COMMISSIONERS
The Bambers: Murder at the Farm SKY
Commissions have been ramped up on Sky’s factual channels as the Comcast- owned service builds its originals budget to $1bn by 2024.
Sky commissions factual across three channels, Sky Documentaries, Sky Crime and Sky Nature.
The bigger part of the budget goes into Sky Documentaries. It is home to 12 original series and 12 original feature documentaries each year - two releases each month.
For Sky Nature, it’s three or four blue chip natural history projects a year.
And for Sky Crime, it’s investing in four to six premium crime, bingeable box sets, plus longer running returnables, with closed ended episodes at a lower price point.
Sky Documentaries is a destination for premium factual story-telling, in the shape of a feature documentary, or a limited series with a strong narrative that takes the viewer across three, four, maybe five episodes. Whether it works best as a feature doc or series is something that can be worked through in development.
16 See the Televisual Factual Films at
televisual.com BIOGRAPHY AND CONTROVERSY
Given Sky’s subscriber base, sports stories – especially football - are definitely on the agenda. Sports biographies of much–loved, or controversial, sporting characters also have built-in competitive drama. Sky Studios has a development deal with Noah Media, which has a reputation for high-end sports documentaries. Recently announced from Noah is a Formula 1 film about Villeneuve and Pironi, which is being backed via Sky Italia.
Biographies of well-known figures, with an untold perspective, can work well. The Tina Turner feature documentary from Lightbox was a really strong hit for Sky, a definitive film about an iconic figure. Crime and scandal are also big areas. Ghislaine Maxwell: Epstein’s Shadow series rated well, people stuck with it and viewers enjoyed the detail on a topical story. And drugs and gangs three-parter Liverpool Narcos, from Blast! Films and director Anthony Philipson, was a big success.
One pillar of Sky Documentaries’
content is contemporary history or ‘news adjacent’-history where eye- witnesses are still alive and there’s a visual archive. For example, Shamima Begum feature documentary The Return: Life After Isis, from film-maker Alba Sotorra Clua.
Another three-part series that landed on the service on World Aids Day – December 1 – is Positive, the story of 40 years of AIDs in Britain, with medical, social, political themes, alongside intimate story-telling about the individuals caught up in the tragedy.
TWISTY, TURNY CRIME
Sky Crime is a classic true crime channel, for people who love to get into a really knotty, twisty, turny, unfolding investigation. Stranger than fiction and jaw dropping stories need to be granular, forensic, most often taking the form of a detailed look at a high profile case, with the best access, unseen archive, new revelations. In 2021, the channel launched five-parter Murder At The Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie, featuring unseen footage and new interviews. It is directed by Oscar-nominated
Poppy Dixon Director of Documentaries & Factual, Sky UK
Hayley Reynolds Commissioning Editor
Jim Sheridan. The documentary represented a first doc series production for Sky Studios, working with Hell’s Kitchen and Dare Films.
Meanwhile, The Bambers: Murder at the Farm, from Mindhouse, is a four-part series about the infamous murders at White House Farm in the 80’s, with access allowing a 360 degree picture of the story and told in a visually unusual way, using models of the house.
Launching on Sky Documentaries in 2022, there will be Chernobyl 86, a feature documentary directed by James Jones, told entirely through archive, much of it previously unseen. Lightbox and Altitude are also working on Ed Perkins’ theatrical Diana documentary.
The Scream is a documentary directed by Jenny Ash, from Curve Media, the story of the theft of Edvard Munch’s painting. It features a cat and mouse chase between the Norwegian and British Police and a charismatic criminal. Wonderhood Studios is working on a series about the modeling industry, a #MeToo reckoning, looking
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
