Acorn TV GM Matt Graham Talks About The Return of ‘Miss Fisher’ — as a Movie!

Let’s be honest: You’re going to be home a lot, and you need new stuff to watch.

If you’re looking for science documentaries, try CuriosityStream. If you want food and travel, try Tastemade. If you need classic movies, try Criterion Channel. If you’re looking for British TV dramas, keep reading. We have a sizzle reel below for Acorn TV and an interview with the exec who runs the service.

“Most of our shows come from the top U.K. broadcasters — BBC, iTV and Channel 4 — and the catch-up services like BBC iPlayer where people watch a lot of those shows,” Acorn TV GM Matt Graham said in an interview with Decider. Acorn TV recently expanded its 7-day trial to 30 days (use promo code FREE30) to appeal to viewers who are stuck at home avoiding the coronavirus, and the service has a deep enough catalog to become part of your TV routine.

Acorn TV’s big new thing is Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, an original film starring Essie Davis (The Babadook) as a sexy, self-assured private investigator. She’s a 40-something Miss Marple in a tight skirt and stilettos and thoroughly modern — unintimidated, uninhibited and a bit cheeky — for a show set in 1920s Australia. The film is based on the Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries series that is one of Acorn TV’s most popular shows.

DECIDER: Acorn TV has not reported subscriber numbers since you reported reaching one million subscribers in the United States and Canada in September 2019. Are you still growing?

MATT GRAHAM: We’re not releasing a new subscriber count at this point, but I can tell you that we finished 2019 adding new subscribers at a record pace, and that is continuing into 2020.

How much do you know about your subscribers — who they are, where they live, what else they watch, etc.?

They’re geographically diverse with high concentration in major metropolitan areas. We know from our survey research that we’re a great add-on service for a large number of our subscribers who subscribe to services like Netflix and Prime Video. People subscribe to those services for a wide range of content and come to us for the specific kinds of dramas and mysteries that we have.

Acorn TV has a freestanding app and is available on services like Amazon Channels, Roku Channels, Apple TV Channels and Xfinity X1 that aggregate your shows with other services. Have you seen different shows break out on different platforms?

We have new content every week and build the featured carousel to be uniform across the different platforms, so we see a lot of consistency in what people are watching. The platform and the device don’t significantly shift what subscribers are watching on the service.

Is most of your catalog exclusive to Acorn TV?

Most of our content is exclusive.

Are you licensing most of your shows after their first run in the U.K., or are you attached to a lot of shows during production?

It’s a mix, and we’re at an inflection point on how we commission content. Historically, we’ve premiered a lot of shows after their U.K. premieres, and now we have shows like Agatha Raisin that we’re commissioning and premiering first in the United States. That’s a big change for us, and it reflects the scale we’ve achieved and our ambitions to make shows that are tuned for our audience.

The two dominant genres I see on Acorn TV are comedic, female-driven mystery shows like Agatha Raisin and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and grittier crime shows like Line of Duty. What else are you acquiring?

Those are the two ends of the spectrum, and we have a lot of shades in between those two. One of the big shows on the service is a family drama from Australia called A Place to Call Home that’s a sweeping family saga with love stories and a lot of intrigue. Detectorists is a really unique U.K. comedy that’s quiet and witty.

Later this year we’ll release the newest season of Line of Duty, which is the No. 1 drama in the U.K., so a lot of our shows are coming to us as big hits in the U.K. And we have a lot of cozy mysteries and crime dramas, which is what many people are coming to the service to see.

Is Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries a hit? My wife is obsessed with that show.

Yes. Miss Fisher has been a huge hit for us for a long time. Acorn TV brought Miss Fisher to the United States for Season 1, we’ve been committed to it, and we’re really thrilled to be the exclusive U.S. home for it. We now have Miss Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries, which brings the show forward to the 1960s with Miss Fisher’s niece taking over, and that’s also a big hit for us.

You’ve got a film spinoff called Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears that’s bigger budget and more cinematic than the show. What were your first impressions when you saw the film?

It is very cinematic. It’s an adventure set in 1920s British-occupied Palestine that ups the ante from the show, and we were glad to be able to do some theatrical screenings before it became available on Acorn TV. The U.S. theatrical debut at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January sold out three screenings, which was just amazing. Fans dressed up in costumes and lined up around the block, and Miss Fisher really is a franchise now.

I’m extremely hesitant to try and mansplain the appeal of Miss Fisher, but she’s this modern woman who doesn’t accept the convention that she’s not allowed to do certain things. Is that why you see the show working?

That’s certainly part of it. Miss Fisher is set in a 1920s Australia where she confronts a lot of issues that women faced at that time — and still face — by taking on sexist characters in a very bold way.

Cush Jumbo co-stars in Deadwater Fell that premieres in April, and viewers who subscribe to CBS All Access will probably be aware of her from The Good Fight. Do you think about things like that when you market a show on digital platforms?

She’s recognizable and she’s incredibly compelling, so it’s huge for us to be able to incorporate her — and David Tennant — into our marketing. Adrian Dunbar, who is one of the stars of Line of Duty can’t walk down the street in the U.K. without getting mobbed by fans, but he’s not as well known in the United States. When we have U.K. talent who have awareness in the U.S., it makes a big difference for us.

A potential limitation on a service with a million subscribers vs. a service like Netflix with 50 million U.S. subscribers is that you’re not in the same position to create a breakthrough hit. Are there things Acorn TV can do better than a big service?

Sure. We specialize in a very specific set of genres and sensibilities and styles that appeal to a critical mass of people to support the kind of service we want to offer, and we don’t need a huge market to be really successful. We think there are a lot more people out there who will like the kinds of shows we have and think there’s a lot of growth ahead of us, and we don’t have to appeal to everyone.

AMC Networks bought RLJ Entertainment, which is Acorn TV’s parent company, almost two years ago. Have the biggest changes for you been how you buy content? What kind of data you have access to?

AMC Networks has been great for Acorn TV and helping us grow the service. In terms of operations, AMC Networks has four services — Acorn TV, UMC, Sundance Now and Shudder — so we have a lot of operational and marketing benefits running those services together.

You’ve been advertising on socials like podcasts, Instagram and Twitter, and still doing more traditional advertising. What’s working for you?

We’ve also done paid search, Facebook and display advertising. We’ve run promotional spots on AMC Networks channels, which has boosted awareness. We’re focused on a particular kind of audience, so direct-to-consumer digital marketing works well for us. The California Consumer Privacy Act has given people a lot more control over the data but has made it more challenging for companies like Acorn TV to identify customers who will be interested in the content.

I see different companies advertising on different socials, so I’m very curious why particular products and services are doing better on particular platforms.

The right podcast with a very authentic voice and the right kind of audience can work really well even if we don’t have a lot of personal information about that audience.

Scott Porch writes about the TV business for Decider and is a contributing writer for The Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.

Stream Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears on Acorn TV