More than 820,000 people in the Czech Republic and Slovakia already pay for access to the content of the Voyo streaming application. Nova Television thus came significantly closer to the desired goal of one million subscribers by the end of 2025. To support user interest, it is investing in the filming of other exclusive formats for Internet launch. It often deals with criminal subjects, but it does not avoid documentaries either.
At the same time, authors and actors collaborate with Nova, which we would not associate with commercial television at first glance. “At first it was hard to convince the best creators that we were serious. Later, the viewers that they will find stories here that do not underestimate them, that relate to their lives and that are on their side,” said the head of development at TV Nova Michael Reitler. He returned to Nova some time ago from Czech Television, where many award-winning programs carried his signature.
Now expert juries are also noticing the production for Voyo. The miniseries The Mathematics of Crime received the Czech Lion and the Slovak Film Award Sun in the Network. The series Method Markovič: Hojer won the award for the best series of Central and Eastern Europe at the Serial Killer festival. And the jury of the Pilsen Finale festival highlighted the exceptional film design and great acting in the historical drama King of Šumava: Phantom of the Dark Region.
“I’m glad that the first series was appreciated by both experts and the wider public. It is of course a commitment for us to fulfill – and perhaps even exceed – the audience’s expectations in the second series as well,” he noted Tomas Hruška, produced by Metoda Markovič. The second series will focus on another successfully solved case of the criminal investigator Jiří Markovič. It will be the capture and conviction of the so-called Spartakiad murderer Jiří Straka.
“We had enormous support and creative freedom from Nova’s management, which I think can be seen in the result. And I’m glad that it gives back to us and Jiří Markovič’s family the amount of energy that Jiří Markovič and I put into the whole project,” added the screenwriter of both series Jaroslav Hruška. He will reprise the titular role of the investigator Petr Lneničkawill also return Sarah Haváčová, Václav Neužil, Adam Mišík, David Prachař or Michal Isteník.
The director’s six-part series was inspired by another true criminal case Tereza Kopáčová. In 1968, a house with a garden burned down in Vonoklasy in central Bohemia, where investigators later found the corpse of a woman and a drowned man in a well. The shaken, injured son told the detectives the story of the family tragedy. Later, the authors of the series Thirty Cases of Major Zeman elaborated on the topic in an episode called Studna.
From the series Metoda Markovič: Hojer. The crime drama inspired by the real cases of investigator Jiří Markovič will have a second series. This time he will focus on catching the Spartakiad killer.
Author: TV Nova
The upcoming drama for Voyo will also have the same name, but it will tell the fate of the Jelínk family in its entirety. Screenwriters Miro Code and Kristina Májová they want to describe what preceded the tragedy, what followed it and what were the motives and motivations of all the actors. They will introduce themselves in the role of the Jelínk couple David Švehlík and Johana Matouškováwill play their son Filip Cervenka (on the opening image of the article).
Slovaks will also get a show based on real crimes, but this time it will be a documentary series. Screenwriter Jakub Režný and the director Peter Bebjak serial killer interested Ondrej Rigo, which killed nine people, two of them abroad. Rigo was the first murderer in the former Czechoslovakia to be convicted based on a profile created by a forensic psychologist and DNA analysis. The documentary series will not only show police procedures and investigations step by step, but the creators also promise that viewers will feel the atmosphere of the 90s, when all the crimes were committed.
The series Bulldog from Poděbrady will offer a lighter detective story. It is created under the direction of a creative producer Tomáš Baldýnský, who returned to Nova after several years. The bulldog of the title is the character of a choleric policewoman, who is only up to her neck because she has to handle two unbearable teenagers and an ex-husband across the street. He will play it Sabina Remundová. In eight parts of the comedy crime drama, he will solve “cases that Poděbrady does not remember”, but he has to put up with his pedantic boss. Tomáš Baldýnský wrote the script together with Tomáš Chváladirects Jan Haluza.
“Detectives that will make you feel good” are produced under the title Murders in the Region and under the direction of a recent winner of the Czech Lion Tomáš Pavlíček. Ondřej Sokol plays a colonel who, after twenty years in the Prague criminal district, would quite like to relax in the countryside and devote himself to beekeeping. But that’s wrong.
“Those who like to guess what will happen and who is behind it in detective stories will be delighted, because Murders in the Country hides two puzzles in each episode. First, we get enough time to get to know the community or family that the episode will be about, and to guess what kind of crime these people are likely to encounter. Then, when the crime happens, together with Colonel Kučera, we can figure out who committed it and why,” says the creative producer Lenka Szántó.
Director Marta Ferencová is preparing an eight-part comedy series Millionaires. What happens when five colleagues from a small factory win a fabulous amount in the lottery? “They say money corrupts character. If you have character, the good that is in you, big money will only strengthen it. But what if you don’t have it? What would a big win do to you? Millionaires will be about friendship, family ties about the best in us,” explained the development director Michael Reitler. The series will have a star-studded cast, appearing in it, for example Pavel Liška, Zlata Adamovská, Miroslav Táborský or Eva Holubová.
Family comedies are also in the works. The scripted series The Fall of the Koller House gives an insight into the life of an atypical family Natalia Kocábová directed Jan Hřebejk. “I’ve wanted to write a comedy about what can and does happen when you bring home your aging and ever-dominant parents,” said the author of the script.
“On the one hand, I was surrounded by a lot of such stories, and on the other hand, I noticed that it is not filmed or written about as much,” she added. The director cast a Slovak acting legend in the main role of the peculiar mother of the family Božidar Turzonovová.
The successful project Sex O’Clock will get a second series, this time it will be in the background of Christmas Zlín. “Everything revolves around the most stressful period, i.e. around Christmas and New Year,” stated the director and screenwriter Karolina Zalabáková. “But don’t expect candy-candle Christmas kitsch from us. There will be romance, healthy cynicism, rough jokes in which we all recognize each other, and there will be sex at every age. That is, even in the most advanced, where we will visit a cemetery or a gynecological office with our characters,” she summarized.
Nova is also behind the upcoming documentary Virtual Friend of the Director Barbora Chalupová about the OnlyFans phenomenon. In four stories, the film will reveal the motivations of the stars of this social network for adults and at the same time bring closer the perspective of their loyal fans. And the five-part documentary series Kauza Kramný deals with the case Peter Kramný, convicted of murdering his wife and daughter in Egypt. Before completion is a documentary series with the working title Lebo medveid about all aspects of living with a brown bear in the Slovak Poľani.
“I see it as a huge success that in just three years since the restart, Voyo has crossed the threshold of eight hundred thousand subscriptions in one moment. Voyo is thus the strongest local streaming service and can easily compete with the strongest global players on our market,” says Nova’s CEO Daniel Grunt. The average time Voyo is used is 15 hours per week.
