5 new Turkish TV series 2020 to surprise audiences
Turkish viewers love the TV shows. Every day, they freeze in front of screens for several hours, watching the turmoil of their beloved heroes’ lives. But satisfying a capricious audience is not easy. Every year, Turkish producers try to offer the unconventional topics, but often fail. However, victory can bring not only the attention of the Turkish viewer, but also the grandiose success abroad. So the risk is justified. So what shows in the new television season promise to surprise the audience?
Every season, TV series about impossible love and mafia appear on the screens of Turkey, seasoned with a small share of historical production. And every year Turkish audiences ask for something completely new. True, the new is not always successful. Often the audience does not want to accept new stories, despite dissatisfaction with outdated scripts.
However, if the new format proves successful, it easily outperforms the old series. That’s what happened to “The Miraculous Doctor,” which was the biggest hit of last season. The medical-themed series “Hekimoğlu” that followed also proved to be quite successful, although it was no longer a super hit.
The new autumn-winter television season will bring Turkish viewers several TV Shows that will break the old patterns. The first one is an adaptation of the popular French project Call My Agent / Menajerimi Ara. At the heart of the story is the life of an actor’s agency, which tries to obtain profitable contracts for its clients, solving both professional and personal problems. Guest stars will appear in each episode, and this is what makes the project so attractive to viewers. When you see in another TV series Tuba Büyüküstün, Çağatay Ulusoy, Nebahat Çehre, Aras Bulut Iynemli, Halit Ergenç and other superstars of the Turkish screen.
OGM Pictures and TV8’s series Red Room / Kirimizi Oda also uses the guest star principle. However, they will not play themselves, but the fictional characters. Each episode of the project will feature two stories, combined by a therapist’s office. The script is based on the book of practitioner psychologist Gulseren Budacioglu. Showcasing psychotherapy sessions, revealing complex problems of patients, in the format of a two-hour TV show is a rather bold move. Whether it will be justified or whether the project will fail is not yet clear.
Another courageous experiment by Ay Yapim is the Competition / Rekabet series, in which for the first time on Turkish television viewers will be invited to plunge into the world of legal procedure. In the United States, TV shows of this type are very popular, let us recall at least the famous Suits, but in Turkey, lawyers appeared on the screen only as an additional accessory to family and criminal showdowns. Making a series dedicated to lawsuits and the fierce struggle of lawyers for their clients is a rather daring and interesting format.
The series Fatma, which is being prepared by Netflix, stands out for its unusual theme even for the audience of the digital platform. For the first time in the history of Turkish television, the main character of the series will be a female serial killer played by Burcu Biricik. It is not yet known whether the Turkish viewer will accept such a character or whether the series will be watched only outside Turkey, but an experiment of this kind deserves respect, at least for the courage of its creators.
Another significant event in the television market is the merger of Ay Yapim and Karga Seven Pictures. After the tremendous sales of The Choice / Babil series abroad (the project has already been purchased in 70 countries of the world), producer Kerem Catay found a recipe for success: a stellar cast, which is well known outside Turkey, plus a hot topic that is interesting to foreign audiences. As it became known, the newly formed company is currently preparing a grand series with an all-star cast, which could become the second Ezel. Of course, the theme of this project should be very different from the soap operas familiar to the Turkish audience. The TV show is scheduled to premiere in January 2021, so the official casting announcement and presentation of the series will take place soon.
Which of the presented series will justify the hopes placed on them, and which one will fail? Should producers take the risk or should they still focus on the Turkish audience? We’ll know about it in the fall.
