FACTUAL TV
WHAT’S NEXT?
BBC2’s Inside the Factor y: Keeping Br i tain Going produced by Vol tage TV
too ambitious for the next few months. Other big brand shows that rely on people mingling, like The Apprentice or Bake Off, will be impossible or at least more expensive, with longer shoot times and increased insurance headaches. The question has to be asked: What would happen if one of the contestants went down with the bug? Closed formats, where each episode is a separate entity, hold more appeal. At Channel 4, money for ‘blue-
ribbon’ shows is ring fenced. It still has a call-out for a factual entertainment family-based business idea, while the channel’s specialist factual is looking for a bigger, reflective piece around how Covid has affected society. And it is still keen to find a female adventurer. “We’ve got to be really honest about the challenges,” says Salaria. “Realistically it’s going to be incredibly expensive and time consuming and fraught with difficulties. At the moment, we have to look at travel in a different way. “
THE GREAT ESCAPE With so much to worry about, both in TV and across the economy, it’s
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televisual.com Summer 2020
not surprising that escapist ideas are even higher on the agenda than pre- Covid. At ITV, Clinton-Davis says, “we want programming that allows us to forget/escape from the current strictures. This is a prescription for televisual Es,” by which she means Entertainment, Enrichment and Escapism. “Travelogues have fulfilled this previously. How do we conjure up the exotic in a new way? Access to aspirational places is just one avenue.” At the BBC, while its
from Minnow and a follow up to Hometown: A Killing from Forest. The BBC factual team has taken
“THERE ARE BIG HOLES IN PEOPLE’S
new fact ent hit Race Across the World is on ice, it has announced a run of comforting and reliable commissions. BBC 2 has 6-parter 12 Puppies and Us: The Next Chapter from RDF and Your Garden Made Perfect from Remarkable TV. While The Repair Shop has scored a 15-part spin off for Ricochet and BBC Studios has cashed in on the franchise, with a series fronted by Repair Shop presenter, Jay Blades Home Fix. New hard hitting docs have been ordered too, including Britain vs Coronavirus from BBC Studios, a film about serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga
INVENTORIES AND IF ANYONE HAS
ANYTHING IN THE CAN, NOW IS THE TIME TO SELL IT”
a personnel hit, with controller of Factual Alison Kirkham off to Apple TV, following the departure earlier this year of her fact ent and specialist factual lieutenants David Brindley and Tom McDonald. Head of Documentary commissioning Clare Sillery’s brief keeps expanding and head of daytime Carla-Maria Lawson is overseeing popular factual and factual entertainment. While the structure of the factual
top team remains unclear, what has become clearer is the BBC’s commitment to ‘diverse and inclusive content,’ with its three-year plan and £100m spend now on the table. But before they can bid for a slice
of this money or any other content financing, indies will need a post Covid survival strategy. Whatever else, the on-going challenges mean that in the foreseeable future shows will require frugal budgeting and creative thinking. “Factual can deliver that because
we can work with smaller teams,” says Salaria, “we can think on our feet….. we don’t have some of the issues of other genres. We are well placed.”
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