see signs of a shift in favour of the writer, including in the German television industry. The models of the “project network” and the “screen idea work group”, which were introduced in Chapter 3, represent the central basis for investigating such questions of agency and the interaction of writers with other trades, above all producers, directors and commissioning editors.

The interviewed and observed practitioners repeatedly argued that the efficiency of the screenwriting process differs considerably from project to project. As outlined in Chapter 3 and discussed by various practitioners, project networks are at the same time interconnected; after all, actors are often selected on the basis of previous collaborations and the resulting relationships they make. Cross-project production cultures also emerge among series types and genres and the production areas linked to them.1 The practitioners emphasised the differences between production described as “day-to-day business” (interview with Hess 2019) and production considered quality or high-end. According to the writer Annette Hess (2019), whereas in the former segment, with its “short-cycle processes”, everyone has a fixed place, in the quality drama arena—our focus here—the composition of project networks and screen idea work groups is more difficult, individual and flexible.

In addition to the “magic triangle”, as Jantje Friese (2019), co-creator of the Netflix drama Dark (2017–2020), called the cooperating parties of writer, producer and director, other collaborators can play a role in the screen idea work group, such as prominent and influential actors who pursue a “certain agenda” (interview with Behnke 2018). Commissioning editors in particular are relevant precisely because they act as gatekeepers to the broadcasters and streaming platforms and have “a certain mandate and specific managerial ideas about what to produce” (Waade et al. 2020, 8). However, these editors and the departments they represent, as well as production company staff, have only limited economic means at their disposal. Again and again, the corresponding economic framework conditions were at issue when the television professionals negotiated production cultures in screenwriting. Budgets make certain types of content possible, but, by the same token, they can also restrict content, as Arnold Windeler, Anja Lutz and Carsten Wirth (2001, 111) explain when describing the ambivalent relationship of many producers to economic means.

8.1 The Economic Conditions of Screenwriting

8.1.1 Underfunding Script Development

Linked to the well-known argument that quality deficits stem from low budgets, many of the interviewed and observed practitioners held the opinion that screenwriting in German series is underfinanced (see also Fröhlich 2010, 128). The television professionals repeatedly criticised the fact that the budget share for script development in Germany is lower than in other countries associated with quality drama, such as the UK, the US and the Scandinavian nations. In doing so, they once again made a transnational comparison. Correspondingly, Jörg Winger (2019), producer and writer of Deutschland 83/86/89 (RTL/Amazon Prime Video, 2015–2020), contended at an industry workshop that, in Germany, unlike in the US, no development industry exists whereby creatives can develop scripts and concepts and make a living from it, even if an idea does not lead to actual series production. Linked to making transnational comparisons and centring the US, there is a tendency to idealise the production conditions of American quality TV (see also Pjajčíková and Szczepanik 2016). Winger (2019) advised young screenwriters to write “on spec”, that is, without funding and purely speculatively as far as the chances of a sale are concerned. From an economic point of view, however, a speculative screenplay is an extremely risky undertaking, especially in the field of television series, where a single script is not enough and an overarching concept is required. According to an industry lecture in 2015, the pay for a cross-episode series concept with interfaces to the “series bible” (see Zabel 2009, 69)—a still typical development tool in German TV production—is only 6000 euros at most. And such a fee is paid only if a large, comparatively financially strong production company is involved and the writers are already established. According to development producer Gunther Eschke (2015), the production company, which itself has limited financial resources, ultimately passes on the high risk of a yet-to-be-commissioned TV drama concept to the writer through this low payment. The sum of 6000 euros has not increased significantly since that 2015 lecture, despite the rising demand for fresh content for digital streaming services. Thus, the early phase of conceptualisation and brainstorming, which is considered very labour intensive by practitioners, is still paid comparatively little.

Against this background, it has hardly been economically attractive for writers to develop new television series, at least for the last several years. A higher—and, above all, more secure—payment scenario often still awaits those who write for an already existing series or serial format. Furthermore, focusing one’s work on the early concept phase is not very lucrative, because payment patterns are strongly geared towards final scripts, which can be brought into film and series production (see Gößler and Merkel 2021, 224).

8.1.2 Payment Structures in Script Development

Generally, writers in Germany receive payment during each stage of the television serial writing process, from the initial concept paper to the final polishing of dialogue. Among these different steps, they receive the largest sum for the finished script (Zabel 2009, 69–70). According to producer and screenwriter Gabriela Sperl (2018), this fee remains the same “whether you write your script in three weeks or in two years”, which she saw as a structural problem.

Certain practices and hierarchies within script work result from this payment arrangement: for economic reasons, writers tend to complete a series project instead of dropping out of it, even if the cooperation with the director, producer or editor turns out to be difficult or barely functional. Any additional writers’ activities after the script has been completed, such as potential feedback on dailies (film takes circulated during shooting), are generally not included in the budget.

With regard to script development, the question is not only how much is paid for this aspect of production. Also at issue is the extent to which the script work is connected to the later—or in the case of some series, parallel—production and how the development funds are distributed in different phases. Several practitioners considered research in particular to be underfunded and not sufficiently anchored in local production cultures for screenwriting. Even more common than the aforementioned spec screenplay, with its high economic risk for authors, seems to be “spec research” (Redvall 2018, 147): writers do research without knowing whether they can expect payment for it and whether the project will ultimately be realised. Against this background, practitioners called for greater remuneration for research, which they considered especially important for quality drama. They tended to regard serial quality programmes as feeling authentic and realistic, and therefore likely to require intensive research. In the meantime, a stronger financial reward for research work has arisen in certain individual project networks, for example, for the first German Netflix series, Dark, where a research assistant supported the writers.

Hess (2019) noted a general, fundamental shift in the overall budget in favour of screenwriting, at least for quality or high-end drama. However, more ambitious serials, with intertwined cross-episode storylines or very specific plot worlds, also require more intensive script work than other production areas in German TV, such as the “industrial” daily soap and the local procedural, with their well-rehearsed processes and more formulaic narrative styles.2

8.1.3 Commitment and Symbolic Capital

The ambition to create quality drama leads not only to more economic attention on the screenwriting process but also to screenwriters showing a particularly high level of commitment during the development phase—even though they will not receive compensation for this extra work. For example, Hanno Hackfort and his two co-writers Richard Kropf and Bob Konrad (2018) described the gangster drama 4 Blocks (TNT Serie, 2017–2019), for which they were largely responsible, as extremely research intensive and at the same time “budget-wise […] the smallest thing we did”. According to these creators and head writers, 4 Blocks was “a low-budget production” in respect to their payment, but “of course” (Hackfort in Hackfort et al. 2018) they were keen on doing it. This particular project’s “quality” status seems to have functioned as a performance compulsion of the “creativity dispositif”, in the sense of Andreas Reckwitz (2017, 8), or as “symbolic capital”, in the sense of Pierre Bourdieu (e.g. 2010, first 1979). That is, in order to gain reputation and be able to use this standing successfully afterwards, writers become particularly committed to even underfinanced projects if they are artistically appealing. In this context, self-exploitation can occur from the goal to write a quality programme.

