Factual is flying as buyers flock to London

It would be a stretch to say that global TV distribution is a punky, politically charged movement. But the sales community seems to have been listening to the words of Joe Strummer of The Clash: ‘London calling to the faraway towns’.

Distributors submitting shows for Broadcast International’s London TV Screenings Hot Picks – now a regular fixture in the distribution calendar – represent 10 different countries, while there are producers from 14, and buyers/commissioners from a record 22 nations around the world.

Countries as far-ranging as Thailand and South Korea (Parade Media Group cooking show Hidden Gems) and Brazil (Off The Fence natural history doc We Are Guardians) are captured in our numbers.

The global breadth of content submitted for Hot Picks is underlined by the 117 titles put forward, a 46% increase from 80 last year. As in previous years, the shows submitted tend to reflect some of the macro trends occurring in the industry.

With the cost of scripted production putting ever more pressure on distributors to fill deficits, they are employing increasingly creative dealmaking to ensure they can get shows made and make a return on their, often substantial, investments.

Factual titles, so often a more cost-effective genre than scripted, represent 44% of our submissions (51 in total) and are greater in number than UK scripted and international scripted combined (47 in total).

The resurgence of specialist factual docs – comfortably the strongest sub-genre – continues apace, accounting for 15 of the 51 titles, eight of which are pure history titles, five pure science shows and two a combination of both.

Outside of Fremantle’s factual Hot Pick Once Upon A Time In Space, prominent titles being sold include BBC Studios’ Humans (pictured top) and its return to hit brand Walking With Dinosaurs, plus Blue Ant Studios’ new take on the Ripper story: Jack the Ripper: Written In Blood.

UK scripted drop

Natural history and true crime provide seven submissions apiece. Sphere Abacus’s Making Manson, Orange Smarty’s The Pelicot Rape Case: A Town On Trial and Viaplay Content Distribution’s The Bunker offer intriguing insights into contemporary and historical true crime topics.

Elsewhere, standout titles include ABC Commercial’s Eat The Invaders, a lifestyle-cum-science series, Blue Ant Studios’ art-focused single Much Ado About Shakespeare, and Banijay Entertainment’s searing 7/7: The London Bombings.

Linked to the issues facing the UK drama community, where broadcaster tariffs have failed to keep pace with production budgets, the number of submissions in the UK scripted category has dropped by a fifth (21%) from 2024, with only 11 titles compared with 14 last year.

Distributors are again looking to scripted subgenres that are safer bets with buyers, such as crime, detective dramas, true crime and thrillers. Indeed, 10 of the 11 titles fall into these categories, with four thrillers, two detective dramas and four crime series.

Tentpole or prestige series, albeit often difficult to define, are slim on the ground, with Paramount Global Content Distribution’s BBC1 epic King & Conqueror and Sony Pictures Television’s This City Is Ours falling into that category. Even the latter has a crime engine that helps propel the narrative.

Beta Film’s latest foray into UK scripted, Bookish, is one of the most intriguing series at the Screenings, with Mark Gatiss’s assured hand steering a quirky and humorous detective series that is clearly built to return. The show is a good example of commissioner UKTV looking to superserve its audience with a considerable expansion of its drama offering.

Perhaps acknowledging the uncertainty over the US scripted market, which has gone hyperdomestic and decreased activity in the international co-production space, international players have looked to their peers to devise intricate partnerships, resulting in high-end, premium titles.

Besides our sweeping contemporary war, action and character drama Hot Pick Kabul – a multi-country series spanning two European commissioning clubs (The Alliance and New8) – there are many other clear examples of buyers teaming up for series.

Beta Film’s political thriller Other People’s Money is a partnership between commissioning broadcasters ZDF (Germany) and DR (Denmark), in co-production with their New8 peers, comprising Norway’s NRK, Sweden’s SVT, RUV (Iceland), YLE (Finland), NPO in the Netherlands and Belgium’s VRT.

ITV Studios’ comedy procedural Good Cop/Bad Cop brings together US buyers The CW and Roku with Australian streamer Stan, while Newen Connect’s historical drama Etty is a tie-up between Arte in France, SWR in Germany and NPO.

No fewer than nine other international co-pros were submitted, meaning that, even if the US feels like a closed book, international buyers are seeing the value of partnerships. This will be music to distributors’ ears.

To round off our data crunch, the march of the format also points to a universal anxiety about return on investment. The number of format titles submitted has almost trebled, from seven in 2024 to 19 this year.

Shows that have a track record in an existing territory – with format beats that can be adapted for localisation, and that can be scaled up or down, or even hubbed – will always appeal to buyers in straitened times. Add to that the intense audience response to titles like The Traitors or Gladiators and large-scale entertainment formats will have interest.

Getting competitive

Of note in our submissions is the uptick in sport or recreation-based competitions, with Banijay’s Against All Odds rubbing shoulders with the fascinating Hit The Mic! from Mediawan Rights and All3Media International’s Chess Masters.

The perennially popular dating sub-genre is covered by Seven.One Studios International’s Love Costs, BBCS’s The Honesty Box and Twin Love, which also straddles the social experiment arena.

Despite many competition formats – which include Fox Entertainment Global’s Extracted, Nippon TV’s Funny Faced Spy, NBC Universal Formats throwback The Wall and Warner Bros International TV Production (WBITVP) cooking show Last Bite Hotel – there is a definite emphasis on lifestyle and personal betterment this year.

WBITVP has Inside Therapy, which weaves in specialist factual elements to explore the effects of therapy on individuals, ABC Commercial explores parenthood with The Role Of A Lifetime, and Fremantle is scrutinising mobile phone usage in schoolchildren with Swiped. TV might be there to entertain, but in troubled times, self-improvement feels like a powerful tonic too.