GENRE REPORT
FACT ENT
THE GREATEST AUCTION
Channel 4’s Global Format Fund announced its backing of three titles this time last year: The Dog Academy from Five Mile Films, MultiStory’s reality show Scared of the Dark and a recommission of Firecracker Film’s Open House: The Great Sex Experiment. The latest to deliver is The Greatest
Auction, eight one-hour episodes from Curve Media, which launched in May in an eight pm slot. With auction-based programming
a firm favourite for UK audiences and both Channel 4 and Curve having success in this arena before, the idea to turbocharge the genre for prime-time TV seems natural. The Greatest Auction takes place in
a studio-based auction room, with the auctioneer selling rare and valuable items to private collectors, from a taxidermy unicorn to a pinball machine owned by Elton John. The twist being that only the audience gets to hear the experts’ valuation. Commissioned by Anna Miralis,
senior commissioning editor Factual for Channel 4, the executive producer for Curve is Charlie Bunce. Co-founder of Curve Camilla Lewis worked on auction format Four Rooms for Channel 4 and her business partner Rob Carey created American Pickers. With The Greatest Auction, they were
looking to “supersize this space”, says Lewis, and to make it feel “bustly, warm, about people.” Fronted by AJ Odudu, “the cast of auctioneers is fabulous, diverse, a wonderful warm mix,” says Lewis. “It’s got primetime sensibilities, casting, ambition, style, it looks beautiful and distinctive.” The set is designed to give the feel
of an amphitheatre, with the object for auction as the star of the show. “It’s deeply rooted in factual, it needs factual content to drive it” says Lewis. “If you can get to the truth and get information across by stealth, you’re on a winning streak.”
SUPERCAR SHOWROOM, AIR TV, DISCOVERY+
“WHEN WE DO CRACK THE RIGHT
FORMAT WITH THE PERFECT FORMULA FOR
OUR AUDIENCE, THEY’RE THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING”
SENEVIRATNE, CHANNEL 5
DENISE
SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS Studio Lambert is the go-to factual format producer for large scale ideas. For Channel 4 it created Rise and Fall which launched in March. Cotton describes the series as “a game with social experiment at its heart.” Alf Lawrie at Channel 4 says: “We commissioned it as an insight into social dynamics.” The contest for power and influence hasn’t been a huge hit, but ratings consolidated nicely. “We were proud of it. It did well. But there were definitely lessons,” says Lawrie. One lesson was timing: the race to bring the complex, unfolding story to viewers as soon as it happened meant that there was minimal time to finesse. “It was fascinating and gripping and dramatic, and we didn’t quite do justice to it,” he concedes. Channel 5 has had success with Hat
Trick format, Rich House, Poor House. “Formats need to have a purpose and familiar territory,” says Seneviratne. “Rich House, Poor House is about happiness and whether money makes you happy.” Upcoming on the channel is Wife on Strike, from Proper Content. “It raises the questions of what our roles are in modern life and what equality means at home.”
Summer 2023
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