The studied practitioners’ discourse on the economics of screenwriting repeatedly revolved around such commitment and the question of which actors in the project network are in charge of financing the development phase: Is it the writers themselves, through their committed working time as an advance investment; the production companies, who want to keep risks as low as possible; or the commissioners of the programmes? Established public and advertising-financed broadcasters and their editorial teams are faced with the problem that their budgets often stagnate or decline over the multiple years that production can take, when adjusted for inflation. In addition, public broadcasting in Germany has come under increasing political pressure, to the result that raising the broadcasting fees (paid by every household in Germany) is very difficult to justify and implement (see e.g. Nünning 2020). The interviewed commissioning editors (e.g. Zöllner 2018) nevertheless emphasised that they prioritise financing the script development, or at least push for this. A key point’s paper of the ARD network of local public-service broadcasters also declared a “willingness to take into account […] development costs”, including expenses for “research [and] preparatory work on a script that does not become part of the subsequent script contract”. At the same time, this official ARD document on supposedly “balanced contract terms” states: “Research is basically part of the entrepreneurial risk of the producers” (ARD 2019, 15, my translation).

Who bears what risk and finances script development to what level is related to the fundamental interplay between production companies and commissioners and their financing models. In the diversified, transnationalised and digitalised television series landscape, the forms of financing are in flux.3 Mixed and co-financing, new partnerships and new commissioners, especially from the subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) and pay TV segments, are also contributing to change in the screenwriting process. US-origin streaming platforms, for example, tend to impose the US copyright system and thus the assignment of all rights to authors. In this way, the fragile economy of writers is being called into question, concludes Mehdi Atmani (2019). In some cases, Netflix binds local creatives exclusively to itself (and thus approaches the studio model, as discussed in Sect. 5.3). Within the industry, such a move has certainly provoked criticism: one accusation held that the company is buying talent away from the market without being involved in the development of young talent in the same way that public broadcasters and their specific editorial departments are (Lückerath 2020a). For example, Das kleine Fernsehspiel (The Little Television Play), under ZDF (Germany’s other public broadcaster alongside ARD), supports emerging film- and television-makers and co-funds their first projects.

However, Netflix has in the meantime started an initiative for finding and supporting upcoming screenwriters and declared a goal to promote particularly “creative talents from underrepresented groups in society” (Netflix 2021). Benjamin Harris (2022), the project manager of this initiative, highlighted the diversity goal during our interview, conducted in the Berlin Netflix office, and declared: “Netflix is here to stay”. How sustainable and serious Netflix’s work on young talent and diversity is, and to what extent it will influence the German TV industry with its historically rooted structures, remains to be seen.

In co-financing situations with new providers such as Netflix, collisions can occur among the varying views and models of collaboration with writers, and tensions can arise regarding the requirements for scripts and other documents of the screenwriting process. As a result of the manifold economic partnerships in an expanding television series landscape, the already collaborative character of series production is increasing.

Collaborativity also emerged as a central point of discussion in a general sense—that is, beyond strictly economic questions—in the analysed industry discourse on German quality drama. This was the case especially when practitioners explored the writers’ room as a possible means of creativity and quality enhancement.

8.2 The Writers’ Room and Collaborativity

8.2.1 Collaborativity in Series Development

Series productions are fundamentally complex processes. They involve numerous individuals with “many motivations and interests”, as Hess (2019) put it, within institutional, organisational and technological contexts (Newcomb and Lotz 2002, 76). My interviews and observations cemented this well-known finding. In their discourse on quality series, the practitioners repeatedly addressed the collaborativity arising from the multiple involved parties on the one hand and the various steps of script development on the other. The constellation of writers can change and expand considerably throughout the various work phases, from the early pitch paper or series concept to the final polishing of dialogue. The steps also include script versions (Drehbuchfassungen), which the writer Kropf (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018) defined as involving “fundamental” variations, such as where “something else changes in the structure […] a new character is added […,] one is kicked out or a character is completely repositioned”. Smaller deviations not affecting the entire “framework”, on the other hand, fall under “polishing”. From the writers’ point of view, this final revision, especially of dialogue, is a particularly delicate moment when it is carried out by other colleagues (see also Redvall 2013, 110). Related questions include who is responsible for the polishing, who chooses this person and to what extent does the “polisher” communicate with the previous writers. Several times, the practitioners mentioned communication problems and dissension in this step, similar to issues that arise with the director’s version of the script. Practitioners often considered the difficulties connected to collaborative work to be a cause of quality deficits.

The collaborative nature of television series production is stronger compared to that of individual films, since the screen idea work group members can change from episode to episode and season to season. Hackfort (in Hackfort et al. 2018) noted that, for the first season of 4 Blocks, he and his two co-writers approached the production company and broadcaster from the outside with a clear story, while in the second season, the various people involved had different ideas about how to proceed. This “second season syndrome” (Hess in Lückerath 2015) is known and feared by writers. In addition to the pressure to promptly produce the next chapter—before the story and the established brand are forgotten among the huge roster of serials—the increased polyphony can make the development of the sophomore season more difficult.

Seriality further promotes collaborative production practices due to the fact that a large number of episodes often must be produced within a short period of time and within a certain budget, which only a large number of actors, or even several teams, working in parallel can achieve. The historical crime drama Babylon Berlin (ARD/Degeto/Sky Deutschland, 2017–), for example, which has significantly more episodes than most other quality drama projects from Germany, was shot in parallel by three units, divided according to filming locations, and was edited in three editing suites, between which the three directors switched back and forth (Zarges 2017b).

In addition to seriality, the digital media environment is a crucial factor to the highly collaborative nature of the development and production of current television series. Project networks or screen idea work groups can expand through actors who deal with further narration on platforms beyond television, such as social media producers (Krauß and Stock 2021, 419–20). The move towards transmedia storytelling or “world-building” (Ryan 2015, 5) is characterised by interdisciplinary, cross-craft collaboration (Renger 2021, 576). For such transmedia expansions, the key producers must decide whether to outsource the work or keep it within the screen idea work group (Mittell 2015, 265). The case studies on which the present production study is based do not include dedicated transmedia projects, as they have only partially emerged in German television fiction; however, the particular productions discussed in the interviews are, for the most part, strongly oriented towards online distribution. The changed media environment is also reflected in several of the selected case studies, evident in the involvement of relatively new platforms as distributors and commissioners.

At the micro-level of the screen idea work group, collaborativity is key to the writers’ room, whereby writers develop series together. This model originated in the Hollywood studio system and further developed in US television production as a way to increase time efficiency (Gößler and Weiß 2014, 31). Since the 2010s, and linked to the discourse on quality TV drama, the writers’ room has been championed, negotiated and tested in the German television industry as well.

8.2.2 The Writers’ Room as a Collaborative Practice

In the German television industry, the writers’ room is especially discussed as a development path that should lead to both higher quality and a faster production pace, which streaming platforms in particular demand in the digital media environment. While John Thornton Caldwell (2008) identifies immense stress in “writing by committee” (211), related to time pressures and the high volume of work (215–16), and draws parallels to “the non-union digital sweatshops of below-the-line workers” (214), most of the interviewed and observed practitioners framed this collaborative mode of writing only in positive terms. They rarely described the writers’ room as a hierarchical and burdensome work context, as some production and media industry scholars have done via their research into power imbalances within writers’ rooms related to age, class, race and gender (e.g. Henderson 2011). Instead, the practitioners positioned the writers’ room as a means of creativity demanded by the “creativity dispositif” (Reckwitz 2017, 8) prevalent in today’s television industry and in society at large. Achim von Borries (2019), for example, one of the directors and head writers of Babylon Berlin, spoke of a “creative space” in which every idea can be expressed without being sanctioned, which then becomes filtered through the collaboration interaction. In respect to the joint script development with his fellow writer-directors Hendrik Handloegten and Tom Tykwer—which, at three people, is a group size reminiscent of the small, efficient writers’ rooms used for many Danish series (Redvall 2013, 132)—von Borries argued that three people already represents “the smallest unit of an audience”. According to this description, the mutual, immediate feedback is productive and, as von Borries’s words imply, can take place significantly differently and more interactively in a trio than in a duo.

