Despite the UK's improved performance recently, selling scripted formats to US broadcasters remains a high risk gamble.
Sky is also thought to be talking to other US cable channels including Mad Men's AMC (Breaking Bad and Showtimee (Dexter ,Nurse Jackie) about HBO-style output deals, so the supply of the best US scripted programming to other UK broadcasters could all but dry up.
The drama has been scripted by William Ivory, whose screen-writing credits include the BBC1 dustmen show, Common as Muck.
Dubost and Carette play a deliciously sly and comic cat-and-mouse game with the absurdly rigid Modot, especially during the after-dinner entertainment, a breathtaking sequence described by the critic Richard Roud as something from "a Marx brothers film scripted by a Feydeau who suddenly acquired a tragic sense".
Cameron comes across as scripted and managed by special advisers.
Psycho was itself the film that so emphatically answered that question in 1960 and the story of its creation – based on Stephen Rebello's enthralling 1990 account, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, and scripted by John McLaughlin – is at heart the story of a marriage, between a fat, ugly genius and the "tiny, birdlike woman" who was invigilator, confidante and touchstone to his talent.
I certainly didn't expect that to happen and people always ask me if it was scripted but it was a complete coincidence.
Scripted by Pawlikowski with British playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Ida has grossed more than $3.7m in the US and been a major hit in France.
On the other hand, with Lemon and Harry Hill, the film-making teams had faced the challenge of converting characters most famous for a panel game show (Celebrity Juice) and a playful take on the week's TV (TV Burp) into scripted features.
There will be a new commission from choreographer Hofesh Shechter; a large-scale piece of public theatre by Frank Cottrell Boyce (who scripted Danny Boyle's opening ceremony); and a music festival on the longest day of the year.
Colin Weir said, in a carefully scripted statement issued by the party he once stood for as a candidate, it was a natural thing to do.
