On a computer screen near you

The end credits no longer mark the end of a TV show. Instead the drama keeps going through standalone webisodes, Twitter accounts, phone apps and plot twists decided by viewers, writes LAURA SLATTERY

WHEN THE IRISH actor Robert Sheehan, the standout star of the Bafta-winning drama Misfits, decided to leave the show it posed a minor dilemma for Channel 4. A decade ago the production team would have had two options. It could write his character, Nathan, out with just a cursory mention of an offscreen goodbye – an underwhelming option for the show's fans – or devote the first chunk of Misfits'third series to his departure, making it harder for the writers to establish whichever poor actor is destined to fill the Sheehan-shaped hole in the cast.

Now there is a third way: the webisode. An e4.com-only episode of the superheroes-with-Asbos television hit will be broadcast – or rather uploaded – ahead of the third series.

“You’ve got to have a good reason to do an online episode,” says Hilary Perkins, multiplatform commissioning editor of drama and film at Channel 4. “They have the same production values as on-air episodes, so it’s not a cheap way of making content for the web.” Perkins is in Dublin this week to speak about “multiplatform drama” and “telling stories in social spaces” at the Mash media conference at Croke Park tomorrow. “Television is not dead, it’s not dying,” she says. It’s just that, increasingly, television is being consumed in less uniform and harder-to-predict ways.

Misfits's forthcoming e4.com special is just one of many multiplatform delights being cooked up by broadcasters. It's a menu that includes games, apps, tweets, character biographies, standalone webisodes, repackaged extracts from the cutting-room floor and purposely commissioned add-ons designed to satisfy needy fans. What makes the Misfitswebisode different from most is that its plot will affect the narrative of the on-air show. In other words, most Misfits fans will go out of their way to watch it – either that or feel like they've blinked and missed something.

“Nathan was such a key character, we wanted to tell the story of where he’s gone, why he’s left and what he’s up to. So we have the online exclusive episode that explains things and wraps up the end of series two,” says Perkins. “It allows us to start series three with a bang.”

The £12 million assigned to the multiplatform teams at Channel 4 is skewed towards shows with young audiences. The broadcaster’s digital sister channel E4 has the “purest” young profile among the top 20 channels in the UK: 49 per cent of its viewers are aged 16-34. It is the top digital channel for this age group.

OVERALL ONLY ABOUT 10 per cent of Channel 4 shows get what the broadcaster calls a full multiplatform commission. Experimentation is still the name of the game. "One of the great privileges I have in my job is, I have permission to try things out," says Perkins, who is preparing for the launch of Beaver Falls, an E4 comedy drama following three British university graduates who land jobs at an American summer camp. It sounds like The Inbetweeners meets The OC, which is probably doing a terrible disservice to all three programmes.

Whatever Perkins has in store for Beaver Falls, it will take a lot to beat the striking novelty of Channel 4's decision earlier this year to invite Hollyoaksviewers to apply to become members of a jury that would decide the outcome of a rape trial taking place in the Chester-set soap.

“What I’m interested in is what it’s like to be a fan of the soap,” says Perkins. “You don’t need to supply additional material, as there’s lots of content there already. But if you have been a fan for years, you have an emotional connection.”

In video snippets placed on Channel 4's Hollyoakssite, viewers explained their experience of taking part in the fictional trial. The footage shows that many had preconceived ideas about the two characters and the events of the night, but were confronted with some legal realities. "A lot of them then changed their minds," says Perkins.

While Channel 4 considers the viewer jury a success, Perkins admits that "sensitive material" was involved. " Hollyoaksdoes have a public-service tint to it. It airs issues in a way that makes them topics for discussion," she says. "But I don't know if it is something that would be repeated, because it was very particular to that storyline."

She doesn't see the Hollyoakscase as an example of power devolving from writers and story editors. "People still want to be told stories that are compelling. Crowd-sourced plots frequently don't deliver that." Indeed, it is hard to see user-generated content putting writers out of work when much online content still comes across as a marketing exercise rather than as carefully crafted must-see entertainment.

It’s actually both, according to Perkins. “Good content becomes marketing in its own right, because people share it [on social media],” she says. “The days in which we just broadcast are a decade behind us now.”

The Exploding Media Mash Conference 2011 takes place today and tomorrow at Croke Park, in Dublin. mashmedia.ie

TV with a digital twist

Five shows that have used new media to engage with audiences

Hollyoaks(Channel 4) A rape trial placed long-running characters Gilly and Jacqui in a he-says-she-says courtroom face-off. Viewers who applied and were selected for the jury were asked to deliberate on the evidence of the fictional case, with producers filming two endings. The jury decided that Gilly was not guilty of raping Jacqui – an outcome that might have sparked greater controversy had the storyline not been carefully set up so that Jacqui is not making a false accusation. Both Gilly and Jacqui believe they are telling the truth. A scene showing a guilty verdict and footage of the jurors' deliberations were placed online.

The Thick of It(BBC2) This political satire has received a Bafta New Media nomination for an app called Malcolm Tucker: The Missing Phone. It costs €5.49 on iTunes, which works out as approximately 0.5c per inventive expletive. The content overlaps with that of a book called The Thick of It: The Missing DoSAC Files, but the app has the advantage of voicemail messages recorded by the cast. Both come from the writing team behind the series, including creator Armando Iannucci. A Malcolm Tucker Twitter account active during the last UK general election was the work of an unconnected genius.

Being Human/Becoming Human (BBC3) BBC3's drama hit Being Human was on its third series when it spawned the web child Becoming Human. It features the actor Craig Roberts, whose character Adam, a vampire, appeared in an episode of the parent show. His exploits at school were the subject of eight short online episodes in which, in a direct echo of Being Human, he befriends a werewolf and a ghost. But who killed the ghost? Like all good children, Becoming Human was eventually given its place at the big table, with the webisodes strung together into a TV-friendly format that filled a Sunday-evening slot on the youth-oriented BBC3 very nicely indeed.

Spooks(BBC1) The Australian digital-entertainment specialist Hoodlum Active worked with the BBC and Spooksproducer Kudos to create SpooksInteractive, in which viewers of the MI5 show could "become a spy and complete weekly missions" over a 10-part "narrative journey" that aired during series six. Hoodlum later produced Primeval Evolved, an online companion piece to ITV's Primeval.This introduced a new character, Eve, who eventually showed up in the main show. Hoodlum also worked with the US network ABC on Lost, generating an online extra called Find815, which successfully stoked Lost'smany enigmas between seasons.

Downton Abbey(ITV1) A costume drama doesn't seem like a natural fit with Twitter, but news of the outbreak of war had barely reached Downton before one Lady Mary Crawley began bemoaning, in 140 characters, how ghastly it was to be abandoned for the trenches. The novelist Elizabeth Speller has since taken credit for the @LadyMaryCrawley account, but there was also an official ITV @DowntonAbbey feed that took pains to adopt the style of Julian Fellowes's script. By the time the series aired in the US, its broadcaster there, PBS, was organising promotional "Twitter parties". Maggie Smith's Dowager Countess of Grantham would not be amused.