In their negotiations of the writers’ room, the practitioners often questioned the extent to which local writers are capable of the collaborative script work they repeatedly attributed to quality drama productions. Are writers in Germany the traditional lone warrior type, or can they, as Martin Behnke (2018), a writer on the Netflix drama Dark, put it, “keep their egos in check”? Are they willing to subordinate themselves to other writers, especially to the head writer or showrunner, and adapt to their vision? Jantje Friese (2019), Dark’s co-creator, identified this adaptability as essential, demanding flexibility from writers in addition to greater collaborativity: “If you want to work in a writers’ room and you’re on a horror show, then you have to be able to write horror in the style of the head writer”. However, this scenario can be problematic, particularly for less established writers, as invisibility looms for those with a marginal position in the collective (Caldwell 2008, 213).

It is probably due to this danger, among others, that a scepticism towards collaborative writing prevailed for a long time in the German industry, as well as in many other European countries (e.g. Born 2005, 107). In the local industry discourse on the writers’ room and the showrunner (who is usually the leader and manager of this collective of writers), the combination of collaborative and individual writing was a recurring issue. This fundamental tension in script work (see Davies 2007, 174) crystallised particularly clearly when practitioners described individual work as formative for screenwriting in German television fiction and contrasted it with the situation of the writers’ room.

8.2.3 Different Production Cultures

In Germany, fiction television production cultures traditionally have been characterised by miniseries and multi-part films (the so-called Mehrteiler, comprising two or three 90-minute parts) and by a dramaturgical tendency towards procedurals and single TV films.4 Due to this tendency, historically writers usually worked alone on single scripts for television films or episodes of procedurals. This arrangement has been linked to a particular working practice and production situation summarised by former commissioning editor Bernhard Gleim (2016):

You’re dealing with writers who are all working on something else, who have to get a certain portfolio together for themselves, who sometimes write an episode of SOKO [a popular crime procedural with local spin-offs by public-service channel ZDF] or are on a children’s series and so on.

Screenwriters work simultaneously on various scripts and projects and hardly ever write exclusively for one drama serial and its writers’ room. To change this situation, according to Gleim, a different form of remuneration is ultimately needed. The dominant scheme, as previously mentioned, is payment for individual finished scripts, alongside an alternative payment model for “story editors” of daily or weekly soap segments, who constantly develop plotlines (see Kirsch 2001).

The proclivity for individual writing also seems to be linked to the underfunding of script work, which several practitioners complained about. “It is different when one person writes for 45 minutes versus three people for 45 minutes”, Kropf and his co-writers Hackfort and Konrad (2018) stated, postulating that collaborative writing requires different budgeting than traditional individual writing.

According to Hauke Bartel (2018), at the time of interview head of fiction for Vox, a commercial broadcaster of the RTL Group, the lack of a writers’ room and showrunner system perpetuates the individualised work of writers. Bartel argued that, in Germany, “you always have to stand out as an individual” because, unlike in the US, the “classic” hierarchical system of television writing is missing, where “you go through these individual stages from staff writer to editor, to co-executive […] and then at some point you are offered your own series as showrunner” (see also Phalen and Osellame 2012, 6). As in the discourse on content and aesthetic quality,5 the US once again served as a crucial benchmark for practitioners when exploring the writers’ room.

In addition to structural and economic conditions, the television professionals discussed the socialisation and “conditioning” (Konrad in Hackfort et al. 2018) of writers in Germany, which possibly hinders the collaborative development required in the writers’ room and thus makes it difficult to move towards quality drama. While character development across serial storylines is considered a central ingredient of these highly valued television productions, writers shaped by the long-standing individual work tradition “don’t really take a bold approach to the protagonists”, Gleim (2016) contended. According to his diagnosis, writers are often afraid to change the character too much in a specific direction, such that “the person who writes the next episode can’t use [it] at all”.

Correspondingly, several practitioners noted shortcomings of scriptwriting in Germany when it comes to developing serial, cross-episode and character-centred storylines. A recurring argument held that more craft in serial writing, and a greater appreciation of the skills required for it, is needed. In this context, shortcomings in training were also discussed. According to industry voices, the state-run film schools in Germany—traditionally central to generating talent—still strongly favour individual films and single directors and focus little on serial and collaborative script development (see also Sabine de Mardt in Lückerath 2020b).

Traditions of individual work and the individual piece (in the shape of single TV films and single episodes of procedurals) may also connect to the fact that many writers, as problematised by editorial director Martina Zöllner (2018) from the ARD broadcaster RBB, concentrate solely on “developing characters by themselves” instead of doing additional research. Psychological accuracy (at which writers’ individual self-reflection or soul-searching often aims) is indeed important, but this approach can sit alongside intensive research, Zöllner argued; that is, they are not mutually exclusive practices. However, as previously discussed, this type of research poses a challenge under the economic conditions of early script development, being work that is rarely paid (even though Zöllner, as a representative of ARD, explicitly acknowledged remuneration for such additional writing and development activities).

In respect to the writers’ room and script development more generally, practitioners negotiated how ideas are generated. While the writer in the screen idea work group is normally regarded as the “originator of the screen idea” (Macdonald 2010, 55), other scenarios often arise in the development of German television series. Due to the traditionally strong influence of the commissioning broadcasters, initial ideas sometimes emerge in editorial departments or in broadcasters’ meetings with producers. In such cases, writers come on board at a later point (see also Zabel 2009, 64). That means that the idea generation does not take place initially or even primarily in the writers’ room and the person generating the idea is not the same as the showrunner leading the writers’ collective. Writers repeatedly criticised the initiation of script development by other professions, saying that too little thought is given to the narrative itself and too much to programme schemes and themes. According to the writer Stefan Stuckmann (2016), creator of the low-budget political comedy Eichwald, MdB (ZDF, 2014–2019), “entire development processes are dispatched on the basis of settings and themes, although there is actually no idea”. Similarly, Hackfort (in Hackfort et al. 2018) argued that what should be foregrounded first is the story, and not—as is the case in much German television fiction—a particular issue of current social interest.

Hierarchies in favour of commissioning editors or producers, as they appeared in the discussions on idea generation, and the tendency towards individual writing work characterise the adaptation of the writers’ room and its associated practices to the German context.

8.2.4 “Writers’ Room Lite”

The writers’ room—in the narrower and literal sense of writers working together for almost the entire script development and in one location (Phalen and Osellame 2012, 8)—is something that in Germany previously only, or at least primarily, existed in the production of daily soap operas (such as the long-running Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten/Good Times, Bad Times, RTL, 1992–). Since the 1990s, daily soap operas have used collective writing to accomplish an intense division of labour strongly motivated by time efficiency. So-called story editors, who are mostly permanent employees due to their continuous work (Knöhr 2018, 34), develop the storylines together. These elaborate treatments provide the foundation for dialogue writers, who mostly act more individually as freelancers (Kirsch 2001, 48–49). Within this development process—which several practitioners categorised as “industrial”6—we also find steps towards the showrunner: the producer is responsible not only for the budget but also for the creative continuity of the episodes, acting as a kind of “over-director” (Über-Regisseur), as Gunther Kirsch (2001, 46) puts it in his production study on daily soaps.

