Fiction (British TV series)

Title card

**Fiction** (full name: ***It's Fact Or Fiction: Live Or Die***, Japanese: ***事実または フィクション 生きるか死ぬか***, Hepburn: ***Jijitsu matawa fikushon ikiru ka shinu ka***) was an animated science fiction television series produced in the style of an anime. It first aired in the UK on Toffa with its first series from 12 January 2019 which ran until 30 March of that year. A second series aired from 18 July 2020 until 28 November 2020 with the third and last series split in two parts; the first half airing from 11 September to 18 December 2021 and the second half from 2 April to 16 July 2022.

Despite it having an anime-styled look and being co-produced by anime production company A-1 Pictures, the series is not officially classed as an anime.

## History and development

The first concept for the show began in February 2016 when Stephen Portridge pitched the show in an attempt to air it on Saturday evenings for Winter 2017. He claimed to pitch the show as Toffa's next *Timebomb* with it being another live-action sci-fi show now that the channel now had much more money in place. While bosses warmed the whole concept, they feared overspending on the execution, especially for the channel's standards despite having a reasonable amount of money at the time. Portridge pitched the concept again a second time a year later with the positives being an improved premise and possible story arcs. However, the channel retained and suggested to hold it for a while before the timing feels right. He tried again for a third time in 2018 with further developments before finally being given the greenlight in March.

With a planned 24x45 production, Toffa cut it down to 12 to ensure the main story doesn't drag on for any longer. In the pre-production block, fears came that the show may be considered too expensive for Toffa with the camera equipment, budget and VFX being important factors to get a show right. After some thinking, Portridge quickly came up with a solution to drop the live-action based idea in favour of taking a further unusual step by producing it in the style of an anime. Just a day later, this was approved by Toffa chairman Riley Indigo in a cost-cutting plan. Stephen Portridge wanted the whole tone of the show to have the look of a hand-drawn anime rather than computer-generated which had been common for over a decade with most animes. This was particularly risky since it was unusual in recent times.

As a result, the show was pitched to anime production company A-1 Pictures and was soon approved for them to take hold of some of the production. At the same time for a last-minute reprise, Toffa's in-house hand-drawn animation company Toffa Animations, would make the main animation whilst A-1 did some additional CGI and special effects. One issue was with a Winter 2019 scheduled air date and how long it may take for at least an episode to complete as it would be a lot more time-consuming than CGI animes. In another risk as the animation was hand-drawn, the visual effects were CGI where necessary.

Production began in July 2018 whilst the finalised scripts were being developed. The voice recording was done first for each episode, before the hand-drawn animating process began where it was then taken to A-1 Pictures whom handled the post-production. Contrary to the expectations, production was completed in January 2019 shortly after the series first aired. Plans were afoot for a second series; should it be commissioned.

Reception for the first series was mostly positive, though a minority found it a little confusing, or lacking detail. A second series was commissioned after the airing of the penultimate episode on 23 March 2019. However, as production was slightly troubled, Series 2 would not air in Winter 2020 (that slot was replaced by the revival of Fort Boyard; moving from Sunday) but for the Summer or Autumn, giving production time to ease. The second series also saw a radical format change; the 45-minute episode length was cut to 25-minutes as with the average length of most anime episode, but the episode count was increased from 12 to 40; giving it an anime-esque format that the show could work with.

Series 2 began on 18 July 2020, following the last episode of Series 18 of The Microsoft Sam Show, which was also the last produced in-house by Toffa after 17 years and on the odd occasion, was the most-watched programme on Saturdays in the UK; narrowly beating both BBC One and ITV. Overnight ratings averaged near the 3m mark which proved to be more successful than the first series going into the Autumn, with the finale reaching 3.8m, and one of the most-watched show ever on Toffa in terms of the 7-day figures. The series was praised further by critics and audiences, although minor criticism came with the darker themes that took place in the finale including a bus crash and several on-screen deaths which were deemed unsuitable to air at 7pm despite being animated and deemed not too graphical. The third series was announced immediately after the broadcast of the finale.

On 30 January 2021, Toffa confirmed that the third series was to be the last, with the episode format reduced to 30x25 minute episodes in order to suitably pace the series ahead of the show's conclusion. Series 3 was also announced to split into two separate broadcast dates, with the first fifteen episodes airing in Autumn 2021, and the second during early 2022. On 14 August 2021, it was confirmed that 'Fiction: The Story So Far' would air on 4 September 2021, a week before Series 3 would debut. The show would cut down all of the main events from the first two series and compiled into a solid two-hour show to bring audiences up to speed or recap the story, as well as the possibility of bringing in new audiences so they could watch the show going forward.

Whilst the third series was successful as it aired, there was a gradual increase of complaints with the much darker tone of the show, particularly with how it contrasted to how it began as a family drama. This was further proven when the second half of the series aired at approx. 8:35pm before moving to 9pm from May until the finale.

## Episodes

 2 | 40
 3