M1 Strengths and Weaknesses of idea

Okay so some tv show ideas...

I've always loved the idea of going back in time to correct past events so I had the following idea:

FACE THE PAST

Unsurprisingly, the name is a sort-of pun.

This would be a dark-comedy drama with a vague storyline going a little like this. 

Ever since the break-in, Connor has been having nightmares about every detail of it, every nook and cranny of the crime scene, desperately knowing there must have been one thing the police missed out.  One day, when he wakes up, he checks the date. It's robbery day. He looks in the mirror and he's not exactly himself. He looks like his mother. The day repeats over and over again and every time, he's someone different, his sister, his science teacher, and even the family dog, witnessing this robbery over and over again to see if he can change fate and get himself out of this body-switching loop.


SHINY
Did you know birds hold grudges? Stella didn't. When she walked out of Gregs with her new vegan sausage roll, a bird tried to grab it out of the sky. Using her reflexes, she snatched it back and accidentally broke the poor bird's wing.

It's a story about a friendship between human and bird.... until the rest of the flock come to visit.

OPERATION
There's an illegal drug ring set up in the basement. Suddenly, when a debate gets heated and something goes horribly wrong, an intense advocate for Greenpeace, a group fighting for our world, interrupts this family feud. They're let go with a threat, but someone recalls a certain bodycam. Now it's a race against time to hunt the campaigner down to stop the family from facing serious prison time.


.....

The idea that I decided to go for in the end is 'Face the past' as for me, it has more potential to have a concrete plotline and with the possibility of having a decent amount of episodes with something to offer each time.

After talking to a peer, I added the pink highlights as telling someone else about it really helped me to notice what did and didn't work.

FOCUS GROUP

The focus group that we went to really helped me to give me more ideas and possibilities for the show, as well as a more grounded view of my target audience. 

The group's initial reaction to my idea was really quite self-assuring as they seemed quite interested and wanted to know more as it wasn't like some other, more normal, ideas that they'd heard of. 

They suggested that the crime committed (the burglary) was the event going to be repeated over and over again and that Connor, (the main character) would be in the body of someone different each episode, someone involved in the crime in some way so that each episode would help the audience understand more and more about the events leading up to it. 

'Who's the main character?'

"Is it like final destination, that sort of thing?' These questions were also really good for me as Final Destination was actually an inspiration.

A helpful suggestion they said was that I needed to make the characters extremely distinctive as if there is body switching afoot, very loud and firm personalities would be key so I am going to focus on that.

This focus group was made up of 5 students with the social grade of C1, they were all white-English males and between the ages of 17-18 years old. When talking to them, there were no extreme political views one way or another and most of them expressed interests in sports, further education and watching television and film for leisure. 

I also spoke to another person and here is their feedback.

They have a social grade of C1. This person is non-binary and is 17 years old, also being of white-English ethnicity. They were left-wing and expressed interests in history, music, literature and the LGBTQ+ community.

This was our conversation, 

'So what do you think of the idea on a whole, feel free to give suggestions, really, they'll help.'

- "I think it's quite interesting as it's really bizarre, set in a normal experience... I mean, getting shot by burglars isn't exactly a normal situation but it just gives a surreal outlook on a seemingly ordinary situation."

'Feel free to ask me any questions.'

"Ah, alright. Have you thought of the burglars being a couple? That might give an intriguing dynamic to the show. You said that it is just a son and his mother, where is the father?"

-"He's not really important, never addressed, you know?"

"Okay. -I'm thinking maybe if it's shifting from like, different perspectives, if there are other family members... in a way, it might sound like everyone has a different reason for the burglary.' 

"Mhm, yeah,"

-"As the episodes go on you discover more and more about the motivations behind the crime from everyone's perspectives, that would be a nice touch, I imagine. The audience will understand the crime at a deeper level as the show progresses. So they can fill in the blanks."

"Motivations, that could work. Yes."

-"I think I would watch it if there's a subtle commentary on social class and if it stands out with the absurdity of the scenario."

"What sort of characters would you like to see, representation wise or just in general?"

"Uhm... okay. The son is the main character so him, and the mother. The family dog, the burglars, and maybe a police officer as that will add more weight at the end.... -Because I’m LGBTQ+, of course I want to see some representation of these characters. Maybe the protagonist could be gay, give him a boyfriend? Subtly, not forced of course. And don't kill him off straight away, that's often a trope I see a lot, and I don't like it.

"I was thinking, as there's a lot of gay and straight representation on the BBC, done poorly or not, bisexual people or pansexual people don't get much. I want to change that and have this character represent either one of those."

-
-

"The colours look, in my head anyway, almost too normal but the actual acting is quite stylised, much like final destination, [proceeds to show a video clip of Final Destination]"

"Mhm... I see what you mean."

"And how do you watch these shows?"

"On my iPad, with family. I don't watch much new tv, just ones that have already been shown."

"Thank you, this has been a great help."