Beyond the practices of the daily soap sector, a number of the interviewed practitioners also labelled as “writers’ rooms” temporary, less frequent and less systematised meetings of writers for series with significantly fewer episodes. For instance, during the industry workshop European TV Drama Series Lab, Jörg Winger (2017), producer and writer of the 1980s period drama Deutschland 83/86/89, even described a few meetings with writers of the long-running local crime procedural SOKO Leipzig/Leipzig Homicide (ZDF, 2001–)—on which he was a producer for many years—as the “lightest form of the writers’ room”. In the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, a digital group-writing scenario emerged as a new approach to this method. The writers’ room, which does not exist in a singular form in any case, is not easy to define in view of such multifarious and often only loose and temporary gatherings.

The practitioners (e.g. Blumenberg 2018) mostly agreed that what goes by the name of “the writers’ room” in Germany and other European countries differs considerably from the corresponding screenwriting process in the US context. The main deviations in the German context lie in a smaller number of episodes per series, differently socialised and trained writers and, above all, fewer economic resources. Often, the term “team writing”, which Eva Novrup Redvall (2013, 190) brought into play for Danish serial production, seems more appropriate, especially since collaborativity was revealed in several projects as happening through small teams of two or three rather than in larger writers’ rooms.

In the German industry as a whole, the writers’ room model is usually found only in a rudimentary form, over short periods of time and—apart from a few high-budget cases such as Dark and Babylon Berlin—mostly without a continuously shared physical workspace and only in tandem with other, more common or more established practices of screenwriting, such as individual work on a script for a single episode (see Krauß 2021b). No overarching model crystallised in my interviews and observations at industry workshops. Rather, collaborative development sessions take various forms and can include other actors in addition to writers.

8.2.5 Who Belongs in the Writers’ Room?

In several project networks for contemporary serials from Germany, relatively inexperienced writers classified as “newcomers” belonged to rudimentary writers’ rooms. Their inclusion was a calculated move, as head writers and producers hoped for “fresh ideas” (Eschke 2015) or a “younger perspective” (Hess 2019) on the storylines. Just starting their careers and raised on serial dramas, junior staff may also be particularly motivated by and open to collaborative development work and subordination in the writers’ room. Above all and quite simply, however, they are cheaper (see also Caldwell 2009, 227).

Alongside the writers, directors are also involved in many writers’ rooms, thus upholding the industry’s focus on this role, which stems from the historical tendency in German television fiction towards producing individual films. For Babylon Berlin, the writers’ room cohered following the tradition of the auteur film, since the production team consisted primarily—particularly in the beginning—of the writer-directors Handloegten, von Borries and Tykwer (Freitag 2020). Tykwer is the best known of this trio, through German and international feature films such as Lola rennt/Run Lola Run (1998) and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006). Correspondingly, he received the greatest media attention—however, not so much as a writer but rather primarily as a director, thus continuing the attention on this latter guild. Other quality drama projects cited as case studies also point to the ongoing relevance of the director through involving a director and head writer who are closely personally linked. For the political drama Die Stadt und die Macht/The City and the Power (ARD/NDR/Degeto, 2016), for example, these roles were performed by a pair of brothers, and Dark’s primary director is also its co-creator as well as the romantic partner of the head writer. For most productions, though, it is common that the director joins production only after the first drafts of the script are complete—and only on this basis does a “director’s stage” happen in the screenwriting process. Often the director’s involvement lasts only days, which indicates that directors are not yet an integral part of the writers’ room.

Experts can also belong to the writers’ room, though only on a temporary basis, such as advisers from the worlds of journalism and politics (as in the case of Die Stadt und die Macht) or eyewitnesses of the past and historians (for period dramas such as Deutschland 83). For the family dramedy Labaule & Erben/Labaule & Heirs (ARD/SWR, 2018), SWR, the local ARD broadcaster in charge, is said to have approached the “HaRiBo” writer trio (Hanno Hackfort, Richard Kropf and Bob Konrad) with the idea of including a “confidant” among the writers’ room ranks, which was the wish of Harald Schmidt (a well-known television presenter and former popular late-night host), who conceived the show’s initial concept. This person, however, was not a screenwriter in the classical sense but rather a scholar. This example of the public-service comedy Labaule & Erben demonstrates that broadcasters—or at least the commissioning editors representing them—as well as other actors can also have a say in the composition of writers’ rooms and similar writing teams.

Commissioning editors, often described as very influential actors in the script development hierarchy, can sometimes sit in on writers’ rooms as well. For the 24-part Christmas serial Beutolomäus und der wahre Weihnachtsmann/Beutolomäus and the Real Santa Claus (2017), made for public-service children’s broadcaster KiKA by ARD and ZDF, the editor even regularly participated in story development meetings, to give direct feedback and thus shorten the process (Schulte and Gößler 2017; see also Gößler and Merkel 2021, 196–99).

A role related to the commissioning editor is played by the dramaturge, sometimes also called the development producer, who is involved in several writers’ room approaches. For the Beutolomäus project, Timo Gößler (2017) acted both in this capacity and as a more general writers’ room consultant responsible for integrating this development method into the public-service processes of KiKA. Above all, Gößler suggested the use of the beat system, which revolves around the smallest unit of action in a screenplay (the beat), which he emphasised in his interview: “The beat system [can] give you a kind of dramaturgical blueprint, which in a writers’ room leads you to simply work more effectively, because everyone knows: OK, dramaturgically they always have a kind of density, of rhythm, of narrative speed” (see also Phalen and Osellame 2012, 8). However, none of the other interviewed and observed practitioners seemed to have worked systematically, with structural specifications for beats or otherwise. This lack of a shared or consistent approach to collaborative writing once again clearly indicates that the writers’ room is often used only in a rudimentary and barely systematised form in the German industry.

8.2.6 Practices and Techniques

In the discussions on screenwriting and the writers’ room, a certain scepticism towards overly strict structures often emerged, related both to writers’ self-conceptions and to discourses of value and quality. “[T]he suspicion that somehow craft must be the enemy of authenticity” is how John Yorke (2013, 43) summarises British authors’ aversion to technique and craft. In reply to my question about a certain technique in the (so-called) writers’ room that she led for the drama Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo/We Children from Zoo Station (Amazon Prime Video et al. 2021), the screenwriter Annette Hess (2019) seemingly took up a similiar stance: “I hate any form of technique”. At the same time, she hinted at using particular techniques during our interview when she referred to “dramaturgical knowledge”, and she also discussed her conversation with Anna Winger, head writer of Deutschland 83 and 86, about Winger’s alleged writers’ room experience, in particular about the number of writers involved, their remuneration and the intensity of rewriting by the head writer. Such aspects of collaborative writing, and the fact that practitioners engage in discussion about them, suggest that certain techniques are emerging and solidifying in the approaches to the writers’ room in Germany.

One practice of the rudimentary writers’ room observable in the above-mentioned shows—which also seems to be shared among other projects—is that a head writer, or occasionally a director or a writer-director duo, brings in several writers after this lead figure and the other creators have already clearly outlined the series concept. For the first two seasons of the mystery drama Dark, for example, prewritten outlines with many gaps are said to have formed the foundation of the collaborative story development, which took place four days a week in a physical space over an extended period.

Another approach mentioned several times was individual writers taking over certain characters or groups of characters. In the case of Dark, with its rich plotlines and characters, the first thing done in the joint development work was to create a “family tree”, as co-writer Martin Behnke (2018) explained:

Who is actually related to whom and how does that change over time? […] Who is actually what – father, son, daughter, mother? […] What are the actual motives for these characters outwardly [and] under the surface?

Thus characters—which, as shown in Chapters 2 and 7, the practitioners identified as an important element of the content and narration of quality drama and so as a central evaluation criterion—also shape approaches to the writers’ room.

