EXCLUSIVE: The first trailer for European crime drama Safe Harbor is here and it delivers on writer and showrunner Mark Williams aim to ensure viewers get a bang for their buck. “It was important that I blow stuff up because I just like doing that, and also to make sure that stakes are high enough that it feels elevated,” the Ozark co-creator tells Deadline of his new show.
He adds: “It was an opportunity for me to try something a little bit different, to try to bring what I learned from my past experiences to Europe and to do something more global minded – an entertaining show that could reach wide audiences but do it in a location that was a little less familiar, to me anyway.”
The drama revolves around Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port. It follows gifted hacker Tobias, played by Alfie Allen, and his ambitious best friend Marco, played by Dutch actor Martijn Lakemeier (Marie Antoinette). The misfit pair are intent on entering the tech billionaires club.
They are plunged into the chaos of organized crime when they cross paths with the Irish mob. Leading the crime family’s operations in Holland are Sloane, played by Charlie Murphy (Peaky Blinders). Her on-screen brother, Farrell, is Jack Gleeson, like Allen a Game of Thrones alum. Colm Meaney (Hell on Wheels) is the family patriarch. They recruit Tobias and Marco to hack into the harbor’s security system to purloin undetected shipments of narcotics.
“Tobias grew up making his own computer systems and I quickly started to talk to hackers, to learn the difference between the black hat hackers and white hat hackers,” Allen says. “He’s coming from a weird dysfunctional relationship with his father, and a non-existent mother, so it was very interesting to get to grips with.”
Rotterdam serves up a new visual take on a crime drama, he adds: “Visually, in terms of Rotterdam, there are structures there you don’t really see very often. There are mad buildings that are almost built on stilts. It’s kind of crazy, I think that could lend itself to the series having quite an exotic feel.”
Inspired by a long-read article, the fictionalized tale is a Submarine production, in association with Night Train Media and Williams’ Zero Gravity. It was greenlit by Dutch streamer Videoland and its Belgian counterpart Streamz.
“I loved it because it was a story about the moment the drug trade goes digital, and these two regular guys who all of a sudden kind of become the masterminds of this operation,” says Femke Wolting, co-founder and managing director of Mediawan-backed Submarine.
Eccho Rights, part of Night Train Media, is across international sales and premiered the series at MIPCOM in Cannes.
“My general thought process was to keep it simple,” Williams says about how to incorporate the computer hacking elements into a high-octane drama.
“An audience doesn’t want to see a bunch of people typing on a computer for very long. The goal was to present it in a way we could understand what they were trying to achieve and how they were doing it, but most of the show is about relationships and character situations and the drama behind those.”
He adds that thoughts have already turned to a second series. “Absolutely, we’ve already created the outline for season two.”
