Having announced their co-production partnership last year where the two companies plan to combine their Western and Eastern sensibilities to develop new scripted projects for the global market, Nippon TV, Japan’s leading multiplatform entertainment powerhouse, and Envision Entertainment, the London based producer of premium content, announced their first project together entitled CONNECTED. This scripted series has been developed as the result of close creative cooperation between the two companies to produce an innovative, high-quality television series with global appeal and international franchise potential. CONNECTED is the first of several co-venture projects as part of this partnership, a prominent Japanese broadcaster working closely with a Western scripted producer. Worldwide format rights for CONNECTED will be offered for the first time at the upcoming Series Mania Forum with a special showcase set for March 22 in Lille.

CONNECTED is an innovative crime drama series taking place largely online, perfect for today’s world defined by hybrid communication. The concept was inspired by Nippon TV’s successful scripted series Double Booking (60 min. eps.) produced and broadcast in 2020 during the height of the pandemic, and the same production team led by Itaru Mizuno, Creative Director, Nippon TV is participating in this project.

As with Double Booking, CONNECTED will combine both online screens and conventional single camera set- ups unfolding in a shared universe where characters from all over the world are ‘connected’ to each other through the internet using their superior online research skills to solve crimes. The international sleuths form an exclusive online community known as Homebound Detectives, working primarily from their homes, whether it is in London, Seoul or Berlin, with their own problems, stories and mysteries to tackle. This series has been specifically designed to expand to a number of localized versions, featuring diverse characters from different countries, while all belonging to the same shared online universe.

The Japanese version of CONNECTED will air in Japan on Nippon TV in April 2022 which features a twenty-something-year-old Homebound Detective in Tokyo struggling to solve a crime with the help of his international online peers. In the process of probing research, the group uncovers a much larger mystery, which provides a launchpad for future productions around the world. Envision Entertainment and Nippon TV are simultaneously in advanced development for a UK version of CONNECTED which is set in the same shared universe.

Sayako Aoki, Business Producer, International Business Development, Nippon TV, says:  “What we believe is strong about CONNECTED is its relatability you may see in young fresh heroes and their struggles, not necessarily charismatic but charming, and that in how these multilayered and globally expanding stories are told through online and offline world just like how we experience these days. We will be thrilled to see Japanese “episode zero” lead to UK version and to numerous more opportunities, diversifying the universe invented through this East-West collaboration. 

Michael Nakan, Chief Content Officer, Envision Entertainment, says, “We are immensely proud of our work with Nippon TV on CONNECTED, an infinitely flexible crime format which can combine stories in any number of languages and territories in an unobtrusive and believable way. Our unique approach to hybrid communication between characters is a million miles away from forced “Europudding” co-productions and offers a genuinely seamless opportunity to tell stories with local resonance and international scale. We look forward to working with partners around the world to develop a truly global group of Homebound Detectives.”