In addition to divvying up writing duties according to characters, division by episode was also relatively common in German approaches to the writers’ room: writers worked out individual episodes after developing the overarching plot together. Quite often, however, the head writers—in whom approaches to the showrunner are evident—were responsible for the final version of the scripts, and even for the “second, third and fourth versions” (Friese 2019). According to Jantje Friese (2019), despite writing versions of the first episode together in a physical space, for subsequent episodes, the writers under her at Dark were very much “inside their respective episode worlds”. “To have an eye for everything, then, that’s the function of the head writer in the end”, she reflected on her own role, linking the writers’ room closely to the showrunner. Patricia Phalen and Julia Osellame (2012, 8), however, have assessed this scenario of the head writer being responsible for the final draft as suboptimal, because ideally the showrunner should be able to delegate all tasks.

The tradition of individual writing work is potentially reflected in this adherence to a central authority. In a sense, the development of television drama in Germany continues to be strongly characterised by the individual writer: the supremacy of individual head writers is clearly reflected in their better financial compensation and the copyright distribution in their favour within individual project networks. In this respect, contractual stipulations cement the dominance of the head writer.

How the writers’ room is practised in Germany in concrete terms depends, above all, on the economic conditions. Since 2020, the economic situation has become more difficult, through the crises spurred by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic. Even before those changed circumstances, a lack of comprehensive funding meant the writers’ room in many cases remained a superficially tested tool and did not become a central element in the creative process. Often the writers’ room, despite the increasing approaches to it, continued to pose a challenge in the face of low production resources and differentiated production cultures. Linked to budgeting, practitioners discussed the remuneration of individual writers, their share of the copyright profits and their placement in the credits, on which subsequent payments depend (for example, fees for writers through the collecting society VG Wort—Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort [Collecting Society Word], which distributes residuals from secondary publication rights). Against this backdrop, the adaptation of the writers’ room is strongly linked to legal issues and the negotiation skills of writers. Beyond script development in the writers’ room, the practitioners also dealt more comprehensively with the position of writers in the German industry. Writers’ more general involvement in and agency within project networks and screen idea work groups, especially in connection with the showrunner, was the primary point of negotiation.

8.3 The Showrunner and the Evolution of Television Screenwriting

8.3.1 The Showrunner as Creative and Business Leader

The surveyed practitioners repeatedly described quality TV drama as strongly influenced by writers. Approaches to the showrunner, a hybrid writer-producer, were often considered fruitful in both strengthening the writer’s position and increasing the quality of German drama. The industry term “showrunner”, in wide use since the 1990s, refers to a head writer who usually also leads, recruits for and manages the writers’ room (see Mann 2009). By being responsible for both business and creative aspects of series production (Newman and Levine 2012, 40), this lead figure personifies the close social entanglement of aestheticisation and economisation that Reckwitz attributes to the “creativity dispositif” (2017, 8; also 2013, 34), which characterises contemporary society at large. Quite often, the person in the showrunner role is also the series creator, from whom the idea, and thereby the basis for the collaborative plot development, originates (see Del Valle 2008, 403). Within the writing team, showrunners also might take on dramaturgical tasks, such as dividing up and coordinating episodes and acts. In addition, they operate beyond the script development phase in order to ensure the narrative and aesthetic unity of the programme. As an executive with “managerial oversight” (Mittell 2015, 90), the showrunner may also be involved in distribution and may mediate between different parties and actors: “network and studio executives, advertisers, above- and below-the-line personnel, critics, journalists, viewers, and beyond” (Perren and Schatz 2015, 90). In the case of transmedia franchises, showrunners sometimes manage the cross-platform activities, although larger international or US-dominated projects may require a “six-pack of executive producers” (Mann 2009, 100) rather than a single leader (Perren and Schatz 2015, 91). Stefania Marghitu (2021, 12) also points to collaborative aspects of the showrunner role and its integration into networks when she states in her book Teen TV: “Without the support of viewers and the business side of the industry, a showrunner cannot sustain their place within cultural memory and history”. However, in public representations as well as in many of the practitioners’ self-reflections, television dramas and their showrunners are often associated with individual star creators. These solo creators have come to serve as a “branding instrument” (Meir 2019, 115) and a “label of quality and exclusivity” (McCabe and Akass 2007a, 10) in the negotiation and marketing of quality TV. Interdependencies with audiences and the media industry as well as industrialised production processes based on the division of labour are quickly forgotten in the course of such marketing narratives.

In the period of study (2015–2023), several clear deviations from the showrunner principle—in the sense of a central writer-producer and creator—became apparent. For example, in the case of the political drama Die Stadt und die Macht, the original, central writer left the screenwriting process at an early stage, which was not planned but rather resulted from inconsistencies in the development process. The polyphony in the development of Die Stadt und Macht, about which the involved practitioners complained, clearly differed from the showrunner model in its sense of “a creative authority”.

Despite the lack of a true showrunner in many German TV drama productions, this lead writer-producer figure has at least discursively found its way into the local television industry. Some individual practitioners (e.g. Winger 2017) have classified quality series as a “writer-producer’s medium” in contrast to the director-driven single TV film, and others have argued that the combination of economic and creative responsibilities leads to higher quality. Correspondingly, Friese (2019), the creator of Dark, contended that when creatives manage the budget, it makes a decisive difference:

I believe that many things […] look better when the creative person makes the decision: Where do we put the red pencil now? And what is […] important, and what should the red pencil not touch.

As in the case of Dark, one can observe certain adaptations and changes to script work to be taking place in the German industry alongside discourses on the showrunner. A notable difference in Germany as compared to the production conditions in the US—so often used as the benchmark and model—is that serials, and in particular quality or high-end ones, generally comprise fewer episodes. As such, a central showrunner who creatively and economically oversees all episodes, from their development to their production, and thus who controls and holds together the singular or “one vision” of a series, tends to be less necessary (Redvall 2013, 107). It is also due to differing production cultures that the showrunner model, similar to the writers’ room, is practised in only a rudimentary form in Germany and adapted to historical structures.

8.3.2 Showrunner Adaptations and Practices

The professions of the writer and the producer, which are united in the showrunner, are typically clearly separated from each other in the German television fiction industry. According to the fiction editor Hauke Bartel (2018), this demarcation of “very specific fields of activity” has made it difficult for “showrunner personalities in Germany” to emerge. The writer Hanno Hackfort (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018), by contrast, attributed to the Anglo-American world in particular a view of individualised trades as “highly esteemed, highly polished craftspeople” and, against this background, was critical of writers in Germany who suddenly assumed producing, casting or directing duties. With regard to the expanded field of activity for writers, several practitioners hinted at scepticism towards local showrunner adaptations.

At times, practitioners also questioned the extent to which a production model originating in the US could be transferred to German and other European contexts, as well as how meaningful and desirable such a transfer would be. For example, the French producer Jimmy Desmarais (2016)—a co-lead on the French-German co-production Eden (Arte/ARD/SWR, 2019), a drama exploring European refugee policy—doubted, during the course of an industry presentation, that imitating the showrunner principle in Europe would automatically open up access to “international” markets. He stated that he did not believe in importing systems but only in importing people. In pan-European discussions, TV professionals often referred to the different, more democratic production cultures in Europe as compared to the US (e.g. Fatima Varhos in Buffoni et al. 2020) and emphasised the collaborative nature of the writer-director-producer trio versus the situation of central management by one executive (e.g. Caroline Benjo in Root et al. 2020). Some practitioners also complained that the buzzword “showrunner” lacks sharpness. A more general aversion to Americanisation or US hegemony seemed to resonate particularly on the French side in discussions where the showrunner was criticised. But Friese (in Buffoni et al. 2020), during the pan-European panel “Producing with Netflix” as part of the 2020 Berlinale Series Market, expressed the hope that German and European series production would move more in the direction of this model in the future.

