11.2

Treatment

Working title: Darklands 

Synopsis

Darklands is a period crime drama. The show revolves around two main protagonists Adam Sawyer and Eve parker, who are detectives that have been assigned to a case concerning the disappearance of a girl named Camille Moriarty. The case sends the detectives away from their comfortable positions in the Cambridge police force to a small rural village in the fens. At first the village seems normal but through a series of odd vignettes and encounters with villagers strangely reluctant to answer various questions its revealed that something much more sinister is going on than they initially thought. Throughout the series there are various plot points that keep the audience interested such as the ongoing tension between the two protagonists and the various mysteries being solved that always seem to leave us asking more questions.

Outline of form

Darklands is a longform original crime drama that will be aired on Netflix and Amazon Prime. It will have an approximate runtime of 45 minutes. It will run for a total of 10 episodes and follow a serial narrative structure. 

Content and style

Darklands is a thrilling crime drama inspired by shows such as the X Files, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Twin Peaks. It will have a dark and eerie atmosphere atmosphere. The show will be full of shots of the fens on overcast foggy days to create the desolate and remote mood. The show will have many recurring themes, but the main theme is the idea of the strange village mentality that comes with living in remote location. The show focuses on the idea of a close-knit community that hasn't changed for many years and rarely has visitors. The villagers treat the protagonists in vary strange ways making it very clear that they are not wanted. The fact that the village is so remote leads viewers to believe that sinister and illegal thing have been going on long before the detectives arrived.

Market Position

Darklands is a similar show to shows like True Detective and The Wire, so I hope to build on the audience of these kinds of dark crime/dramas. As there are none of these show already available on Netflix or Amazon prime Darklands will fill a gap in the marketplace, and hopefully attract more people to subscribe to these services in the process.

Target audience

My main target audience would be 12 plus due to some of the moral and ethical issues covered  as well as some of the violence. However i want to try to keep the rating as low as possible to make sure its accessible to children/younger teenagers as i think this will be one of the main audiences. Darklands caters to a large age bracket. The show provides a fast paced eerie, surreal world for its younger viewers, whilst offering a more mature audience a dramatic storyline between two protagonists and underlying metaphorical themes that create  complex and multi layered plot.

Episode breakdown

Episode 1: "Paradise lost"
In episode 1 a small town in the east of England is shaken up when a young girl, Camille Moriarty goes missing under mysterious circumstances. Police investigators Adam Kowalski and Eve Sawyer are called by the local chief of police tom cooper when a school friend of Camille's is found dead by a farmer in the fens. Agent Kowalski believes to find a connection between the two cases and a case he investigated two years prior, after he finds a similar marking on the girls lower back. Kowalski believes that the same killer may strike again. At the end of the episode we see Camille's mum wake up from a terrible nightmare depicting a long haired man laughing manically.

Episode 2: "The one with chandler"
In episode 2 agent Sawyer finds out that Camille had a secret boyfriend named Chandler Bing. She arrests him and questions him. Meanwhile agent Kowalski discovers that Camille's therapist may have something to do with her disappearance. At the end of the episode we see Chandler and Camille's best friend Trisha vow to solve the mystery of Camille's murder.

Episode 3: "God is dead"
Episode 3 begins with Chandler and Trisha trying to solve the case in the form of a montage. After the montage we return to a more conventional series of shots observing the pair question various character from the village. At the end of the episode we see the pair collecting their evidence. when there collecting the evidence Trisha drops a piece of paper and when both of them go to pick up the paper their hands meet. This is how the episode ends.

Bold=key scene in detail.

Episode 4: "Time after Time"

This episode starts 20 years in the future. in the opening seen we see the majority of the characters from the first 3 episodes standing in black suits in the rain holding black umbrellas obviously attending some kind of funeral. After this initial shot the camera pans to a grave stone bearing the name Adam Kowalski, there is then a sudden flash of lightning and loud roar of thunder. After this camera pans up to the sky and Cindi Luaper's time after time begins to play.  A flashback then begins explaining Kowalskis death. It reveals He gets too invested in the case and begins to go insane. One night he went out to solve the case and never returned. His body was never found but all evidence pointed towards his death. He was pronounced dead on the 18 may 2000.

Episode 5 "The passion of christ"

The camera pans down and shows Agent Sawyer tied to a chair, she looks to her left, her new partners lifeless corpse lying beside her on the wet and dirty warehouse floor. As Sawyer looks around hopelessly trying to figure out how to escape, she hears a loud thud and hears a car engine start, she looks forward and sees the blinding headlights of the car, driving towards her, she screams and as the car gets close, the shot ends and it jumps back in time and has super imposed text across the screen saying "2 Days later". We see Sawyer waking up in a hospital ward bed with a blatant heavy bruise on her forehead.

Episode 6 "Fire in the confession booth"

She wakes up in a hospital bed, restrained. Sawyer panics and frantically tries to shake them loose. She has no luck budging the bed. She screams and shouts, hoping someone will come to her aid. She sees the long haired man look through the window on her door. She goes ballistic. A nurse charges in and sedates Sawyer.

Episode 7 "Circle theorem"

 The nurse hears her cries for help and runs in through the long haired man to aid Eve and make sure she's alright. Sawyer tries to explain to the nurse about the long haired man, but the nurse dismisses her talk and tells her to stay and rest in bed. Sawyer feels like a million bucks right now.

Episode 8 "Secrets of the guardians"

Sawyer awakens from her sleep and feels much better, she tries to get out of bed and manages to successfully start walking again without support but starts to think about the long haired man and has deep pains in her head and starts to have a fit. She gets restrained. Nurses surround Sawyer. She frantically looks around the room in panic. She sees the long haired man. She stares into his empty, lifeless eyes. His eyes flicker with fire. The episode ends.

Episode 9 "Manipulated living"
The episode begins first person from sawyers perspective. Her eyes open. Theres smoke swarming out of the open window, Sawyer knows that she's in trouble! The door creeks open, slowly. Sawyer can smell the foul stench that the man carries. She can hear his miserable moans. She can feel his presence in the room. Sawyer climbs to her feet and looks into the mirror. She see's him behind her in the reflection. She scream "What do you want with me!?". The smoke engulfs her. All you can hear is heavy breathing and the constant sound of a heart beating.

Episode 10 "The physical impossibility of death in the mind of the living"

Sawyer compares herself to the longhaired man, she see's similarities between them both. She cautiously drapes her hair over her eye, she has an eye patch. She rapidly looks at herself and the long haired man. He disappears. She flicks her hair back over and sees that she has become a man! She releases a manly roar in terror. She grabs a scalpel and starts to cut her hair off. The faster she cuts it the faster it grows back. She becomes overwhelmed by her own hair and cries out. Fire fighters run in and see her, covered in hair. They lift her up and run out. She struggles and wants to be left behind. She only wants to die. She draws the scalpel from her sleeve and stabs the firefighter in the throat. Blood gushes out and blinds the other man. She screams and run deeper into the burning building. To this day her body was never recovered and no one know where she is and how she escaped. To this day children still claim to see the long haired WO-man in their rooms at night.