Sky U.K.’s Meghan Lyvers Discusses IP, Original Content Mix and “Increasing the Emotional Stakes”

Comcast’s Sky recently showed its desire to grow via an acquisition, agreeing to acquire ITV’s networks and streaming businesses in a $2.13 billion deal. But the company has also been growing its investment in original content in recent years to ensure it can regularly premiere attractive series and films for its subscribers in a competitive industry where streamers and traditional players constantly tout new and returning programming.

Sky has been betting on series that it feels can break through in this environment. Case in point: the upcoming October premiere of legal drama War, whose first of two seasons, ordered together with HBO, stars Sienna Miller and Dominic West. Or how about season 2 of Sweetpea, the dark comedy starring Ella Purnell (Fallout, Yellowjackets) as a wallflower-turned-killer, which returns to Sky in November, before partner Starz airs it next year. Sky audiences have this year already been able to watch the likes of Possession, the limited inheritance mystery series led by Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Loki), and Prisoner, the high-speed action series starring Izuka Hoyle, which has been renewed for a second season.

Plus, early this year, Sky had success with the Rafe Spall-starring Under Salt Marsh and it has unveiled an eight-episode “bold and contemporary reimagining [that] brings The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo into the present, grounded in the characters and investigative DNA of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium novels, with themes that carry heightened relevance today.”

All in all, Meghan Lyvers, managing director, scripted originals, Sky U.K., is clearly keeping busy.

The executive first joined Sky in late summer 2022 and relocated from Amsterdam to London, reporting to Cécile Frot-Coutaz, who is chief advertising and content officer at Sky and CEO of Sky Studios. Her remit has since been expanded. Lyvers previously served as senior vp and head of international co-productions and development at CBS Studios after working as a producer at Management 360. She began her career at Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s Tribeca Productions with such projects as About a Boy and the Meet the Parents franchise.

On Wednesday afternoon, Lyvers will be featured during a “Spotlight on Sky” session at the Edinburgh TV Festival, along with fellow commissioners Philip Edgar-Jones, executive director, unscripted originals, Sky U.K., and Sky managing director, programming Jamie Morris.

Ahead of her Edinburgh appearance, Lyvers talked to THR about her team’s original content strategy, why ambition and characters are key, Sky’s film slate and how important, or not, franchises and star power are.

How do you approach your commissioning strategy for and what is key for content to get your and your team’s attention?

Our North Star is the audience. We’re a premium pay service, and the Sky audience has so many options. Between sport and the entertainment offering, we also acquire a lot of content still from the U.S. So if you think about the Sky audience, if you have that subscription, it’s got to be exceptional when it comes to original programming. It has to be exceptional, complementary programming, whether that’s unscripted or scripted.

I look after the scripted group, for film and series for TV, and talking about it with our commissioning teams, [it’s about] what’s the most ambitious, most provocative, most character-driven story?

Do you have targets for how many originals you premiere, or is it more about quality?

I’ve worked in other places where you have more volume, and you have to do a lot of different things. But we get to be super-curated and think about what those stories are that are going to be really bold and provocative and really stay with the audience and impact them in a deeply emotional way. We don’t make a huge amount of volume, although our investment is going up, which is fantastic because the business is like, “Hey, what you’re doing is great. Let’s keep building!”

So, we really do think about what are the most provocative and ambitious stories we can tell.

How do you think about the mix of big returnable shows and one-offs?

Strategically, in terms of how we program, we always make limited series. So, last year we did Lockerbie: A Search for Truth with Colin Firth, which was incredible. We just launched a limited series this month called Possession with Gugu Mbatha-Raw, which is amazing. It’s a really provocative story [about the horrors of colonialism], and also thematically something that we thought we have to tell because it’s still relevant, no one’s doing this, and we can do it. Let’s back ourselves. Let’s do something that we think is going to create a very specific and important and relevant conversation. So, limiteds are always going to be something that we do as a big global story that captures a conversation and feels relevant to our audiences in the U.K.

And then, of course, we really like to make a couple of big, massive, often IP-based, franchises. The Day of the Jackal is a really great example. I’ve just seen a couple of cuts of [season] 2, and it’s going to be fantastic. We can’t wait to bring that back next year.

In that tradition, we want to make more franchises, which is hard because it’s like making studio films on steroids. It’s really complicated. They take a ton of time to prep. They’re massive stories. They have huge production value. The footprint of locations and shooting is massive. But we’re making the next one, which is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and that’s coming up in terms of the shoot, so we will be talking about it more. It’s our next franchise series that we hope will run for more than one [season].

It’s a wonderful, faithful way in which we pay respect to the IP and legacy of those books, which I devoured and loved. But it also takes the Swedish films and David Fincher’s film and evolves the story for today. You’d be surprised how much, thematically, it still resonates. So if you’re a fan of the books, if you’re a fan of the series, if you’re a fan of the films, if you love what’s inside of this, you have something new to explore. We have been asked to make one to two of those a year. So that’s our next one that we’re excited about.

You have also been championing British stories. What can you share about those?

We would like you to make more of these contemporary British stories about British characters in different genres. Under Salt Marsh was our version of doing a really smart, very character-driven, emotional crime story. It had a propulsive murder mystery in it, but it felt so different – something that you couldn’t get anywhere else. You wouldn’t see that on a streamer. You wouldn’t see it on a public broadcaster. And that’s for us. Let’s push ourselves to make that story as ambitious as possible, in the storytelling, but also in the execution, and make it feel completely authored. [Importantly,] those characters, at the end of the day, are relatable, and that’s something where we have really listened to our audiences the last couple of years. So we’re making more of those because viewers tell us that they want them, but they also perform extremely well.