Friese’s definition of the showrunner in this panel—an executive who wears the “vision goggles” and a role that also can be shared by two people (in Buffoni et al. 2020)—seems to be geared towards herself and Baran bo Odar, the duo behind Dark. Her statement suggested that a certain adaptation of the showrunner has emerged in the local industry, namely as a self-designation that not least of all serves the purpose of self-marketing. In German, this Anglicism can convey modernity and internationalism. Other practitioners who dubbed themselves “showrunners” in the interviews or at the observed industry events include Jörg Winger (2017), who evolved from producer to writer for the Deutschland trilogy, and Stefan Stuckmann (2016), writer and creator of the political satire Eichwald, MdB, who associated the term primarily with agency. As a showrunner, Stuckmann was able to creatively guide Eichwald, MdB and reject editorial feedback, when necessary, which is what sealed his decision to go with ZDF’s Das kleine Fernsehspiel as the production context: “That meant I was paid much less, but I could set more conditions. And that was […] the basic condition I had: that I could work there as a showrunner, so to speak”. According to Stuckmann’s account, the showrunner was practised in a precarious context and in connection with the “auteur film”, towards which ZDF’s long-standing editorial department for newcomer films is traditionally oriented (e.g. Wietstock 2003). However, the practice of the writers’ room, which usually goes hand in hand with the showrunner, did not take place—though primarily only for economic reasons, as Stuckmann and the ZDF editors in charge of the first season of Eichwald, MdB admitted (interview with Haslauer and Schmidt 2015).

An adaptation of the showrunner into existing, historically developed power structures also emerged when practitioners (e.g. von Borries 2019) located this role within that of the director. This trade is traditionally important in European cinema and television film production (Szczepanik 2013) and is also influential in television fiction in Germany, which is characterised by individual films. Such a director-centricity was particularly evident in the Babylon Berlin project. That series’ three central writer-directors were often dubbed showrunners (e.g. Freitag 2020) or referred to themselves as such. “For me, [the] showrunner is actually the creative, artistic decision-maker behind all the things, and that was always the three of us”, announced a self-confident Achim von Borries (2019). He saw a decisive advantage in the fact that he and his two counterparts, by directing and writing at the same time, could make changes to the script even at a late stage and thus respond to feedback during filming.

An association of the showrunner with directing was also evident when the producer and writer Gabriela Sperl (2018) referred to West German television history by identifying directors or “auteur filmmakers” as showrunner personalities. These names included Helmut Dietl, the creator of Kir Royal – Aus dem Leben eines Klatschreporters / Kir Royal – From the Life of a Gossip Reporter (ARD/WDR, 1986) and Monaco Franze – Der ewige Stenz / Monaco Franze – Eternal Dandy (ARD/BR, 1981–1983), two comparatively high-budget miniseries set in Munich’s glitterati scene of the 1980s that continue to be popular today, especially in Bavaria. In this context, Sperl linked the showrunner with cost-intensive productions, sitting outside a “given low-budget industrial mode of production”, as well as with certain “artist[s]” and creatives. Sperl herself exhibits approaches to showrunner, as she has acted for years in the rare combination of writer and producer, for example, for the three-part miniseries Preis der Freiheit/Prize of Freedom (ZDF, 2019) on German reunification in 1989–1990. For the trilogy Mitten in Deutschland: NSU / NSU German History X (ARD et al. 2016), which dramatises the true events and people of the National Socialist Underground, a German neo-Nazi terrorist group, Sperl was not an official writer but nevertheless acted as the central idea generator and initiator.

Beyond the exceptional case of Sperl, other writers have displayed only occasional tendencies towards becoming showrunners, in the sense that few have developed in the direction of (co-)producers. In some cases, they have founded production companies (such as Anna Winger, head writer of Deutschland and Unorthodox [Netflix 2020], with Studio Airlift) or taken on production tasks beyond pure screenwriting work, thus gaining stronger “creative control of a series” (Newcomb and Lotz 2002, 76). The prominent writer Annette Hess now also acts as creative producer for her various series. For the period dramas Ku’damm 56 and 59 (ZDF, 2015/2018), Hess had parallel contracts for her multiple roles, through which she was eventually remunerated for these additional activities. Furthermore, the contracts fixed her right to have a say and “partly also to make decisions in finding the director and then later […] the look and music, casting, editing, [and] rough cut” of the series (Hess 2019). But, even in this case, development and shooting work remained largely separate. Hess (2019) noted that, as a writer, it is advisable to go to set “a few times”, but in Germany, lead writers do not have a continuous presence on set as they do in other countries (interview with Berger 2018; on the showrunner’s presence on set, see also Caldwell 2008, 212; Redvall 2013, 145). Last but not least, the lack of economic means for such additional activities is decisive for the fact that the showrunner is, ultimately, only rudimentarily applied as German television-makers take steps to realise quality dramas. Co-determination rights of the kind and intensity that Hess has negotiated are also an exception and constantly need to be articulated and defended. Linked to the showrunner and the extended activities undertaken by some screenwriters, the interviewed and observed practitioners also negotiated the position and agency of the writer’s trade.

8.4 Evaluating the Scriptwriter’s Power

8.4.1 The Marginalisation of Writers

Initially, the industry discourse on German quality drama and production cultures was dominated by the thesis that the situation of local screenwriters was bad: they were not valued enough, they were quickly forgotten and they did not have enough agency. The long-standing tendency towards the model of 100 per cent financing through the commissioner and the so-called total buyout (see Sect. 5.3), in which writers relinquish rights and thus lose influence, as well as their accompanying exclusion from the production process, seems critical to this diagnosis of marginalisation. For a long time, the following attitude towards writers prevailed, as described by the producer Jan Kromschröder (2018), who personally distanced himself from this stance: “Here, you get your last instalment. Bye. […] You’re at the beginning of the food chain, and now you leave us alone”. Through this separation of screenwriting and production, the script is often significantly developed and changed by other production participants without the writer being able to object.

In other markets, as the practitioners’ negotiations on quality TV drama suggest, writers often have more agency through project networks and screen idea work groups. However, the marginalisation or (relative) invisibility of screenwriters, as well as the mostly emotional discourse on this, are by no means limited to the current German television industry (see e.g. Mittell 2015, 88). In an interview study of the screen idea work group in the United Kingdom in the 2000s, Ian Macdonald (2010, 51) revealed that writers felt excluded from decision-making processes and constantly rejected. According to Macdonald, this sense of violation arises from the basic structure of the screen idea work group, into which individual authors add their input, submitting their writing “to a process of review and decision-making in an arena fraught with social complexities, industrial and cultural conventions and individual habitus masquerading as ‘sound artistic judgement’” (55).

This general arrangement is probably linked to the reason television writers in Germany (as several practitioners observed) have long anticipated and internalised the evaluations and feedback of broadcasters, to the result that they do not take too many risks and often end up kowtowing to commissioning editors and their guidelines. This diagnosis and the reference to the precarious position of writers was accompanied by the demand from several practitioners that they take on more responsibility. The opportunities for such increased agency have grown, at least for some established writers and in certain series segments. Hackfort (in Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018) described how producers and editors, as a result of the many new commissioners and the related increase in series production, approach certain writers with more fervour. Writers with notable reputations are therefore more sought after in the diversified market and have more freedom in selecting projects. Practitioners’ power to select is known to be decisive for series production in project networks and for the interplay between broadcasters, production companies and creative freelancers. A tendency towards extending more agency to writers was also evident in the initiative and voluntary commitment Kontrakt ‘18—a sort of declaration of screenwriters’ rights—and the accompanying industry discourse it spurred.

