News

Exclusive: The Manhattan Alien Abduction producer Story Films is expanding its team in the U.S. and UK.

The All3Media-backed indie has created a VP Development post in New York and brought in International Emmy-nominee Adnan Mohammed. As well as leading the development of all unscripted projects, Mohammed will spearhead further growth into the streamer market, focusing on limited series, feature documentaries and co-pro opportunities. He was recently development boss at October Films in the U.S. and was International Emmy-nominated for Waiting for Jasmin.

In the UK, Story has upped Executive Producer Unscripted Adam Hopkins to Head of Factual, overseeing the docs production slate and seeking to find crossover in the docs and drama teams, while Netflix’s Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare director Liza Williams has joined as EP. Williams won a BAFTA for The Yorkshire Ripper Files- A Very British Crime Story and worked with Story on Hell Camp.

Following closely behind, Bad Sisters, The Crown, The English and Slow Horses also received five nominations apiece.

BBC dramas This is Going To Hurt and The Responder lead the nominations for this year’s Bafta Television and Bafta Craft awards with six nominations each.

Both dramas have received nods in the leading actor category for Ben Wishaw and Martin Freeman’s performances.

Sister’s This is Going To Hurt is up for best drama mini series, while Dancing Ledge’s The Responder, which has been recomissioned for a second series, makes the list for best drama series.

The two dramas...

Sky said it is the first time a major UK broadcaster has comissioned a project of this scale from a person with Down Syndrome.

Filming is underway on UK filmmakers Bruce Fletcher and Peter Beard’s feature-length documentary Otto Baxter: Not A F***ing Horror Story, which details the making of a 30-minutes film by Otto Baxter, who has Down Syndrome called The Puppet Asylum.

Both projects have been backed by pay-tv broadcaster Sky which said it is the first time a major UK broadcaster has comissioned a project of this scale from a person with Down Syndrome. Both are...

Commissions

“The Freedom Orchestra” (working title), a documentary film presented by Clive Myrie, will tell the story of Ukraine’s newly formed Freedom Orchestra. In the midst of the ongoing war with Russia, 75 of Ukraine’s noted musicians have come together to bring a message of defiance and hope. Some of their family members are on the frontlines, and many have fled Ukraine since the war began.

Myrie follows the stories of the musicians from rehearsing, often alone, in Ukraine, to coming together for their first rehearsal as an orchestra in Warsaw for their inaugural concert — ahead of a tour of Europe and the U.S., including a performance at the BBC Proms on July 31.

Myrie said: “There has always been a cultural frontline in this war and I wanted to reflect that struggle. This documentary, I hope, shines a light on Ukraine’s artistic achievements as well as creative spirit,...

Comcast-owned Sky has become the first major British network to greenlight commissions of scale written and directed by a person with Down Syndrome, the pay-tv giant has said.

The network has ordered two shows from Otto Baxter, short film The Puppet Asylum and companion doc Otto Baxter: Not a F*cking Horror Story. Both will be given a theatrical window before airing on Sky.

The former is described as an allegorical horror biopic reimagining Baxter’s life from baby to becoming his own master, charting his birth as a horned baby in a blood-splattered morgue through wayward teens to years in captivity in the ‘Puppet Asylum’.

The show is being exec produced by Bridget Jones star Sally Phillips, whose son has Down Syndrome and who has presented documentaries on the subject in the past, and comes from All3Media-backed Story Films in association with Archface Films.

Blending archive with drama and present-day footage,...

A drama exploring the collapse of Barings Bank and the man at the center of the scandal, trader Nick Leeson, is in the works at All3Media-backed Story Films.

The four-part drama “The Man Who Broke The Bank” (working title) for an as yet unnamed major U.K. broadcaster, charts the meteoric rise and fall of the plasterer’s son from Watford who secretly hid losses of more than £800 million (then 1.4 billion) in the early to mid-1990s in Singapore, leading to the collapse of one of Britain’s oldest merchant banks.

It is based on research from multiple books and archive and archive and first person accounts, including recent dialogue with Leeson himself, by BAFTA winning writer Tony Marchant.

Story Films’ recent true life dramas include recent acclaimed series “The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe” for ITV, which dramatized the story of infamous conman John Darwin, and “Deceit” for Channel 4,...

Bodyguard star Nina Toussaint-White is to lead a Channel 5 thriller from Deceit producer Story Films.

Toussaint-White will play Jodie in Witness No.3, a single mum who runs a hairdressing salon. One day at work, Jodie momentarily glances out of the window and in a split second her life descends into freefall. What she notices seems innocuous – two men walking on the opposite side of the road – but she’s actually witnessed a killer and his victim moments before a murder.

Joining the ensemble cast are Sion Daniel Young, Clare Dunne Ruaridh Mollica and Sue Johnston.

Filming in Ireland, the thriller from up-and-coming writer Thomas Eccleshare is the latest from the Viacom-owned UK broadcaster, which has been ramping up its drama offering following the success of the All Creatures Great and Small reboot and thrillers like The Drowning...

BBC Studios Teams With ‘The Inbetweeners’ Star

BBC Studios has signed a development, production, and distribution deal with People Person Pictures, the company recently co-founded by The Inbetweeners star Simon Bird and Jonny Sweet (Chickens). BBC Studios will have global rights to People Person shows co-developed, co-produced and commissioned from BBC Studios Productions. Josh Cole, head of comedy at BBC Studios Production, said: “We are long-time admirers of Simon and Jonny’s work – they are not only exceptionally gifted writers and performers but also producers, working closely with the industry’s most exciting, emerging comic talent.”

