EXCLUSIVE: In his first interview since launching drama indie Poison Pen, Ben Stephenson has set out plans to “use crime as a fulcrum to tell big characterful stories” and take a “different approach” to adapting novels.
Stephenson, who has held top exec roles on both sides of the pond as BBC drama chief and head of TV for J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, launched ITV Studios-backed Poison Pen in 2023 and the move is beginning to bear fruit. His second greenlight, an ITV adaptation of GR Halliday’s novel From the Shadows titled The Dark, was unveiled yesterday, a few months after a Danny Brocklehurst-penned series for the same broadcaster called Adultery.
Speaking about his transatlantic indie for the first time, Stephenson said Poison Pen is about “the mainstream and trying to twist the mainstream.”
His duo of early commissions are both crime shows and while he said Poison Pen is “not exclusively crime,” he noted: “We are called Poison Pen and crime is just such a great fulcrum to tell big characterful stories.”
“It’s not crime for crime’s sake but is a way of telling complex, surprising stories that may not work if they didn’t have the crime element,” he added. “You can use the genre to slip in surprising characters and themes.”
That’s certainly the case with The Dark, which is aiming to “bring a serial killer thriller to mainstream ITV,” according to Stephenson, who said the books put him in mind of legendary 1990s hits like The Silence of the Lambs and Basic Instinct.
The show follows Detective Monica Kennedy, investigating the death of a young man in the idyllic Scottish wilderness who fears this is just the beginning of a terrifying campaign that will strike the heart of a rural community. Casting is nearly there and Stephenson straight off the bat communicated a desire for the show to be a returner. “There are three books and he is writing more so we would like that,” he added.
Revealed by Deadline several months back, Adultery is about two families’ lives turned upside down forever, “raising questions about class, grief and the effects of social media.” Both Adultery and The Dark are unashamedly mainstream, which fits within Stephenson’s wheelhouse. At the BBC, his enviable list of credits included Luther, Line of Duty, Sherlock and Peaky Blinders. He said he is developing shows with the BBC, ITV and Netflix, which are in a similar vein, tapping into the “modern mainstream.”
“My favorite thing is stories that aim to get a big audience in a fresh and different way,” he added. “I just love the idea of people at the end of a busy day choosing your show to watch over someone else’s. I saw people watching [Disney+’s ] Rivals on the tube and I just thought, ‘That’s a hit’.”
“Different approach to books”
Stephenson believes his team has unearthed a gold mine by unlocking Halliday’s novels. One of his earliest hires was head of IP acquisitions Fern McCauley from Hachette – one of a number of buzzy Poison Pen signings along with ex-Sky drama exec Preethi Mavahalli and Left Bank’s Luke Woellhaf – and Stephenson said he wants the indie to “take a slightly different approach to books.”
“I’m less interested in the big books everyone is going after,” he added. “I think sometimes you can get blindsided by the process and can feel a bit of FOMO [fear of missing out], as though you should just chase a book because everyone else is. Development and production is a long road and making a decision about committing to a book in one weekend is not something I really believe in.”
Stephenson, who worked on the likes of Westworld at Bad Robot, is splitting his time between L.A. and London as he tries to get Poison Pen going on both sides of the pond.
His move to Bad Robot was one of the highest-profile UK-to-U.S. ship-jumps in years and he says the main differences between the UK industry and U.S. center around process.
“None of us get into the business for process and neither [UK or U.S.] is better or worse but in the U.S. you have the studio system, writers’ rooms and showrunners,” he explained. “Day to day the experience was very similar to any other job I’ve had but there are systems that are extremely different that you can only really learn by doing. But in the end drama is all about sitting in a room with a writer and finding an idea that engages you, that gives you a shared language.”
He noted the tricky state of today’s TV drama market, which has been deemed a scripted funding crisis by his old employer the BBC, but said while “there is a particular issue around deficits and co-pros,” there is also plenty to be positive about.
“I guess my advanced age means I have seen many different crises and the reality is producers see the problem and try and solve the problem, and there is still much more drama than there was 15 years ago.”
Stephenson was recently positioned as an outside bet for the top BBC content job, which eventually went to the corporation’s unscripted chief Kate Phillips. Notably, he said it is much more common for unscripted execs like Phillips and her predecessor Charlotte Moore (a former documentaries executive) to take these top jobs.
“There’s something in our ‘drama DNA’ that makes us just want to do drama,” he mused. “I remember thinking of going for the BBC One Controller job [years ago, while I was at the BBC] but then I just thought, ‘Imagine someone else doing the drama commissioning’.”