8.4.2 Kontrakt ‘18: Writers’ Demands

In 2018, in the midst of the present study’s period of investigation, several well-known screenwriters (including some of the interviewees) called for “contractual and behavioural standards” that allegedly have “long been a matter of course in other countries” (Zahn 2018). This action triggered quite a large media echo (e.g. Ströbele 2018). The 92 signatories (Krei 2021a)—now more than 200 (in 2023)—of what came to be called Kontrakt ‘18 declared that they would enter into contract negotiations only if their agreements included the following six options:

  1. 1.

    The author is responsible for the script until the final version, unless otherwise agreed in writing.

  2. 2.

    The author has a say in the selection of the director. The decision will be made by mutual agreement.

  3. 3.

    The author is invited to table reads with the actors.

  4. 4.

    The author is granted the right to see and comment on the dailies as they come in and on the rough cut at the earliest opportunity. The author is invited to internal screenings or rough cut presentations with the network.

  5. 5.

    The author is mentioned by name in all communication materials about the project (press releases, programme notes, posters, etc.) and invited to all project-related public events.

  6. 6.

    The signatories undertake to accept orders for script revisions to another author’s project (rewriting, polishing, etc.) only after they have come to an understanding with the author who is leaving the project (Zahn 2018)

The trigger for this list of demands is said to have been the outrage prompted by the 2018 ceremony for the Deutscher Fernsehpreis (German Television Award), an important industry-run annual television award: writers of nominated works were not invited, except for the specific category “Best Screenplay”. In response, Kristin Derfler, writer of the series-TV film hybrid Brüder/Brothers (ARD/SWR, 2017), which took the award for Best Multi-Part Series (or Mehrteiler, separated from regular series in the Deutscher Fernsehpreis categories), complained in a public Facebook post about the lack of appreciation for her guild (Lückerath 2018). This post sparked the discourse that led to the formation of Kontrakt ‘18.

During our interview, Hess (2019), a co-initiator of Kontrakt ‘18, stated that great support for the group’s demands came from producers and commissioning editors “who will still be playing in the market in the future, because they have of course recognised that now is the hour of the writers, the storytellers”. She explicitly mentioned the goal of wanting to “educate people” about the Kontrakt ‘18 initiative and the mode of production it stipulates—a statement that clearly confirmed that media practitioners who take part in production studies, as stated by Caldwell (2008, 14), pursue a certain agenda and self-interest in their responses to surveys.

Other interviewees largely praised Kontrakt ‘18, but also partially and carefully criticised the initiative. For instance, Claudia Simionescu (in Simionescu and Steinwender 2018), a lead commissioning editor from BR (a member of the ARD consortium), found the writers’ demands understandable, but at the same time she expressed a fear that issues would be conflated “which do not necessarily have anything to do with each other”. In addition, she emphasised the sovereign rights of public broadcasters, which are responsible for their programmes and managing the spending of public fees; such a statement can be understood as a defence of the existing hierarchies. Friese (2019) asserted that writers, in order to have a say in some of the terrains claimed by Kontrakt ‘18, would have to co-produce, which in turn would affect the rights situation and the (existing) producers’ ability to act. She criticised the Kontrakt ‘18 initiators for displaying an attitude of “just wanting without giving”. Florian Cossen (2018), one of the directors of the Mitten in Deutschland: NSU trilogy and Deutschland 86, also referred to economic responsibilities, which he saw as being more strongly held by producers and directors than writers. According to him, producers and directors are “the decisive point” where it becomes apparent whether “a budget explodes or is adhered to”.

Especially Kontrakt ‘18’s second demand—the writer’s right to have a say in the selection of the director—led to controversies and broader discussions, similar to how the industry discussion on production cultures in television screenwriting more generally revolved around the interaction of the director and the writer and their respective statuses.

8.4.3 Director and Writer: A Complicated Relationship

The director and the writer are the central makers of television content, if we follow Werner Holly’s (2004, 34) German-language introduction to television. However, as the discussions on Kontrakt ‘18 and the related statements of many interviewees made clear, writers and directors often are not equal partners in television drama productions. The tendency for directors to have more agency may be related to the greater attention paid to them in many German-speaking film studies as well as in past discourses on the value of television (e.g. Kammann et al. 2007, 118). In the face of ambitions to produce quality TV drama and negotiations on the showrunner and writers’ room, however, the weighting has shifted at least discursively in favour of the writer. Against the background of a potentially threatening loss of power for the director, it is hardly surprising that the Kontrakt ‘18 demands were not met with unadulterated praise from that side. For example, Edward Berger (2018), lead director for the first-season Deutschland 83, objected in our interview that the Kontrakt ‘18 initiative “overshot the mark a bit”. In his view, the reasons other actors intervene in the script usually lie with the writers themselves or in the deficits of their work. Von Borries (2019), who is equally active as a director and a screenwriter, expressed a similar opinion:

Why are books changed? Because the editing doesn’t work, because the story is literarily good but not cinematically realisable, because it is told too much through dialogue […] and transported [too little] into the plot […], because it is not dramatised but remains literary and mute, and so on.

Still, von Borries also acknowledged that writers are valued in a very different way in the US—that is, as central creative players—again revealing a certain idealisation of the US television and film industry as well as the showrunner figure. Berger (2018) argued, now in alignment with the Kontrakt ‘18 initiators, that writers’ work output would improve “if they were given more rights and more support”. In his discussion of the writer-director relationship, he argued for intensive cooperation and assessed directors’ script ambitions as being, in principle, positive:

If you want a certain director, then you have to expect […] that they have their own vision. And usually those are the people who are also better. […] Of course they want to intervene in the script. That’s why you should simply involve them [the directors] from the beginning.

The public criticism of Kontrakt ‘18 by the well-known film and television director Dominik Graf, responsible for the early German quality drama project Im Angesicht des Verbrechens/In the Face of Crime (ARD et al. 2010) and dozens of TV films, took a similar bent. In an article for Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany’s top newspapers, Graf mocked the Kontrakt ‘18 initiators for choosing the wrong enemy in the figure of the director, and he criticised the common practice in Germany of bringing directors “on board late, when the script, important cast members and also staff have already been decided” (Graf 2018, my translation).

However, this very early and comprehensive collaboration between director and writer—or “togetherness to the pain threshold”—demanded by Graf (2018, my translation) stands in stark contrast both to the conceptions and practices of the writers’ room found in my surveys, where it was cast as a prolonged and autonomous creative space for the writers alone, as well as to the understanding of quality drama serials as compilations of several episodes by different directors who have to subordinate themselves to the showrunner. As outlined earlier, series are a “writer-producer medium”, not a “director medium”, according to producer and writer Jörg Winger (2017). Hess (2019) quoted the proverb “cobbler stick to your last” and argued for a clear separation between the activities of writer and director. Such an argument can also be understood as a critique of the so-called auteur film and the auteur theory, which is a sensitive and emotionally charged topic in screenplay discourses beyond Germany as well, because the artistic contribution of screenwriters threatens to be forgotten in the focus on star directors (see Maras 2009, 97).

