2015 is ending well for Sony Pictures Television’s (SPT) international production unit in Asia Pacific.

Exactly one year after acquiring Australian production house Playmaker Media, the company has four productions either on air or commissioned for 2016 in Australia. Channel Ten picked up 13-episode romantic drama, The Wrong Girl, for next year. 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. If, with SPT’s help, their 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 episodes of a local version of U.S. comedy, Mad About You, for Chinese audiences. The series, which goes to air in January 2016, follows a newlywed couple living in the city and looking to sustain marital bliss despite many hurdles, including their careers, families and friends.

Mad About You is Sony Pictures Television’s first adaptation of the comedy series in Asia; the Chinese broadcaster had not been announced at press time.

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 ableto do that in China”.

Drama production in China is also on her radar in the form of a co-production between SPT joint-venture production house Left Bank Pictures, based in the U.K., and mainland China’s China International Television Corporation (CITVC), which is a subsidiary of the all-powerful state owned China Central Television (CCTV).

The co-development deal for an English-language drama for the Chinese and international markets, was announced at the China International Film & TV Programs Exhibition in August this year. Under the deal, the partners will choose one high-end English-language television series to go into production by 2016. The series will air in China and SPT will distribute the project in the rest of the world.

“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.

The series is produced by Indian production house DJs, with the involvement of Wong’s central scripted creative team. The team travels around the world supporting local adaptations. Sumit Sambhal Lega is SPT’s second scripted adaptation in India after I Dream of Jeannie, which aired as Jeannie Aur Juju on Sony’s India channel SAB until the middle of 2014.

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.

“When we buy a company, it’s about giving them the opportunity to be even stronger in their markets and to grow globally,” she says.

“Believe it or not, when we met [Playmaker founders] David Maher and David Taylor, we weren’t necessarily looking for a company in Australia... But we looked at some of their work and we really liked them and thought they were creative and talented. We also got hugely positive response from the market, which told us there was a strong appetite for drama going forward. It was the combination of those two things that made us decide we wanted to be in business with them,” she says.

It is, she adds, “first and foremost about the creators”.

This article first appeared in ContentAsia Issue 6, 2015, published in December 2015.