Hot Picks: Cops On the Rock

As part of a bolstering of its crime slate, Blue Ant International invested in Rare TV’s Cops On The Rock back in 2019, before filming had even started.

The 10-part series is Rare’s debut commission for UKTV’s comedy and entertainment channel Dave and signals a departure from the network’s usual focus on scripted and unscripted comedy programming by highlighting the extraordinary work of the police and customs force on the island of Gibraltar, the British territory home to approximately 30,000 residents.

Each hour-long episode provides extensive access to a police unit that bridges the gateway to the Mediterranean, with Morocco just nine miles across the sea. The result is a breadth of attention-grabbing crime stories ranging from terrorist threats and international smugglers to low-level drug dealers.

These subjects were a major draw for Blue Ant director of international sales and acquisitions Fleur Wheatley, who expects the series’ crime topics to “drive ratings and subscribers”. She adds: “It’s bingeable, and for us that is a massive tick.”

While the police are British, Wheatley sees both the crimes tackled in the series and the fact that Gibraltar acts as a hub for a variety of nationalities as an attraction for international buyers and audiences. Cops On The Rock covers a spectrum of crimes, from high-end to low-end, and presents a range of different cultures and perspectives, setting it apart from its UK ob-doc counterparts.

“It’s not just your regular bobby” says Wheatley. “It’s all of the different elements of what is a unique police force that you wouldn’t know about unless you had this access.”

Pre-sales had already been secured across numerous European territories before the show aired on Dave in February, drawing average audiences of 150,000 in its slot, comfortably above the 100,000 benchmark. The distributor is currently in negotiations with a number of other territories.

Although Wheatley acknowledges that had the series been around a few years earlier, its 10-episode count could have made for “a difficult play” for the streamers, Blue Ant has received interest from SVoDs, as well as other niche platforms.

Wheatley partly credits this to the fact that each episode is self-contained, but has a host of recurring, charismatic characters that viewers can “fall in love with”, combined with fast pacing that speaks to both a linear and an SVoD market.

With a slate that includes Mountain Vets and Digging For Britain, Rare TV offered an opportunity for Blue Ant to delve into true crime and fact-ent in a way that “feels specialist”.

Having previously distributed programming with more specialist factual tendencies, such as World’s Most Scenic River Journeys and Secrets Of The Imperial War Museum, Cops On The Rock adds to a growing fact-ent slate.

“Rare TV takes very interesting topics and looks at them in a very intelligent way,” says Wheatley. “Yes, it’s true crime, but it feels premium factual because of the nature of the programming and the way that Rare sells things.”