More concretely, the reservations of many writers regarding screenplay work by directors, as expressed in Kontrakt ‘18 and in several interviews, stem from instances of cooperation that were experienced as negative. Several times, interviewees cited these collaboration experiences as “failure studies” of sorts (Redvall 2013, 194), where directors either hijacked writers’ scripts or obtained a writer credit for economic reasons. Hess (2019), for example, problematised such a collaboration on Weissensee/The Weissensee Saga (ARD/MDR/Degeto, 2010–2018), a public-service period drama following two families in East Berlin between 1980 and 1990 that she created. According to her, in the second season, the director massively rewrote the script. Hess and the director, Friedemann Fromm, who now shares the writer credit, have publicly addressed discrepancies in opinion on the plot and character development for Weissensee (e.g. Klode 2015). Or, as the former commissioning editor Gebhard Henke (2018) put it, taking a critical view of Hess: the pair “aired plenty of dirty laundry”. The HaRiBo trio of writers behind the first German Amazon Prime Video drama production, You Are Wanted (2017–2018), likewise described the collaboration with the prominent director and lead actor Matthias Schweighöfer—credited as showrunner in official external communications—as extremely difficult (Hackfort, Konrad and Kropf 2018). Bob Konrad, part of the trio, more generally criticised that the screenplay work of directors, in contrast to that of writers, is usually not subject to any control:

A script is partly rewritten over years, every comma is turned around, everything is […] discussed to death, and then you have this book and give it to the director, and then suddenly it’s a black box. That means that the director usually writes a director’s version, or has it written, […] whatever. Then no one accesses it any more, it is not discussed.

“It is not discussed” probably means that, at this stage, writers are left out of the process and directors have the final say. Once again, the separation of script development from the subsequent production reveals itself to be foundational to the writer’s often precarious position.

In addition to the director’s version of the script, dailies and the rough cut were considered central moments in the production process, and access to them was part of negotiations regarding the writer’s agency in the project network and vis-à-vis the director. The dailies—or, as Hanno Hackfort (in Hackfort et al. 2018) described them, “takes that […] go out and don’t go straight into the dustbin”—are mentioned in the fourth tenet of Kontrakt ‘18 and, with the digitisation of television production, these takes have become more easily and directly accessible. Whereas in the past viewing appointments in the cinema were required to view dailies, today they can even be checked on the taping date and made available to various production participants as a digital file. The “important people”, as Hackfort formulated it, get to see these basics for editing purposes and can thus keep track of whether the shoot is going according to their ideas. These “important people” include the lead producers, central representatives from the broadcaster or platform and, according to Hackfort, not necessarily but “ideally” also the writers. However, writers reported that their digital access to dailies can be limited or even terminated altogether if their feedback displeases other lead production participants. In this respect, writers have to choose and formulate their feedback carefully.

Similar caution and self-reflection also characterise writers’ approach to the right to comment on the rough cut, which is demanded by Kontrakt ‘18 (Zahn 2018). The editing phase usually requires cuts to hit a certain length, and so the narrative can be drastically changed to meet these standards, sometimes leaving writers with the impression that the foundational story they wrote has not been sufficiently respected and valued. From the point of view of the writer, their involvement in the editing process serves as a means of control and is conducive to quality, contributing to protecting the “singular vision” of a serial drama.

Time and again, practitioners invoked the idea of a singular or “one vision” (Redvall 2013, 102) when arguing that “the story” needs to be held together and controlled. Hess (2019), for example, confidently attributed to her trade the fact that they know the base narrative best and, against this background, can most competently decide on cuts and the selection of scenes and settings. Hackfort (in Hackfort et al. 2018) reflected that if writers have a say regarding dailies and rough cuts, then it is also important that they afford directors a little bit of influence. According to the practitioners’ negotiations, the aim is to increase not only writers’ agency but also their productive cooperation with other actors in the project network, especially the director.

8.4.4 Increased Agency of Writers?

In the discourse on German quality drama and its production cultures, a focus on the increased agency of writers became apparent several times—and not only with regard to their cooperation with directors. The Kontrakt ‘18 demands and the discourses on the showrunner, which are closely linked to the negotiations on German quality drama, proved to be influential. However, the screenwriter’s supposed increase in power was less about clearly quantifiable effects and more about a mood or feeling beginning to permeate the sector; as described in 2021 in the online industry magazine DWDL.de by Volker A. Zahn, a screenwriter and central co-initiator of Kontrakt ‘18, his profession is now “clearly more appreciated” (in Krei 2021a, my translation). Accordingly, the broadcaster representatives I interviewed announced that they would listen to and involve writers more. Martina Zöllner (2018), head of the department for documentary and fiction programmes at RBB, suggested that the (at the time of the interview still quite recent) demands of Kontrakt ‘18 prompted one to “take another critical look at your own behaviour”. According to her, this self-reflection includes, among other things, committing to protecting writers from directors if necessary and pointing out the limits of their agency to the latter.

In the meantime, several broadcasters have developed guidelines to regulate revenue sharing and development fees for writers, and, according to public accounts, they intend to deepen cooperation with writers or increase their involvement in the production process (e.g. Hennings 2020b). The corresponding negotiations with ARD and ARD Degeto (a film rights trader and production company) involved Kontrakt ‘18 initiators alongside the VDD—Verband Deutscher Drehbuchautoren (Association of German Screenwriters) and the Allianz Deutscher Produzenten—Film & Fernsehen (Alliance of German Producers; short name: Produzentenallianz) (Hennings 2020b). While steps are being taken, it remains true that official guidelines can be formulated so vaguely that violations of them have no legal consequences. Likewise, broadcasters and platforms can potentially use their guidelines to relativise and dilute the demands of Kontrakt ‘18. These two issues have been pointed out in the Kontrakt ‘18 group’s continuous criticism of these negotiations (especially against ARD; see Niemeier 2021a). As a result, Kontrakt’18 commissioned a legal review of ARD’s guidelines (Krei 2021a).

Key representatives of Kontrakt ‘18 announced, in DWDL.de, the initiative’s goal to establish a special regulation for its members or signatories (Krei 2021a). This narrowing to members only implies that increased agency will be made available only to individual writers who are already firmly anchored in the industry and so who can dare to sign the Kontrakt ‘18 demands. The fact that the German industry lacks a “middle class” of emerging screenwriters, as discussed by the practitioners, is a determining factor for this concentration on a few established and successful ones. Kontrakt ‘18 signatory Bernd Lange (2018), who is the writer or co-writer of several feature films as well as the drama serials Das Verschwinden/The Disappearance (ARD et al. 2017) and Die Kaiserin/The Empress (Netflix, 2022), considered it important to support especially those writers who “may not have the guts or are too young, too inexperienced” and who do not yet understand that screenwriting films and especially series is inevitably “a collaborative process”.

Similar to other professions and trade union struggles in general, those with smaller networks, or those who are less organised or formalised, risk being left out. Even with the rise of the quality drama serial and emerging approaches to the showrunner, there is not always an accompanying increase in the power of the writer. Several representatives of this guild also addressed ongoing reservations about their involvement in broader production negotiations on behalf of other trades. In corresponding discourses on the role of scriptwriters, it again became apparent that the industry discourse on German quality drama series and the production cultures enabling them very often was and is about agency within project networks and screen idea work groups. Including but not only in regard to screenwriters and producers, the industry discourse on German quality dramas and their production conditions continues to be intense.

Notes

  1. 1.

    For more on these production cultures, see Sect. 4.3.

  2. 2.

    For a description of these production areas, see Sect. 4.3.

  3. 3.

    Chapter 5 explores these topics in more detail.

  4. 4.

    See Chapter 7 for more on this bias towards “single pieces”, which practitioners emphasised in their discussion of the textual characteristics of German television fiction and their historical genesis.

  5. 5.

    See Chapter 7.

  6. 6.

    For more on “industrial” series and other series types and production areas in Germany’s television industry, see Sect. 4.3.