Australia’s Ten has picked up The Wrong Girl, a new 13-episode romantic drama from Sony Pictures Television’s (SPT) Australian production house Playmaker Media. In China, the finishing touches are being put on the first scripted format, Mad About You, and another SPT-backed production house, Left Bank Pictures, is sitting around the table with mainland China’s China International Television Corporation (CITVC) developing their first English-language drama for the Chinese and international markets.

Back in Australia, new seasons of Logie Award-winner Love Child and dramedy House Husbands are returning to Nine in 2016. And award-winning political thriller/crime drama, The Code, is back on ABC for season two.

Plus the second season of Love Child, based on the book by Zoe Foster, has been nominated for Best Television Drama Series in the 2015 AACTA (The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts) Awards, which takes place on 9 December in Sydney.

Andrea Wong, SPT’s president of international production and Sony Pictures Entertainment’s president of international, is more than happy.

“We bought Playmaker because they make great high-quality drama and they are very popular in their own market,” she says as SPT celebrates the first anniversary of the acquisition. If, with SPT’s help, Playmaker shows begin to travel around the world, including to the U.S., as scripted formats or tape, all the better. But this isn’t a prerequisite for success.

Wong says SPT’s acquisition of production houses is “first and foremost about the creators”. The company currently has 18 wholly owned or joint venture production companies in 11 countries, including Australia and China. The China production house, Huaso Film/TV Digital Production, is a joint-venture between Sony Pictures Television (SPT) and state-owned Chinese Central Television CCTV6’s HuaCheng Pictures.

Huaso has tied up with China’s Croton Media to co-produce 30 local episodes of U.S. comedy, Mad About You, for Chinese audiences. The series goes to air in January 2016.

The decision to create scripted shows in China follows a strong slate of non-scripted formats, including talk show Dr. Oz, and competition series Raid the Cage and Dancing Nation.

Wong says SPT would love to build a scripted business in China, replicating the model built in Russia over the past 10 years or so. Russia has produced multi-camera sitcoms such as The Nanny, Married with Children and Everybody Loves Raymond.

“We really got on the ground and taught local writers, directors and producers how to do multi-camera sitcom,” she says, adding: “It has been a hugely successful business for us. It would be great to be able to do that in China”.

Drama production in China is also on her radar. The co-development deal, announced at in August this year, involves one high-end English-language television series to go into production by 2016.

“Production has become much more global... TV shows are moving around the world in a way that they haven’t before. Both formats and prints are moving around much more readily,” Wong says.

So far, SPT’s global production ownership map hasn’t included India, where the company is involved in a local version of Everybody Loves Raymond, a 108-episode commission from 21st Century Fox’s Hindi general entertainment channel Star Plus. Sumit Sambhal Lega (Sumit will Handle Everything) premiered on 31 August 2015, and airs Mondays to Saturdays at 10pm.

Wong’s antennae are also always up for additions to SPT’s stable of producers and production houses. “We are constantly looking at production houses all over the world,” she says, highlighting SPT’s focus on great creative talent, wherever it is.

What does SPT look for in picking who to buy and who to bypass? “First and foremost, we look for great creative people. In the end you are betting on the people, on talent,” she says.

Adapted from the December issue of ContentAsia...in print, which will be distributed at the Asia TV Forum from 2-4 December.