FACTUAL TV
THE FUTURE OF FACTUAL FORMATS
success for UK producers in the dating space, including Love Island America that’s holding its own on US network CBS. But it’s a tough call to land a format in the States. “I’m not holding my breath for too many format commissions from streamers,” she says. “I’m not sure we have a shared sensibility.” At Curve Media, CEO Camilla Lewis,
describes a format that found a slow-burn way to the global limelight. How Did They Build That? was financed through Curve with TCB Media Rights. Produced three years ago, it was recently shown on Smithsonian and its success inspired Paramount + to commission a second season. Also on Curve’s slate is Salvage Hunters for Discovery, which has gradually built. “It’s a nice example where we’ve built a brand slowly, with distinctive talent, and it’s now getting bigger with the SVOD space.”
BACK TO THE START Lewis believes that we are in “a real throw-back moment... proper formats have got distributors jumping up and down.” Curve has two new series commissions in production: one is a constructed format in the medical space and another is a take on locations. “People want honest, true formats that reflect their world in a heightened reality,” says Lewis. At Ricochet, creative director Katy
Thorogood, riding high on the success of The Repair Shop on the BBC, agrees that formats have boomeranged. “Reinvention, you’re always looking for reinvention,” she says. “The
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televisual.com Summer 2021
BREATH FOR TOO MANY FORMAT COMMISSIONS FROM
STREAMERS. I’M NOT SURE WE
HAVE A SHARED SENSIBILITY”
HOLDING MY “I’M NOT
Repair Shop was the first time that antiques and collectables wasn’t done with money. It’s a universal idea, that something can be worthless and yet priceless.” Producers are rummaging around in their
archives for formats that might be profitably dusted off and thinking of the next turn of the competition wheel. Ricochet has eight-parter Britain’s Top Takeaways, its own new take-away competition format for BBC2, where a cast of people in their homes will judge deliveries. “It feels more playful, a bit more tongue in cheek, subverting competitive tropes in food competitions,” says Catherine Catton, BBC Head of Commissioning, Popular Factual and Factual Entertainment.
DRAMATIC STUFF Thorogood adds two fundamentals that can set factual entertainment apart. “The quality of drama in the last few years has raised the game for the quality of factual. A show has to have more than a factual beat, human storytelling has to be right at the heart of it and they have to have big story and drama.” And it needs to look good. “The Repair Shop was done on a daytime budget, but we spent the money very cleverly and it looked beautiful from day one.” Catton has seen The Repair Shop and The
Great British Sewing Bee move over to BBC One, winning huge audiences. “I think the formats landscape is exciting, it feels like a really thriving genre,” she says. “We want shows to feel invitational and pleasurable.” Formats are
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