Content powerhouse, Banijay, today confirms the line-up for its bespoke London TV Screenings event on Wednesday 1 March at BAFTA. It marks the second physical participation in the wider annual distribution gathering, which runs from Monday 27 February to Friday 3 March.
Shining a light on scripted, Banijay Rights’ premium offering includes UK dramas Three Little Birds for ITV and BritBox International, This Town and The Sixth Commandment for the BBC, Domina for MGM+ and Sky, Safe Home for SBS, as well as feature documentary LARA (w/t).
This year’s stellar scripted offering will be complemented by Banijay’s unscripted formats fronted by its Creative Networks team. Included are fresh interior design competition, The Big Interiors Battle; addictive dating and relationship shows, Love Triangle, Date My Mate, Save the Date; entertainment newcomers,Boomerissima and Cover Night; competition titles Blow Up and MasterChef Young Talent; and sneak peeks will be on offer for much-anticipated adventure reality, The Summit, and comedy entertainment, No Strings Attached.
As part of the exclusive, invite-only event, This Town creator, writer and executive producer, Steven Knight, stars of Three Little Birds Rochelle Neil, Yazmin Belo, and Saffron Coomber, will be interviewed live on the BAFTA stage, as well as The Sixth Commandment writer Sarah Phelps and director Saul Dibb; Safe Home star Aisha Dee, Domina creator Simon Burke and award-winning LARA (w/t) director Mags Gavan.
Cathy Payne, CEO at Banijay Rights says: “This year’s Banijay at BAFTA event is set to have the strongest line-up yet, and we’re proud to create a truly must-attend showcase for international buyers, with a high-calibre of talent supporting us on stage. With an extensive range of genres, bringing globally relevant themes to audiences, we expect our eclectic roster of content to be immensely popular.”
James Townley, Global Head of Content Development & Lucas Green, Global Head of Content Operations at Banijay comment: “From Love Triangle to Blow Up and No Strings Attached, at Banijay, we have a strong pipeline of emerging IP that we’re proud to present. This is down to our creatives who we are delighted to support in super-charging their ambitious ideas and getting them on-screen and travelling the world.”
Banijay Rights’ footprint in the premium documentary space has expanded over the last year, and along with Banijay Benelux joint venture Scenery, it’s lining up LARA (w/t). Directed by the BAFTA and Emmy award-winning Mags Gavan, the film recounts an extraordinary reconciliation story between Jorge Lara and Juan Pablo Escobar – the son of notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
On the scripted front, Banijay Rights is highlighting Three Little Birds, the six-part drama created by Sir Lenny Henry which depicts his mother’s stories of leaving Jamaica in the 1950s. The project is produced by Tiger Aspect Productions in association with Douglas Road Productions – both Banijay UK companies. Meanwhile, from Kudos, (a Banijay UK company) and Nebulastar, and co-produced with Mercury Studios, in association with Kudos North, Stigma Films, and Nick Angel for the BBC, This Town tells the story of an extended family and four young people who are drawn into the world of ska and two-tone music. This marks the first project of the Kudos-Knight creative partnership deal which supports the Birmingham film and TV industry.
The Sixth Commandment, from Wild Mercury Productions (a Banijay UK company) and True Vision Productions, is a true crime drama which explores the deaths of Peter Farquhar and Anne Moore-Martin in a small English village, while Domina returns for a second season, from Tiger Aspect Productions in association with MGM+ Studios, continuing the epic sweeping drama series that takes place during one of the most provocative periods in Roman history.
In addition, thriller Safe Home, the first commission for Imogen Banks’ new production company Kindling Pictures, which follows Phoebe, played by Aisha Dee, a 20-something professional who leaves her job at a prestigious law firm to work at a struggling family violence legal centre. As interconnecting stories unfold, relationships are tested and pressure mounts to save the centre.
Joining Banijay’s factual competition offering is brand-new interior design format, The
Big Interiors Battle from Banijay UK’s Remarkable Factual. Eight people with an eye for design receive the keys to an apartment where they are challenged to transform a different room each week. Will their key card work when they next try to enter or have, they been locked out the competition?
Love Triangle is a bold new relationship show created by the producers of Married at First Sight Australia, Endemol Shine Australia. It challenges a group of singles to relinquish their grasp on what they think their perfect partner should look like and instead choose, sight unseen. Following its successful first season on Stan, it has been recommissioned for a second series. Produced by Dragonfly in the UK, Date My Mate also explores modern dating. Based on the Endemol Shine Australia format Date Night, singles swipe through prospective suitors on the formats’ dedicated real-life app and then watch the subsequent dates unfold. In addition, in Save the Date single women tired of the dating world gain total control of their love life by setting a wedding date, before they have even begun to search for their partner. Will setting a love deadline help them find the one? Created by Endemol Shine Israel, Endemol Shine Finland produced the first series for Nelonen.
Boomerissima, created by Banijay Italia, is all about proving the superiority of your generation. Each episode sees celebrities from different eras pitted against each other highlighting TV shows, movies, music, famous names, adverts, etc to refute stereotypes and highlight whether things were better in the past or the present. The first series concluded on Rai 2 this month, outperforming the channels slot average across all demographics. Next up, how would Flowers by Miley Cyrus sound as rap or Beyonce’s Crazy in Love as a ballad? Cover Night is the singing contest from Shine Iberia that sees young talented singers (16+) go head-to-head as they transform hit songs into different genres and add their own twist to covers, accompanied by a live band.
Elsewhere, there are strong signs competition entertainment combos are here to stay with brand new formats from the Netherlands, and the Nordics. Amongst Banijay’s successful formats is Blow Up, created by EndemolShine Nederland and now commissioned in four territories. The first season which aired in the Netherlands last summer was the number one show in the slot on all commercial key demos with the slot average up 168% for 6-12-year-olds. Banijay also has the latest spin-off from MasterChef, the world’s most successful cookery television format which was created by Franc Roddam, starring a new generation of promising chefs, aged 13 to 18. Created by Danish company Metronome, and Nordisk Banijay in Norway, for Viaplay Group, this exciting and authentic new iteration aims to equip a future generation with the best tools within the industry, providing them with the platform and experience to one day, hopefully, fulfil their chef dreams.
On the first-look side, The Summit is a new and highly anticipated blockbuster adventure reality series created and developed exclusively with the 9Network by Endemol Shine Australia. Set in New Zealand’s rugged southern Alps, a group of strangers carrying an equal share of 1 million Australian dollars must reach the peak of a distant mountain in just 14 days to win the cash. All that stands in the way are a series of adrenaline-charged challenges and human nature. In a thrilling tale of endurance, survival, and greed; morals will be tested, physical limits pushed, and bonds broken. Will they work together or turn on each other as the going gets tough? And if they reach the summit in time…who will walk away with the money? Combining comedy with entertainment, RDF Television’s No Strings Attached invites a different celebrity in each episode to read an erotic piece of creative writing where they are the lead role. The adult fan fiction brought to life by puppet versions of the stars will encounter romance, scandal, mystery, intrigue, and farce.
More than 20 distributors join founder members Banijay Rights, Alll3Media International, Entertainment One, Fremantle and ITV Studios in showcasing their catalogues at this year’s London TV Screenings.