ALL3MEDIA Celebrates Midsomer Murders at MIPCOM

October 5, 2009 World Screen

LONDON/CANNES: ALL3MEDIA International, which is unveiling a host of new product in Cannes this week, is celebrating 15 years of success of Bentley Productions’ hit crime drama Midsomer Murders, inking a new deal with ZDF, among other agreements.

Licensed into more than 230 territories, the series has been the leading drama export out of the U.K. for the last five years. It was developed for TV in 1994 from the original novels by Caroline Graham. John Nettles, who plays the role of Detective Inspector Barnaby, will be at MIPCOM this week celebrating the 15th year milestone for the show, alongside cast members Jane Wymark, Jason Hughes and Barry Jackson.

New deals for Midsomer Murders include German pubcaster ZDF acquiring more than 30 hours for a Sunday night slot. In addition, the series is now airing in a Sunday night prime-time slot on La Sette in Italy, which re-licensed seasons 1 to 5 and acquired the rights to 12 and 13. Also in Italy, Dolmen has acquired seasons 3 and 4 for DVD release. In Australia, ABC re-licensed seasons 7 to 9 on the heels of the success of the recently acquired season 12. Hallmark Channel in the Middle East and Turkey opted to re-license seasons 7 to 11, while feeds in Hungary, Russia, Poland, Israel, Romania and Africa acquired seasons 12 and 13. VRT Belgium has just acquired series 12 and 13 and is re-licensing a further eight back series, whilst KRO Netherlands has acquired series 13. Three seasons have been acquired for Slovakia on TV Joj and in Canada, TV Ontario and Knowledge took seasons 10 and 11.

ALL3MEDIA is in Cannes with more than 75 hours of new drama, including eight two-hour episodes of Midsomer Murders; the 6×1-hour second season of Raw; a fourth season of the youth-skewing hit Skins, from Company Pictures for E4 and Channel 5; a fifth 10-episode season of the ITV1 commission Wild at Heart; the Objective Productions BBC One series Reggie Perrin; a new season of the period detective drama George Gently; season six of Outrageous Fortune, in production for TV3 New Zealand; the 13-episode TVNZ series Go Girls and, also for TVNZ, the TV movie Spies and Lies.