We get the feedback from audiences that they enjoy the characters and the storytelling, and it’s propulsive, and it looks gorgeous, but they also are saying that these stories connect with me as a viewer. So it is something for us to continue to build on. The [same goes for] Prisoner and Sweetpea, which does this in a very genre way. And our next one coming up is Charmer, led by Anthony Boyle.

So, you have limited series and returning franchises – anything else worth highlighting for the original content mix?

The last piece is that we’ll make one provocative, bold, really edgy show that is completely character-driven. Last year, we made a show with Matt Smith and Clerkenwell Films called The Death of Bunny Munro, based on the Nick Cave novel. I couldn’t make that anywhere else. The fact that Sky lets us and our audience program those originals, and that they have been received so well, is a pleasure.

You mentioned the importance of authorship. Tell me a bit more about that, please.

Claire Oakley, who is a filmmaker, created, wrote and directed Under Salt Marsh. She had a story she wanted to tell, and we were like: “We have to make this.” And because Claire wanted to tell a story that was climate-adjacent, it does speak to a very specific community being impacted by this thing in a way that feels very organic. All the climate stories in this show are part of the desire to be authentic, but also speak to what our audiences are living through.

So, it’s about finding stories that also really hook and engage audiences?

Yeah, it’s not just about making great shows with exceptional production value if they are lacking emotion. I started in film, where it’s always been about the character and the point of view of that character. With TV, you need to make sure that the audience feels an emotional connection to those characters. We talked very openly about making sure that our shows continue to have wonderful execution that everyone in the industry and customers know from Sky, which means you’re going to see something that looks epic and on par with rivals and the Hollywood studio systems. But what we also wanted to do was make sure we increase the emotional stakes, and so the audience feels a more a stronger personal connection to the characters and what those characters are going through.

So it’s about big emotions. If we’re not going to make a ton of shows, all of our shows have to really impact the audience. TV viewing is instinctual. There’s a gut instinct that you can’t deny. If you emotionally connect to something, you’re going to watch it, and you’re going to talk to your friends about it, and you’re going to be passionate about it, and you’re going to want a [season] 2 to come back.

You have been working with production companies and distribution partners, such as HBO and Starz, on originals. The upcoming War seems to be an example of how Sky works with different outside and inside partners. Sky gave the series a two-season order, with HBO/HBO Max taking it for the U.S. and Australia, and NBCUniversal, which Sky is a part of, distributing it internationally. How do you approach partnerships?

We really like to work with a bunch of different partners. We’re really proud that we can work with somebody like Carnival Films, which is in our bigger corporate family [of NBCUniversal], and they do incredible work – whether it’s on Lockerbie or Jackal. But we are also working with Little Door Productions [in Cardiff], an incredible opportunity to support this small production company that’s in Wales that has this incredible story to be told.

Do you have any qualitative targets, a la how many originals you make, and do you target audience segments or so?

What I can say is that at Sky, we don’t have an algorithm. So we still make human decisions, and ideas must pass our gut check of “would we watch this”? We definitely need to make sure that our bigger tentpole shows that have huge investments, for example, The Day of the Jackal, appeal to bigger audiences. So we do think about broadening those. But I think the fun part of making shows like Bunny Munro or or even Possession is that we get to make shows that are much more singular. And if they grow, it’s because people love them and there’s word of mouth and it creates zeitgeist.

You have shows with Sienna Miller and Dominic West, or Ella Purnell. How do you guys think about the need for star power?

I’ll say this: look, we don’t have talent deals. Those shows have to be good enough on the page for an actor like Dominic or Sienna to say, “I have to play this part. I’m obsessed with this character. I love this script.” It’s the same way with Anthony Boyle with Charmer. He fell in love with the script.

So for us, it starts with the material, what’s on the page, and no doubt, well-established actors help bring an audience to a show. But we have a lot of other means in which we can bring audiences into shows via the marketing campaigns and social. We make sure that the actor is right for the role and they have to love it.

Existing IP is obviously also a way to get an audience’s attention right away. You have mentioned Jackal and Dragon Tattoo. Anything you can add on that front?

No doubt, when you talk to people all over the industry about this, it’s really important to have a mix of stories. Original ideas still cut through. Under Salt Marsh was 100 percent Claire Oakley’s original idea. Prisoner was an original idea. Possession is an original idea. For us, it’s continuing to find the right balance because our audiences really like to see a bit of both. So, we believe in the mix, and because we don’t make a huge volume, it’s really about getting that balance right.

Any goals for Sky’s original output and budget sizes ahead that you can mention?

It’s not formulaic. Our investment is going up. So, 2029 is going to be our biggest year in terms of overall investment in scripted originals for series, and then we talk about what is the right budget size for each particular show. That’s where things differ between [comedy] Mr Bigstuff and, say, [drama] Meantime, which is coming up next year with James McAvoy, or Jackal, because these stories all need something different. So, we take more of an approach of what’s the right budget for the show, and look at the factors of how the budget gets split across the year.

Before I let you go, what can you tell us about Sky’s original film strategy?

It’s a wonderful pleasure for me to look after the film group because we have had such an incredible run. If you think about Nuremberg, [the star-studded character piece about the Nuremberg Trials] last year, for example, or Kate Winslet with Lee, [in which she starred as the pioneering World War II photojournalist Elizabeth “Lee” Miller]. We had [British crime thriller] Fuze earlier this year and just launched Mutiny with Jason Statham.

For us, on the film side, it’s really important that we continue to support the British filmmaking community. For example, we’re going to debut Animol, which is Ashley Walter’s directorial debut, later this year. Seeing an actor turn to directing or producing, it’s just such a pleasure to be able to support them in their storytelling journeys.