ViacomCBS First-Look AGC Deal

ViacomCBS has inked a first-look deal for Spanish language content with AGC Television, the television division of Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios. The first project under the pact is human trafficking drama Te Buscaré Hasta Encontrarte (I Will Look for You Until I Find You).

Channel 4’s ‘Deceit’ Rounds Out Cast

Eddie Marsan,...

ITV has announced a glut of new content as part of a spring showcase, including revealing that it has greenlit a true-crime drama series on John Darwin, the former prison officer who was jailed for faking his own death.

All3Media-backed Story Films is making four-part series The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, which is based on an unpublished manuscript written by journalist David Leigh.

The series tells the true story of how debt-laden Darwin and his wife, Anne Darwin, came up with an elaborate scheme to defraud insurance companies by faking his death in a canoeing accident in 2002.

Anne told the world that her husband had gone missing off the coast of Cleveland, England, weaving a web of deceit that included lying to her sons about their own father’s death.

Anne and John later moved to Panama City to start a new life together before their secret...

U.K. free-to-air channel BBC Two has ordered “Idris Elba’s Fight School,” a four-part series that will see the “Luther” star set up an experimental fight school in London.

Elba will enlist seven recruits whose circumstances around their upbringing have not given them the opportunities to make the right choices from across the U.K. and teach them the discipline needed in fight training in order for them to transform their lives and avoid street violence.

The series is produced by Workerbee and Elba’s Green Door Pictures. Executive producers for Workerbee are Rick Murray and Michelle Chappell and for Green Door Pictures are Elba and Lorraine Burgess.

“I see history constantly repeating itself and can empathize with these kids,” Elba said. “I believe there is a better way to teach people that you don’t need knives to protect yourself. It’s a proven fact that in urban areas where fight schools open,...

Idris Elba is to step back into the boxing ring for a BBC Two series, in which he will provide seven disadvantaged young people with lessons in discipline, focus and determination by putting them through an experimental boxing school.

Idris Elba’s Fight School is a four-part series produced by Workerbee, the Banijay-owned producer behind Quibi series Elba vs. Block, and the Luther actor’s production company Green Door Pictures.

Living and training together over six intense months in London, the school recruits will battle it out against other amateurs and work towards a big showcase finale. They will be trained in the ring by former boxing champions.

If they can stick it out, the no-holds-barred, rough-and-ready experience will motivate them to make positive changes, but only if they are open to them. Along the way, they will be mentored by Elba, who has been through similar training himself for Discovery’s Idris Elba: Fighter.

Exclusive: Niamh Algar, who is set to star in HBO Max’s upcoming Ridley Scott-directed sci-fi drama Raised By Wolves, is to front a crime drama for the UK’s Channel 4.

The British broadcaster has ordered My Name is Lizzie (w/t), which tells the true story of the high-pressure investigation into the devastating murder of Rachel Nickell in 1992.

The series is written by Emilia di Girolamo, who wrote The Tunnel, Sky’s UK version of The Bridge, and produced by All3Media-backed Story Films.

Algar, who also starred in C4 drama The Virtues, plays Lizzie James, female undercover officer, who is asked to become sexual bait for a suspected killer.

The police were desperate to solve the crime, which was headline news in the UK at the time and becoming a national obsession. First identified through a BBC Crimewatch appeal, the evidence is stacked against Colin Stagg,...

All3Media is backing fledgling documentary and drama production company Story Films, which was founded last year by filmmakers David Nath and Peter Beard. Nath is a three-time BAFTA-winning director whose 2015 trilogy The Murder Detectives earned him a BAFTA for Best Factual Director along with a BAFTA for Best Factual Series and Grierson award. He then moved into drama with The Watchman at Channel 4. Beard directed and produced the 2015 pic My Son the Jihadi, which…...

Louisa Mellor Aug 24, 2016

Channel 4’s one-off drama feat. This Is England’s Stephen Graham is tense and thought-provoking with a terrific central performance…

This review contains spoilers.

With very few tweaks, The Watchman could slot in as an episode of dystopian tech anthology series Black Mirror. No matter that it takes place in the present and features technology already so widespread you’ve almost certainly been captured by it multiple times today, its depiction of modern alienation aligns it perfectly with the Charlie Brooker drama. The two also share a composer in Jon Opstad (whose cleverly spare score is the closest thing Stephen Graham could reliably call a co-star here) and the ability to captivate in no time at all.

The Watchman seizes you in its first minutes with a simple but urgent problem. An anonymous woman is preparing to jump to her death – can lone CCTV operator Carl...

Channel 4 has announced a series that will follow the investigation into a fatal stabbing in Bristol.

With a working title of Murder, the three-episode series will run as one-hour instalments.

The Films of Record series, directed by BAFTA-winning director David Nath (Bedlam), has been filmed over 18 months with unprecedented access to the police force's Major Crime Unit as they investigate the murder of a 19-year-old man.

Channel 4's Deputy Head of Documentaries Amy Flanagan said: "Unlike previous crime documentaries, this is uniquely shot as a drama - a ground-breaking police series followed in real time and inside the mind of the detectives.

"But with the heart-wrenching story of a young man's senseless death, his family's pain and the police's determination to achieve justice for them at its heart, viewers will be in no doubt they are watching real life; with all the far-reaching consequences such an act of...