Jail Birds

June 27

A fresh take on a well-worn genre makes for a compelling series available to view in US distributor CABLEready’s C21screenings suite, writes Emily Brookes.

In a fairly well saturated genre, CABLEready president Gary Lico (left) believes he has a crime and investigation series on his slate that offers something different from the rest. Asked what elements make WOMEN BEHIND BARS a successful format, Lico deadpans: “It’s women-slash-jails.”

CABLEready has been in the crime content game for about 15 years now, and its catalogue includes titles like MEDICAL DETECTIVES, FORENSIC FILES and DOMINICK DUNNE’S POWER, PRIVILEGE AND JUSTICE.

“There’re not too many shows around here that take this sort of line,” he says of WOMEN BEHIND BARS. “In fact, I don’t know of a single series that isolates women. Years ago there were dramas and things like that, or movies that did look at women in prison. But they were more sexual than this.”

WOMEN BEHIND BARS, from long-time CABLEready collaborator Burrud Productions (WEIRD WORLDS, SHARK CHASERS), goes face-to-face with women incarcerated in American prisons for violent crimes, often murder. Each episode profiles two different cases, using dramatic reconstructions as well as interviews with the victim’s family, the criminal’s family, the detectives involved in the case and, almost unprecedently, the criminal herself within the walls of her prison.

“It’s not designed to judge,” Lico says. “It’s really designed to profile these people and the cases that got them there.”

The show’s executive producer, Ashley Crary, agrees. “None of these women woke up one day and shot their husbands, or their children, or the clerk at the bank,” she says. “It was a culmination of many choices and life experiences that led them to this place. That’s what makes the series so fascinating.”

Although Burrud has been careful not to be too sensationalist in its portrayal of the incarcerated women, Crary concedes that ‘Men Behind Bars’ would have a very different kind of appeal as a series prospect.

“I think it’s a segment of society that we don’t know that much about,” she says. “There’s definitely a lot of stuff on TV featuring men in prison, but I think you sense the violence, and maybe the animalistic nature of it. I think the women are more relatable.”

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